Former Soviet: Socialist Left would make America look like Russia

Madison — Yuri Maltsev defected from the disintegrating Soviet Union to the United States in 1989.

The economic professor joined the faculty of Kenosha-based Carthage College a couple of years later in 1991.

Before he left his native land, Maltsev served on a senior Soviet economics team to move Mother Russia away from communism – the scourge that had killed millions as it devoured the wealthy nation.

Forty years later, as the left works to transform his adopted capitalist country into a socialist administrative state, Maltsev half-jokingly asks a critical question.

“What worries me now is – where to defect to again?,” the professor told grassroots conservatives at a recent event in Greenfield sponsored by the Wisconsin Conservative Digest and the Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty. “It is absolutely unbelievable. This country has changed so much.”

From the left’s push for Medicare for All to the “farrago” of the Climate Change agenda to “social justice” without due process, Maltsev said he’s seen this movie before.

He speaks with growing trepidation about where his country — the United States — is heading. As liberals like presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke and Gov. Tony Evers talk about government gun “buybacks” and “red flag” laws, Maltsev reminded his audience what happened under the communists in Russia.

“My message, speaking about gun control is, (Vladimir) Lenin was asked, ‘What do you think about gun control? He said, ‘The one with the guns controls a lot without,” the professor paraphrased.

In December 1918, shortly after the Russian revolution that brought communists to power, the Council of People’s Commissar mandated that Soviet citizens turn in their firearms. Failure to do so led to criminal prosecution, notes the Mises Institute, an economic education think tank.

“That’s exactly what they did. And they began to shoot and they were killing millions and millions of people,” Maltsev said of the communists. “Same with Hitler. The first thing he confiscated was guns, and then they would begin to kill.” The Nazis did impose bans on Jews possessing firearms. Before Hitler rose to power, post-World War I Germany drastically limited gun ownership.
Maltsev said he worries most about the freedoms too many Americans are readily abandoning.

So what’s next for the economics professor?

“I am getting too old to defect again,” he said. “We should stand here and fight. This is the only way to secure the future, for ourselves, for our children, grandchildren.”