Robert Conquest - What to Do When the Russians Come

Or you may be able to watch a game of football between two factory teams or between teams of the American People’s Army, the Secret Police, and other state bodies, in which at least the usual doses of propaganda will only be injected during the breaks in the action, when you can turn the sound down while waiting for play to recommence.

Perhaps during halftime you may glance through the newspaper, The New York Red Times or the Washington Truth. You won’t bother with the political pages, devoted to turgid and predictable analysis, falsified statistics, and verbatim reports of the latest bloated speeches by Party leaders; but you will probably turn directly to the end of the paper, to the small section containing the daily chess problem or the crossword puzzle (if such a frivolity is allowed), and you might check the stub of your ticket in the State lottery against the list of winners. The State takes the bulk of the money, and the winners receive only fairly small awards, but even that would be a welcome addition to one’s budget and scanning the list does at least give you something to look forward to.

You might, of course, simply choose to go straight to bed and huddle up under that extra blanket you brought with you. You will not have dared to bring with you any of the pre-Occupation books, or “underground” typescript literature you may have at home. Nor, unless you are a fervid supporter of the Party, will you have weighed down your baggage with one of the ponderous, ill-printed social realist novels that are published by the millions but that only devotees of boredom ever bother to open. However, you can probably solace yourself (unless the management is saving power by an early turning off of the lights at the main switch), with a volume by some classical author that, though it may have been somewhat expurgated, is deemed to have redeeming social value.

Pleasant dreams.

IT IS POSSIBLE, if not very probable, that you are visiting your strange city in connection with one or another of the resistance activities that have sprung up and that are always flaring up more or less sporadically thereafter.

There is no point in being starry-eyed about the scope and possibilities of the American Resistance. What happened in World War II and in the forty years afterward, both with regard to resistance and counterresistance techniques, is not a reliable guide. If resistance methods have grown more sophisticated, so have the means of combating them. It will be a long struggle. Resistance groups will rise and will be wiped out. It would be foolish to expect that the attainment of American liberation is likely to take less than a generation or two. The resistance group with which you perhaps cast your lot will in all probability be merely one of a myriad of bright bubbles that the Russians will burst.

You, in your lonely room, are likely to be doing some small but invaluable service like carrying a message between illegal urban groups. But, in the early years, there will still be patriot partisans, like the Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, in mountains and forests, and you might be a courier, or scout, for these. One of us has some experience with partisans, and we venture some advice in this field.

Partisans can consist of as few as five people or as many as five hundred; obviously, the larger they become, the more they lose their irregular characteristics and take on the appearance of routine military formations.

In the early years of Soviet rule, there will be a great many bands of partisans, major and minor, prowling the vast back-country of the United States and Canada. At first sight, North America is ideally suited to partisan activity. Partisans will take to the forests of Colorado, Oregon, and Washington; to the mountains of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho; to the canyons of Arizona and New Mexico; to the marshes and bayous of Louisiana and Florida.

There are an estimated nine million handguns and rifles in the possession of individual Americans. Many of their owners belong to gun clubs and know how to use them. The people who vanish into the wilderness soon after the surrender will have taken care to raid their local clubs’ caches and the armories of the National Guard in order to carry off a mass of weapons and ammunition. Wherever possible, they will have raided their nearby military barracks and navy and air force installations, where these have survived or are uncontaminated by atomic attack, and will have acquired trucks, jeeps, half-tracks, and as much sophisticated combat material such as antitank missiles, mines, and grenades as they can load up and cart away.

The worst problem faced by the modern partisan, as in Afghanistan, is the armored helicopter gunship. These can be brought down without sophisticated SAMs; but small arms are not very effective, and heavier, though simple, rifle-type weapons work well. These will not be readily available, and military commanders should divert supplies while this is still possible.

The American partisans will be tough and vigorous people who will know the territory where they operate like the back of their hand. They will know how to make themselves scarce in it and the best places to hide the stuff that they steal. They will know every road and path and track. They will be ranchers or farmers or people from small- or medium-sized towns who are experienced hunters and fishermen. They will be able to ride a horse and repair any sort of machine. A few will have owned their own aircraft. Above all, many will come directly from the armed forces.

They will be resourceful and physically fit. Some of them, who have seen the war coming and will be aware of the need for knowledgeable leadership, will have specially hardened themselves by means of additional climbing, hiking, camping, trekking, and orienteering. They will have mapped out the best ski trails, particularly those that can be traversed at night. The more provident will even have made special trips to the larger libraries to seek out and make photocopies of the more important books and articles on irregular warfare such as Mao Tse-tung’s Primer of Guerrilla War or General Alberto Bayo Giroud’s 150 Questions for a Guerrilla. As we have said, part of this material will be out-of-date, but it will still contain a tip or two that might save your life in an ugly situation.

It will be a temptation to band together into sizable groups. This will be a natural instinct, especially after the shock of an overwhelming defeat.

Yet a band of even fifteen or twenty partisans already begins to pose serious administrative problems. Larger units are only desirable when the circumstances are such that the enemy troops are tied down elsewhere and cannot concentrate against you. But, even when it is feasible to have larger units, do not attack regular Soviet troops unless you have an overwhelming advantage. Even more important than an advantage of numbers or position, never forget the advantage of speed. Have your operation finished before the Russians can call up an air strike or ground reinforcements. By such tactics, Afghans armed with rifles and grenades have destroyed tank detachments. The threat of such action has meant that even when superior Russian force makes a valley untenable, the Russians have nevertheless withdrawn after laying it waste for fear of attacks on their supply columns.

Indeed, the Afghans have shown that determined guerrillas in suitable country can effectively fight the enemy to a standstill. All the same, do not forget that the Afghans have certain advantages. They still have an open frontier to the south and are able both to evacuate their noncombatants and to receive a certain amount of supplies from abroad. These advantages are unlikely to be available to an American partisan force. Then again, the Afghans are trained from childhood for guerrilla fighting. They are ready for it both in the sense that they know their mountains from a scout or sniper’s point of view, and they are expert in the weapons of the lone fighter; but also, they are psychologically ready for such a war when it comes. The answer for Americans must be that they are quick learners. At first, they will make mistakes and suffer disasters. After a while, the survivors will have had the experience for which nothing else is a substitute.