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. Your 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.