Robert Conquest - What to Do When the Russians Come

For the photographer not directly employed on a paper, there will also be outlets. The new elite always show an endless appetite for professional-style visual representation of themselves and various aspects of their power and position. You may also find that ordinary families will seek, more than usual, records of their loved ones, in the constant fear that they may be separated at any time by death or deportation. (In labor camps it has often been possible for prisoners to keep small photographs, which have given them some cheer and comfort.)

If you are skilled at montage and general faking of photographs, you may be employed as a specialist on one of the main newspapers or agencies. It is traditional in Communist countries to issue historical and other photographs with changes made to eliminate faces of those who have meanwhile fallen into disfavor or to enhance the status of those who have risen. Cases in the USSR, going back fifty years but practiced to this day, include the mere omission, by brushing out, of major leaders of the revolution like Trotsky; the substitution of a tree for a famous former comrade, Lev Kamenev, in a reproduction of a famous prerevolution photograph; the moving of Georgi Malenkov, a comparatively minor figure when the photo was first printed, to standing alone with Stalin and Mao Tse-tung through the removal of half a dozen intervening figures when Malenkov had become prime minister; the insertion of a nonexistent beard on a figure of unclear status, F. Khodzhayev, in the edited version of a group picture; and quite recently, the transformation of one of a group of five astronauts into a doorpost. So if you have talents in this direction, you may have a prosperous career.

You will have splendid opportunities to ruin your neighbors, colleagues, and friends by writing anonymous denunciations which have always been much valued in Communist circles, to the secret police. The facts you retail need not in any way be truthful, but it will be nonetheless advantageous to be able to include genuine remarks made by your victims in which they express dissatisfaction with some aspect of the Occupation. If you want to cause even more harm, you can offer your services to the secret police as a “Seksot” or a regular paid informer and collaborator. (Well-organized networks of these “Seksoti” will be set up, covering every area of the United States.)

All senior officers will be replaced, and there will be arrests and executions of those of whatever rank who had previously been engaged in combating subversion, putting down riots, or otherwise engaging in “political” activities in support of the previous government. Soviet sympathizers will be given all major posts, and police everywhere will come under the centralized control of a new Department of the Interior in Washington. Some cadres of the regular detective force will be retained, under Soviet direction, until they can be replaced by Communist collaborators. Many traffic police and highway patrols will be laid off since there will be few cars or trucks on the road except those of the occupier, which will move largely in a convoy.

The police will be concerned with issuing permits required for internal travel and with checking on those from out of town registering at hotels and will take on a large staff for such purposes.

The border patrol, together with the immigration service, will come under the direct jurisdiction of the secret police in Washington, who may keep on reliable Americans and seek to recruit more. Movement across national borders will be extremely restricted—unless, in the case of Canada, it is thought convenient to “unite” it with the United States. The Mexican border, in any event, will be equipped with a formidable barbed-wire fence, with watchtowers and searchlights at frequent intervals.

In the course of time, a new special police force of considerable size will be equipped with modern weapons, up to and including light tanks and artillery. This force will be used as the first line in putting down demonstrations or risings against the Occupation, with the Red Army held in reserve.

Your skills will be much in demand by the authorities. There will be an enormous increase in the number of forms, permits, and general bureaucratic papers. Even more, there will be an enormous output of propaganda material of every type: pamphlets, posters, leaflets, booklets, and books by the hundreds of millions. The main newspapers will appear in enormous editions, again in several millions, even when they are virtually unreadable. Though real circulation will go down, there will be a large forced circulation to all Party and official bodies and individuals, while in the absence of other information, some citizens will continue to buy the papers.

All printing machines and all printing matter will be under very strict control. Unofficial possession of even the smallest press or duplicating machine will be illegal.

Western psychiatry is ill regarded in the Soviet Union, and most psychiatry in the present sense will cease and the files of its practitioners will be turned over to the secret police as possible sources of evidence. A Soviet-style psychiatry will take its place, and for those Western psychiatrists who contrive to adapt their theories to Soviet ideology, a small clientele of rich Party officials and their families will be a source of fees. But the massive employment of psychiatry will cease, and you are advised to think about developing other skills. On the other hand, an ambitious and unscrupulous psychiatrist might do well by gaining employment in one of the special police psychiatric hospitals where certain offenders are held and subjected to psycho-chemical abuse (see chapter 3).

If you are able and prepared to control yourself in all matters where you might offend the authorities, a wide field of activity of a type you will find rewarding will remain open to you. Those not afflicted with consciences will be much in demand not only in occupations offering opportunities of violence (see Sadist) but also in all other institutions, where it will always be possible to denounce anyone who stands in the way of your desires or to blackmail them into submitting.

Indeed, the Soviet system as consolidated by Stalin and perpetuated by his successors has been described as a psychopathocracy. If your condition is of the right type, you might rise very high indeed in the new hierarchy.

There will be a short interim period before all publishing firms are brought under control of one or another of the Communist-sponsored organizations. But there will be an immediate ban on all “anti-Soviet” literature. Publishers will find that this is interpreted to cover any independent work whatever in the fields of history, economics, politics, and social thought—just as almost all modern American fiction will be banned as “pornographic.”

Many publishers will in any case have been arrested for their earlier purveying of books warning America of the Soviet threat or simply retailing facts about the Soviet regime. Those firms that survive will be taken over as soon as practicable. The new Communist-controlled “writers’ union” will own directly, or through local branches, most of the firms printing literary works proper. The publishing of political, military works, and so forth will come under direct government control; political works being published by the State political publishers, military works by the Department of Defense, and so forth.

If you continue to work in these institutions, you will have to be careful not to offend the censorship. Sticking to the general guidelines will not be sufficient, and even these new Communist-controlled organizations will not be trusted in this sensitive area.