Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (11 page)

Communists of my generation had very little in common with Pavka Korchagin.
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They weren’t like the first Bolsheviks with their briefcases and revolvers, all that was left of the forefathers was their army jargon: “soldiers of the Party,” “the labor front,” “the battle for harvest.” We no longer felt like the soldiers of the Party, we were its public servants. Clerks. We had our sacred rites: “the bright future,” a portrait of Lenin in the assembly hall, a red banner in the corner. Sacred rites, rituals…But soldiers were no longer in demand, what we needed were administrators: “Go, go, go,” and if not, then “You can leave your Party membership card on the desk.” If they tell you to do something, you do it. You report. The Party isn’t an army squadron, it’s an apparatus. A machine. A bureaucratic machine. They rarely hired people who’d studied the humanities, the Party hadn’t trusted them since Lenin’s times. Of the intellectual class, Lenin wrote, “It’s not the brains of the nation—it’s the shit.” There weren’t many other people like me there—philologists, that is. The cadres were culled from the ranks of engineers and livestock specialists—experts in machinery, meat and grain, not humanities. The feeder schools for the Party administration were agricultural institutes. They needed the children of workers and peasants. People from the people. It reached absurd extremes: A veterinarian was more likely to work for the Party than a physician. I never met a single lyricist or physicist. What else? Subordination like in the army…The rise to the top was slow, rung by rung: you began as the lecturer of the district Party office, then it was the head administrator of the Party office…the instructor…the third secretary…the second secretary…It took me ten years to get to the top. Today, junior research associates and lab administrators run the country; the collective farm deputy or electrician can become president. Instead of running the collective farm, it’s straight to the head of state! This kind of thing only happens during a revolution…[
A rhetorical question addressed either to me or herself.
] I don’t know what to call what happened in 1991…

Was it a revolution or counterrevolution? Nobody even attempts to explain what country we’re living in. What is our national idea now, besides salami? What exactly are we building? We advance toward the victory of capitalism. Is that it? For one hundred years, we castigated capitalism: It’s a monster, a fiend…Now we’re proud that we’re going to be like everyone else. But if we become like everyone else, who will care about us anymore? The “God-bearing” people…the hope of all of progressive humanity…[
Sarcastically.
] Everyone thinks of capitalism the same way that they—until very recently—had thought of communism. They’re dreaming! They’re passing judgment on Marx…blaming the idea…A murderous idea! I, for one, blame the executors. What we had was Stalinism, not communism. And now it’s neither socialism nor capitalism. Neither the Eastern model nor the Western. Neither empire nor a republic. We’re dangling like…I won’t say it…Stalin! Stalin! They’re burying him, all right…Or at least they’re trying to…But they can never quite get him all the way under the ground. I don’t know how it is in Moscow, but around here, people put portraits of him on their dashboards. On buses. Long-distance truckers tend to be particularly fond of him. In the generalissimo uniform…The people! The people! What about them? The people said, “Make us a truncheon and an icon.” Both. Like you would out of wood…Whatever you carve, that’s what you’ll end up with…Our lives reel between barracks and bedlam. Right now, the pendulum is in the middle. Half of the country is waiting for a new Stalin to come and put things in order. [
She is silent again.
] We…of course…At the district Party committee, we too had our share of conversations about Stalin. The Party mythology, passed down from generation to generation. Everyone loved talking about how things had been during the Master’s reign…Stalin-era practices included, for instance: The heads of Central Committee sectors would be served tea and sandwiches, while the lecturers were only served tea. Then they introduced the position of deputy sector administrator. What to do? They decided to serve them tea without sandwiches but on a white napkin. So they’d be distinguished…They’d gotten to the top of Mount Olympus, they were among the gods and heroes, now all that was left was to squeeze into a spot at the feeding trough…That’s how it’s always been—from Caesar’s court to Peter the Great’s. And that’s how it always will be. Take a good look at your beloved democrats…They seized power and took off running—toward what? Toward the trough. Toward the horn of plenty. The trough’s been the downfall of more than one revolution. Before our very eyes…Yeltsin fought against special privileges and called himself a democrat; now he likes it when they call him Tsar Boris. He’s like the Godfather now…

I recently reread Ivan Bunin’s
Cursed Days.
[
She takes the book down from the shelf, finds the bookmark and reads from it
.] “I remember the old man who worked in front of the gates of the building where the
Odessa News
bureau used to be. It was the first day of the Bolshevik uprising. A gang of boys ran up to the gates with heaps of
Izvestias
hot off the presses, shouting, ‘Odessa bourgeois are required to pay an indemnity of 500 million!’ The worker sputtered, choking on rage and Schadenfreude: ‘It’s not enough! It’s not enough!’ ” Remind you of anything? It reminds me of the Gorbachev years…The first uprisings…When the people started pouring out into the streets making all sorts of demands—one day it would be bread, the next, freedom…then vodka and cigarettes…The terror! So many Party workers ended up having strokes and heart attacks. We lived “surrounded by enemies,” as the Party had taught us, “in a besieged fortress.” We were preparing for world war to break out…Our greatest fear was nuclear war—we never saw our nation’s demise coming. We didn’t expect it…not in the slightest…We’d gotten used to the May and October parades, the posters, “Lenin’s Work Will Live On for Centuries,” “The Party Is Our Helmsman.” Then suddenly, instead of a parade procession, it was a primordial mob. These weren’t the Soviet people anymore, they were some other people that we didn’t know. Their posters were totally different: “Put the Communists on Trial!” “We’ll Crush the Communist Scum!” I immediately thought of Novocherkassk…The information was classified, but we all knew what happened there…how during Khrushchev’s time, hungry workers had protested and were shot. Those who didn’t die were sent off to labor camps; their relatives still don’t know where they went…And here…it’s perestroika…You can’t shoot them or put them in camps. You have to negotiate. Who among us could have gone out into the crowd and addressed the people? Initiated a dialogue…agitated…We were
apparatchiks,
not orators. I, for instance, gave lectures in which I denounced the capitalists and defended blacks in America. I had the full set of Lenin’s collected works in my office, all fifty-five volumes…But who really read them? People flipped through them while cramming for tests in college: “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” “All worship of a divinity is necrophilia.”

There was a sense of panic…The lecturers, instructors, and secretaries of district and regional Party committees, all of us were suddenly scared of visiting workers at factories and students in their dormitories. We were afraid of the phone ringing. What if somebody asked about Sakharov or Bukovsky
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—what would we tell them? Are they the enemies of the Soviet state or not anymore? What was the official line on Rybakov’s
Children of the Arbat
and Shatrov’s plays? There were no orders from above…Before, they would tell you when you’d fulfilled an assignment and successfully enforced the Party line. Teachers were striking in demand of higher salaries, a young director in some factory workers’ club was putting on a forbidden play…My God! At a cardboard factory, the workers had pushed the director out in a cart, shouting and breaking glass. At night, a monument of Lenin was wrapped in a metal cable and toppled, now passersby were making obscene hand gestures at it. The Party was at a loss…I remember what it was like to be at a loss…People sat in their offices with their blinds shut. Day and night, a reinforced police detachment guarded the Party headquarters. We were afraid of the people while, out of inertia, the people were still scared of us. And then they stopped being afraid…People started gathering on the squares by the thousands…I remember one poster that said “Give us 1917! A Revolution!” I was shocked. It was some trade school students holding it…Kids…Babies! One day, parliamentarians showed up at the district Party committee headquarters demanding, “Show us your special stores! You always have plenty of food to eat while our children are fainting from hunger at school.” They found neither mink coats nor black caviar in our cafeteria, but they still wouldn’t believe us: “You’re deceiving the simple people!” Everything went into motion. The ground started shaking. Gorbachev was weak. He stalled. On one hand, he was for socialism. But then again, he also wanted capitalism…His biggest concern seemed to be being liked in Europe. And in America. Over there, they’d all applaud him, “Gorby! Gorby! Oh Gorby!” He babbled up perestroika…[
Silence.
]

Socialism was dying in front of our very eyes. And those boys of iron had come to take its place.

ANNA ILINICHNA

It wasn’t that long ago, but it’s as though it happened in another era…a different country…That’s where we left our naïveté and romanticism. Our trust. No one wants to remember it now because it’s unpleasant; we’ve lived through a lot of disappointment since then. But who could say that nothing has changed? Back then, you couldn’t even bring a Bible over the border. Did you forget that? When I’d come visit them from Moscow, I’d bring my relatives Kaluga flour and noodles as presents. And they would be grateful. Have you forgotten? No one stands in line for sugar or soap anymore. And you don’t need a ration card to buy a coat.

With Gorbachev, it was love at first sight! Today, they disparage him: “He betrayed the USSR!” “He sold our country out for pizza!” But I remember how amazed we were. Shocked! We finally had a normal leader. One we didn’t have to be ashamed of! We would tell one another the stories of how he’d stopped his motorcade in Leningrad and went out into the street, or how he refused to accept an expensive gift at a factory. During a traditional dinner, all he had to drink was a cup of tea. He smiled. Gave speeches without reading from a piece of paper. He was young. None of us believed that the Soviet state would ever fall apart, that salami would magically appear in the stores, that you wouldn’t have to stand in a kilometer-long line to buy a foreign-made bra anymore. We were used to getting everything through connections: from subscriptions to the World Classics Library to chocolates to tracksuits from the GDR. Being friendly with the butcher so he would save you a piece of meat. Soviet rule seemed eternal. We thought that there would be enough of it left over for our children and grandchildren! It ended abruptly, when no one expected it to. Today, it’s clear that Gorbachev himself didn’t see it coming. He wanted change, but he didn’t know how to change things. No one was prepared. No one! Not even the people who tore down the wall. I’m a regular technician. No hero…and no Communist…Because of my husband, who is an artist, I fell in with a bohemian crowd when I was young. Poets and artists…There were no heroes among us, no one was brave enough to become a real dissident and risk doing time in jail or a psych ward for their beliefs. We lived with our fingers crossed behind our backs.

We sat in our kitchens criticizing the Soviet government and cracking jokes. We read
samizdat.
If someone got their hands on a new book, they could show up at your door at any hour—even two or three in the morning—and still be a welcome guest. I remember that nocturnal Moscow life so well…It was special…It had its own heroes…its cowards and traitors…Its own enchantment! It’s impossible to explain it to the uninitiated. Most of all, I can’t explain how enchanted we were with it all. And there’s something else I can’t explain…It’s this…Our nocturnal life…had nothing in common with how we lived during the day. Nothing! In the morning, we would all go to work and transform into average Soviet citizens. Just like everyone else. Slaving away for the regime. Either you were a conformist or you had to go work as a street cleaner or a watchman, there was no other way to preserve yourself. And then when we got home from work…We’d once again be sitting in the kitchen drinking vodka and listening to the forbidden Vysotsky. Catching the Voice of America through the crackling of the jamming static. I still remember that beautiful crackling. There were the endless love affairs. Falling in love, getting divorced. At the same time, many of us considered ourselves the nation’s conscience, believing that we had the right to teach our people. But what did we really know about them? What we’d read in
Sketches from a Hunter’s Album
? The things we’d learned from Turgenev and other “authors of village life”? Valentin Rasputin…Vasily Belov
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…I didn’t even understand my own father. I’d yell at him, “Papa, if you don’t return your Party card, I won’t talk to you anymore!” My father would cry.

Gorbachev had more power than a Tsar. Unlimited power. Then he went and said, “We can’t go on like this.” Those were his famous words. So the country turned into a debating society. People argued at home, at work, on public transport. Families fell apart over political disagreements, children would fight with their parents. One of my girlfriends got into such a big fight about Lenin with her son and daughter-in-law, she kicked them out. They had to spend a whole winter in a cold dacha outside of Moscow. The theaters grew empty, everyone was at home glued to their televisions. They were broadcasting the First Congress of the People’s Deputies of the USSR. Before that, there had been the whole hullaballoo around electing those deputies. The first free elections! Real elections! There were two candidates in our ward: some Party bureaucrat and a young democrat, a university lecturer. I still remember his last name—Malyshev…Yuri Malyshev. I recently happened to learn that he’s in agribusiness now, selling tomatoes and cucumbers. Back then, he was a revolutionary. You should have heard his seditious speeches! It was unbelievable! He said that Marxist-Leninist literature had low horsepower…that it reeked of mothballs…He demanded the repeal of the sixth article of the Constitution—the article that decrees the leading role of the Communist Party. The cornerstone of Marxism-Leninism…I listened and couldn’t imagine any of it coming true. Pipe dreams! Who would allow us to even get near it? Everything would fall apart…It was the glue holding everything together…That’s how zombified we all were. I spent years scrubbing away my Soviet mentality, dredging it out of myself by the bucketful. [
She is silent.
] Our team…There were about twenty of us volunteers who would go around to people’s homes in our neighborhood after work, campaigning for him. We made posters: “Vote for Malyshev!” And can you imagine? He won! By a large margin. Our first-ever victory! Afterward, we nearly lost our minds from the live Congress broadcasts—the deputies were even more frank than we were in our own kitchens, saying things we wouldn’t dare say any further than two meters away from our kitchens. Everyone got sucked into the broadcasts like drug addicts. Stuck to the screen. Now Travkin would show them! Really show them! And Boldyrev? Now he’s going to—that’s the spirit!