I joined the Harris-Walz Election Eve Party… and spoke to a Soviet Union escapee

I’ve spent the past few weeks talking to swing state voters about government overreach. That explains how I found myself at the Harris-Walz Election-Eve Party and Concert in Phoenix, Arizona.

On the ground at rallies for both parties, I’ve heard my share of crazy. I’ve had to bite my tongue a time or two.

But nothing could have prepared me for talking to a Soviet Union escapee.

Typically, my routine goes something like this: First, I, a nonpartisan Convention of States (COS) reporter, sit expressionless through an entire campaign speech. It’s harder than it sounds. People begin to get suspicious when you’re silent in a sea of shrill, shrieking super fans. Then, the event ends. And as the now-hoarse fans exit the venue, I ask them a simple question: “Do you think the federal government has too much control over your life?”

The answers are usually about the same. “Of course.” “It does, right now.” “Absolutely.” “Most definitely.” “Probably.” “Yeah.”

On this particular night, I encountered a completely unexpected answer.

SEE ALSO: Tocqueville on the deceptive nature of tyranny

Inexplicably, amidst a crowd of hundreds, I felt compelled to approach two women. I know it sounds hokey, but I heard what I am certain was an audible voice: “You should talk to those two ladies.” So I did. 

“Yes, [the federal government has too much control]” the first woman, Mila, answered. She spoke in a thick accent. “I think that the federal government [has] control to the point of KGB level.”

That’s when her companion, whose name I did not catch, offered a vital piece of information: “She’s from that area.”

I should have known. The accent was an obvious giveaway.

“I am an Arizonian,” Mila clarified, “and I escaped [the] longtime communist Soviet Union, and I know what I am talking about. I recognize the danger coming to America — the same that is in Russia. I’m very scared.”

“So, what was your experience there, in the Soviet Union?” I asked.

Mila thought for a moment. “No freedom for words.”

Fortunately, she now lives in America, where, at least for the time being, she has the freedom to speak openly about her experiences under communism.

“You have to march with everybody, otherwise you’re not going to get into college — into jobs,” she described. “[They throw] people in jails. If you think different, they put you in a mental institution. They think you are mentally insane if you are not with them. You have to be with them.”

“It’s a very scary world,” she continued gravely. “There’s no future for that world. And there’s going to be no future for this world,” she said, nodding toward the event, “if you’re going to keep going [to] that level.”

It was an interesting comment. Although she never explicitly expressed her political affiliation, Mila made it clear that she was only at the Harris event because her friend, with whom she disagreed, wanted her to be there. She didn’t seem particularly impressed with either political party. To her, it seemed that no one was taking the growing threat of government overreach seriously enough. And for as long as she had my ear, she was intent on warning me that my generation was at risk of losing its freedoms.

To clarify, I asked: “You see that happening here in our country?” 

Her answer was blunt. “In phenomenal speed.”

“And when it happens in this country,” she added, “it’s too late. It’s too late to come back. You cannot get it back.”

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Staring soberly into my eyes, she made her admonition even more personal: “When [it happens] in America, where you gonna run? What are you going to do?”

What America needs, she said, is “a real awakening — not what [these people call] ‘awakening.’ Not woke. Awakening.”

And why do we need an awakening? Because tyranny can only exist under a “big government” of bureaucrats who experiment on the people just “to show that they can.” Mila saw it in the U.S.S.R. And now, she’s worried that many Americans are oblivious to the same travesty of government unfolding in our country. In fact, she called for the dissolving of “many” federal agencies, including the Department of Education, which she said was “the most dangerous one.”

“When the Founding Fathers created America, they thought out very, very carefully,” she said. “They had rights, and they were true philosophers and knew the [long-term] consequences. So, they created minimal involvement of the government. They’re only supposed to provide military safety and a few functions. Even police and security of the state should be as the community situation, not as the main government.”

The federal departments, by contrast, have become “useless” and “harmful,” “stopping the brilliancy of the mind.”

Interestingly, she pointed out that the treatment of Elon Musk in this country echoes how the Soviets suppressed innovation in Russia, favoring “group think” over individual “genius development.”

Alexis de Tocqueville’s parallel warning crossed my mind: “After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

That, in short, was what my Soviet-born interviewee was describing.

Needless to say, I am still processing everything I learned from the mysterious Mila. To hear her wise words of warning on the eve of the “most important election of our lifetimes” was truly sobering — a not-so-gentle reminder of all that is at stake, not just on November 5, 2024, but every day after.

The fight for limited government is truly a fight for the nation’s soul — but it extends far beyond shallow talking points. Mila’s rhetoric is neither inflammatory nor bombastic. She has lived through the horrors of one of history’s deadliest regimes. Now, the symptoms have followed her here. She means to sound the alarm.

If, by virtue of my pen, I may help her spread that message, sitting deadpan through hours of political rallies was more than worth it. It won’t be the big-name speakers I remember, but the woman who survived the Soviet Union.