What to Do When the Russians Come

by Robert Conquest

  None of the above will apply to dental specialists with a clientele among the elite and the senior occupation officials.

  Eventually the entire profession will be incorporated into a Soviet-style health service as government employees.

  Doctor

  Many doctors will be regarded, for political and class reasons, as enemies of the people. But the Communist State will stand in urgent need of the medical profession since, even if the takeover of the United States were to prove unexpectedly peaceful, the disruption of public services will soon lead to epidemics on a large scale. As the levels of nutrition sink, the health of the population will further decline. Doctors who survive will therefore be in a comparatively favorable position; and those who are outstanding specialists will thrive even more because their services will be in demand by members of the Communist hierarchy itself, either in Washington or in Moscow and Leningrad.

  That is not to say that such medical specialists should not adopt certain precautions. If rival schools spring up over aspects of medical treatment or biological theory, the leading proponents of the vanquished school will pay the price. Do not commit yourself too firmly. Leading specialists must also be warned that if they treat political notables, it can be very dangerous if their patients die on their hands.

  It has happened twice in the Soviet Union that whole groups of doctors in this situation have been given particularly bad treatment at the hands of the secret police as “murderers in white coats.”

  Doctors in a more humdrum way of business should read the entry Dentist above. In time, of course, all doctors will become State employees; and hospitals and clinics will be Communist-run, which will entail an increase in employees and a decrease in effectiveness. Though private practice will not be illegal, it should be conducted with the utmost care. Watch out for dissatisfied or neurotic patients who may denounce you. When in his sixties, Russia’s leading heart specialist was jailed on a fake charge of assaulting a patient, to give the secret police the opportunity to soften him up for more serious accusations.

  Dressmaker

  Existence will be extremely difficult at first; but eventually people will need to squeeze a longer life out of their old clothes or will need to get them cut down for younger members of the family. Those who do not possess, or cannot master, the necessary skills will turn to you. Be prepared to offer to mend curtains and perhaps develop a sideline with the lighter types of upholstery. It will be a hand-to-mouth existence, but when all shops have become nationalized you may have a chance of being taken on as a government employee. If not, it may still be possible for you to eke out a living in a private capacity, in conjunction with a sister or daughter, from your own house or apartment or, rather, room.

  Drugtaker

  At first, drug addicts and drug dealers will probably be shot. Later, they will receive the current Soviet sentence of five years for possession of drugs, including marijuana, and ten years for pushing or influencing other people to take drugs. These sentences are served in labor camps.

  Eastern European American

  The Russians will probably mete out severer treatment to Americans who are of Eastern European stock than to those whose forebears came from Western Europe. The reason is simple: Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia are close to the Soviet Union, and most Americans migrating from those countries are well informed about Soviet imperialism. American citizens of Eastern European origin who can be identified as in any way anti-Soviet will be among the first to be pushed into the cattle trucks.

  On the other hand, the Russians will, as with other groups, want to utilize the American Poles, the American Hungarians, and the rest in an active fashion, to further their own aims. All their organizations will be brought under control, and there will be a great expansion of the existing “friendship societies” with the Eastern European countries.

  Ecologist, Environmentalist

  You must remember that the plan will impose on the Party secretary of your State, and his subordinate the governor, the maximum they can cope with. To fulfill a timber plan (for example) they will have to make irreplaceable inroads into the forests. After all, the next year they may receive a transfer or promotion and it will be their successor who is blamed for any later shortfall. Similar considerations apply to pollution, which has produced a stinking morass to accompany the hydroelectric developments on the Volga, lifeless stretches on the Caspian and Lake Baikal, and the erosion of the ancient statues of Prague by lignite fumes.

  The Party and government in the USSR and other Communist countries do not intend these results, even though production always comes first. If you can assemble a small group of scientists who are politically impeccable, they may be allowed to make representations about particularly horrible offenses to the environment, and in some cases, improvement will be effected—especially if it can be shown that the pollution has a long-term ill effect on productivity. But no public organization, demonstration, or other activity will, of course, be permitted. As for nuclear power stations (under strict Soviet control for reasons of military security), they will be developed to the limit. No sort of objection to them will be permitted in any circumstances.

  However, there will be one area in which improvement will have been made: the shortage of private cars will mean less pollution from gasoline.

  Economist

  “Bourgeois” economics will, in principle, be a banned subject. If you have been prominent in any of the fields covered by this term, and in particular if you have justified the free-market system, you have no professional future and had best seek a job in accountancy. If you have worked on purely quantitive matters, and are prepared to give the appearance of accepting the set of abstract dogmas called Marxist economics, you may well find employment (probably under Soviet advisers) in one of the agencies of the new State Planning Committee.

  One of your problems will be that many of the statistics you will need to work with are either unavailable or falsified—as with the present Soviet method of estimating grain yields, which exaggerates them by an estimated 20 percent.

  You will find that even your Soviet colleagues would wish the government to use genuinely economic methods but that they have mostly given up hope that anything but purely administrative methods of compulsion will be allowed. We advise you to remain discreet in any discussion of this.

  Engineer or Technician

  You will be in great demand. Nonetheless, because of your “class” origin, you will not be regarded as wholly trustworthy, so you will be under rather strict supervision. Some of you will be compelled to “volunteer” to go to the USSR to operate the American machinery that has been taken there and to instruct Soviet technicians in its use. You will be paid well by Soviet standards, but you should prepare yourself for a different style of life.

  However, most of you will be employed in developing American industry under the new system, and since that system is inefficient and yet exerts grinding pressure on all concerned, in it you will find yourself at constant risk. For example, in a desperate effort to meet unrealistic quotas, directors will have no choice but to relax or abandon safety standards, which will result in disasters. For every type of shortcoming the “bourgeois” engineer is the natural scapegoat and will figure prominently in trials for “sabotage.”

  We therefore suggest that senior engineers and technicians should try to gain employment in enterprises where raw materials are in fairly regular supply and where safety factors are not paramount. Where possible, you should stick to the development rather than the production side of industry and, whenever you can, get any instructions that look as if they might lead to trouble in writing, make two copies, and keep a copy at home. If the enterprise that you direct or in which you are a prominent figure seems likely to land you in danger, you will not be allowed to resign without permission; but by keeping your eyes open early enough, you may conceivably be able to escape in time by finding some other plant that will request a transfer for you. You
r main danger, apart from these, will raise its head in ten of fifteen years’ time, when the new dispensation will have trained enough indoctrinated Communists to take over management. (See also Businessperson above.)

  Farmer

  If you are a big farmer, your farm will be immediately confiscated and will be run by a Communist official who will be sent to direct it. Your class status will probably entail arrest, although in certain cases you may be allowed, for a time, to work on your former land as an employee. In general, if you have been a successful farmer, even if on a small scale, and particularly if you have employed hired labor, you will be labeled a “kulak” and be subject to deportation. Even if you survive deportation and return to civil life, you will carry the “class” label on your identity documents and remain under a permanent stigma. Your children will be discriminated against with regard to education and jobs.

  If you are a farmer on an extremely modest scale, with no hired help, you may at first be rather better treated; and if there are any large landholdings in your neighborhood, you may be given part of them for the time being. However if, as is likely, during the first months and years of the Occupation there are drastic food shortages, you will be required to hand over everything you produce to the State agencies, from whom you will get back whatever they think fit. If the shortages are particularly grave, your crop may be taken without any compensation whatever since it will be regarded as more important to feed the towns than to feed the countryside.

  Then, if conditions improve, you may for a while be allowed more latitude and be permitted to sell your produce, under supervision, at something approaching regular market prices.

  Thus, even the small farmer is going to be faced with many ticklish problems, of which the plummeting of his standard of living will be the simplest. In fact, it is going to be virtually impossible for the rural population to function at all without making at least some sales (and purchases) through the black market. Official reaction to this is going to be bewilderingly erratic and capricious. Sometimes a local commissar, anxious to save his own skin, will crack down at random on any farmer he catches or suspects. At other times, when he is not under pressure himself and is eager to keep the quotas of his own district respectable, he may decide to turn a blind eye. Orders from the center, too, will vary. Sometimes the need for productivity will take priority and the farmer can breathe fairly freely; but this policy may be abruptly and arbitrarily reversed, and the call will go out for tighter control. If you are a small farmer, we can only tell you to keep your eyes open for these developments and trim your conduct accordingly.

  On past form, you should remember that, once the 20–30 percent of the adult population who are suspect for other reasons have been dealt with, it is always the farmer who is the first victim of mass operations against society in general. Sooner or later, the Russians always impose their own system of farming. In some cases, there has been no intermediate period at all, and collectivization has been introduced at once without any preliminary phase. In America, it is almost certain that a more gradual approach will be attempted. In any event, after a longer or shorter interim, many small farmers will in turn be declared kulaks and deported to the Arctic, while the rest will be ordered to merge their farms with those of their twenty or thirty nearest neighbors. If you are among these, you will be permitted to keep an acre or two and a few animals in your own name. The rest will cease to be your property, and you will work your “collective farm” with your neighbors under a Communist-appointed director sent in from the city. No later than the time of the collectivization, the system of identity cards will be transformed into a system of internal passports, whereupon the rural population will be discouraged from leaving the countryside by being forbidden to visit even the local town for periods of more than five or six days.

  The individual’s chance of arrest and deportation during the actual collectivization campaign is perhaps one in eight, higher in the case of farmers in prosperous areas.

  Feminist

  Full equality of both sexes will be officially decreed. However, no “affirmative action “ in the case of women or any other section of the community will be taken or permitted, and you will be expected not to voice any complaints you may have in this regard. No attempt will be made to secure female participation in any job through quotas, and in practice very few women will attain positions or high-salary brackets within their profession. In Communist countries, women traditionally predominate in teaching and the lower ranks of the medical profession and are prominent in manual labor in the cities and particularly on the farms but rarely attain important political or professional status.

  Present-day feminist organizations will be wound up, but a women’s organization under Communist supervision will be set up, with the main object of establishing “friendly relations” with their Russian women’s counterpart and the preaching of “peaceful reconciliation.” Posts in it will be available to American women with organizational experience, especially those now prominent in pro-Soviet women’s bodies. It might also be noted that mass arrests will have removed more men than women, in the proportion of perhaps ten to one, and conscription into the “American People’s Army” will have drained millions of able-bodied young men from the normal work force. Farms will have been particularly effected, with the result that unskilled manual labor on the land, as elsewhere, will rely to a great extent on women.

  Filmmaker

  Conditions with regard to schooling, registration in a union, and State control, are the same as those for painters and sculptors (see Artist). Film style will be that of socialist realism. Directors who attempt to be too clever and are caught by the censor or secret police will suffer the same penalty as given such men as Sergei Paradjanov, maker of two of the few interesting modern Soviet films, Sayat Nova and Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors. In January 1974, he was arrested and sent to a labor camp on a charge of homosexuality. It is KGB policy, when destroying a person on political or other grounds, to discredit them morally for good measure. (See also Actor, Musician.)

  Financier or Financial Consultant (see Banker; Businessperson)

  Fireman

  State employee. Lower salary. No strikes.

  Funeral Director

  Services will be speedy, drab, and uniform. Atheist forms of committal will be encouraged, religious forms banned or perfunctorily performed. Mortuary “chapels” will be secularized, and only in rare cases will services be carried out in cathedrals, churches, chapels, or other religious buildings, the majority of which will in any case be closed or devoted to nonreligious uses (see Clergy). However, Communist burials, while lacking frills, will at least be inexpensive. You will eventually become a state employee.

  Furniture Maker or Dealer

  The majority of furniture stores will close. Most citizens will lack the funds to buy new furniture and will make do with what they have. The furniture industry will be State-owned, and when it gets back on its feet, its products will be of poor quality and indifferent design.

  Garage or Gas Station Owner or Employee

  As we saw in the last chapter, private motoring will have enormously decreased. There will be very few cars on the roads and consequently no need for a large number of gas stations. The oil companies will in any case be nationalized, and there will be only one brand and probably only one grade of gas. Even large cities will possess only a handful of gas stations, usually tucked away in obscure and inconvenient spots. (The elite will have their own gas stations, limousines, and chauffeurs.) Although there are fewer cars, production and servicing standards will be such that motor mechanics’ skills will be saleable on the black market. And you may also try your hand at, and profit by, the repairing and refurbishing of bicycles.

  Hawaiian

  Because of the strategic importance of Hawaii, halfway between the United States and China and in a position to dominate the Pacific, stringent measures will be called for. The able-bodied members of the population, including the na
tive Hawaiians, will join a “voluntary” defense organization to build, in their spare time, underground bunkers and fortifications or to enlarge and strengthen those that already exist. The remainder are likely to be shipped to the mainland as with Japanese-Americans (see below). In time, Hawaii will most probably be seeded with Russian colonists in order to make it totally secure. Old Russian claims to the islands are likely to be revised, and direct annexation to the USSR is probable, as will also be the case with Alaska. (The USSR has annexed territory from all the Communist countries on which it borders.)