Nikita Khrushchev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1958, five years after the death of Joseph Stalin.
After the devastation World War II caused to Europe, Asia, and most of the world, the United States emerged as the world’s global superpower by the end of 1945. The United States possessed large amounts of natural resources, a homeland spared the ruin of many other countries around the world, and a free and industrious people that produced a disproportionate share of the world’s goods. In fact, with about seven percent of the world’s population, the United States was home to about half of the world’s manufacturing capacity and possessed approximately forty-two percent of the world’s wealth.
The Soviet Union suffered approximately twenty-seven million deaths during World War II, but also ended the war with an army that could have marched all the way through the continent of Europe if not for the presence of American soldiers. While possessing its own large amounts of natural resources, the Soviet Union also usurped the resources of nine formally independent countries in Eastern Europe and installed communist governments in each as it marched towards Germany.
The Soviet leader at the time was one of history’s most evil men, Joseph Stalin, who wanted to spread the influence of the Soviet Union and its communist ideology throughout the world. This ideology murdered over one hundred million people, enslaved hundreds of millions more, and suppressed the human potential of untold amounts of men and women in the twentieth century alone. But for Stalin to be successful, he needed to weaken the resolve of all free people everywhere, especially in the United States.
In 1945, the United States was the world’s only country to have developed an atomic bomb. This changed in August 1949 when the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb of its own. As the years went by, these weapons only grew in veracity, as both the United States and the Soviet Union developed even deadlier nuclear weapons capable of destroying all life on Earth many times over.
The communist leaders of the Soviet Union were not on a suicide mission and knew a direct confrontation between two nuclear powers was not in either country’s interest. So while there was confrontation between the two nations through proxy countries such as Korea and later in Vietnam, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union concerned which country’s values would dominate the world. Stated plainly, the Cold War was about whether the world would be largely free or not free. Each country was looking to undermine the influence of the other while not starting World War III.
So how did the Soviets go about this? They sought to weaken the United States internally by slowly turning individual Americans away from a country governed as a constitutional republic to one with a more sympathetic view of communism. That way, the Soviet Union believed they could win the Cold War without open warfare.
It was under these circumstances that Cleon Skousen, a former FBI special agent turned author and devoted anti-communist, wrote the book The Naked Communist in 1958. In 1961, Skousen added a list to his book entitled “45 Communist Goals for America.” This list is his own and is reprinted below without any changes. While the list is specific to communism, the reader can substitute any authoritarian (Do as we say!) or totalitarian (Do as we say and think how you’re told to think!) ideology in its place. Skousen’s list was important enough to be read into the Congressional Record by Congressman Albert Herlong of Florida on January 10, 1963.
After over sixty years, how has Skousen’s list aged? While I provide commentary and context for many of the forty-five items, it is ultimately up to the readers to decide for themselves.
The 45 Communist Goals for America by W. Cleon Skousen, written in 1961:
1-U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2-U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3-Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4-Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5-Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet Satellites.
6-Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
Money and aid given to governments with communist or totalitarian regimes seldom ends up in the hands of the people who need it the most. Instead, tyrants end up enriching themselves while everyone else suffers. Fidel Castro of Cuba died in 2014 with a net worth of nearly $900 million, while the Cuban people were some of the poorest people on earth during his reign. Aid given to such governments is usually used to further repress the people they were meant to help.
7-Grant Recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
Communist China now sits as one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council along with the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Russia, giving it veto power over U.N. resolutions. This has been the case since 1971.
8-Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the Germany question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9-Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10-Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11-Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo).
Changing the U.N. from a forum to resolve conflicts between countries into one that acts as essentially a one-world government has been a goal of communists and other totalitarians ever since the U.N. was created. Of course, this is only if they are in charge.
12-Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13-Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14-Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent office.
Intellectual property is one of the most valuable assets for free people. Today, countries like Communist China do what they can to steal all the technology they can from other countries.
15-Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16-Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
Communists only support civil rights if they further the agenda of the Communist Party. These rights are changed at the will of the Party leaders.
17-Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18-Gain control of all student newspapers.
19-Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
Nothing is more important than education. Indoctrinating, not educating, children has been and continues to be a goal of communism. If America’s schoolchildren are taught to hate their country, become full of anger, and do not want to defend the nation, then the United States will not survive. Nothing would please our enemies more.
20-Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, and policy-making positions.
21-Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motions pictures.
The Soviet Union published the state-run newspaper “Pravda,” which translates into “Truth” in Russian. This was the official newspaper of the Communist Party, and no other newspapers were allowed. The only “truth” that was permitted in the Soviet Union was propaganda that furthered the power of the Communist Party.
Censorship is critical to controlling a society. A free exchange of ideas and access to facts is never allowed by totalitarian regimes. People can never be allowed to think for themselves or speak freely.
22-Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23-Control art critics and directions of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive meaningless art.”
Why control art? Simple. In communist societies, it is dangerous to the state for any individual citizen to show creativity. The individual has one role – to comply. No matter how mundane their assigned role is, the individual is to do their duty to further the power of the Communist Party with as little thought as possible. Art is only used as another form of propaganda.
Also, much of the great art of world history was created to honor God. One example of this is Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, which millions of people from around the world visit annually. There can be no God in communist countries because one cannot honor both God and the Communist Party.
24-Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25-Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
26-Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
Whether under the cultural norms of 1961 or today, this is not meant to be a commentary on any particular group or lifestyle by the author. Rather, the point is that every society has standards of public morality that are reflected in its culture. Here, Skousen reflects the cultural norms of 1961.
Communism is interested in making public morality as chaotic as possible to lessen the influence of traditional American institutions such as religious faith and the family. As faith and family wane, communists want their values to fill this void in American society.
27-Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28-Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
Atheist Karl Marx famously stated, “Religion is the opioid of the masses.” Communists cannot have a competing value system to their power. Religion is one such value system. While the world’s great religions have been around for thousands of years, communism has existed for roughly over one hundred years. However, in this time, it has been communist values that infiltrated the long-held doctrines of religions, not the other way around. Make no mistake, communism seeks to turn as many people as possible away from God.
The end of prayer in American public schools has its origin in the 1962 Supreme Court case of Engel v. Vitale, and prayer in American public schools is virtually nonexistent today.
29-Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a world-wide basis.
30-Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31-Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
Communists have a vested interest in portraying American history in the worst light possible. It has only been roughly in the last 100 years, starting with the Progressive Era in the United States and the beginning of Soviet communism in Russia, that attacks on America’s founding generation have taken place. Calls by some to replace the Constitution, denigrate the Declaration of Independence, and attack nearly every American institution have become more common.
Americans should ask themselves a follow-up question: Replace the Constitution with what? It is a guarantee that those advocating for such a position have no desire to move the United States towards a Constitution with even more safeguards for liberty. Rather, they seek to move the country closer to a communist governing model.
32-Support any social movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
Centralized control by the very few is the core principle of communism. Communists seek a country where every decision is made to further the Communist Party’s, not the country’s, interests. The apparatus of the state is used to punish any political opposition.
33-Eliminate laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34-Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35-Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
Communist countries are all police states. Whether it was the KGB in the Soviet Union or the Stasi in East Germany, there was always an extreme level of “state security.” These agencies were designed to instill fear in every individual to keep them compliant with the Communist Party agenda.
Communists and those in all totalitarian regimes investigate anyone considered disloyal or a threat to Party power. The “law” becomes whatever those in charge need it to be to ensure the regime’s survival. It was Joseph Stalin’s head of the secret police, Lavrentiy Beria, who infamously stated, “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.”
It was unlikely that Skousen, a former FBI agent who believed in the righteousness of the FBI, ever contemplated a time when the FBI might not be the good guys. However, if the FBI becomes an agency that no longer equally applies the law to all people and becomes primarily influenced by political, not Constitutional, considerations in its investigations and charging decisions, then it will have stopped operating as a police agency worthy of a free people. If not addressed quickly by Congress, the president, the states, or the Federal Courts, such a change would end Constitutional government in America.
36-Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37-Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38-Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39-Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
In the Soviet Union, if someone did not believe in the alleged merits of communism or socialism, this was considered a psychiatric disorder. This individual was sent away to the Gulag (prison) system to be “re-educated” in communist doctrine. This is how a totalitarian society operates. The individual will think how they’re told to think or else there will be severe consequences.
40-Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41-Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Separating children from their parents is a fundamental communist goal. Why? Because the communist state needs to raise a generation of loyal communists, and to do so, they must separate children from the values of their parents. There can be no ideological competition between the communist state and its parents. Children in these societies were encouraged to turn their parents over to authorities if they believed they were not loyal to the Communist Party.
42-Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
Violence is always okay if it furthers a communist objective. Communists want American society to be as unstable as possible.
43-Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44-Internationalize the Panama Canal.
Control of the Panama Canal changed from the United States to Panama on December 31, 1999.
45-Repeal the Connally Reservation so the U.S. cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
A one-world government with a one-world court system that eliminates most of the sovereignty of the United States is a dream scenario for a communist.
In June 1989, thousands of brave Chinese citizens protested against the Chinese Communist government in Beijing at Tiananmen Square. The communist government sent in the military, and as a result, thousands of Chinese protesters were killed and many thousands more arrested. Communism seeks to destroy the individual, which is one of the reasons the above photo of a lone Chinese man standing up against communist tanks became such a powerful image.
A Warning to America
It is important that Americans hear from some of the many voices who have lived under communism to fully appreciate its depravity. The video below is from a former Soviet KGB agent named Yuri Bezmenov who was able to defect to Canada in 1970. He explains how the Soviets sought to control the United States with a long-term strategy that he describes as “a great brainwashing process.” Again, I will leave it to the viewers to decide for themselves how effective this Soviet plan was:
A portion of an interview with former Soviet KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov given in 1984. It’s a little over 13 minutes long but needs to be heard by all Americans.
In 1945, a twice-wounded artillery officer in the Soviet army named Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested in the closing days of World War II. His crime? Allegedly making derogatory comments about Joseph Stalin in private correspondence to a childhood friend. For this, he spent the next eleven years in the Soviet Gulag or prison camp system.
Solzhenitsyn chronicles his experience, shares the stories of hundreds of others, and becomes the voice for tens of millions of men, women, and children who suffered under Stalin’s communist state in his book The Gulag Archipelago. With very few exceptions, all these victims were completely innocent but were considered disloyal, not to Russia, but to Stalin and his regime.
For those blessed to live their entire lives in freedom, the stories told are difficult to comprehend. Death came from torture, starvation, being worked to death, being killed by guards, and in other horrific ways. Everyone suffered in an inhumane and cruel environment.
When a society operating under communism can take hold, individual human life becomes meaningless. As soon as this occurs, evil is sure to follow. Reversing this process becomes exceedingly difficult and always involves great suffering.
What does a totalitarian state look like? In one story, Solzhenitsyn tells of a Communist Party meeting in Moscow. A tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. “Stormy applause” erupted. The applause went on minute after minute. As Solzhenitsyn states, “But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However, who would dare be the first to stop?” Finally, after eleven minutes of this, a director of a paper factory took the lead and stopped. Everyone sat down. But the secret police were always watching. Later that night, the factory director was arrested. He got ten years in prison.
Everyone living under a communist government is forced to live a lie. It is the ultimate dystopia. It is a police state where the central authority determines what the law is, and the individual’s only purpose is to further the power of the Communist Party. If one is deemed not to have worth to the Communist Party, their life becomes disposable. Once the individual cannot speak out due to fear, the conquest of society is complete. Freedom is extinguished.
In the Forward to the abridged version of his book published in 1986, Solzhenitsyn calls it a fallacy that the stories he describes could not happen in the reader’s country. He warns, “Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”
Please Read:
Live, Comply, Die: A Snapshot of Communism
Please Visit:
Recommended Reading:
The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (For most readers, I recommend the 468-page abridged version published in 1986 with Solzhenitsyn’s cooperation. The full version was published in three volumes and is over 1,900 pages in total. This book is inappropriate for young readers due to its graphic descriptions of violence.)
We MUST reeducate Americans about this. We have become Stupid, complascent and lazy. I was a public school teacher for my career. I watched the Communists take over first our universities, then our Public school system.