Blog #294 Democratic-Socialism = Communism in Sheep’s Clothing
Democratic Socialism; Communism in sheep’s clothing`
By Harold Strunk, July 2026, Retired Navy Captain, PhD, Public Health, Epidemiologist, Historian, Writer.
I think a lot of younger people are being conned into thinking this is the answer for all their problems. Many are in debt, some chose worthless majors in college, others cannot afford to buy a house, and many are still single with no prospects of change. Little about Communism is being taught in high school or college, so they fall prey to the promises of the Communist Loreleis.
For those who think this is the answer, I would suggest you introduce them to the movie by Boris Pasternak, “Doctor Zhivago”. I’d call this Communism Lite. It portrays Russia during the period of 1917-1922. A movie would be easy to watch. But what about Boris? What happened to him after writing the book in 1958? It was smuggled out to Italy and printed. Well, he received the Nobel Prize but the Communist Party stripped him of his medal and his life began to unravel. He was sent to a ‘writers’ village’ of Peredelking and died two years later. His book was made into the movie, but he didn’t live to see it. But then, it was not shown in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics either.
More educational, but heavier, would be the book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago”. He had served as an artillery commander in World War One but was arrested for disparaging Prime Minister Josef Stalin in personal correspondence. He would serve eight years at hard labor in the gulags, the labor camps. Following Stalin’s death, he was considered to be rehabilitated and allowed to publish, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, who was a soldier, in 1962. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His book telling of the horrors of forced labor in the gulags from 1918-56 was smuggled out to the West and published. He told of the thirty thousand gulags and of eighteen million people kept there as slaves. You might not know that many Americans were there also.
With that, he was convicted of treason and expelled from the USSR. Lucky at that. Treason is the firing squad. He was allowed to come here and he settled in Vermont. He continued to write about the horrors of Communism.
At the end of World War Two, the Soviet Union consisted of fifteen countries living under the hammer and sickle. All members because they could not defeat the Russian army. There was no freedom. Forty years behind the Iron Curtain, as PM Winston Churchill had named it. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”. And thus began the many years of the Cold War with the USSR.
It was only until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power that the USSR was dissolved. President Reagan went to the Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin Wall and appealed to Gorbachev on June 12, 1987, saying, “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall”. His reforms of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) led to a failed coup’ in 1991. He was away from Moscow at his dacha in Foros, Crimea. It was only because of the counter-coup’ led by Russian President Boris Yeltsin that he was rescued. I was in Germany watching all of this on German television. Yeltsin won the day.
Russia allowed Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to return in 1994. He was cleared of charges and returned to a hero’s welcome. He continued to write about the labor camps and failed Communism. He died in 2008.
By now, you wonder how this all started at the time of a Russian monarchy, ruled by Tsar Nicholas. Well, he and several other monarchs of Europe were related to Queen Victoria of England. Suffice it to say, they took care of each other and lived well. However, at the time of World War One, their subjects were not doing so well. In fact, the Russian Army quit World War One and went home. They had suffered catastrophic military losses, with no food and war fighting supplies, and their country was in economic ruin. Vladimir Lenin came on scene and led the October Revolution of 1917 and forced Tsar Nicholas to give up the throne. The Bolsheviks brought the Tsar and his family to Yekaterinburg and executed them.
Lenin led the Bolshevik Party and promised to give land to the peasants and to feed the hungry. As their influence and membership grew, it became the Communist Party in 1922.
The Communist Labor Party USA was born at that time, led by journalist John Reed who wrote, “Ten Days that Shook the World”.
When our troops came home from World War One they faced high unemployment, a deadly Flu epidemic, and intense racial and social unrest. Our presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and now Hoover had been unable to lift our country up. When our troops were discharged, they were given service bonus certificates that would be paid in 1945. But most were in poverty and wanted the government to help them now. Twenty thousand veterans and their families set up an encampment in Washington, DC begging for an early cash payment. It got the name Hooverville.
Someone planted a rumor that Communists were pushing the violence that was erupting in Hooverville and President Hoover turned to his Army Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur to break up the camp and drive the veterans out. Major Dwight Eisenhower served as liaison between the troops and the DC police, while Major George S. Patton commanded the Third Cavalry. Five hundred mounted cavalrymen charged with sabers flashing and tear gas to drive the veterans and their families out. Two veterans were killed.
When our Stock Market crashed in 1929, America was plunged Into a hopeless depression. Few had any money, and a man was fortunate to even have a job. Russia began to place ads in our newspapers calling for men to come and work in their factories. Henry Ford had built factories in Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow and they needed skilled workers. About ten thousand men answered and hired on. Many had families and they were allowed to come. They were given apartments and many were made citizens of the Soviet Union with new names and passports.
Then on June 22, 1942, Hitler’s German Army attacked Russia. It was a ‘war of annihilation’ that aimed to kill tens of millions of citizens giving the German people Lebenstraum, some living space. With that, the Russian army conscripted millions of men to fight. With a knock on the door, Russian soldiers took the men and pushed them up onto trucks. Of the Americans that worked in the factories and were drafted into the army, none returned. Two of the children that I know about were Victor Herman, who wrote the book, “Coming out of the Ice”, and would be enslaved in the gulags for forty-five years before he made it back to America. Another was Alexander Dolgun, who wrote “An American in the Gulags”. As a teen, he survived because a physician took him as an assistant. He was allowed to leave the USSR in 1975. He came back to Potomac, Maryland and died a few years later.
Communism is new to this generation, but not to me. By 1947, CPUSA boasted of 75,000 card carrying members. They were everywhere; in the Unions, in Hollywood, in the colleges and universities, and cells in our communities. There were radio and TV programs such as “I was a Communist for the FBI”, and “I led three lives”, that kept us on the lookout.
We knew that the Russians had taken our POWs from the German stalags and put them on trains to the gulags, and we knew they had taken our POWs from the Korean War to Prague and to the Soviet Union. And even from Vietnam. This gave rise to the idea of Manchurian Candidates who would be brainwashed to return home and be able to be triggered by a command to assassinate the president. Frank Sinatra starred in the movie.
In 1938, our House of Representatives created the House Un-American Committee to investigate alleged disloyalty and activities of private citizens having Communist ties. Then in 1975, Senator Frank Church headed investigations into organizations and government departments suspected of harboring Communists.
Many countries have suffered greatly under Communist domination, but our only close geographical problem has been Cuba. And rumor has it that there may be plans underway for regime change. The Cuban people would welcome that and to be able to live in a free country again.
Which brings us back to NYC Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani. Born in Kampala, Uganda. Came here at age seven, naturalized citizen. Graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine with a BA in Africana Studies. He has had only two paying jobs, one as a Foreclosure Prevention Counselor in Queens, and as the rapper Young Cardamom. He is Muslim, took his Oath of Office on the Koran, and seems not to like Jews or Italians. Only by promising free stuff was he elected to be the Mayor of America’s largest and wealthiest city. By the uninitiated and uninformed . By those who will vote for anyone promising more handouts.
As a child, I lived in NYC. Why can’t we have Mayor Fiorello La Guardia back. He used to read the funnies to us kids. He was a Mayor who cared.
Hal