By Merita Bajraktari*

If you paid attention to the Comptroller of the Currency Nomination Hearing for Saule Omarova on the morning of Thursday Nov 18th 2021, you probably felt fooled, duped, sad, mad, excited, hopeful, useless, and all those combined.  It depends on what side of the American political spectrum you are on.  

The hearing can be found here:  

Saule Omarova, an immigrant from  Kazakhstan currently teaches law at Cornell University. She is , according to those who know her, a brilliant mind, a woman, a minority, an immigrant , who was born and raised in the former Soviet Union (Kazakhstan) and came to America, where she greatly succeeded, at least  professionally.  She is now picked by Joe Biden to a very important position.

It is also said that she was arrested for shoplifting at a TJ Maxx store. 

You can read details of that here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWcQqQfsklY

I do not know Saule personally.

But I know the system that made her and that formed her.  I know the mentality of people like me and her, who came from the Eastern Bloc Countries and who were subject to state control and propaganda on almost everything  

I am Saule’s age and it appears we came to the US at approximately the same time. Maybe I came a few years later, but it was in the 90s.

I grew up in communist Albania. I went to school there and the Albanian system was a copycat of the former Soviet system and I know exactly what happened to our generation and to those who came to the USA. 

I was very impressed by several honorable senators questioning Saule. Yet I was shocked by several honorable senators who encouraged her and wished for her to be the person in charge of the US Currency. I was thinking whether these senators (Democrats) are aware of what is happening here? Or maybe they are not actually fully aware of what they are doing? It is sad to see they are promoting a person with a socialist and Marxist leaning agenda, which fits the agenda of the left, which sadly is pushing more and more   to the left and hurting our great USA. Wake up America before you lose all your freedoms

I will raise three major points:

1. Saule was a member of the Komsomol, the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League in the former Soviet Union. I was a member of Albania’s similar Youth Union that at my time was called “The Labor Youth Union of Albania”. That organization was the youth wing of Communist Party of Albania and was the feeding organization to the party.  The whole society was organized in the same way as the communist Party was. You started your indoctrination as young as six years old, when you started first grade. By the age of eight the children became members of the young Fatosa, taking an Oath to serve the party, in fifth grade we took the oath of becoming communist Pioneers (“Pioneers of Enver” was the official title) and wore the red scarf around our neck, pledging to serve the party. When we were high school age we were members of the Communist Labor Youth Union of Albania and we were equipped with membership cards, called Tesera.  We paid dues for that membership and we were forced to participate in a month-long volunteer work. I did mine at the end of High School at the age of 18. 

I would like to pause here for a moment and remind the reader of what is happening in our American public school system regarding indoctrination today, it an accident  or coincidence , definitely not , part of the bigger agenda of the left . 

The aim of these associations and forced membership to communist organizations from the first grade or younger, was to be controlled and for those who were eligible, to be a member of the highest organization, the party, but not all could make the cut, of course. But the young ones, starting at the age of thirteen or fourteen, were handpicked by the communist secretaries, groomed and were sent to specialized schools that further prepared to be loyal communists. They had to be ideologically in line with the party and were appointed to key positions in the communist government after University graduation. The schooling of all trades was assigned by the government authorities and was not earned by merit. A person that went to study Communist Theory like Saule, had to be very well vetted and approved by the country’s ruling political Party. 

She, when asked by honorable Senator Kennedy if she ever belonged to the Young Communists Organization, reacted like she did not get what organization he was talking about. That I thought was funny. For us, who were members in those dreadful organizations, we have realized that it took our honor, it abused our freedoms, we know very well what it was and we will never forget.  The days of such memberships were pivotal moments in our lives, which were unjustly ruined by such evil ideology as communism.

2. The thesis in question, the document that Omarova is not providing, is her college graduate paper in Moscow State University.  It appears that as late as 2017 Saule had included in her Resume the paper she wrote in her Soviet Union College. One can read about it in a letter from Senator Pat Toomey to Saule. He wrote: “Therefore I write today seeking a copy of your thesis, “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,” which you wrote as a student at Moscow State University on the V.I. Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. While it appears that you have deleted any reference to your thesis in the version of your curriculum vitae (CV) that is currently available on the Cornell Law School website, the paper appeared on your CV as recently as April 2017.”

It seems she says I cannot find it. It is sad but  it is clear that she does not want them to have it. Even if she doesn’t have one copy , she would not make an effort to find it . She does not want them to read it. She is probably both embarrassed and also mad that she wrote it, because it has come to bite her now. I would be. We were not thinking of ourselves those days and acted as robots. But I have my thesis somewhere. I was a student myself. I wrote a thesis on statistics. It was published by my Institute.

(I could not make it to a University as I was not coming from a communist family, therefore I was not good material for the party, but God for some reason, made it possible for me to get a right to study at an agricultural Institute).

My point is that every thesis you wrote for the final exam (best students would write thesis for their college diplomas), was published by the university and should be found at the University’s library. They always kept copies. I do believe Saule doesn’t want that thesis to be known because she knows what she wrote (consciously or unconsciously) and if she still does believe in what she wrote, she knows that is a very obvious red flag for the left Senators too in the USA. But it would have done her well to acknowledge it. She is trying to sideline it. And that is very revealing and scary.  

3. The point above leads to point three which is most important.  While I cannot vouch on anyone’s conscience, we judge the public conduct of others, I think Saule and us all, have yet to make the act of renouncing, publicly or privately, through our works, and deeds, seen and unseen of our pasts, as individuals that were raised, indoctrinated and brainwashed by communism. Senator Kennedy’s call if she has renounced her past and if she has resigned in writing from the Komsomol is a wakeup call to all of us who came from Eastern Europe, who love America and want to contribute to it.

I believe Saule genuinely thinks that she can make a better country (USA) by activating and implementing her (radical) ideas of government control on the banking system and more. But is she right for America? I do not think so. Unless she has radically converted to the great American Way, which from the hearing, it seems she has not, she is not fit for that office. Sadly though, she is not the only one America should worry about. You look at US public colleges. They all lean left. No surprises here.

Nevertheless, thank you Senator John N. Kennedy for that poignant question. I would repeat it with an added word for all the people like Saule and myself (immigrants from former communist countries):

Have we all consciously resigned from the “Young communists” organizations? Have we made a sincere effort to convert to the great and beautiful American way? Have we contributed to make America better, or have we contributed to its demise…

Time to reflect…. 

• The article reflects Author’s views and not necessarily those of the newspaper. The Author is an Albanian -Immigrant in the USA. She is a wife, mother and Higher Education professional. Her free time she dedicates to her family, parish and community. She is an author and speaker on “Life under Communism in Albania”. Her twitter handle is @emershqip