Robert Conquest - What to Do When the Russians Come

This will all be a very harrowing experience, and it is no wonder that teachers have been among the most severely purged professions in all Communist countries. After a while, if you keep your job, you will adjust as best you can. And you will find as time goes by that the children too have adjusted to the situation and no longer betray themselves. As for the minority whom you regretfully see passing from your hands as offensively loyal robots of the regime, do not worry too much. Some, indeed, will go on to become the new generation of Soviet auxiliaries. But many, even those who may be at their worst at sixteen, will become disillusioned as students or in early adulthood.

Military and civil-defense training will be compulsory in all schools, and you will be required to help where necessary.

Certain sciences, such as astronomy, will be comparatively free from official intrusion, but most will be subject to State intervention. If you are a practicing scientist in any field particularly useful to the Soviet Union, you are likely to be deported there, although you will be handled more or less with kid gloves as you will be regarded in the same light as valuable livestock. Once in the Soviet Union, you will be housed in comfortable circumstances in special isolated communities, in the Urals or in Siberia. Provided you behave yourself and work hard, you will be well treated as long as your line of research proves fruitful.

Whether you work for the Russians in the USSR or the United States, you will encounter continuous trouble among your Party managers at all levels. Avoid getting involved in all such backbiting and squabbling and devote yourself, as far as possible, to your own concerns. You are, after all, purely as a scientist, likely to find your work absorbing, and it will help you to forget your troubles. You will find it disturbing and infuriating to be herded into mass projects, harangued by officials, and given timetables and deadlines; but as long as you toe the line, you will probably be able to continue with your own line of research, whatever it is, at least for part of the time, and you may be able to overlook the fact that whatever advances you help to bring about will be put to use to increase still further the powers of a tyrannical regime.

The sting may also be lessened by the sympathy of your Soviet colleagues, most of whom will be sensitive people who silently regard themselves as being in the same boat. Now that Soviet science has come of age, there is less likelihood than formerly that you will become trapped in one of the crasser controversies. Vavilov, the great biologist, fell foul of the quack Lysenko, whose theories were endorsed by Stalin, and he died in the Gulag. Stalin also espoused the peculiar theories of the linguist Marr, who claimed that all language derived from only four basic sounds, and many scholars fell foul of the dictator in consequence and wound up in jail. In modern circumstances, the probability of such bizarre episodes has lessened, but the Central Committee still has the last word in scientific matters. You should be alert and try not to get yourself entangled in controversy. Many scientists, mathematicians, and so on are now in jail or exile in the USSR for applying their reasoning powers to political and social matters. Do not despise the minor skills you may have picked up, such as the ability to repair electrical equipment. If you are purged, this may be valuable even in a labor camp, while elsewhere it may provide you with an income.

Socialists with ideas about socialism different from the definition of that form of society thought correct by the Soviet authorities will suffer earlier and more severely than mere democrats and capitalists. The leaders of the Eastern European Socialists are mostly dead or in prison, and all their parties have long since been extinguished.

But at first, for a time, the Russians will encourage a Socialist party. It will have as its leadership, if possible, a few prominent members of the present movement with the addition of a few secret Communists. All the smaller Socialist sects will probably be incorporated into it, as we said in an earlier chapter, at a conference run on “constitutional” lines. Those attending the conference will be rendered amenable both by simple, direct pressure and by the absence due to the arrest of those Socialists who have previously shown themselves strongly opposed to the Soviet system.

Within two to three years, any remaining Socialist leaders inclined to show any sign of independence will be eliminated, and the Socialists will be merged (once again “voluntarily”) with the Communist party. A very few Socialist leaders will be accorded positions in the new organization. These, of course, will be men who have already collaborated unreservedly. Even so, few of them will last long. Some will vanish into oblivion, others into the labor camps and prisons, as did the stooge Arpad Szakasits, who betrayed the Hungarian Social Democratic party to the Communists.

You will not get to college if your parents have been classified as social or political undesirables. Children of working-class parents will in principle enjoy preference over middle-class parents, but in fact, the children of collaborators and Party functionaries will have priority, whatever their scholastic abilities. (And the employment by the Communist rich of teachers wishing to supplement their salaries by private tutoring will give them a certain advantage even there.) For ordinary students, as against the children of Party members, the entrance requirements will be stricter than they are now. The curriculum will be drab and examinations will be strenuous. Punctual and regular attendance in class will be obligatory, especially in the courses in Marxism-Leninism. Military and paramilitary training will take place, although this will be in addition to, not in place of, the normal two years of military service that will precede or follow the years at the university. Students will be expected to be polite, and their clothes and personal grooming will be in accord with the institutional dress code. The student leadership will be appointed by the Communist administration, and student protests, strikes, sit-ins, and other demonstrations will be promptly and unequivocally put down if they occur. Offenders will be dismissed from college and sent to jail. Students will also be liable to free and “voluntary” service to the State; for example, at the times of planting and harvesting you can be sent to work for ten hours a day and for a month or six weeks at a time, in the fields with the regular farm workers, picking potatoes, cabbages, beets, and other row crops. This will keep you physically fit but will interfere somewhat with your studies.

As the system settles down, a flourishing market in examination papers, professional examination sitters, and so on will arise. If, even so, you fail your examinations, it will often be possible to buy fake credentials. Influential parents will usually be able to obtain improved marks for their children through threats or bribes—a perennial scandal in the USSR today. (See also Youth .)

Honest trade union leaders will be bustled off at once to the labor camps. Crooked ones, who can be expected to be familiar with the strong-arm tactics called for in the first days of the Occupation, will last longer. The smaller craft unions will be abolished and those that remain will be concentrated into large, streamlined corporations with all leading posts under direct Party and secret police control. Trade union conferences will rapidly become spectacles at which the decrees and policies of the Party will be ecstatically and unanimously rubber-stamped. This in fact will be the chief function of the trade unions: to facilitate the control, discipline, and unity of the workforce. Questions of pay and working conditions will be of secondary importance and will in practice be the concern of Party officials. To resist or question the decisions of the employer, who will now be the State, will bring you penalties.