My good friend Concerned American at Western Rifle Shooters Association recently wrote to Vlad and me. He wanted to ask our East Bloc contacts who grew up under communism the following question:
“What lessons, if any, can be taken from the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and applied to those of us stuck in the upcoming fall of the US Bloc?”
Vlad and I forwarded his message to a number of our translators who have experienced communism. Four of them have replied so far, and more are expected. I’ve collected the first group below.
I expect WRSA and Vlad to mirror this post, and will add an update with links for the mirrors when they appear.
Update: The WRSA post is here.
The first report is from DarLink, the only member of the team who grew up in the Soviet Union. She later moved to Israel, and translates both Russian and Hebrew for Vlad and me:
I have a nearly constant sense of déjà vu these days…it feels like my past is inescapable; I simply cannot leave the USSR.
The signs are everywhere:
A senile leader, lying media, a lawless society, corrupt institutions…
The fall is coming and I don’t think we can stop it.
- Food shortages.
- Medical supplies shortages.
- Water, electricity, gas will be shut randomly and for unknown periods of time.
- The government will run out of money and we the people will be left to fend for ourselves.
Prepare in anyway you can:
Get out of the cities — warmer areas where you can grow your own food are the best, in my opinion.
If you are alone, gather some friends/relatives in a group and do it together — you will go back in time technologically, and living off the land is easier in a group.
Learn to grow anything that can nourish you and your family.
Learn to hunt.
Prepare alternative sources of water.
If you can rig your own electro grid, do it.
Learn a craft others may need and would be willing to pay for in goods.
Money will be useless for a while — have stuff you can trade.
Get guns and ammo to defend what you have — others WILL try to rob you of anything valuable.
The situation, most likely, will be different from state to state, and some will have it harder than the others — if you are in a blue state, leave.
It may not be obvious, but Russians actually had it easier and suffered less than Americans will — they were less spoiled, had less stuff, and their fall was less destructive because there wasn’t much there anyway.
It’s up to us.
Start preparing.
The second report is from CrossWare, who grew up in Hungary under communism. She emigrated to Canada and lived there for a number of years, but returned home when political repression in Canada reached an alarming level:
First a little about my circumstances: I was born in the mid-’60s in Hungary, when the Beatles first arrived in America. Hungary at the time was on the path to consolidation. The Communists gained power in 1947 by cheating (moving people with trucks between voting places and having them vote multiple times — does this sound familiar?).
The next nine years were spent mirroring the “Greater Soviet Union”: first they consolidated their own power by arresting or just simply killing everybody who was not with them. Once they ran out of “enemies” they moved the goalposts and started killing each other. In the meantime, they completely mismanaged the food chain by eliminating the “kulaks” (the farmers with proper agricultural knowledge). They forced heavy industrialization on a country with an agricultural past.
The subsequent hunger and political fallout led to 1956, the first revolt against the “workers’ paradise” system. The West promised help, but nothing happened, as Western political powers preferred to solve the Suez Crisis, throwing the Hungarians into the hands of the Red Army. Hundreds of thousands fled, were killed or got locked up as political prisoners. Janos Kadar, the new general secretary of Hungary, decided to follow a different route: he loosened the reins and allowed Hungarians to bend the communist rules a bit. Have a little side job, earn extra money, etc…
That is why by the ‘60s and ‘70s we were called the “happiest barracks” in the socialist (concentration) camp, a “goulash communism”.
So that’s the history. Let’s look at what might be expected in the US, and also a bit of comparison between classical communism and the new improved Marxism 2.0 version.
There are a lot of things which will be NOT be applicable to the new communist regime. First of all, growing up in the country, we were not poisoned by the state with pharmaceutical products (jabs). Such companies were state-owned and quality was strictly enforced. The regime needed healthy soldiers in their struggle for “world peace by war”.
Also, LGBTQ+ behaviour was not tolerated, and it was punishable by prison and electroshock therapy. So the family unit was left intact. I can say that the state, generally speaking, wanted healthy new generations, except of course for the ideological indoctrination. Because they did not have today’s technical abilities, such indoctrination was not all that successful. Most people learned the truth about the ‘56 revolution, the true colors of communists, and the atrocities of the ‘50s from their parents and grandparents. People learned to read between the lines of the propaganda. Hungarians were famous for creating jokes about the political system and its leaders.
Now, looking back, the original communism worked as a weakened virus introduced into the system: an inoculation.
I could write examples of communist brutality and behaviour for the next ten, pages but I do not think that is the goal here. After all, you will soon be able to see this first-hand…
I think one of the most important aspects of the new communist regime will be the erosion of morals and human feelings such as compassion.
All communist systems like to place marginalized and untalented people into positions (for example, AOC), where they can take their revenge against their peers. I think this is something you can expect to see at all levels.
Once everybody is disarmed (yes, it is coming!), Karens and liberal-Bolshevik lunatics will be put in charge. They will be the community eyes and ears, in addition to the all-knowing vax passports and social credit system. Everything will be scrutinized, and Karens will have the full support of the militarized police.
This will not be a “Red Dawn” style occupation, where soldiers march around in hammer-and-sickle decorated uniforms and you can play the hero resistance fighter, but the occupation of the mind. I think even the book 1984 does not properly reflect what lies ahead. People will be watching each other to report someone out of envy, so that they can gain some social points. Families will report on each other, children on their parents. Social cohesion will be broken. You will not have the ability to conspire or even discuss issues.
One might ask: how would they enforce such things? Well, they are already flooding the country with lumpenproletarians, migrants, who will be more than happy to shoot some agitated white folks and follow a government that gives them handouts. Small terror groups (like BLM) will have the state’s tacit approval to eliminate targets. (I think you already have that in some level).
One of the failures of classical communism was its inability to control the flow of information. Since then, technological advances have arrived at a level where this is no longer a problem. It is every dictator’s wet dream… Once such a system is entrenched in society, it will be impossible to get rid of.
What is even worse is that the USA will continue its role as the bully of the world, beating up everybody who gets out of line. Of course, you guys have been doing that for the last seventy years in the name of democracy, so not much difference there…
What should we do? What could we do?
I wish I could say: just be a good citizen and go vote for your favorite GOP candidate. The USA had a fake multi-party system for the biggest part of the 20th century. Your voting system is worse than a third-world country, wide open for cheating.
Communism never got the bad rap it deserves, compared to the Nazis, even though they are both very similar leftist ideologies. Also, anyone who has already been indoctrinated into believing this system can rarely be persuaded to relinquish it.
I wish I could say there is a peaceful solution for this, but I do not believe there is. This is a radical turning point in history, where the world will celebrate for centuries either the heroic American freedom fighters, who rise up and won, or will be “celebrating” their execution. I do not see any other way…
I think I’ve painted a pretty dark picture. Also, I am not all that good at writing, but better at answering questions. I am more than happy to have a chat about it all in the comments if anyone is interested.
The third report is from Xanthippa, who was born and raised in Czechoslovakia, and emigrated to Canada before communism fell:
I left Czechoslovakia in 1980, so I do not have direct knowledge of what it was like to live there. But I did visit there shortly after 1990, and can share a few words on that.
Just a few months following the Velvet Revolution (the students’ blood was still on the walls and the makeshift memorial was still filled with candles), the atmosphere among the people was jubilant. Entrepreneurship was on steroids: I suspect that a lot of the black market that had existed before went above ground, but other businesses were also popping up. Our host proudly took us to an American Café in a prominent area of Prague where they only served popcorn and coffee, because that is what they thought people in America did. The prices had not yet caught up with the market value of the goods, so it was incredibly cheap for us as Westerners. Many Western movie companies were shooting films in Prague during this window (think Mission Impossible, the Dune miniseries, and so on).
Stores already had a lot more things in them, including a lot of imports (mainly from China, if I recall correctly). And even though it had only been a few months, the service in stores and restaurants was great.
Small businesses and cottage industries sprang up everywhere and people were looking for ways to export their products. One such sector of industry was military miniature kits, and I became an importer of these for Canada and the US for a number of small, budding companies around 1991/1992, and did so till about 2000. Visited there a few times during then. Again only visits, but…
During this time, things became brighter — literally. The built-up smog on the surfaces of buildings was being cleaned up; buildings were being renovated. A lot of property that had been expropriated was being returned to the original owners, including land and nunneries that had been turned into schools, and even castles. And while castles were always a tourist attraction, their opening hours were now more people-friendly and I was proudly taken for a business lunch to a high-end restaurant in a castle.
When it came to restaurants — meat was now available and most of the meals on the menu included it. That was a HUGE difference. And while I did not get a chance to go shopping as such, I did notice that stores were full.
Also, there was a very visible immigration wave from Vietnam. The first time I was approached by a Vietnamese person who spoke Czech but not English, I was amazed. Integration was successful.
On the other hand, the problems with the Roma population had increased in every respect. This has a complex history… Prior to WW2, the Roma population was mostly (not completely) integrated into society. But these Roma were genocided by the Nazis, and following the war, they were replaced by a new population of Roma from the South and East, and these Roma had never integrated. They self-segregated, but most of the criminality was limited to petty crime because of the totalitarianism. Or, because of censorship, we simply did not hear about it.
Following the Velvet Revolution, their criminality became very visible. When walking down a major street in a good part of town, my host suddenly pulled me towards him and put his arm around me. Not usual. After we had walked for a bit, he let me go and noted that my purse had been securely nestled between us, because we had passed by several Roma…
The Roma children’s school attendance had dropped, the segregation and self-rule increased and the disregard for law increased, as did cries of systemic racism, discrimination against them, both by the Roma themselves and by activists.
When visiting a business associate’s home, he had proudly shown me that they had renovated their bathroom — something that was not possible under socialism, as they had only been allowed to rent their high-rise apartment.
Small businesses were growing, cottage industries were now actual small- and medium-sized businesses.
The die-hard communists did not change, though; they held on to their beliefs. Some who had prided themselves on their status as Party Members had suffered a bit of an identity crisis, and some were not dealing well with their loss of status. I had been told that some of the older ones went insane.
Well, that is all I have. I hope it helps a bit!
The final report is from László, who was raised in Hungary under communism, and still lives there:
Thank you for asking me. I am responding from Hungary. I am not sure though that I can give you a meaningful answer because I saw no war.
But what first comes to my mind is that what is happening in the USA now is not exactly comparable to the disintegration of the Soviet bloc; it would be more comparable to a Communist enemy attack and takeover, like the 1917 Russian Revolution, or the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956, or Mao’s Cultural Revolution. What is happening in America now, and in Hungary and indeed all over the West, is the end game of decades of globalist commie subversion the way Yuri Bezmenov described it.
I think this is an important distinction, because finally this may mean active attacks, even kinetic enemy operations in America and elsewhere. It is the now the middle of a war and the beginning of a new era, while the disintegration of the Soviet Union was the end of an old era.
So, even though I was not alive in 1956 I can tell you what worked against the Soviet invasion: unity.
The Hungarians became one soul, and fought a guerilla war against the enemy who broke in with tanks and heavy artillery. Hungarians were fighting for their homeland, and the key was that even strangers helped each other and fought for the common cause — the country became like a huge extended family or tribe. So this may be one lesson: UNITY. But another lesson is that there was betrayal within our ranks, and state terror came, and mass murders, and we were overpowered by the then-second-strongest army in the world.
But to answer your question: my personal experience in 1989, when the Berlin wall came down, was that of relief. I was young, and we could suddenly travel as the borders opened. What followed in Central Europe was more freedom, a bit of general political and economic chaos and the shift of power. Our family’s life has changed but not in a dramatic way. My father lost his job but he found another one in some months — we did not starve or anything.
Weapons played no role here in Hungary in 1989 and there was no huge violent upheaval, but countries around us experienced some calamities. Hungary was on the fringes of the disintegrating Soviet bloc, not in the middle of it. We are a buffer area. In 1990 the Soviet army just left Hungary without any further ado; they simply returned home — and upon arrival in Russia many of the soldiers were fired and became jobless! The Soviet Union was exhausted and could not be held together any more. It just fell apart.
So it was more like a disintegrating corpse than the new war that is just now taking place in the US and around the world.
What ensued in the early 1990s in Hungary was that most public property was literally stolen and sold to foreigners for very little money. The economy collapsed, but it was partly rebuilt immediately by HUGE amounts of foreign “aid” that we have not been repaid up to now. The ownership of everything (such as factories and energy infrastructure) changed, unemployment was significant, and mafias ruled. Multinational companies took over the market and killed the remaining small businesses in five to ten years. But lots of new opportunities appeared as well, for example, in the advertising business.
I have no first-hand experiences on how the Soviet Union ended deeper in the Soviet mainland, such as in Russia or Ukraine.
So, if there is a lesson I can draw about it all, it is that AFTER a big societal and political change everything is for sale. There is a power vacuum and a constant fight for the ownership of everything, while the market is turbulent. I saw that with my own eyes. Probably exactly this is what the Powers That Be are playing for in the USA — this will be the time of the Great Fascist Reset, i.e. takeover.
I see this war as the US Deep State with China against the continental US and the world. So you people who can fight in the US are the last bastion of freedom for the West, because you still have weapons (unlike us Europeans). Actually, it is the same war over here and over there, so it is a common fight this time all over the West. The parasitic ‘elite’ vs. the people; and the people against the covert Chinese takeover.
To sum it up: my general take from Hungarian history is that it is (1) unity and (2) guerilla war that make a country and a nation harder to break. That is all I can tell you — I am not sure it helps much in your situation.
Thank you for contacting me and good luck for your battles — our battles.
Russia becomes USSR. Count the executions against the “saboteurs” of the pure idea of communism.
See Ukraine conversion to communism and count the executions.
About Romania…well… my grandfather from my mom’s side, got his eyes out of his head because he didn’t want to donate his land to the communist party, in the “nationalization” of industry and agriculture action, right after second world war.
Romania allied with Germany in the second world war, because USSR was a bigger threat than any other war. Romanians were anti-communists. After the war, all weapons were collected from people. But many did not gave up their weapons. In the first 10 years of communism, soviet army was fighting romanians in the mountains. Many, many thousands died. Many, many thousands were executed. My mother and her sisters were send in the mountains when soviet troops came in their city. And few other thousands of young girls did the same.
My perspective today is different. Europe ( and not only) was subject to different ways of implementation of ideologic communism. In the east, by force. In the west, by distraction and comfort. Reality shows that by force, people don’t give up their traditions, religion, unity. They will resist. In the west, people did not realized when they lost their “everything”. This is why the wall of Berlin fall. To spread the communism in the east, using a new method, tested in the west with success.
USA still have a chance. They still have weapons.
I don’t know if all stories will have any effect today. You understand the value of things and freedom when you fight or work hard for them.
There is much to talk…but the time for talk is over.
Oh Vlad, if you believe in usa why are you well installed in Canada then?
I think you are paranoid all of you.
None of you will be able to successfully survived what is coming.you just cry in the desert.Calm down
I am Stefan, cousin of Vlad.
I lived once under a system dedicated to extermination of people with wrong ideas. I know how to exist in this kind of world. Do you have also this knowledge? Existing and opposing the system from inside, not knowing if you are going to see the sun, next day.
Great article we’ve all come to expect, Baron. A perspective from the San Diego area; the vast majority are sleep walking to the gulag. And if the aforementioned topics are brought to discuss with anyone, an immediate conspiracist label is applied. So it seems to be a lost cause in the affluent areas of America.
As an American citizen, college sophomore in 1968, I went on the Experiment in International Living’s program to Poland (where stayed with a family) and USSR (was supposed to be two weeks but group left early). Communism, I observed, causes soul deadening shortages and oppression of mind, body and spirit.
Before the trip, I wrote my Polish “mother” asking what would they like me to bring from the USA. Her answer was aspirin! She had been Jan 6th-ed in a WWII prison camp and developed severe arthritis and wanted above anything in the world aspirin. Aspirin wasn’t the only shortage. Taxi drivers turned keys off and coasted down hills in an effort to save gasoline, every family had just been granted the “right” to grow food in a communal garden…each assigned patch was tiny and sparse, no one could tell you a truth unless well away from snitches or microphones, food was a scarcity, and in the USSR everyone tried to buy your jeans and clothes off your back, GUM was empty shelves and massively long lines to get in to see the empty shelves. We Americans were taken to a camp where anti American posters were everywhere, radios blared in English (ascerbic Russian Propaganda) and if you turned them off they automatically came back on, Ruskies offered vodka and made sure glasses were always filled to brimming so you were unaware of how much you’d drank, North Vietnamese soldiers were on leave playing volleyball (at the height of the Vietnam War) in the same camp, men with big reel to reel cameras documented our every move and we were forced to tour the cabin Francis Gary Powers was imprisoned in after being shot down.
My “Groupa” decided to go back to Poland rather than try to fend off the unceasing oppressors, the Russian Communists.
When I returned to my Polish family (and discovered that the two room apartment couch I slept on had been graciously given up to me and the 3 teenaged “sisters” had shared a small twin bed in their parents’ room), they urged me to visit Czestochowa in a annual pilgrimage to view the Black Madonna…because the whole family had the flu. So I traveled down (with my passport still in the Sopot police station where required to be) and didn’t the Russians choose that date to invade Czechslovakia (border is just to the south of Czestochowa) with what seemed like millions of tanks! Tanks are scary to a small,unarmed human.
Communism does not give its suppressed subjects what they need…forget about what they want in pursuit of their happiness! Communist are only good to ruling govt. officials and then in its system run by corruption, envy, graft, and hatrid of those opposed to the oppressor class, they will eat their own and lick their chops. Dear people of good will of the USA, you do NOT want an anti- constitutional, anti-freedom, anti free will system ruining all life and all livelihoods except bureaucrats’!
Every single thing about Communism is a Potemkin village-made to look good from its fake “store fronts” built of fake promises.
Democracy as we know it has an expiration date of about 200 years, give or take, before it collapses upon its own success and decadent lifestyles. The people have figured out on how to rob the treasury and soon we will be skint broke. There is absolutely no way in hell we will ever pay off the trillions in debt we have and the politicians of both parties just keep getting richer and whistling past the graveyard in the vain hope the people don’t find out just how corrupt, feckless, decadent and weak we really have become. Like all civilizations, it eventually collapses of it’s own dead weight or is conquered from either within or without. Eastern Europe and Russia will survive and thrive in the coming civilizational correction, the western nations are going to find brutality, depravation, starvation and barbarism on scale not seen in a millennia. The most ruthless and strong amongst us will rule,( the military class) the weak, feckless and stupid will not survive. The 3rd worlders living in our western midst will give us the nationalism we need to make them the common enemy and those that support, finance and defend them. Western democracy as we know it is dead, we ain’t voting our way out of the mess, we are responsible for all that is happening and coming because we had the circus entertaining us and full bellies and could not be bothered to see what was happening being the curtains of power. Well now we are going to pay for it, in spades and on steroids. The only thing you can do now is arm up and prepare for the coming Civilizational Correction and the Great Purge.
“What lessons, if any, can be taken from the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and applied to those of us stuck in the upcoming fall of the US Bloc?”
I would say: People need to learn certain skills and have “good connections”.
Communism and Fascism are inherently bureaucratic systems – therefore one set of skills is to have good contacts in the right places and be ready to bribe with your home made vodka or your grandpa’s golden teeth… Being connected to good bureaucrats is a skill.
Secondly, there is universal scarcity in the totalitarian economies, and money can get you just so much… So – you have to be able to produce something on your own to be able to trade in the shaddow economy, where uncle of a friend’s friend needs weekend help working on the roof, and he can pay by getting you brand new rubber tires for your [inferior] car, you know, the tires that are never available in the shops because they dissapear on the way to the shops…
Communism in Czechoslovakia – in its latter days – run on shaddow economy. The bureaucratic structures and their command of the economy basically rotted out so much, they became irrelevant.
Therefore – the new totalitarian system, the “Green Horse of the Apocalypse”, is different from the horses that came before it: They are planning to use high tech and the incredible computing power of modern computers to get rid of the shaddow economy.
In this manner – the new totalitarian system will be different, and they know it: No one will be able to buy or sell unless he is “in the system”. It’s a brand new challenge!
This was written by someone in Britain I believe. I had to type it by myself so forgive me if not totally word for word.
Take back our country
We were not present during our nation’s darkest hour
Nor did we choose to be where we find ourselves again at this very moment
Facing down a new coming storm
We are here because it is necessary
We are here because no men of conscience may turn a blind eye
The battle has come to us, it rages in our towns our cities and on our very own doorsteps
A dark cloud looms over this land and we must now fight so that the generations who preceded us will not wake up one day as a despised and persecuted minority on the very land which is their birthright and is soaked with the blood of their ancestors
Pushed aside to make way for those who are encouraged to come here seeking entitlement at the expense of those who have been taught to wallow in self hate and shame for the glorious deeds of our forefathers
Well we say no we will not be shamed cowed we will take back what is rightfully ours by birth and by the will of god,
The time has come where mere words must give way to action and you the individual must make up this struggle or else being condemned to history as a traitor to your nation your race and your very own children the time has come my brothers to make a stand
Hail victory
This used to be white country white men white women white children white families white culture white values
50 years ago if you weren’t white you didn’t exist here if you were a pervert you kept it hidden we had ideals white ideals and now our nations has been ruined , ruined to the point where we can’t even talk about it on the soil where our grandfathers were told they had to die to protect
Where is the resistance why isn’t anyone trying to stop it exactly a hundred years ago our people were drowning in their own blood, with nothing but blind hatred for our German brothers yet since then again and again the Brighton has been trampled underfoot by the hooked nose bankers by the child raping politicians the celebrities the entire upper-class looks down on the British people in disgust and contempt
I assure you comrades our children will speak about how their parents stopped it all their parents said no and went out to inspire our people to action, when everyone else was far to occupied with whatever crap was on TV
Whatever football team made up of overpaid Africans was playing who their parents were busy marching like today,
All across the country in order to drive off the parasitic class and secure their future in their own country we our coming together we our getting bigger we our getting stronger we our getting tougher we have to be because we are preparing for the fight of our lives
The time is here for nationlist socialism to stand up and take back the land that we love will you join them will you join us will you rise up to reclaim your country from the vile aliens who are stealing it from you
We shall once more national socialist we shall rise once more we will finally win back our lands and win back our continent and our race shall forever be free
Hail victory
Socialists, forever free? That is an oxymoron. Rick, national socialists, Nazis, are enemies on par with Communists. Authoritarianism is the enemy of humanity. Nazis are authoritarians. As for me I am a friend and ally of every man or woman who believes in individual liberty, skin color is irrelevant. The existence of “national socialists” within the ranks of we who oppose global totalitarians, is a sure formula for the defeat of liberty, and I assume that is your real goal. This is a great article and every comment was gold, until yours.
Do you really think after western civilization collapses that we will have liberty, freedom and democracy as we know it?? Wrong! The militaries of western civilization will take charge and we will be ruled by those military entities because we were too lazy, well fed and entertained to pay attention to what our politicians of both parties were doing behind the closed curtains. The Civilizational Correction will have no such thing as democracy in it when all is said and done. As for diversity? LOL We are all about to get extremely tribal because dwindling resources will make nature come to the fore front as it always does when competing for scarce resources to stay alive. The 3rd worlders including the african’ts living in our western nations are all doomed for this reason. Look in the mirror for who to blame, because we are all responsible for not doing any due diligence and letting our so called betters do what they want with no repercussions for do so.
Reread what I wrote, find the word “democracy” anywhere. I don’t use the word, it is a stupid concept, two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch. I have, unfortunately for me I think, been cursed with the knowledge of the globalist plot for exactly 61 years, having been told by one of “them” when I was 13. I have been called a conspiracy theorist more times than you can imagine, I am bone weary of talking with stupid people; it’s here now, [epithet]. My ideology is precisely anarcho-capitalism. Nazi’s, Communists, and Statists of every flavor are the enemy.
The globullist won’t be able to take over, the militaries will eliminate them and their wretched families along with vengeful mobs, what will take over will be the Franco, Pinochet type
Thank I /. E/