Oct 09, 2026

Surviving Communism: seven people who lived under it sat down with Jenny Beth Martin in Atlanta, from China, the Soviet Union, Hungary, Romania and Nicaragua. Between them, more than a hundred years of life under communist rule, and two come from countries where communism is still in power today. In this first part of the panel, each survivor starts with the childhood moment they realized their parents were not in charge of their own home: a nine-year-old sent to pick peppers because her family was declared counter-revolutionary, a child laborer who learned that cars existed from leaflets dropped by Taiwanese balloons. Then daily life: a Chinese ration card of 25 pounds of rice, 0.6 pounds of meat and four pieces of tofu per adult per month; a Romanian grocery run that started before dawn and ended with empty shelves; free socialized medicine that meant bribing the doctor, the secretary and the nurse, and bringing your own soap. A Soviet dissident explains why mature communism no longer needs daily terror, and why equity means redistribution. A Romanian survivor closes with the classroom experiment that shows what happens when every student gets the class average. Guests: Sasha Gong, former China director at Voice of America; Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev, Soviet physicist exiled in 1980; Agnes Gibboney, whose parents fled Hungary in 1956; Oviedo Frasina and Manuela Colini, from Romania; Captain Onofre Gutierrez, from Nicaragua; and Janice Trey, chairman of the board of The Epoch Times. Learn more at teapartypatriots.org and jennybethshow.com.

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