Venezuela's ruling Cuban and Chavista socialists put on quite a show last night.  So much for Vladimir Lenin's famous dictum: "Communism is Soviet government plus the electrification of the whole country."

The "plus," they decided, was dispensible.

Here is what Caracas looked like last night:

Brutal imagen de Caracas a oscuras. Venezuela #SinLuz #7DeMarzo pic.twitter.com/Qp4Q4IQMMK

— Cristian Crespo F. (@cristiancrespoj) March 8, 2019

Little to no information coming out of Venezuela right now. People report empty streets and dying batteries. https://t.co/SaNAohLQ6N

— Caracas Chronicles (@CaracasChron) March 8, 2019

View from my Caracas apartment during the blackout. You wouldn’t think two million people live in this city. pic.twitter.com/pgJRigkyd2

— Angus Berwick (@AABerwick) March 8, 2019

Here's what the airport looked like:

De horror y misterio. Así se encuentra el aeropuerto de #Maiquetía este #7Mar #Venezuela pic.twitter.com/ObGqiXh4u2

— Cristian Crespo F. (@cristiancrespoj) March 8, 2019

Here's what the intensive care unit of a local hospital maternity ward looked like:

Mothers and relatives wait outside of an intense care room for babies at a clinic without electricity tonight in #Caracas (photo by @CubillosAriana): pic.twitter.com/Y5T4wp8hrq

— Christine Armario (@cearmario) March 8, 2019

Here's the impact of what happened:

Venezuela in midst of its most prolonged and widespread powercut in living memory. Entire city of Caracas in darkness. Many hospitals and clinics without functioning generators. Grave concern as to what the effect of this will be on the most vulnerable.

— Stephen Gibbs (@STHGibbs) March 8, 2019

And the disaster was confined just to Caracas, but to dozens of cities nationwide.  If your heart doesn't break for those women in that maternity ward, you aren't human.

It's the spectacle of a whole country going dead, with its socialist rulers turning the nation into something quite similar to parts of eastern Nigeria, where the impoverished locals in remote rural areas live with little electrical infrastructure (Lagos and Abuja have no such problems), or, even more similarly, into Pol Pot's inhuman communist regime, which was a nationwide project by Khmer Rouge central planners to rebuild the entire society from the ground up, destroying anyone touched by education.

I have my doubts that this nationwide blackout was just the characteristic incompetence of socialism and its Cuban masters.  Cubans have made a hash of the electrical grid in Venezuela, it's true, but they also seem to be following the plan of doing what it takes to make Cuba the electrical disaster it also is.  The Maduro regime has got its Baghdad Bobs out, making extraordinarily mendacious claims about hoarders and wreckers and saboteurs, as well.  The blackout not only is a bid to starve the country into submission, as Cuba and North Korea have done, but is also about killing off Venezuela's democrats.

That's because this blackout comes at a time when Venezuelans are mobilizing to pressure dictator Nicolás Maduro to get out and leave the country and allow the legitimate acting president, Juan Guaidó, to take over.  A nationwide blackout is extremely convenient for halting all internet services and the social media that are propelling this mass movement to retake the country.  Internet blackouts and blockages have been predicted from the beginning of Guaidó's entry onto the scene. Update: Richard Fernandez has much more to show for those forecasts.

It now seems to be happening, and if it's not the work of socialist incompetence, as is likely to be assumed in the West, it's the work of a socialist regime determined to make the country as blackened out from the world as North Korea and communist Cuba.

It's frankly very ominous, given the threat to Venezuela's democrats — and not solely because of the terrible pictures from those baby wards.

Image credit: Twitter screen grab.