Surviving Communism: Seven Survivors, Five Countries, One Warning for America | Panel

[00:00:00] Seven people sat down with me in Atlanta, between them more than a hundred years of life lived under communism, and two of them come from countries where communism is still in power today. Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and this is our Surviving Communism series. Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show.

[00:00:35] I sit down with people from five countries who know what communism actually does. Today we're going to learn more about what happened to them in communist countries, to their families, their food, their churches, and their futures. Our communism survivors are... Sasha Gong from China. Dr. Yuri Yuriyamagaev from the Soviet Union. Agnes Giboney from Hungary. Ovidu Frisina from Romania.

[00:01:05] Manuela Kalini, also from Romania. Captain Onofre Gutierrez from Nicaragua. And Janice Trey from China. Seven survivors reveal what communism really meant, from childhood labor and empty shelves to ration medicine and government control. And now, here's our panel. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for coming to Atlanta to do this very important panel and the discussions that we are doing.

[00:01:35] Thanks so much. All right. Let me start with each of you. I want each of you to answer this. What is a memory that you have from your childhood or early in your life where you realized you did not have freedom in your own life or that your parents weren't really in charge of the house, that there was this other governing force in your life? Sasha, let's start with you. Well, I have no childhood because the communists took it.

[00:02:05] When I was nine and only at the third grade, my entire family was accused of being counter-communist and sent to work in the countryside. So my first job in my life was to pick peppers on the field. Yuri? Well, actually, my childhood was quite happy, and the differences were in different periods.

[00:02:34] And in the Soviet Union, it was already third generation, which I belong, which was under communism. And my young years fell under so-called Khrushchev's thought, which is kind of period of temporary liberation. So my parents were both professor of science, and a nuclear bomb in the Soviet Union

[00:03:03] made scientists a very prestigious part of the society. So I wouldn't complain about my very younger years. I was maker of all my own troubles later when I became dissident, which happened already after I graduated school and university. And you have something that is unique from the other people.

[00:03:31] They all escaped communism, I guess is an accurate word, and you were exiled. Yes, I was exiled. Most of my friends were in prison for many years. I actually expected that any moment, and I escaped one arrest.

[00:03:50] But then, thanks to Western scientists who organized boycott of cooperation with the Soviet Union in response to the arrest of Andrei Sakharov and other scientists, which frightened the Soviets because they were lagging behind in critical areas,

[00:04:14] such as computers, electronics, etc., which were essential for the military buildup. So they decided to make such a gesture as exiling me and several other scientists' dissidents instead of arresting them because they hoped that they would do something with this boycott, which fortunately didn't stop and continued.

[00:04:41] Yes, and we can get into why that was so fortunate in a little while. Sure. Agnes? Agnes. Agnes. Agnes. Agnes. Agnes. Agnes. Agnes. Agnes. Agnes.

[00:05:10] So they wanted to keep us there. And my mother said, no, we wanted to come to America. So growing up, just listening to all the horrific stories and the oppression, growing up without any extended family has left a mark in my life personally, because I never knew what Christmas was with family. And I never knew what it was like to know my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins until I was 23 when I went to Hungary for the first time.

[00:05:39] And I was shocked how depressing the whole country was, how dark and gray and gloomy. People walked in the streets like zombies. And it was very noticeable, especially coming from a country like Brazil, very happy. It was quite a different experience and mixed with fear that I was going to be kept in Hungary and not allowed to leave. And when you went there, was it still under communist control then? Yes, it was. And I was not a U.S. citizen then.

[00:06:08] I was just a legal resident. We legally immigrated to the United States in 1970. And I had a re-enter permit passport. And unfortunately, my passport said that I was stateless, meaning I did not belong anywhere because Hungary took our citizenship away. So I was afraid when I went to meet my extended family that they're going to keep me there. Ovi, what about you?

[00:06:32] Well, I was born in Bucharest, Romania, Eastern European bloc country, a socialist country under a terrible dictatorship regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. Communism was an ideal for a communist party that was totalitarian. I had a good childhood. I heard from my colleagues here.

[00:07:00] I wouldn't say that we were afraid of anything as children. But as you turn to be 15, 16, 17 years of age, and I was a very good student. So I've done everything that I could to educate and get the education. And then several questions arise of, why is this happening? Why do elderly have to be four or five hours in line to get a piece of bread?

[00:07:27] And you could not ask these questions because if you start asking these questions, then the police will come and get you like it happened to me when I was 20 years of age. And they take you to the stations.

[00:08:07] And then you get beaten up. And then your mother suffers the consequences. Your brother suffers the consequences. You just don't want to talk about this. So I realized from a 20-year-old age that my future there is going to be complicated. I was probably listed on some hidden file somewhere that I guess I'm not a good citizen.

[00:08:35] And I remember being in college at the university, actually. And I was labeled a traitor, a country traitor for just maintaining a relationship with a 17-year-old girl that happened to be in a different country. And I was labeled a little child. Manuela? Sure. Sure. I'm going to share how a grocery run looked back when I was a little child.

[00:09:02] So I've experienced communism for four years. I was almost four when we had the fall of Ceaușescu, our previous dictator. I remember this one morning waiting in line with my dad and my two other sisters trying to buy, and I think it was dairy. The way our grocery stores were set up, we didn't have a grocery store where you had a diversity of products.

[00:09:27] We had the butchers, we had a dairy store, and then a bakery. And that was pretty much how the grocery stores were set up. So I was waiting in line with my dad and my sisters and waiting there since before the break of dawn. And then when we finally got to the front of the line, I remember being told, well, you have to go home because we ran out of product. And every morning you'd have to make a decision. What do you want to buy today? Do you want to buy meat?

[00:09:57] Then you have to go to the butchers. And whatever choice you made, you could not go and buy. If you wanted to buy meat, you were not able to buy milk or bread that day. And when you had the opportunity or I could say the luck to get to the front of the line and be able to buy products, there was another stumbling block because we had these cards where it said how much you were allowed to buy.

[00:10:22] So even if you had money to purchase it, you had to wake up probably at 4 a.m. or earlier just to buy a piece of bread. And if you were lucky enough to get to the front of the line and then you were told how much you could buy as well. I hope that my children and everybody appreciates the freedom that we have today in America.

[00:10:50] I was born in Managua, Nicaragua. I had a very good childhood, safe childhood with my family. And the first thing that I saw where everything was changing was after the earthquake in December 1972. And when we saw the humanitarian aid coming into the country and was being stolen by Somoza's National Guard, basically.

[00:11:20] And a few of it was going to the people that needed the humanitarian aid. That was the beginning. And that was one of the probably the beginning of the catalyst that the Sandinistas, the communists used to say, this is what you guys have. This is what this is what we have. And then eventually I saw the country change. And of course, the Sandinistas took over in 1979.

[00:11:45] We were in D.C. by that time on a interesting agenda that my dad was doing. But the sad thing about Nicaragua is that we went from 42 years of dictatorship under the Somoza regime to now 47 years under the Sandinista and now Orteguista regime.

[00:12:11] So Nicaragua has not seen one day of what freedom is, what a true democracy is. And that's the sad part. And that's what I see here in the United States. The same pattern is happening here. And that's what has me very concerned. All right. And we'll talk about that pattern in a little while. Janice. I was born during the Cultural Revolution. My parents were engineers just because they were educated.

[00:12:38] They were sent to forced labor camp. I was actually a child laborer, first grade, second grade, third grade, growing sugar cane for the school, picking crops during harvest seasons. If I could not meet the quota required every day, I could not return to school. I have no idea about freedoms or different world outside communistic China.

[00:13:01] Until one day, as a child, I pick up paper slips, drop from the balloons sent from Taiwan, which described that we don't ride bicycles. We have cars. We have refrigerators. We have washer dryer. I asked my parents, what's car? Because in the whole labor camp, there was only one and only one vehicle, which was a military truck.

[00:13:28] And there was no washer dryers, no refrigerators, non-existence. What other things were scarce that we just take for granted here? Well, everything is scared. I grew up basically staying in lines. And the scarcity was not the most scary thing. The most scary thing is that you can get yourself into trouble anytime.

[00:13:55] So since people talk about it, well, I was working in the factory when I was 16. And when I was 17, I joined the underground group and called the communists fascists in that time. So I spent my 21st birthday in jail. I stayed in jail for a year. And actually, the current Chinese leader, Xi Jinping's father, released me after Mao died. So I went to the university.

[00:14:23] The good thing, actually, China education was so scary. And my whole generation, besides having nothing, my whole generation lost. College were closed for 12 years. And the high schools and schools were closed for many years. When they opened up, well, earlier in the schools in the 70s, they were not teaching much.

[00:14:51] Children, as she said, are all used as laborers. And so the first and foremost scarcity is opportunity. Because opportunity and resources, government control everything. And you think the students here would say, oh, we can't find a job? Think the government will control all your job opportunities. Think of that. My biggest fear is losing freedom.

[00:15:18] Growing up, I heard nothing but how depressed and how oppressed Hungary was. And actually, one of the things that I noticed when I went to Hungary for the first time in 77, it was still a communist country, was how people were afraid to even talk to their siblings about communism because they were afraid of being reported. And they came and picked you up. They took you to labor force camp if you weren't executed. So everybody was afraid of everybody.

[00:15:47] And I thought that was incredibly disheartening to live like that in fear. Also, listening to my mother saying that I wasn't allowed to be baptized because it was against communism. So my godparents took me to church and baptized me. My parents weren't at my baptism because four people going into the back of a church is a dead giveaway.

[00:16:15] And having to get tickets for meat for my mother's coworkers to be able to prepare a luncheon for my baptism because the government told you how much you could have. It didn't matter if you had money or not. You were only allowed to have so much. You were held back. And I think thinking back to that oppression, to how depressing everything was and how controlled everything was,

[00:16:43] there was no outside media, the radio. Everything was completely censored. In fact, they used to say, United States, people are dying in the streets of hunger. That's the lie that they portray to people. And I'm afraid to lose the freedom that I enjoy in this country. And I hope that the young generation will wake up and not buy into this socialism nonsense because you're not going to like it. I can guarantee you. It's very, very scary.

[00:17:13] Yuri, and then we'll go to Ovi. What is interesting when I listen to many others, what I see, that we have actually very similar stories, but they're shifted in time. Because communism in the Soviet Union started much earlier than in all other countries.

[00:17:34] And I already belonged to the third generation which lived under communism, which made my experience different from any other. For example, my grandparents, my grandfather was arrested and shot. One another was also arrested, spent years in prison. His sister, my cousin grandmother, spent 17 years in Stalin's labor camp.

[00:18:03] So that generation will actually experience the same kind of great terror as generation of your parents experience and partially you. So it's almost the same. It's sometimes shifted in time. And as I say, communism in the Soviet Union by my time matured. The fear was there.

[00:18:30] But it was kind of internized inside. People got used to all that. That's what happens when in mature communism. People are afraid. People know how to behave. People self-censor themselves. They don't say anything they shouldn't be said.

[00:18:53] But they don't even so much care about that because it became kind of natural lie for majority of people. And maybe that's the scariest part about communism, you know. Not that when there is external terror and oppression, which is absolutely terrible. It killed tens of millions of people in China and the Soviet Union and another country.

[00:19:17] But when eventually it reaches a level when those who survive becomes people who get used to that, who self-control themselves, who don't need everyday KGB reminded them about that. I mean, KGB is always present there and everybody knows about that. But again, it becomes their nature.

[00:19:44] They succeeded to create such a—what they dreamt of, so-called new Soviet individual. You know, that was the main objection of totalitarian system of communism, to change the nature of the people.

[00:20:02] And by first eliminating tens of millions of people and then installing fear in all others who behave and all ongoing indoctrinations for tens of years, many decades, and complete isolation, which was mentioned already here by the external world and alternative information.

[00:20:28] And until now, even after the communists, we see this in many people who still survive, particularly of old age, that they are different people after being born, brought up, and in several generations under communism.

[00:20:53] So my experience is slightly different in a sense, but actually we're talking about the same thing. And for example, many people mention rationing of food here. It happened in my happy childhood also. But I didn't actually care when I was a small boy, but I remember when my grandmother took me to the food line because there was given amount of food.

[00:21:20] And I am talking about very basic food like sugar or flour or something, which was given ration to each person some amount. I don't know, for example, two pounds of sugar or one pound of sugar. So I was a small boy, you know, playing in the yard. She would bring me into the line because then we can get two rations of that food. So even in my happy childhood, I experienced those things.

[00:21:48] What it seems to me is that by the time I reached your generation, it was so commonplace that you didn't even think about it. And in China, you knew something, even if you were just a child, you knew something before the labor camps. And so you knew you were losing something. For you, you didn't know the difference. You didn't know any difference. You didn't think of any alternatives.

[00:22:18] No alternatives existed, you know, in the mind of people. It seems like no alternatives existed and also there was very little hope. There was very little dreaming going on. Zero hope. Not little, zero hope. Okay. You want me to give you the ration number? It might be fun. You see, when I grow up, what's the ration? Rice changed to about 25 pounds for an adult a month.

[00:22:44] And the cooking oil, like that much a small bottle a month. And the meat, 0.6 pounds a month. And tofu, four pieces a month. And every other thing said, but ration. So the ration number, we really related to it. But we envy you because you're doing so much better. Two pounds of sugar, are you kidding me? Yeah.

[00:23:13] Yeah. Look, again, again, there's a shift in time, you know. So, look, people, previous generation, you know what famine happened under communism. Now, in light of Russia-Ukrainian war, so-called Holodomor became very well known when more than five or six million of Ukrainian peasants died of starvation.

[00:23:41] And famine was typical situation in Russia on many occasions, as in China. It was before me. It actually got closer. The irony is that the Soviet Union was very close to it at the very end of its existence. When Gorbachev came to power, you know, it was terrible food shortage. But even in my time, look, I lived in Moscow most of my time.

[00:24:08] Moscow was a special place which had much better supply of everything than any other places. But in many areas of the country in my time, people never had meat, for example, any meat, you know, and even in large cities. So, the interesting part I hear is a lot of food shortages. Romania had wonderful agricultural terrain and land.

[00:24:39] They could have fed the whole Europe. But the reality is my cat and my dog, they love me because I feed them. So, if I control how much food and water I give them, that's how much love I get back. So, it's not about the ration or the lack of the food. It's the government's control of it so then you don't go and protest. You don't go and say things.

[00:25:07] What I really wanted to talk about, though, is something very interesting that's called social medicine. I lived in Romania where everybody was provided with free social medicine. So, in the neighborhood I grew up, if you get sick, you have to go to a small medical center with very few doctors.

[00:25:34] And you have to probably wait for days to get an appointment. But people were sick. So, then what do we do to get an appointment right now? Well, you're going to have to introduce the element of bribing. So, even though it's free and I'm entitled to it, I'm going to just take $100 and I'm going to stick it in the pocket of the doctor so he can see me now because I'm hurting.

[00:26:03] So, the doctor will take a look at you and if he is able to assist you, then he will prescribe you some medicine and you can go to the pharmacy and get it. And if I remember from my early age, the medicine was not extremely expensive. It was rather affordable. But the reality is I may need a specialist.

[00:26:25] So, to see a specialist now, your family doctor has to send you to some place where those specialists are, better hospitals. And, yes, we had, you know, two or three or maybe four specialized big hospitals in Bucharest. And then you'll go there and you'll find out that they lack the ability of treatment. They don't have the medications for the treatments that you want.

[00:26:53] It might take three months for you to get, let's say, an appointment to go and see somebody. And then you say, but I'm sick now. So, now I bribe again and I go to be seen by a doctor. And the doctor says to me, well, you have appendicitis. So, I'm going to have to probably, you know, check you in the hospital and you're going to have surgery.

[00:27:18] So, now you have to bribe the secretary to get through the first level. Then they will say, but, you know, we don't have any beds available. It's very crowded. So, now you bribe the second person to be able to get in there. And then you bribe the nurse that's going to come and take care of you. So, we are introducing in, at least in my country, I'm not sure how it was in their respective countries,

[00:27:46] the element of bribing, the underground reality of making deals under the table. If you do not pay up, you're not going to be able to get bread today. You might not be able to get whatever piece of equipment you need. Your car is broken. If you are one of the fortunate ones to have a vehicle, it may take five months for it to procure the part that you want unless you bribe them.

[00:28:14] So, in Romania of my times, there was this system that looks a lot like free market. You know, hey, there is not enough food on the market, so it's going to cost more. There is not enough service for whatever you need, whether it's medical assistance, whether it's, you know, even in education. In order to go to a university, you had to get mentors. You had to get people to help you and do extra studies, and you have to pay them.

[00:28:43] And that is, again, a system that's been developed to the side of what the government is providing for you. So, just wanted to tell these people that think that social medicine is wonderful. I would love to give them a sample of how it really was. You go into a hospital, and you go to the restroom, and there is no paper towel. It's just not available. There is no soap.

[00:29:10] Basic, fundamental elements that you need for hygiene. You would fight with other people to get toothpaste. And why? They are available, but the government will not release them to you. They need to control you. And then you have the regular people, and you have the privileged ones. You have the ones working for a political party, for the Communist Party, and you have their families and their friends.

[00:29:39] And they can always get what they wanted. But the regular people? And you didn't mention how many patients were in one hospital room, right? Yeah. Well, you fight for a bed. Yeah, but it could be 8, 10, 12 people in one room. You see, the truth here is... Hospitals were very infectious because of that. The truth here is that being able to pay bribery is a sign of progress. Yes.

[00:30:08] When you have no place to pay, when government controls everything, whatever government controls, they cause one thing, scarcity. I think then what you're describing is what Yuri was just saying. The clampdown period, the revolutionary period versus a period where it's adjusting versus where it's been in place for a while. Agnes?

[00:30:34] Yeah, I just wanted to mention that in Hungary, you would want to buy a car, you know, the Trabant, the old card box, card box, car pretty much. You would pay the full amount of the vehicle, and three, four, five years later, you get your car. But you have to pay ahead of time.

[00:30:55] And not only that, but in hospitals, you had to take toilet paper, all your necessities, forks and knives, utensils, if you wanted to eat, but your family would bring you food because there was not much there. And if you needed a knee replacement or anything like that, wait three, four, five years. So socialized medicine is the worst thing. Well, an introduction is Obamacare to socialized medicine. Yes. It's horrible. Yeah.

[00:31:24] And we'll talk, we'll go into more about healthcare in a little bit, but go ahead, Yuri. Because I want to a little bit summarize the things which we just said, and it deals with the issue of human rights. And there are two kinds of human rights. There are political and civil rights, which are foundation of our society, which are now declaration of independence.

[00:31:52] And there are so-called socioeconomic rights. Those are two very different things. Because political and civil rights or natural rights, they are given to us with our birth. They are given to us as declaration said by our creator. No one should give them to us. Government can only take them away, which it does in all communist countries.

[00:32:21] So those rights, social economic rights, on the other hand, somebody should provide them. Because it's right to medical care, right to education, et cetera, et cetera. It requires money, finances, et cetera. So it could be granted only by government and by someone.

[00:32:42] So the basic premise of the totalitarian and communist countries, completely abolish political and civil rights, but promise all social economic rights. Because they say, look, you don't need those freedom and rights. It's abstract things. But you need food, you need medicine, et cetera, and we will provide them.

[00:33:07] And here we already see this trend in substituting term equality with term equity, which is exactly substituting political and civil rights with socioeconomic rights. Because equity means redistribution of wealth. And that's a critical step in developing in this country. But when you don't have human political and civil rights and political freedoms,

[00:33:38] you lose initiative, incentive, productivity in the society. And despite you promise all those things, you cannot provide them. You don't produce enough. So the only thing you can realize is equality and poverty, nothing else. Because the whole product is very limited.

[00:34:03] And when you try to subsidize shortage, you inevitably get to what Ovid said, black market. The black market becomes essential part of developed communism because you have, on one hand, you have not enough product for everyone.

[00:34:25] On the other hand, you subsidize those prices, which is a deficiency in sold even at lower prices. So definitely most people cannot get it. And the only way to get it is pay additional price. Would it be food? Would it be medical service? Would it be anything, you know? And black market becomes actually the only driving force of a communist economy in its late period.

[00:34:55] It cannot exist without it. I would like to summarize with one word from Adam Smith. Private sector never makes a nation poor. Governments often do. That's what we see the examples. So if I may or like to take a minute to bring an example to exactly what he said. In order to have wealth redistribution, first, you have to have wealth.

[00:35:24] Romania, after the Second World War, had wealth. Okay? When the Communist Party took over and they confiscated all the private property and all that, there was wealth. People were excited. The ones they didn't have anything before, now they have something. The ones they had stuff before, now they don't have it. And I would like to bring a very nice example for these kids in school

[00:35:52] that probably they will think about and understand. So there is this absolutely fantastic economical example where a very nice university professor takes a class and gives them a test. And basically everybody is going, they do the test, and now it's time to receive their grades. And they receive the grades, and of course you will have some students that receive 100,

[00:36:20] and then you've got some that receive 80, and then you've got some that probably may fail. So they all get their results, and you know, they're all happy according to the work they put in. The ones that parted for two days, three days before the exam, they failed. The ones that studied for a month, they got their A's. But then the professor turns around and says, Well, let's try something. Let's get these grades now in a socialist form where everybody is going to get the same grade.

[00:36:49] So they take all the numbers, and they average. And instead of getting the grades they got before, now everybody gets an 80. So if you are the student that got 100 and worked hard to attain that, now you're getting an 80. And the one that failed before, oh, this is pretty cool. I just passed the exam. So then we have another test.

[00:37:15] And now the kids don't really know how they will be graded. But the guys that worked for 100 before, they decided, I'm not going to put in the effort. So I'm going to go to study a little bit less. I'm going to study for an 80. The ones they didn't study before, they're not going to study because they're expecting to pass again. So the results of the second exam, it's now the average. It's about 70, 72. And this is exactly what happened in Romania for 20 years.

[00:37:45] Originally, we had wealth to distribute. And then we had less. And then we had less. Because the ones they don't want to work, they're not going to work. The one that actually had the reason to work for, they stopped working. And this is exactly what communism promotes. When everybody gets paid the same, but not everybody is going to work the same. Not everybody is equal.

[00:38:09] And I would like for them to consider that if you think socialism is great and you're going to get Steve Bezos' money and you're going to take everybody's money and now we all have something, that will be great for the first week, for the first two weeks. But then where are you going to take more? Once Bezos is no longer here, once Elon Musk is no longer here, where are you going to take from? Well, now you're going to take from the next ones, the ones that don't make billions, they make millions.

[00:38:38] And then once you, you know, take everything from them, then where are you going to take from more? And guess what? That's exactly what socialism is doing. That was the first part of our panel. Ovidu said his cat and dog love him because he feeds them. And if he controls how much food and water they get, that is how much love he gets back. It's all about power and control.

[00:39:04] In our next episode, I put up famous photos from communist countries, such as a photo from Tiananmen Square and long lines in Moscow. And I asked the people from those countries to tell you what you are looking at. If you've not seen it yet, go back and watch my conversation with Janice Trey, who escaped from China and was put in a child labor camp.

[00:39:26] Before we close, we hope you'll share all or part of this surviving communism episode with your family and friends so that they understand the unintended real life consequences of socialism and communism. Please be sure to vote for liberty and for our constitutional government and against communism. To help us get out the vote, go to IWillSaveAmerica.com.

[00:39:51] I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and this is a Jenny Beth Show Surviving Communism Series. If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin.

[00:40:19] The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.