“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” – Winston Churchill

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NOTE: This is a mirror of a post from Gates of Vienna, with special thanks to Western Rifle Shooters and Xanthippa Socrates.

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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.

EDITORS NOTE: This column posted by Eeyore on the Vlad Tepes Blog is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.