My story is one many immigrants share. The common thread in all our stories is the love of freedom and the love and gratitude we feel for America. This is relevant in this moment because America is under attack and we, the expatriates from communist countries, know there is nowhere else to go!
My story is unusual because I escaped communism twice! The first time was from Russia when I was a little girl. The second time was from Venezuela as a young adult.
I was born in Russia under unusual circumstances. My mother was a Russian college student in Bucharest, Romania, where she met a young Venezuelan gentleman who was also studying there. He was sponsored by the Venezuelan Communist Party, which he was pretending to be a part of because they offered him a scholarship. My Russian mother and Venezuelan father fell in love. This was frowned upon by the university because the Russian girls were not supposed to fraternize with students from countries that were not socialist. This was the 1970s, when Venezuela was still a democratic republic, free and rich with resources. However, a small communist faction was already lurking in Venezuela, preying on underprivileged youth like my dad.
As a result of the love affair, my mom was kicked out of the university and forced to return to Moscow. My dad protested to get her back but to no avail. Desperate and resourceful, he boarded a train to Moscow where he appeared at my grandparents’ house and refused to leave until they agreed to take him in. Soon thereafter, my mom and dad were married. I was born a year later. Unfortunately, my dad was not allowed to continue his career in Russia. My mom was not allowed to continue her education there either. Because they were not enthusiastic about living with bread lines, they decided to emigrate to my father’s country of Venezuela.
There was one major problem though. Because I was born in Russia, the government would not allow them to take me to Venezuela. My grandfather, a colonel in the Russian Armed Forces, was told he had two options: (1) retire early and be allowed to keep me or (2) stay in the army, get promoted, commit to never again making contact with my parents, and turn me over to the custody of the state. Thankfully, he chose his family over his career. My grandfather raised me in Russia for the first six years of my life.
At the end of those six years, I was allowed to go live with my parents in Venezuela. There are many details I do not know—Russians are good at keeping secrets—but I am certain my freedom had a high cost. I made the long trek from Russia to Caracas, Venezuela with my grandmother.
Life in Venezuela was good at the time. I was fascinated by the grocery stores filled with a cornucopia of food, the abundance of toys, and the multitude of shows available on the TV. My first Christmas in Venezuela was filled with so many gifts that I thought I had hit the jackpot!
By contrast, there was no Christmas in Russia, and children got only a bag of candy for the New Year. When I was five years old, my mom (then in Venezuela) sent me a Fisher Price Snoopy pull toy, one of those wooden dogs you walk on a leash. Grandpa and I were out for a stroll with the wooden dog when a man approached us and offered my grandfather a large sum of cash for the toy. Grandpa refused his offer. Strangers trying to buy things from people on the street was common in Russia at the time. If people saw someone with a product from the West, like jeans, shoes, or a toy, they would offer to buy the item right then and there!
Growing up in Venezuela, I became accustomed to the luxuries and freedoms of the West. The Russian bread lines, empty shelves, the lack of freedom of speech, neighbors spying on each other—all of those memories started to fade away.
When I finished high school, I was fortunate to have the means to study in the USA. As a child, I always saw America as a shining beacon of light and the premier place of opportunity. Having visited America a few times, I knew I wanted to make a life there. I was intrigued that everything functioned in the United States. Streets were clean, police were trustworthy, laws were mostly obeyed and crime was under control. Education was of a high caliber, institutions were uncorrupted, and elections were not rigged. Compared to Venezuela, the quality of life was much higher, even in the years when Venezuela was at its peak of prosperity.
Right before I moved to the USA, Venezuela began to deteriorate and fall into chaos, thanks to Hugo Chavez and his communist allies. Those people were from the same communist faction that my dad had previously fallen in with. But once he saw firsthand what communism looks like in real life, my dad completely disassociated himself from them.
Chavez staged a series of revolts, the first few of which failed. I witnessed one of these protests firsthand. My dad, who owned a media company at the time, picked me up from school on the day it happened. As we drove by the protest, he took out his camera to record it. It was peaceful at first, but violence suddenly erupted and we had to run for our lives. I still remember the sting of tear gas and how it made my insides feel like they were on fire.
After that incident and the general climate of unrest that took hold in the country (not unlike what is happening in America today), my parents scraped together as much money as they could to send me to college in the USA. They wanted to give me a fighting chance in case things in Venezuela got really bad. My mom, having lived under a communist regime, could feel in her bones that the darkness was closing in.
I got to enjoy one happy semester before everything fell apart in Venezuela. I remember mother’s phone call like it was yesterday. She told me, “Sit down and listen. It’s over. Chavez has taken over. We can’t change our money into dollars and send it abroad anymore—nothing above 100 dollars. It’s bad. People are losing their businesses. We might lose everything. You could come back and ride it out, but there are no guarantees. If you can, stay there. Try to figure out how to survive.” My mom had never before said anything even remotely so heavy to me. Having to figure out how to survive on my own in a foreign country was completely outside my perception of reality.
I contemplated going back to my parents in Venezuela, but I could hear in my mother’s voice that she was hoping I would stay in America. I became an adult that day, when I decided I was going to become an American. I quit school, worked jobs under the table, and kept myself afloat.
Eventually, I joined the United States Army. What better way to show that you really want to be an American than to serve the country and its people? Because I enlisted, I could fast-track through the citizenship process and make a petition for my parents to join me in America. My parents did not want me to go into the Army, but it was my time to repay America for taking me in.
A couple of years after Chavez’s takeover, things stabilized just enough for my parents’ business to rebound. They were able to save some money and prepare for a move to America. As everyone knows by now, communists do not know how to run an economy. All the private infrastructure, institutions, and resources the government had taken by force began falling apart in the corrupt and greedy hands of the tyrants. Everything started unraveling fast! The healthcare system was in ruins. The gasoline started deteriorating in quality and polluting the air. Crime skyrocketed. Inflation went crazy. Because Chavez had won the presidency by promising all kinds of freebies to the lower classes, he had to deliver on some of those promises. But all those freebies are paid for with taxpayer money, which soon began running out.
By then, most families that owned large businesses took what they could and moved elsewhere. As a result, there were fewer jobs and fewer goods being produced. It all collapsed like a house of cards. Slowly at first. Then one day, people were eating zoo animals and stray dogs. It happened just like that. Most Venezuelans refused to believe it could happen to them—just like the people in today’s America. Maybe it was because they had never experienced communism.
As of this moment, my life in the USA is still great. But now I, too, feel the darkness looming, just as my mother did prior to the fall of Venezuela. Ever since the pandemic began, I started realizing that the uncomfortable feeling I got when faced with certain topics, such as political correctness, critical theory, globalism, or “progressive values,” was not wrong. In fact, my intuition was right on target.
Those are the things communists have been using to undermine our American way of life. Those of us who have fought so hard and given so much to earn the right to be here, we feel it! The worst part of the problem is, this time, there is no place else to go! If we let the communists win, we become a third-world county. We all become serfs.
Most people who are American born have a hard time understanding how deep this rabbit hole goes. I was unaware of how thoroughly the communists had infiltrated us until I started researching for myself. My research started with looking at organizations like Black Lives Matter (BLM), the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the tech industry. What I discovered chilled my blood.
I realized we live in a time when dark forces are bent on dominating America and her people. Those dark forces aim to take what made America great and replace it with something veritably appalling. I can see it happening because it looks exactly like what I have lived through before. Those who have not experienced life under communism, however, usually do not understand what is happening to them and their country. This is especially true of the younger generations who were brought up in the schools that have, for many years, been infiltrated by Marxist ideology.
This can be confirmed by reading “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire. The book is pure Marxism yet is considered the most important text for American educators at all levels. The Marxist poison has seeped into our culture via education. That is why I am telling my story.
I have seen this before. I was too young to fight then. But I escaped to tell the tale. Please listen. If not to me, listen to all the other immigrants who escaped from communism. They tell similar stories, some far more harrowing than mine.
Our warning is simple. Communism and its sordid sisters socialism and globalism are not what they pretend to be. They are not for diversity or inclusion or justice. That is all just a honeypot. These failed political ideologies lead to famine and serfdom, and to the deaths of millions in the end. America is the final battle. If necessary, it will be the hill we all fight and die on. The future of a free humanity depends on how many are willing to understand this.
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Relevant Elevant is a content creator who believes in the American dream. She came to the USA via Russia, then Venezuela, both times escaping the ravages of communism. She holds a Master’s degree in Psychology, served in the United States Army (2008-2014), worked as a Certified Fitness and Nutrition Coach, and was a ballet dancer.
Relevant Elevant posts on several video platforms on topics such as the war against American values, the left’s attack on American morals and the education of our children, and God. She hopes to reach people who are confused by the lies of the mainstream media by showing them the truth. Relevant Elevant also includes positive, uplifting topics in her content to keep the hope alive that we may take back our country.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@relevantelevant8203