Outside your own home, perhaps even outside your own room in your own home, you feel yourself continuously subject to examination and scrutiny. It will be like living in a fishbowl. Or, to change the metaphor, you will feel as if you had been stripped of your clothes and are walking naked or as if the regime has performed a delicate operation on you that has peeled off the outer layer of your skin. As the Russian writer Isaac Babel remarked, under Soviet communism at its worst, “One only talks freely with one’s wife—at night, with the blankets pulled over one’s head.”
You will find yourself forced to separate your life outdoors from your life indoors, your public life from your private one. You will begin to practice the compartmentalized existence practiced by all people who survive under a Communist dictatorship. You will split your mind into two halves. It is a trick that it will take you some time to acquire; but unless you belong to the minority, tiny and nasty, who will throw in their lot with the Communists, you will eventually learn how to demarcate your activities into a public sphere and an increasingly constricted private sphere. And you must get used to the fact that you will have to do or say something you will hate yourself for at least two or three times a day.
You will do all the things required of you: attend the meetings, march in the parades, chant the slogans, cheer the leaders.
You will at the same time perform an inner withdrawal and cultivate a very intense private life. This is where you must live—inside yourself or within a small circle—and it is a life that will become increasingly precious to you.
You will become gratified at the depth and closeness of your family relationships and your immediate friendships. These profound affections are the compensation, well known in all Communist countries, for the otherwise monotonous and mechanical quality of your existence. You will also find that, beneath the brusqueness and suspicion with which you will treat strangers and outsiders; beneath the endemic bad temper, snarling, and rudeness, there will sometimes spring up a remarkable spirit of kindness and generosity. Deprivation, fear, short rations, endless waiting lines, and the need to be servile will make everyone touchy and quarrelsome. Suspicion will arise between honest men. And yet, people who are companions in misery in their submission to a Communist government, even in Russia itself, are often prompted to behave toward each other with a rare selflessness and compassion.
However, take care not to be too carried away by the warmth of your friendships and family feeling. You will not really be safe even in the bosom of your own family. A specific and very great danger will arise when, after the regime is fully established, your children will have to join the “Pioneers” and will thus become integrated into the Communist system. In addition to providing some military training and running the summer camps, the Pioneers will inculcate the lesson that loyalty to Communism is far more praiseworthy than loyalty to one’s family. As we have said, if you have subversive ideas, you must be very careful not to express them directly in front of your younger children. Even the most loyal child may inadvertently blurt things out and get you into trouble. Some children become brainwashed by the constant propaganda to which they are exposed and become zealous agents of the regime. Such unfortunate girls and boys are singled out and cherished by the Communists. Pavlik Morozov, a boy who during the collectivization of the land in the Soviet Union denounced his parents for hoarding and had them shot, is still lauded as a hero in the USSR and new statues to him have recently been erected. Most parents will try to pass on to their children, as we remarked earlier, decent values, and the general experience from Communist countries is that many succeed. However, you must proceed with the utmost vigilance, especially when your children are at an impressionable and talkative age. Therefore, as you peer out across the ruins, your first duty to yourself and to your loved ones is to practice caution. Every day you will be walking through a minefield. Every caretaker, doorman, porter, elevator man, lavatory attendant, and taxi driver is a potential government informer, not to mention the people with whom you regularly rub shoulders at the office or factory. You will have to consider very carefully the weaknesses of your old friends and acquaintances. And you must never make new friends impulsively or trust first impressions. Enlarge your circle slowly and carefully. You will learn to identify the people who are sympathetic to you and your ideas by subtle signs: a slight smile here, a cautious nod there. Even then you will be very careful. It is true that there may only be one rotten apple in the barrel; but you will not know which it is.
By the way, on the subject of communication, the telephone system will deteriorate rapidly, and you will no longer be able to rely on it to get through on any given day. However, we would advise you to keep your telephone if you can. A friend may be able to give you useful information that is otherwise unobtainable, for example, the appearance of lemons at some market. But do not speak indiscreetly. The chances of being bugged will be very small, especially at first; but as with all your actions, better safe than sorry should be your guiding principle. Similarly, you will not put on paper, in letters in particular, any facts or thoughts that might give offense to the authorities or annoy any individual official.
You might also think of having a radio capable of receiving stations overseas, which may give you better information about what is going on in the United States than you will be able to obtain from official broadcasts. In listening to these, you should also take the customary precautions of keeping the volume low and not having anyone present of whose reliability you are not certain.
There will be times of comparative relaxation as well as ones of intense horror. In these milder times, you still should not talk too freely. Remember that there is a file on you at the local secret police headquarters, and when things get worse again, you may suffer. As a Soviet writer rightly remarked to the American academic Dr. Gene Sosin when congratulated that things were a little easier: “Yes, but what about yesterday—and tomorrow?”
You may have complained, in your time, of the spread of bureaucracy in present-day America. When you come to look back upon it, you will be astonished at its moderation in comparison with what you will now experience. The number of forms to be filled in will increase tenfold. The number of permits, identity cards, labor books, ration cards, and registrations will astonish you. State offices will multiply, and the number of their employees will proliferate. But more importantly, from your point of view, is the fact that you will be entirely at the mercy of the new functionaries. There will be no press, independent lawyer, or politician, nor any other effective means of combating errors, injustices, and bullying. Courtesy toward the citizen will disappear. You will feel that you are mere bureau fodder. But be prepared for it. Get used to it. Study the new forms carefully. Do not be too alarmed if some document goes astray—very few people will be able to keep up fully with all the demands. On the other hand, if you are cheerful and helpful to your local administrators, who after all are subject to harassment in their turn, you may find them helpful when you want, for example, to visit a coastal state at short notice and thereby be able to get your permits in a week or ten days instead of having to wait months.
Inside every office the tension will be high. Those seeking promotion, or mere survival in their jobs, will increasingly tend to use every form of intimidation and blackmail against anyone they believe is a threat to them, including denunciation on charges of anti-Soviet agitation, which will lead to swift arrest. We can only advise you to keep a low profile and to control your natural instinct to express your own feelings and opinions. You will be able to console yourself by the frequent disappearance into labor camps of those who gained promotions only to find themselves denounced by even more devoted toadies of the regime.