All printing machines and all printing matter will be under very strict control. Unofficial possession of even the smallest press or duplicating machine will be illegal.
Psychiatrist
Western psychiatry is ill regarded in the Soviet Union, and most psychiatry in the present sense will cease and the files of its practitioners will be turned over to the secret police as possible sources of evidence. A Soviet-style psychiatry will take its place, and for those Western psychiatrists who contrive to adapt their theories to Soviet ideology, a small clientele of rich Party officials and their families will be a source of fees. But the massive employment of psychiatry will cease, and you are advised to think about developing other skills. On the other hand, an ambitious and unscrupulous psychiatrist might do well by gaining employment in one of the special police psychiatric hospitals where certain offenders are held and subjected to psycho-chemical abuse (see chapter 3).
Psychopath
If you are able and prepared to control yourself in all matters where you might offend the authorities, a wide field of activity of a type you will find rewarding will remain open to you. Those not afflicted with consciences will be much in demand not only in occupations offering opportunities of violence (see Sadist) but also in all other institutions, where it will always be possible to denounce anyone who stands in the way of your desires or to blackmail them into submitting.
Indeed, the Soviet system as consolidated by Stalin and perpetuated by his successors has been described as a psychopathocracy. If your condition is of the right type, you might rise very high indeed in the new hierarchy.
Publisher
There will be a short interim period before all publishing firms are brought under control of one or another of the Communist-sponsored organizations. But there will be an immediate ban on all “anti-Soviet” literature. Publishers will find that this is interpreted to cover any independent work whatever in the fields of history, economics, politics, and social thought—just as almost all modern American fiction will be banned as “pornographic.”
Many publishers will in any case have been arrested for their earlier purveying of books warning America of the Soviet threat or simply retailing facts about the Soviet regime. Those firms that survive will be taken over as soon as practicable. The new Communist-controlled “writers’ union” will own directly, or through local branches, most of the firms printing literary works proper. The publishing of political, military works, and so forth will come under direct government control; political works being published by the State political publishers, military works by the Department of Defense, and so forth.
If you continue to work in these institutions, you will have to be careful not to offend the censorship. Sticking to the general guidelines will not be sufficient, and even these new Communist-controlled organizations will not be trusted in this sensitive area.
There will be a large body of censors—in Russia it is estimated that there are about seventy thousand of these. Every printed word must be examined by a representative of the Board of Censorship and certified correct before publication. In the case of a book there is first a “precensorship.” If it passes this, some twenty copies may then be printed, after which the presses will be locked and copies sent for approval to a variety of governmental agencies and departments of the Communist party, always including the secret police. When and if all these have approved, printing may take place.
The censors will be guided by an instruction book (the Polish one consists of 700 pages) listing the things that may not be mentioned. These will naturally include anything discreditable about the Soviet Union, the Communist party, and so forth— and in particular any atrocity committed by the Soviet army, any information about the now-flourishing labor camps, any hints that everybody is not happy under the Occupation. There will also be a number of named persons to whom one may not refer because for one reason or another they are in disfavor.
Puerto Rican
Puerto Ricans will, to some degree, be a special case since Puerto Rico itself will probably become an “autonomous” republic in a Caribbean federation dominated by Soviet Cuba. The important Puerto Rican communities in New York and elsewhere will be tightly organized under Communist control, and Puerto Rican Communists will be given a fair proportion of local administrative posts, as with blacks. (See also Chicano, etc.)
Rabbi
Your position will be, as we have suggested, among the worst in religious categories. You should, more than most others, pay particular attention to our advice in preparing for prison and labor camp. (See also Clergymen; Jew.)
Radio Station Operator or Employee (see Television)
Realtor
Private ownership of property and land will be abolished and a decree of total nationalization will immediately go into force. Real estate dealing will thereupon become inoperative.
Restaurant Owner or Worker
A few top-class restaurants will remain in business and, even in famine times, will be provided, for the edification of the Soviet and Communist elite, with a plentiful supply of provisions, including luxuries. Otherwise restaurants and eateries in general may continue under private ownership for a year or so until full nationalization and Sovietization has taken place. However, keeping them supplied will entail your being in constant attendance at the local rationing offices and the necessity for continuous bribes and payoffs.
The prices you will have to charge will probably be beyond the pockets of most citizens, although there will always be a quota of minor officials, police, and so on who will prefer to eat anything and to eat anywhere in preference to their own dreary canteens.
Many cooks and waiters will find that they have no choice left but to work in such canteens, where conditions are notoriously poor, hours indeterminate, and pay minimal. However, wretched though working in State canteens may be, it possesses one advantage not to be despised: access to food. Employees will always be suspected of stealing, and suspected correctly, but the Soviet habit is not to try to enforce the unenforceable in such spheres unless they have some other reason for getting rid of somebody—or unless instructions for a strict purge have come down and they are looking for easily compromised victims.
Eventually the whole restaurant network will be run by the Department of Internal Trade, and quality will suffer accordingly, though restaurateurs who manage to work in them will, as we say, at least eat.
Russian American
Though some will be used by the occupiers as interpreters, and even in political posts, Americans of Russian descent can look forward to especially virulent treatment. We will draw a veil over what will happen to former Russian defectors who fall into Soviet hands.
Sadist
Although the secret police will have some use for torturers, such positions are unlikely to be open except to men with political acumen and training, but low-grade thugs, known as “boxers,” are often employed for routine beatings. Guards will be needed, of course, on a large scale for the new labor camp and prison system and will be more or less free to maltreat prisoners at their leisure. You should be warned, on the other hand, that most of the labor camps are likely to be situated in the most distant and forbidding parts of the continent.