Word: communes
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...grisly remains of Jonestown's dead had been brought to the U.S. and stacked tidily in coffin-like aluminum transfer cases in a huge gray hangar at Delaware's Dover Air Force Base. The shacks and other buildings at the Jonestown commune in Guyana were shuttered and silent. Most of the 80 Jonestown survivors waited restlessly at the Victorian Park Hotel in Georgetown, pending a decision by Guyanese authorities on whether they would be allowed to leave or be held as witnesses, and in some cases defendants, in future murder trials...
After he moved his church from Indiana to California in 1965, Jones' mental condition seemed to deteriorate rapidly. In 1973, eight members fled the commune because of his ban against sex between cult members. Calling 30 associates to his home, Jones declared: "Something terrible has happened. Eight people have defected. In order to keep our apostolic socialism, we should all kill ourselves and leave a note saying that because of harassment, a socialist group cannot exist at this time." He did not go ahead with the plan, but from that time on, Jones periodically conducted fake suicide rituals...
...conceived to be his own communal-agrarian ideals. Prime Minister Forbes Burnham told TIME last week: "I feel what may have attracted him was that we had said we wanted to use cooperatives as the basis for the establishment of socialism, and maybe his idea of setting up a commune meshed with that." Guyana had its own motives in making the commune welcome: it wanted immigrants to develop its hinterland and fortify its border with Venezuela. For the Americans, Guyana offered the additional advantage of being an English-speaking country...
...Guyanese government was Viola Burnham, the Prime Minister's wife. According to diplomats in Georgetown, Guyanese officials seemed to find it was in their best interest politically to offer assistance to the cult and even contribute financially. Medicine, building materials, U.S. currency and guns were imported for the commune with little interference from local customs officials...
...Jones' final delusions was that he would move his cult to the Soviet Union. A delegation from the commune talked twice with Feodor Timofeyev, the Soviet press attache in Georgetown, about a possible move, but a memo of that meeting shows the Russians offered little encouragement. Russian consular officials and a Russian doctor also visited Jonestown, which was the object of a favorable report by Tass. In the past few months, Russian language classes were held at the commune. Members had to recite Russian phrases, like "good morning," before receiving their rice-and-gravy meals...