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Several recent polls suggest an increasing number of young people have positive feelings about socialism and/or communism.
A Heartland/Rasmussen poll taken in August 2025 found 53% of men and women aged 18 to 39 would like to see a socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election and 76% would like the government to take over major industries. A recent Gallup poll reported similar results.
Perhaps young people wouldn’t think so highly of socialism if they had experienced life in a real “socialist paradise.”
The following is a firs-thand account of life in the Soviet Union as published in the Coleridge Blade.
In the summer of 1944, Eric Johnston, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was invited to visit the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin. Johnston subsequently asked William Lindsay White to accompany him. White was a journalist, foreign correspondent, and publisher of the Emporia (KS) Gazette following the death of his father, William Allen White.
Upon his return, White wrote a lengthy report describing some of the things he learned about Russia on his visit. The report was serialized in the Coleridge Blade from December 1945 through March 1946.
Johnston‘s party flew from Washington to Tehran, making stops for refueling in the Azores, Casablanca, and Cairo. From Tehran, they flew to Moscow with Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, aboard his plane – a modified Liberator bomber.
During the flight over southern Russia, White saw no paved roads, railroad tracks, or electric power lines until they were close to Moscow. Russian villages and surrounding fields were connected only by wagon trails. From the air, the village houses appeared to be no more than thatched-roof huts. The largest building in each village was a church with onion-shaped domes dating from Czarist days. White remarked that in the 25 years since the communists seized power, nothing as large as the churches had been constructed. Upon landing in Moscow, White noticed row upon row of American built C-47s. The planes had been supplied free of charge under President Roosevelt’s lend-lease program. White stated lend-lease trucks were far more useful than planes. Without American trucks to quickly move soldiers and equipment from one place to another, the Russians would have been overwhelmed by the mechanized German army.
During his visit to Moscow, White visited several factories. The first was an airplane factory where he learned 65% of the workers were women. (As in the U.S. most of the able-bodied men were in the military). In this factory adults were required to work 11 hours a day, six days a week. Children under 18 worked eight hours a day, five days a week.
A worker who fulfilled a predetermined quota was paid about 750 rubles per month. Workers who exceeded the quota could earn more. White noted since one ruble was equal to eight U.S. cents, the average Soviet worker earned about $60 a month. Out of this salary, six percent was deducted for rent in factory-owned apartment buildings which White described as concrete beehives.
White noted under socialist theory, the factories belonged to the workers. But in reality, the workers belonged to the factories. Workers were not allowed to quit or change jobs without obtaining permission from a government official.
When asked about absenteeism, White was told “we simply don’t have it. The first time a worker is absent without permission he is warned. The second time he is fined. The third time he is discharged and assigned to a labor battalion.”
White observed Russia did not have a prison system like the U.S. Convicted criminals were either executed or sentenced to years in a labor camp far from home with no contact from family.
Political prisoners often were sentenced to 10 years chopping wood in the forests of Siberia, working in the coal mines of Kazakhstan, or on construction projects far from home. Criticism of the government was considered criminal.
