Homosexual
Male homosexuality is illegal under all Communist regimes. The usual sentence will be five to ten years in a labor camp. As with other regulations, this will not be invariably enforced if political considerations make it convenient in individual cases to proceed otherwise. The regime occasionally prefers to secure the collaboration of the homosexual by holding the other alternative over him. In the takeover period, the police will probably be too busy to pay much attention to the persecution of homosexuals in general, but gay liberation and organizations designed to promote their interests will at once be banned, and those who attempt to persist with them will be instantly arrested.
Hospital Employee (see Dentist; Doctor)
Hotel Owner or Employee
Hotel owners will be dispossessed and, if they are fortunate, may be given employment in lower grades of the industry. Those hotels that are permitted to continue will operate in a notably run-down condition, although some of the luxury hotels will be maintained at a level somewhat below their best in order to cater to the Soviet and Communist elite and other important visitors. In these major establishments, all rooms will be bugged, with a special central office listening in at all times. Only “cleared” and reliable staff will remain, and they will be required to act as government informers. In ordinary hotels, also State-run, jobs will be available at a reduced salary, but there will be less work to perform as little service will be given beyond the provision of a more-or-less clean room.
Indian (Native American)
The Communists will make what use they can of Indians and the Indian movements, although they will not have the priority given to the more numerous black and Chicano elements.
The reservations, probably renamed “autonomous areas.” will be maintained, but the inhabitants will have no right to the oil and other resources in them, which will be the property of the State. And there will no longer be any bar to white or other settlers. The Indians will become citizens, although of course, the advantages of citizenship will be few. A few select Indians will be given impressive-looking posts, largely of a cosmetic nature; for example, there will be an Indian commissioner for native American affairs together with a number of Congressmen of the new style.
Indian organizations will be purged of any independent elements of leadership. As the record of the tribes and many subgroups in the Soviet Union shows, it will be difficult to find any Indians who are real Communists, or even near-Communists, to be heads of the administration of the autonomous areas; the Communists will have to make do with supervision by unobtrusive white “advisers.” Indian languages, dances, customs, and folkways will be encouraged but guided into the desired channels. For example, new “folk songs” will be required, extolling the virtues of communism. At the same time, as elsewhere, Indians will be forced into collective farms. Those who live a mobile existence, such as the Navajo, will be compelled to settle.
In general, the interests of the State economy will be put before those of the small peoples. A Soviet commentator has written of similar groups in areas in the mountains bordering China:
The present-day Khakassi living in the Khakass Autonomous Province are a minority in the national composition of Khakassia. The non-Khakassian population in Khakassia forms a majority and outnumbers the Khakassi several times. This has occurred during the last twenty years chiefly because the Khakassi, few in number, were not in a position to ensure the rapid development of a powerful industry having All-Union and All-State importance, for the establishment of which favourable local conditions exist. This is also applicable to the Shors… and the Altais of the High Altai Autonomous Province… It is difficult to say what will be the ultimate fate of each of the small ethnographic groups and peoples…
But not too difficult to guess; and for Khakass, Shor, Altai, read, in the American context, Navajo, Hopi, Apache.
In the Soviet Union, mountain and desert peoples like the Chechens and Kalmyks, resembling many of the Western Indians, were driven into a more desperate resistance than that of any section of the population; and several were among those later deported en masse (men, women and children) to Siberia, although some of these were later allowed to return.
Meanwhile, those of you who inhabit mountain or desert country will possess certain advantages in that it will be difficult to keep you under constant observation and control. Our advice is: Keep your more unassimilable customs and folkways as far out of sight as possible; take what you are given; do not be deceived by temporary advantages; and unless you are desperate, do not offer resistance. But you will be prepared, if you do become desperate, to revert to the guerrilla-type existence of your forefathers. You should be more successful than most.
Industrial Worker
In theory, you will be the bulwark of the new socialist America.
You and everyone else will read a vast amount of propaganda about your heroic efforts in industry, and about your devoted loyalty to the new “workers’ state.” Control of your organizations will be the major concern of the Communist party (see Trade Unionist).
All this will have some slight advantages, up to a point. Over minor offenses, for example, you will be treated comparatively lightly. With major matters such as opposition to the regime, on the other hand, your status will count against you since you will have proved yourself a “traitor to your class.” After the needs and wishes of the new bureaucratic elite have been satisfied, your children will, in the first decade or so have preferential access to education and indoctrination.
You will find a good many changes in your work. Trade unions will be totally under Communist control, and while they will administer holiday and insurance funds, they will have no right to oppose the management. The basic rule to which everything else must cede is the fulfillment of the “plan.” Since this is allotted from Washington, it will often be unrealistic, and you will be forced to work a great deal of overtime, almost invariably without special payment—especially toward the end of each month.
You will be issued a “labor book” that will list your successive jobs, with each management’s comments on your reasons for being transferred, including censure.
It has been the industrial working class above all, in spite of the pretenses of the Communist party, which has been the backbone of resistance in the Communist lands; as in Plzeň and East Berlin in 1953, in Budapest and Poznan in 1956, in Gdansk and elsewhere in 1970, and finally in the great Polish Solidarity movement today—to name some major worker militancy in Soviet-controlled countries. And in the Soviet Union itself, huge worker outbreaks have taken place in the last couple of decades in places like Novocherkassk, Temir-Tau, Krivoy Rog, Dneprodzerzhinsk.
These are signs that the worker does not really do very well out of the system administered in his name. But they also show that in certain circumstances worker unrest can spearhead major revolt against the regime. It is notable that some of the most powerful outbursts, even in the USSR itself, have come when economic resentment has been linked with political resentment—some Soviet riots and strikes were touched off by economic suffering, others by workers’ resentment at their colleagues being jailed and beaten to death by the police. But the most powerful movements of all have taken place when worker resentment has been linked with national hatred of the Soviet occupier. You will probably find this to be the case in America.
Insurance Agent or Insurance Company Employee
Insurance companies will be immediately nationalized and their capital confiscated. Insurance will become a prerogative of the State or its subsidiary, the “Trade Unions,” and you may be employed in the State insurance organization.
Japanese American
If Japan has not been conquered, all Japanese Americans will be regarded as adherents of a hostile power. They will automatically be deported from the Hawaiian Islands, California, and the other Pacific states. This will remind the older among them of their fates in 1942, with the difference that similar deportations under Soviet rule have
resulted in an average 30 percent death rate.
Jewish
Many Jewish groups will find themselves in immediate trouble for a wide variety of reasons. They may be capitalists or involved in non-Communist politics or, in the specifically Jewish context, be Zionists or rabbis. Even if you have not given offense in any of these respects, you will inevitably find yourself, if you are Jewish, in a paradoxical situation. As with every other “ethnic” group, there will be an effort to use your organizations over the transitional stage; yet, at the same time, you will automatically be more suspect than your Gentile equivalent. This even applies to the Jewish Communist, who will be regarded with more distrust than his Gentile comrade when it comes to sniffing out deviation. So, unless you are an exceptional creature who can be manipulated as a “show Jew” and as a docile “leader” of the Jewish community, your prospects are shaky. This is not to say that every Jew will be arrested (though such a plan does seem to have existed in the Soviet Union in 1953), or even that you will automatically lose your job; but it does mean that certain professions will be largely or wholly closed to you. The maintenance of your Jewish identity will be discouraged, the Hebrew language will be virtually banned, and while Yiddish will be permitted, no Yiddish theatres will be open and no Yiddish books will be printed, although a few small-circulation Yiddish Communist newspapers will probably survive. As for anti-Semites, they will, of course, provided they can pass muster on other grounds, be very welcome to the regime, particularly as propagandists.
John Birch Society Member
Your life will, of course, be automatically forfeit. However, if you are determined to preserve it at all costs, your chances are a good deal better than those of, say, the Maoists or the Trotskyites (see below) at the other end of the political spectrum. In East Germany, large numbers of ex-Nazis were admitted to the Communist party, to some extent because the Nazis and the Communists had similar authoritarian affinities but, more importantly, because, to save themselves, the Nazis had nowhere else to go; and the Communists were glad to accept them since they needed any recruits they could get. (At one time the Communist Central Committee, the highest organ of the DDR, contained fourteen ex-Nazis to merely two ex-Social Democrats.) Even more encouraging is the example of Piasecki, once the leader of the very small and very extreme Polish Fascist party. When he fell into Russian hands, he was told by Ivan Serov himself, deputy head of the Soviet secret police, that he was as good as dead already, but if he agreed to collaborate, the Russians could use him. He was made head of PAX, a body directed toward the subversion of the Catholic Church and, at the same time, was allowed or encouraged to carry out private financial transactions that made him the richest man in Poland. So you can see that there is no need to despair, and that, paradoxically, if you are a right-wing politician with a strong anti-Communist record, you may yet have a better future (at least for the time being) than many of your more “progressive” colleagues. As in the case of Piasecki, you can take additional heart from the case of Tatarescu in Romania. He had actually been a signatory of Hitler’s Anti-Comintern Pact; but while Socialists and moderates were being arrested, the Russians made him foreign minister, a post that he managed to hold for some years.
Journalist (Newspaper, Magazine, TV)
If you are a political columnist or commentator, or have otherwise become known for ideas antipathetic to the Communist view, you will have little chance of remaining at liberty. Anyhow, you will have no future in journalism. If the offense you have committed is judged to be minor, you might be able to secure some sort of job in the bureaucracy. We would suggest that you acquire some appropriate skill such as bookkeeping. If your field has been reasonably far removed from politics, however, you may be allowed to carry on for a time until you can be replaced by a young Communist who has been trained to present your subject in an impeccable Marxist-Leninist light.
Censorship will be imposed immediately on the arrival of the Russians and all “anti-Soviet” staff will be turned off. Newspapers that are considered to have had a particularly anti-Soviet bias will be expropriated and handed over to the Communist party or some other Communist-sponsored organization. In any case, one or other of the main newspapers and television stations in each locality will be delivered up to the Party and renamed. Those non-Communist papers and stations allowed to survive will be given the task of representing the views of the “Democratic” and “Republican” parties which form part of the “coalition” government until they too fade away.
Ku Klux Klan Member
Your organization will be suppressed. Trials will be held in Washington and in the South in which men totally without KKK sympathy or background will be branded as such. The Soviet authorities will have little use for real KKK members, who are seldom as “literate” as John Birchers (see above); but those who have specialized in anti-Semitism and have any journalistic or demagogic flair may come to some arrangement, and be retrospectively proved not to have been KKK men at all.
Lawyer
Lawyers will, in general, be regarded as a hostile class element. This will be more so in their case than similar strata because so many of them are involved in the public life of pre-Occupation America and concerned with rights, balances, constitutionality, and common law—all totally opposed to the Communist principle.
Casualties, therefore, will be high.
However, under the leadership of lawyers already of Communist persuasion, of whom there are some, a new body of lawyers will be built up, in which, if you survive and are able to accept education in the newer legal principles, you may obtain employment.
Some lawyers will be needed, especially those with the histrionic talents of an Andrei Vishinsky, for the upcoming series of spectacular show trials. Compliant judges will also be required.
The profession will, naturally, be brought under control like the others. A well-purged “bar association” will be headed by Communist officials. Judges at all levels who are still at their posts after the first phase will be replaced “constitutionally.” Where they are at present elected, Communist-style elections will provide suitable replacements. Where they are appointed, as with the Supreme Court and so forth, the new political leaders will act accordingly.
The new judges will interpret the Constitution to suit the wishes of the occupying power and the processes of Sovietization.
Should any constitutional amendments be required, they will be dealt with by the puppet Congress and through fake popular votes. In fact, Communist-type constitutions are full of the same sort of guarantees of civic rights as are to be found in the present Constitution of the United States. But a few changes will nevertheless be necessary—in particular, say, a Thirtieth and Thirty-first Amendment, respectively—institutionalizing the Soviet economic system and officially making the Communist party the central power in the land.
If you do continue to practice, you will have to change your courtroom style. In a Soviet-type court, especially where there is any trace whatever of a political tinge to the case, lawyers are not expected to get into arguments. The defense lawyer, in particular, is supposed to represent not so much the interests of his client as those of the community; and there have been many cases under this system in which they have strongly dissociated themselves from their client’s pleas of innocence.
You will not, moreover, be operating in a private and independent capacity. You will be a member of the “collegium” of lawyers in your area, paid and controlled by the State, and allotted to clients as suits the authorities.
Unless you have a very strong stomach, therefore, our advice would be that you abandon the profession at the outset. So you should now put your mind to training yourself for some other means of supporting your family.
Librarian
Your job will be comparatively safe, if you can bear the conditions imposed on you. Your first duty will be to carry out the removal from your shelves of a large part of their contents. Politically unsuitable books, together with those considered
pornographic or decadent, will be proscribed; you will be surprised at the manner in which the labels of pornography and decadence have been extended to cover a very wide range of literature. Your old reference books, such as encyclopedias, will be withdrawn and pulped.
You should keep handy a pair of sharp scissors and a supply of paste as you will have to cut out or replace those entries in the new style encyclopedias and reference books that become politically inconvenient—a normal Soviet practice. As the years go by, even the more harmless books on your shelves will be gradually replaced as works commissioned and printed by the State begin to appear in adequate numbers. Experience from the Soviet Union and particularly from Eastern European countries suggests that you will not be kept very busy checking these out. If you can safely save and secrete some of the books that are being discarded, well and good; although your superiors will be on the lookout for this, and it may be hazardous for you or your friends to be caught reading them.
Duplicating machines will be usable by designated staff only, and will be available, even to this degree, only in major libraries.
What to Do When the Russians Come Page 9