What to Do When the Russians Come

by Robert Conquest

  All the same, hold out. Do not at any time be tempted to parley with the Russians under a flag of truce. In 1945, the Polish underground leaders contacted the Russians. They were guaranteed safe-conduct but were immediately arrested and later tried and sentenced for anti-Soviet activity. In 1956, the Hungarian minister of war was induced to attend talks with the Red Army commander in Hungary. He too was arrested, tried, and hanged. American partisan chiefs are likely to get an even shorter shrift, so do not weaken. It seems a more enviable fate to die fighting on Pike’s Peak than in a cellar in Pittsburgh.

  Partisans, generally speaking, cannot hold out forever unless they are aided from outside. Nevertheless, it has often taken a number of years even for the Communists, totally uninhibited as to methods, to destroy guerrilla movements even in comparatively small areas. The Lithuanian partisan struggle, in a small, well-forested but nonmountainous territory, was not abandoned till eight years had gone by. The same applies to the western Ukrainian partisans, in the more mountainous regions of the north Carpathians. In the larger territories of America, a longer struggle could probably be sustained, even though we may set against this the advantages of new Russian equipment.

  It may be improbable that the Soviet system could be shaken to the point of collapse in so short a period. But nothing is impossible, and in the case of mass risings throughout the Soviet empire, American partisans could play a big part. In the more likely event that partisan warfare becomes ineffective long before the Soviet grip is shaken, it may be better for the partisan command to make a conscious decision to demobilize their surviving fighters, providing them with false papers and cover stories and fitting them into properly chosen backgrounds—as in both Lithuania and the Ukraine.

  By that time, survivors would be few. If you are among them, you will act out the life of a loyal Soviet-American citizen and await your time. It may not come in your lifetime, but you can go to your grave with a clear conscience.

  Good luck!

  In the cities, and other areas easier to control than the mountains and forests, armed resistance will be difficult. For a few months, “urban guerrillas” in very small groups may succeed in carrying out sporadic acts of assassination and sabotage against the occupiers. But such groups have never succeeded in maintaining themselves for long in Communist-occupied countries. It may be that, in the special circumstances of America, such groups will last longer. But in a comparatively short time, at any rate, the complete ruthlessness of Communist secret police methods, involving in each case the probable arrest and torture of hundreds of people who might conceivably know anything, will probably have its effect. The illegal possession of a weapon will, in itself, in the early stages, carry the death penalty and, even later, will always involve sentencing to a labor camp even in the absence of any suspicion of rebellious intent.

  Nevertheless, there will be Americans who feel impelled to strike back in this way. And, in spite of the disadvantages, some good results may yet be attained. Our advice is: Do not waste your efforts. A single, really massive act of sabotage against a carefully picked secret police or military target may be worthwhile; wrecking the odd train will not. The assassination of local, and if possible, of more important Quislings is also worthwhile, both in cheering the population and frightening the rulers.

  After a few years, though, armed resistance in the cities on any organized basis will be virtually extinct. The resentments of the American people will not.

  In fact, in all the countries that have come under Soviet occupation, the population has never become reconciled to the regime. The rulers have maintained support only from that small caste that has done well in terms of power and privilege and from a limited gang of indoctrinated young thugs. The sheer pervasiveness and ruthlessness of the secret police and the whole power apparatus is enormous. But only armed force, including the Soviet army itself and the prospect not merely of defeat but of greatly intensified military terror, has kept the people down.

  Even so, time after time, whole populations have come together in great movements of resistance and rebellion that have at least temporarily thrown off the Soviet yoke.

  Among Americans, with their special attachment to the principles of liberty, their special horror of foreign rule, you may expect that Communist control will never even begin to strike serious roots. People will be cowed, baffled, disorganized. Some may even hope to work “within” the new system and turn it in a more acceptable direction. But the invariable experience has been that Communist policies increasingly antagonize every section of the population—including major sections of the Party itself, who see that they cannot rule indefinitely on such a basis.

  Even in democracies, governments become unpopular. And they would become even more unpopular if they stayed in power, even without terror, for a decade or decades. How much more is this true of an unpopular foreign-sponsored clique, bound by its principles to ever more hated and unsuccessful policies. A poll taken in Czechoslovakia at the end of 1967 showed that the then leaders of the Party and State had the support of 1 percent of the population.

  The situation that will thus be established, throughout the Soviet empire, is that of a population faced with a political and military machinery developed over many years for the purpose of holding down resentment and preventing its expression. And of crushing it if, in spite of everything, it turns into full rebellion.

  Yet as the years go by, you will sooner or later find yourself swept up in a mass movement against the occupier. These movements are very often started in the cities, in the form of strikes and demonstrations by the industrial workers (see p. 95). With no trade union rights, yet thrown closely together by the nature of their work, they are the first to be able to make some united protest at a reduction in the rations (or mere absence of necessary foods in the market), at deteriorating housing conditions, or sudden cuts in piece-rates—all of which have always, sooner or later, appeared in cities under Communist regimes. This is not, of course, the only way in which pent-up resentments will be released; some gross offense to national pride has also been the last straw in bringing people out onto the streets. In any case, after years of repression, during which you may have felt that no one else thought as you did, it will be immensely refreshing to find the bulk of the population coming together as comrades in a struggle.

  It will be particularly encouraging to note that the young, right down to school children, whom you feared might have been indoctrinated and lost to their country, are the most active and aggressive.

  In the beginning, there will be little question of armed uprising. The few weapons secreted here and there will be no match for the machine guns and cannon of the police and soldiers. It will be a matter of furious but unarmed demonstrations, run by spontaneously formed and secret committees, that will march with various demands on Party headquarters and the local government buildings.

  The authorities will find that units of the Sovietized “U.S. Army” will refuse to fire on their compatriots. Secret police and eventually Soviet army formations will, perhaps not until your town has been in your own hands for some days, put down the crowds with machine-gun fire. Losses in your town at this stage may not be very great—probably only a few hundred dead. If, as is probable, you survive as “order” is being restored, you will face something similar to the problems of the very first phase of the Occupation.

  If the resentment thus boils up spontaneously in a single city, the regime will probably find it possible to isolate it. In this case, it will be comparatively easy to crush the movement. Nevertheless, it will prove worthwhile. The rulers’ morale will have been shaken. The American people, even if not at once, will learn of your exploit. One more hand will have taken up, and will be passing on, the torch of liberty.

  In other circumstances, the movement may spread from city to city before it can be stopped, till a mass rising of the American people faces the Communists in Washington.

  All the advantages will still be on the side of a w
ell-armed, well-organized military force. All the same, the mere numbers of the insurgents, their ability, with luck, to halt essential supplies to the occupier, the coming over to them of portions of the puppet “U.S. Army,” will present the Russians with a formidable threat. Even so, the chances are heavily against you. If the United States, well equipped with modern arms, was unable to defeat the Soviets, it will be even more difficult now. Although they may have a period of indecision (when they hope that the movement can be headed off), when they act, it will be with complete ruthlessness, and all weapons deemed necessary will be employed.

  Casualties will be heavy, and the immediate reprisals heavier still. But they will not be able to deal with everyone who has opposed them since that will involve almost the entire population. In similar circumstances, even quite prominent resisters have escaped the net.

  And there will be advantages. First, the whole Communist network will have been shaken and virtually destroyed; the building of a new Party on the discredited ruins of the old will be no easy business. Second, the Russians will wish to ease the tensions and return things to something similar to Soviet-style “normality” as soon as they can. To this end, they will, after the first wave of terror, withdraw the most ruthless and hated of their American servants and replace them with men of more moderate appearance. Economic policies that have driven the population to desperate acts will be to some extent relaxed.

  But above all, the American people will once more be morally invigorated. Over the years that follow, it will look as if, once again, apathy and adaptation have set in; but the example will not really be forgotten. Sooner or later, perhaps not in your own lifetime, the Soviets will be faced by a national rebellion at a time when their grip on the rest of their empire is being shaken, and their internal policies have brought the Soviet Union itself to catastrophe.

  AFTERWORD

  If you have followed us thus far, you are no doubt shocked and gloomy. What can we say to cheer you up? Our advice on how to behave under Soviet rule will generally improve your chances of survival. But even if you survive, the prospects are grim enough, for the scenes we have described are not imaginary. They have happened elsewhere. They will happen in the United States if its leaders misunderstand Soviet motives, or if they make miscalculations in their foreign policy.

  We live in dangerous times. Such miscalculations are very possible. But they are not inevitable.

  The American people and their representatives have it in their power to prevent their country from undergoing the ordeal we have described. A democratic government, with all its distractions and disadvantages, is still the most effective method that men and women have yet devised for deciding policy. It is not infallible, it is slow to learn, and it is willing to grasp at comfortable illusions; but it may yet act decisively. If it does not, its ideals may yet prove ineradicable. We would guess that even in the depths of defeat, invasion, and occupation, the memory of what democracy has meant to Americans will not perish. Men and women will remember that their parents and grandparents once lived in hope and freedom and will determine to wrest the same for their own children and grandchildren. The recollection of that lost democracy will sharpen the longing for it. It is when Americans have been most cruelly and thoroughly collectivized that they will yearn most fiercely to regain their individuality. The more the Soviet absolutists and their allies suppress the individual, the more they will nourish him.

  But why should we fear that such an ordeal may face us? The economic potential of the West in gross national product is far greater than that of the Soviet Union. In a direct comparison between the United States and the USSR, the Soviet GNP (in 1981)—and for a larger population—was about 1,500 billion dollars as against the American 3,000 billion dollars. The GNP of the NATO countries (and France) was about 5,700 billion dollars against the Warsaw Pact’s 1,800 billion dollars. And that is to say nothing of the other allies and friends of the West: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Brazil alone add another 1,400 billion dollars, while the contribution of Russia’s allies outside the Warsaw Pact is negligible. Even the population of the NATO countries is greater, with 554.8 million against the Warsaw Pact’s 365.7 million. And, with all the deficiencies of the Western effort, military manpower is not much less than that of the Warsaw Pact: 4.8 million as against 5.2 million.

  In fact, the Soviet Union is economically far behind the United States. American technology is always a generation ahead of theirs. They have to turn to the United States for wheat. The Soviet economy is at a dead end. The Communist system has failed to win support in any of the countries of Eastern Europe. The Soviet idea has no attractions. On any calculation—of economic power or social advance or intellectual progress there could be no question of the Russians imposing their will. But in terms of actual military power, the West’s advantage does not seem to have been made use of. It is at least matched, and many would say overmatched, in the nuclear field; the Western forces in Europe have less than half the striking power of their opponents. It is no good our being more advanced than they are if this is not translated into power—both military power and political willpower. As a leading British student of Soviet matters, Professor Hugh Seton-Watson, has said, the fact that a man is a more advanced creature than a crocodile will not be of much use to him if he goes swimming naked in the Nile.

  How can they be a threat—a threat to the mere existence of the United States?

  Because they have made an armament effort wholly disproportionate to their economic capacity. Because they have developed techniques of expansion through puppets. Because they have maintained a single-minded, long-term intention to press forward. Because the West misunderstands this.

  Yet democracy has been underrated before. Its ideals—the urge to be free, to live one’s life in one’s own way without the bullying interference of the State—are built into the human psyche, especially in America. It may yet wake to the problem.

  Just as the airlines hope that their passengers will never have to follow the instructions they give you on what to do in case of a disaster, so we, for our part, hope you may never have to follow the advice we have given you in the preceding pages. But time is running short. We would be deceiving you if we pretended that the nightmare we have described is not a real and deadly possibility. If it does come about, we have one last piece of advice:

  BURN THIS BOOK.

  Copyright

  STEIN AND DAY/Publishers/New York

  Copyright © 1984 by Robert Conquest and Jon Manchip White

  All rights reserved, Stein and Day, Incorporated

  Designed by Louis A. Ditizio

  Printed in the United States of America

  STEIN AND DAY/Publishers

  Scarborough House

  Briarcliff Manor, NY 1010

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Conquest, Robert.

  What to do when the Russians come.

  1. United States—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—United States. 3. Communism—United States—1917- . 4. United States—National security. 5. Imaginary histories. I. White, Jon Ewbank Manchip, 1924- . II. Title.

  E183.8.S65C66 1984 327.73047 84-40236

  ISBN 0-8128-2985-9

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