One could sympathize with reasons behind writing alarmist material in the 1980s when Western nations were living under the threat of nuclear annihilation. Some might even make a case for “well-intentioned” propaganda during times of conflict. But this absurd book is not worth such efforts. What is striking is the fact that it was co-written by a “respected” historian who dedicated half a century of his life to writing about the Soviet Union. A fact that could be used to add to the rising cynicism against “smug” intellectuals and experts. Reviewers of that forgotten book today consider it an embarrassment to the author Robert Conquest who “should have known better.”
The most disgraceful aspect of this book is not about it being a bad propaganda pamphlet but the fact that it’s a lazy work! And that could be found in two major elements:
a. Its content is a failure of imagination, merely based on a simple premise of a Soviet invasion following by major campaigns of looting and rape. The authors ignored the facts that there were absolutely no indications of a Soviet desire or capability of invading the United States. They ignored the reality that Soviet Union never attached a nation of that size. They ignored the fact that the Soviet army was suffering major losses in one of the world’s poorest nations, that is Afghanistan. They simply hinted at the ongoing Soviet economic decay that was known to many though that did not deter them from concocting their absurd scenario. They ignored almost all realities on the ground about American history and culture, for example it is one of the most armed populations on the planet. Worst of all, they rewrote all crimes they had been aware of that took place in East Europe over the previous six decades and imagined them taking place in the United States. Only four years later, the Soviet Empire would collapse.
b. The tone is so overdramatic to the point of being unintentionally hilarious. After laying a simple premise of a successful Soviet invasion, he warns those who rise up to resist that they would be sent to the Canadian uranium mines. At the end of the book, he advises his readers who own he book to burn it when the Soviet invaders arrive.
Modern readers will find one passage in the book particularly amusing where the authors encourage American armed dissenters to learn from the Afghani mujahedeens who had been bravely battling the Soviets at the time of writing. By the time you get to that section close to the end of the book, you realize that you could only get one thing from this book: amusement!
![What to do when the Russians come](https://www.booksontrial.com/wp-content/uploads/USA-Communist-map-lenin.jpg")
Here are the most important passages:
A portrait of America just after the Soviet takeover
None of your family have been killed, except a distant cousin shot in the street early on, and your brother-in-law in the marines who was executed as a war criminal. None of the women have been raped.
Your job was one of the many that ceased to exist, and your savings have been extinguished by the “currency reform,” but you had enough food and fuel to carry you through until you found your present low-paid post in one of the huge new rationing offices.
Your home was not wrecked or even damaged. And it was not impressive enough to be confiscated for the new elite or for Soviet officers.
[…]On your return journey you got your permit to visit your old parents in a neighboring state next month, after waiting only an hour. And when you drew the potato ration, you were pleased to find it was practically the right weight and of reasonable quality, capable of making a decent meal when you mix it with one of your bouillon cubes. What’s more, while waiting in line for it, you met a friend who told you where some apples were available, and you hurried over there and managed to get a couple.
So here it is, only nine at night and you are already back home. You have not had time to look at the paper, but when you settle down to read it, there is little except news of Soviet industrial and artistic achievements and speeches by American Communists recently back from Moscow. You do notice an account of the trial of a dozen local officials for sabotage; but they are not from the Department of Agriculture, so this does not mean another famine. You start to remark on this, but you quickly break off. The children are around, and the younger ones might unthinkingly repeat what you say somewhere outside or at school.
Your ears catch the crunch of boots at the end of the street.
A Soviet platoon goes past. You automatically draw back still farther from the window. But it is only a routine patrol, not one of the special squads, so you relax as you see the helmets flickering in the red glow of the lone street lamp.
Yes, so far you have certainly been lucky. Next door, the old schoolteacher was arrested a few weeks ago for failing to abuse President Truman in a history lesson. Half a block away, the chairperson of the local Democratic party resisted arrest and was shot on the spot. (Her Republican opposite number, from another section of town, is in the uranium mines in Northwest Canada and rumored to be on the point of death.) The widow in the house across the way had a son in the FBI, who has vanished without trace. And the Chinese couple a little farther down have been deported. …
Suppertime. A delicious smell from the Primus stove—the potatoes are nearly boiling. Tomorrow is another day. Today, at least, has been uneventful … a good day. 1Robert Conquest, Jon Manchip White, What To Do When the Russians Come: A Survivor’s Guide, (New York: Stein and Day, 1984), 9-11.
As horrible as this scenario may be, things could be worse
We are not even presenting a “worst case.” We have not transferred to America the mass slaughters such as the Terror of 1937–1938 in the USSR, that have been inflicted in a number of Communist countries. Things may be worse than we have outlined. At any rate, they will hardly be better.2Ibid., 12
Indeed, we are almost ashamed to have described conditions that appear idyllic compared with those likely to prevail, as they always have done in similar circumstances, when America is subjected to full-scale terror.3Ibid., 50
How the Sovietization of America would happen?
THERE ARE SEVERAL ways in which disaster might strike America. We cannot totally exclude an all-out nuclear war that is so destructive that little is left of either side; or one in which America is largely destroyed with far less Soviet loss, resulting in the occupation by Moscow’s troops of a ruined and depopulated land—a scenario quite commonly found in Soviet military literature.
[…]Military occupation, perhaps under a gradual and partially camouflaged facade, would be inevitable. And, however done, this would be accompanied by a slow but total Sovietization of America.
Initially American surrender might not be given such a harsh name. America would be allowed to save a certain amount of face—whether it had to back down because of Soviet superiority of weapons or because it had lost an actual war—by disguising the unpleasantness of formal surrender under some such rubric as a “disarmament agreement.” America would agree to the dispatch of Soviet “inspection teams” to monitor the “agreement.” The teams would be military and would set up bases in key areas. Their consistent and rapid reinforcement, which the United States would be powerless to halt, would naturally lead, without undue loss of time, to full-scale Soviet control.4Ibid., 17-18
How cruel will the Soviets be with Americans?
If you are not one of the lucky ones: arrest and dispatch to a labor camp or exile, a fate that will not overtake everybody but one that will be common enough to be a very serious risk to almost all of you, affecting probably some 20 percent of the adult population. We seriously believe that the advice we give in this context, and on the possibility of escaping abroad, could save thousands of lives.5Ibid., 11
But when the world is looking the other way (as to some degree in Afghanistan today), or during wartime, or in the turmoil of postwar circumstances, or when the globe has been sufficiently communized, complete ruthlessness has been and will be the order of the day.
If, in a few years’ time, the occupation of the United States actually comes about, it will mean that any significant, freely informed world opinion will have ceased to carry weight. There will be almost nobody left to placate or gull or shock. Any inhibitions on tough behavior by the Soviet troops, police, or bureaucrats who occupy the United States will not be applicable. The Russians will behave as they like, according to their estimate of the comparative benefits of actual ruthlessness and apparent concession.
[…]Many of the early resisters will, moreover, in any case, be men who are bound to be rounded up and shot by the Russians in any case, and who will decide that it is better to die in a foxhole, fighting back, than in the cellars of the secret police after months of suffering.
Random shootings, homicidal incidents, executions—either of hostages or as a result of mistaken identity—and so on, will anyhow certainly be major problems for Americans. […]
Misunderstandings will arise because of the simple fact that most Americans do not speak Russian and most Russian soldiers do not speak English. There will be little means of communication except by means of fist and rifle butt. Another difficulty will arise because many Russians are heavy drinkers. Most American cities are well provided with liquor stores, and most American homes are well stocked with bottles. Drunken soldiers are not easy to cope with. They will be further elated by the enormous scope of their victory.6Ibid., 19-20
The Soviet campaigns of killings in USA
Your best course is to lay in, as far in advance as you can, an ample supply of provisions. In the first days of the occupation keep off the streets. Stay indoors. Keep away from the windows. Remain at the back of the house. Do not reply to any knock on the front door. If you hear your front door being broken in, try to smuggle your family out of an exit at the rear if you can do so without running into any patrols that may be prowling in the back.
You will, of course, be able to recognize members of the Soviet army by their uniform. Should you by some mischance encounter them in the open air or on the sidewalk, stand aside, or step off the curb, and keep your eyes down. Do not attempt any kind of heroics or dumb insolence. Russians are not famous for their sense of humor, and what sense of humor they possess is notoriously capricious. Take no liberties. These are mean people. In particular secret police troops—of whom there will be many—have done unspeakable things to their own countrymen, and there is no reason to suppose that they would not behave with a total lack of pity toward conquered Americans.7Ibid., 19
Americans should prepare for mass rape and looting by the Soviets
Judging by past performance, rape could be a major problem. Even if your city or area has been taken over without resistance, for the first three or four weeks you should expect massive and repeated incidents to occur. The women of your family should avoid letting themselves be seen outside the house or at the windows, if this is at all possible. Emergency hiding places should be provided for each of them in case of break-ins. As a precaution, we suggest that all the women in your family, from puberty to menopause, should begin to take the pill regularly when a Soviet occupation looks probable or even possible; in these circumstances, be prudent and lay in a sufficient stock. Women who are younger or older will not, of course, need such protection against unwanted pregnancy, although they will not thereby be exempted from the possibility of rape.
You will have little defense against looting. If you go out, leave behind your watch or jewelry. It is even known for Soviet soldiers to demand jackets and shirts at gunpoint, so wear your oldest clothes. Remember that for these soldiers many things regarded as commonplace and as the everyday concomitants of American life will appear as new and marvelous. Looting of stores will probably be more general than the looting of homes; but you should be prepared for the latter. Hide anything of value, or anything you are going to need in the dark days ahead, if it is in any way possible to do so.
Incidentally, it is unwise to complain of looting or rape to the military authorities. It will do no good and may get you listed as a troublemaker. Moreover, in the ensuing period, the secret police will regard as particularly suspect anyone they know who has suffered at the hands of the Russians and who is hence likely to be an “unfriendly element.” 8Ibid., 21-22
A puppet regime in Washington
It will not be the aim of the Russians to annihilate the American people but, rather, to reduce them to the status of loyal, or at least submissive, subjects of the puppet regime in Washington. The full rigor of the system will not be put into effect all at once; there will be no immediate Sovietization.
While ruthlessly suppressing open opposition and ensuring complete control of the police, the secret agencies, and all armed bodies, they will maintain a democratic facade, at least over a transitional period of several years. Under this cover, they will introduce the major changes in the social and economic order in a piecemeal manner with the grip gradually tightening.9Ibid., 22
The first government following the American surrender
In fact, it is probable [it] will not even contain any open Communists. It will be a “coalition” of surviving Democrats, Republicans, and “Independents”—the latter being known as well disposed toward the USSR, but no more. In principle, the parties left in existence, purged of all anti-Soviet elements, will be designed to harness, as far as possible, the political energies of the various sections of the population. The new government will not even term itself “socialist,” but will proclaim itself “democratic” in the old sense, as was done in most of Eastern Europe.
[…]Blackmail, often of the crudest sort, will also be used in suborning the loyalties of politicians. […] In Eastern Europe a number of “Agrarian,” “Social-Democrat,” and other figures of eminence were found to have been involved in financial or sexual scandals that the Soviets authorities kept quiet in exchange for their collaboration. The cases of Tonchev and Neikov in Bulgaria come to mind. In Western Europe, major leaders like Jouhaux, head of the French trade unions, and various other socialist and union figures in Britain and elsewhere, became puppets of Soviet blackmail and were compelled to steer their organizations in a direction indicated by the Communists.
[…]By this means, Congress and state and local bodies will be largely transformed into organs that offer no effective resistance to the consolidation of the new order. Even so, at first there will be men and women, even among the newly elected, who will begin to voice objections. They will be attacked in the media, harassed, and left for removal until the next “elections.” […] This will result in a wave of show trials in which the objectors will be charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government.10Ibid., 23-26
The Communist Party of USA takes control
The main thrust of the Russians will, of course, be behind the Communist Party of the United States. It will be confronted with a formidable task of organization. It will be given all the money, premises, and access to the media it requires and some control of security and other armed groups. Initially it will attract a swarm of recruits in the shape of careerists, but as an obvious stigma will attach to it in the minds of most Americans, it will quickly seek to expand itself by other means as well. After a short interim period, for example, it will attempt to merge with other organizations of the Left into a “united party” under effective Communist guidance. At this juncture, what you will probably see is a “Unity Congress,” with a Socialist party splinter group pretending to be the entire party, a similar pseudorepresentation of the American Labor party based in New York, and a revived Farmer-Labor party, all funded and controlled by the Soviets and stiffened with Communist cadres.
Soon a merger between all these Leftist groupings will be arranged, under the name of the now fake Farmer-Labor party or the equally fake Socialist party. In this way a respectable-looking basis for establishing a third major party under total Communist control would be provided, and the new party would enter into a “coalition” with the remains of the Democratic and Republican parties and gradually work toward dominating the whole state apparatus.11Ibid., 26-27
Communist rehabilitation of American society
The Young Communist League will be extended to enroll millions of young people in their teens and early twenties, and membership will be a virtual requisite for a large number of jobs above the most menial. Its branches will be under the control of party members, and all Young Communists will be required to obey party orders, to attend indoctrination sessions, and to operate as an arm of the party in their schools, streets, and homes.12Ibid., 28
The Soviets steering mass media
Within a matter of months, all modes of mass communication will retail no news or information except that which conforms totally to the pro-Soviet line. For years to come, you will read or hear nothing but dreary praise (full of falsified statistics) for the Soviet Union and for the progress made by the new United States. Entire editions and newscasts will be given over to the texts of speeches by Soviet dignitaries and their American followers. […] This boring mishmash will occasionally be enlivened by accounts of the trials of “war criminals”—American political and military figures accused of waging, or merely planning, war against the USSR. You should not be surprised to find personages for whom you entertain the greatest admiration confessing to barbarities of which you rightly believe them to be incapable. 13Ibid., 30
Labor camps for 25% of Americans
In a “difficult” country like America, where the tradition of liberty has been strong, the probability is that, apart from executions, about 25 percent of the adult population will ultimately be sent to forced-labor camps or exiled under compulsory settlement in distant desert and arctic regions or in the USSR. If past performance is anything to go by, around 5 percent of the prisoners in the labor camps would be women, although in a country like the United States, where women are so influential and play such a prominent role in the national life, the figure may be much higher.
Sometimes, particularly in the early days, it will be usual for children to go to relatives should both their parents be arrested. If you have been unable to make such an arrangement in advance or no such relatives are available, the probability is that they will survive as members of gangs of urchins living on their wits, subject to arrest and incarceration in adult jails as soon as they are in their teens.
Later, State orphan homes, often barely distinguishable from reformatories, will be set up for such children. There they will be indoctrinated in Communist beliefs and, later, if suitable, sent to serve in the police and other units.
You should seriously consider how you can best equip your children for both spiritual and physical survival should they become lost or orphans. […] You will have to balance the necessity of never saying anything that they might innocently blurt out in front of unreliable acquaintances or known agents of the regime, against the need to ensure that their basic attitudes towards their country, their religion, and their parents remain as firm as is possible.14Ibid., 36-37
Prepare for arrest at all times
Since the danger of arrest is therefore substantial, whether you are “innocent” or not, we would advise you to be prepared for it at all times.
[…] If arrested, you will probably be allowed to take a small package or a small suitcase with you. […] It is always sensible to have bags packed and ready, so that you are not taken by surprise. At least compile a list, in order not to omit some essential item in the confusion of arrest. And, summer or winter, always keep a couple of pairs of good solid shoes and several pairs of socks handy. A quick-witted wife has often saved her husband’s or son’s life in Communist countries by keeping shoes, socks, gloves, scarf, and a warm overcoat handy. Remember that, if you can manage to hang on to them, minor articles of clothing can also be exchanged later for a loaf of bread in case of extreme need in prison or camp or on the journey there.15Ibid., 38-39
Your other problem—this time one of conscience—will be that you will be asked to name “accomplices.” Try to use names of people you know are dead or have escaped the country or otherwise disappeared. In addition, you may be able to involve Communists or other Quislings.
You will eventually be sentenced, though not necessarily in your own presence—the judgment may merely be a smudged form handed you by a warden. Then, assuming you have avoided execution, you will be packed off to a labor camp.
The trip, in tightly sealed cattle trucks, may last some weeks; and since the labor camp system will at first be more or less unorganized, you are likely to find that you and your companions are simply dumped, in the heat of the summer or the cold of winter, in a wooded area, where you will forthwith be set to work to build your own camp. Meanwhile you will live in a pit dug in the ground and covered with a canvas sheet.16Ibid., 42
Possible locations of concentration camps for Americans
One of the most likely sites for a great concentration of labor camps is in the uranium-bearing area of the Canadian Northwest Territories. There, as in similar projects in the USSR, climatic and other conditions are so hostile that it is hard to attract free labor except by the payment of astronomical wages. […] We can also expect forced-labor battalions to be put to work in Greenland and, in particular, in exploiting the coal and other deposits of Antarctica, where Soviet rule is likely to have been established by default. If, as is often stated, these deposits prove to be immensely rich, we may expect hundreds of thousands of American prisoners to be sent to work them, with the added advantage that the prisoners’ whereabouts will be quite unknown at home. Conditions there may be expected to be extremely adverse, the work exhausting, and the prospects of survival negligible. Northern Canada, where the death rate will be high by all normal standards, would be a Utopia in comparison.
Uranium mining, however unpleasant, is at least rational. Many of you will find yourselves wasting your lives on projects whose only justification is the grandiose self-importance of political leaders or planners. For here, as everywhere else in the Soviet-type “planned economy,” there will be enormous and idiotic waste. In the Soviet Union, a quite unnecessary and uneconomic Arctic railway to the town of Igarka was labored at for four years in temperatures down to −55° Centigrade in winter, by scores of thousands of prisoners in more than eighty labor camps, at intervals of 15 kilometers along the 1300-kilometer stretch. In the end, only 850 kilometers of rail and of telegraph poles had been built, and then the line and signals, the locomotives, and everything else were abandoned to rust in the snow. In Romania, hundreds of thousands of prisoners’ lives were lost in the Dobruja marshes, building a grandiose “Danube-Black Sea Canal” that was similarly abandoned. […]
Wherever you are sent, you will find yourself working up to sixteen hours a day, from the 5 a.m. reveille, ill clad and undernourished. Even today, in the peacetime USSR, labor-camp ration scales are well below those issued by the Japanese in the notorious prisoners-of-war camps on the River Kwai (which averaged 3,400 calories a day against the Soviet 2,400).17Ibid., 43-44
Get fit in preparation for Soviet labor camps
If you at present perform a desk job or follow some other sedentary occupation, it is vital that you make yourself fit and ready for hard manual labor. In all the Communist countries, it has always been found that professors, lawyers, administrators, and officials are among the first people to succumb in the labor camps, where they are suddenly faced with intense physical exertion on inadequate rations.
You might also begin to practice a few skills that might possibly save you, once you are in the camps, from the most burdensome and debilitating work. For example, you might be able to stay alive if you were to take a first-aid course since you could then become a camp medical orderly or nurse. Doctors, subject to the limitations that will be noted later, would enjoy an automatic advantage. 18Ibid., 44
Some camps will probably be death camps, designed to use up a man’s strength in anywhere between six weeks and six months, and in that case, there will be very little [51] you can do since you will be fed a restricted diet. Even there, however, you will probably want to try to save your energy at all costs. Do everything as slowly as you can possibly get away with—such is the advice of all the survivors of the Soviet camps. Practice extreme slow motion. When you are lumbering, you might adopt the traditional trick of managing to get the same log counted by the guard several times by the expedient of sawing off the check number after each inspection. In most camps it has usually been possible, at least for a time, for separate labor gangs to cooperate in methods to claim a higher productivity than is really achieved. Remember that with every swing of your ax you are chopping an hour off your own life.19Ibid., 51-52
Obviously there is no guaranteed method of survival in a Communist camp, prison or “mental hospital.” The odds are against you. Nor will you be helped by the fact that the widespread dislocation that is bound to attend the first few years of Soviet rule in the United States will inevitably result in food and other shortages in the camps and prisons. They will be desperately overcrowded.20Ibid., 51
Moral dilemmas: Would you become an informant?
There is one problem that we ought to mention that will concern the relatives of the people who have been arrested. It is this. They are likely to find themselves approached by the secret police with the proposition that they will gain better treatment for the arrested member or members of their family, or perhaps even save them from execution, if they will become police informers and report on the work and private life of their friends.
When this happens, it will present you with a nasty moral dilemma. All the same, it might help you to bear in mind that such promises to ease the lot of arrested relatives have never, in Communist countries, been honored. In any case, the local branch of the secret police will have no control over what goes on in a labor camp hundreds, or even thousands of miles away. Once in the camps, your relatives are in a different world, almost on another planet, and beyond your ken.
Allied to this will be a further ordeal, affecting all rather than merely the closest relatives of the arrested person. Once your husband (for example) has been found guilty and sentenced as an enemy of the people, you, as his wife, together with your children, will be required to repudiate and denounce him. At school, your children will be required to go up and stand beside the teacher’s desk and make a public condemnation and repudiation of their father. This is standard practice everywhere in Communist countries.21Ibid., 45
Books to read in preparation for Soviet occupation
We seriously urge you, while you still can, to go to your local library and check out whatever books it contains on life in the camps. The works of Solzhenitsyn, and such books as Evgenia Ginzburg’s Into the Whirlwind and General Gorbatov’s Years Off My Life could prove useful guides. Do not read them as literature, or as accounts of alien experiences, but in the light of practical blueprints of a not-improbable future.22Ibid., 53
Where American refugees could go?
You will probably not wish to go to China (unless, perhaps, you go to Hong Kong or Taiwan). Japan would be a better bet, as would the Philippines, Australia, or New Zealand. We recommend the Southern Hemisphere, in any case, as less liable to fallout in a Soviet-Chinese nuclear war.23Ibid., 58
Once you’re found asylum abroad, don’t consider returning to USA!
Eventually, Communist agents may approach you, pointing to declarations from Soviet Washington promising complete amnesties to émigrés who return. You may be tempted if things are not going well for you. Resist this temptation; except in a few showcases, such promises have always been broken once the returnee is back in Communist hands.24Ibid., 58
Features of the new Sovietized economy
– Businesses producing anything except the barest necessities will, almost without exception, collapse.
– Oil will no longer be imported. Most domestic American oil will be earmarked for official purposes.
– Nationalization of all major firms will take place almost at once. Small firms will face the same fate within a year or two.
– Personal savings will be wiped out by the “currency reforms” that will reduce the value of the dollar to one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of the new Red dollar, which alone will be valid thereafter.
– American grain, which has already frequently prevented food shortages within the Soviet Union in past years (shortages brought about by the inefficiency of Soviet agriculture), will be abroad in great quantities. The Russians will take whatever other foodstuffs they want[…] – Large amounts of engineering equipment will be removed to the USSR, often with American technicians attached, as “war reparations” or under some other quasi-legal excuse or will be “purchased” at prices dictated by the Soviets. This would follow the pattern of the dismantling and removal of equipment from Germany and Manchuria in 1945.25Ibid., 64
Grocery shopping: Stock up whenever you can and keep the good items for special occasions!
You will not be choosy in the way you shop, and you will take everything on offer. There will not be much of a selection, particularly after present stocks are gone. Normally only one type of soap, stockings, razor and so on will be available. […] One month the stores will be overflowing with pickled gherkins from Poland or stuffed peppers from East Germany or whatever else the Soviet Union and its partners are dumping on you. Whether or not you and your family are partial to gherkins and peppers, buy them. You may find an imaginative way to serve them up or sell or exchange them with people who like them. It is always a mistake in any Communist country to turn up your nose at any food that happens to be going. The rule is: stock up. And if by any chance you lay your hands on something extra good, keep it for a birthday, an anniversary, a special occasion. It will give you something to look forward to, something memorable to interrupt the wearisome procession of the days.26Ibid., 67-68
Cruel winters: Chronic outages in electricity, gas and oil
Above all, make sure you keep your family as well provided as possible with warm clothing. A constant feature of your daily life will be the breakdown of power supplies and other public services. Even when they are restored, fuel shortages and the deterioration of equipment, together with administrative inefficiency, will result in chronic cuts in electricity, gas, and oil, with a ban on all but “essential” uses in the home and elsewhere. Your first winters are liable to be particularly miserable. Central heating, like air-conditioning, will be a thing of the past, except in the districts commandeered by the elite. You would do well to invest in a Swedish-type wood-burning stove and get used to cooking on a Primus stove or some other cooker that works on solid fuel. If you live in the city, it will help you greatly if you have friends or relatives in the country who can help secure you odd items of food. This will depend, of course, on whether the farmers themselves have been left by their overseers with any surplus, or have been clever enough to conceal it. Country friends may also help with good firewood. (In the cities in wintertime, you will notice that the benches, bushes, branches of trees, and even whole trees will mysteriously vanish from the public parks.)
[…]You will no longer have a deep freeze and seldom even a refrigerator in working order, but you can bottle or dry out your fruits and vegetables and add them to your store cupboard.
When it comes to purchases, do not rely on food that needs refrigerating since, even if your refrigerator works, the electricity supply will be unreliable, at any rate for some time. Tins and dried foods will be best, as well as being more easily hidden or disguised, and take up less space. But you might explore the possibility of getting hold of one of the old-fashioned iceboxes, which could in the end prove more serviceable and durable than the modern kind.27Ibid., 68-69
You live in the suburbs? Use your lawn for chickens and pigs
If you live in the suburbs, your lawns and flowerbeds will largely relapse into a natural state since you won’t have the time, energy, or gasoline to mow and to tend them, although you may keep a few strips shorn with a hand mower or shears. If you are very lucky, and so situated, it might be possible to use the grass more profitably by keeping chickens and, perhaps, a pig—if you can spare the scraps from your kitchen for nonhuman consumption and can get permission for such activity, as may be the case if you are prepared to let the official concerned have a share of the by-product. All such livestock will even then have to be guarded continuously from sneak thieves and bands of marauders, and this will almost certainly prove very difficult to do. You should consider the risks. For example, it may be possible to keep the pig indoors at night and well watched by day; and neighbors in the same position may collaborate.
You may also be able to grow a few vegetables, although these too will need protection. Fruit trees, if you had them, are likely to have been cut down. But berry bushes of various types may survive and be an invaluable source of vitamins.28Ibid., 69
It is unlikely that families will be able to spare any scraps of food for feeding pets, let alone extra money for grooming them or purchasing accessories. The various pet industries will be closed down, and most cats and dogs will have to be put to sleep or allowed to run free and take their chances. After the fighting ends, there will, in any case, be a serious infestation of ownerless dogs running in wild packs with which the authorities will have to deal. 29Ibid., 123
Sovietization of American universities
Private, religious, and racially or ethnically oriented institutions will have been taken over by the State. All departments, but especially those of history, philosophy, political science, economics, and sociology, will be purged of “incorrect” teachers with great thoroughness. The curricula will be thinned down and streamlined along Russian lines, with the more controversial and enterprising elective courses omitted.
Colleges will be run by Communist-appointed functionaries, including representatives of the secret police, and there will be no “academic freedom.” If you are at the moment an academic with Communist or Marxist leanings, you can expect to become at least a dean or the head of your department, at least for as long as your orthodoxy is regarded as adequate. If you lack such credentials, you must make up your mind to tread warily and keep your mouth shut. Eschew the banter, gossip, and small talk that is normally the small change of academic life. Departmental infighting will cease to be a diversion and will become a blood-sport, the losers being consigned to the ranks of bricklayers, coal miners, and washroom attendants, if lucky. Sneaking and denunciation will be the order of the day, and since the arrest rate will be one of the highest in any field, you will be hard put to trust your colleagues, for you will not be able to tell which of them have become police informers, either of their own volition or through blackmail.30Ibid., 80
The future of American banks?
Banks will be among the first businesses to be nationalized. Services will be cut to the barest minimum—indeed, even checking accounts are regarded with suspicion by the Soviets. Savings will be limited to State bonds, although there will be little spare money to save. Credit cards will be abolished.31Ibid., 87
Few cars will be on the road
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.32Ibid., 107
Penetrating American black movements
It has always been a Communist aim to penetrate and control black movements in the United States, with a view, first of all, to using them against the American system, and second, to persuading them that only under communism can the black get justice. The Russians will turn their attention to the blacks, as to the other minorities, as a major article of policy. Black Communists will at first enjoy a disproportionate chance of being given a high position. […] Those that emphasize the idea of a black culture different from the official one and unassimilable to it, such as the Black Muslims, will be crushed at once. Others will simply be placed under black Communist leaders; and these in turn will suffer the usual cycle of purges. Such groups as compete for the souls of the black population, like the Southern Baptists, will be taken over, or disrupted, with special ruthlessness as the Soviets seek to capture the black constituency.
For the unpolitical majority of blacks, the Occupation is bound to bring about a sudden turn for the worse. While equality of the races as well as of the sexes will have been proclaimed, there will be a cessation of all quotas in jobs and education and a cancellation of all “equal opportunity” and “affirmative action” programs. There will no longer be a problem of black unemployment—in the sense that people who are unemployed cannot expect to have their problems more or less sympathetically examined at their labor exchanges, but instead will be summarily directed into any kind of job or into the regular labor corps or labor battalions.
The American Communists at one time envisaged a black Soviet republic in the old “Black Belt” in the South; but this was abandoned long ago in favor of an integrationist attitude, and it now seems unlikely, although perhaps not quite impossible, that it will be revived. More probably areas with a high proportion of black population will have black mayors, and the first secretary of the local Communist party will also be black. But it is a principle of the Soviet order that the interests of the Party come first, and that key power positions must be filled according to this principle regardless of racial or other considerations. […] You will often find, in fact, that a rather shadowy figure from out of state, often white, will be the repository of real power in your neighborhood.
[…]The Russian record with their own minorities is, indeed, very bad. In theory all nations are equal, but in practice control by Russians, the Russification of schools, and the repression of all nationalist elements is continual. In Stalin’s time eight small nations, totaling about a million and a half people, were deported—every man, woman, and child—from their homelands to Siberia and central Asia, where around a third of them died. To this day, although the charges against them have been dropped, three of these nations, numbering about half a million, are still in exile.33Ibid., 87-89
No place for churches in Soviet America
It will be general policy to close down as many churches, seminaries, and theological colleges as possible, while leaving enough to justify the assertion that religious liberty is not being infringed. Large sums and spacious premises will be given to the League of Militant Atheists; antireligious museums will be opened in the main cities; and courses of atheist lectures will be given throughout the country on Lenin’s principle that: “Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness.”
It will be illegal to teach children a religious faith. This will be hard to enforce on a family basis, but priests and rabbis who feel it their duty to teach children religion will be arrested when caught.34Ibid., 94
Anything good to watch on TV?
Most of the programs will consist of primitive propaganda of the type you avoided by not going to the cinema.
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.35Ibid., 158-159
What to expect in American hotels post-takeover by the Soviets?
[A] tablet of soap, a clean towel, and a supply of toilet paper or the cut-up pieces of newspaper that for some time will do universal duty as toilet paper. Even the better hotels in Communist countries have had the plugs for the baths and basins stolen, so you might also take with you a couple of plugs of assorted sizes. An extra blanket and a tin of flea powder might also come in handy. In the hotels, as in most public buildings, you will not expect to find the elevators working, so be prepared to climb the stairs.
[…]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.36Ibid., 158-159
Pleasant dreams.
American armed resistance (partisans) vs. the Soviets
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.37Ibid., 164
American rebels can learn from the ferocious Afghani mujahideens
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.38Ibid., 164
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.39Ibid., 166
Expect a lifetime of resistance
Partisans, generally speaking, cannot hold out forever unless they are aided from outside. […] 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!40Ibid., 168
Does USA have any advantage over USSR?
The following passage was a known fact at the time and it deserves credit for being accurate in a book based mainly on political fantasies.
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.41Ibid., 176
One last piece of advice
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.42Ibid., 177
Endnotes
