4. How surviving intellectuals might have reflected on the Soviet system
This scene is pure supposition.
1971 Crowded hall in Moscow; end of celebration for Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich’s 65th birthday [b 1906]; Slava Rostropovich [1927-2007], prematurely bald, brilliant cellist; a passionate but unpredictable extravert; his wife Galina Vishnevskaya [1926-2012; opera singer] who is becoming a formidable battle-axe; she loves Slava and has learnt to take his volatility in her statuesque stride; Alexander Solzhenitsyn [1918-2008], balding, bearded, austere, dissenter with great moral authority; Andrei Sakharov [1921-1989], nuclear physicist and dissenter and Yelena Bonner [1923-2011], his wife/ loyal supporter; Roy Medvedev [b 1925] a historian whose father died in the Gulag, and whose twin brother was briefly interned in a mental hospital in May 1970. They are happy to talk freely; in 1970, the Rostropoviches were ostracised after giving Solzhenitsyn a home when he was made an unperson.
Rostro [on podium] ... Finally, my friends, let us all thank Dmitri Dmitrievich not only for his very great contributions to his art, but also for his whole life so far and, above all, his friendship. [raises glass] Let us all drink to their continuation for many years to come!
Loud applause; crowd mingles, chatting over drinks and nibbles, including this one small group:
Solzh Slava, well done. That was a deeply moving tribute: only you could have done it.
Rostro Thank you, Sasha. There was so much more I would’ve liked to say [with a confidential wink], but Galina wouldn’t let me.
Solzh I don’t really know him, but I find the way he’s survived and kept coming back is very impressive.
Rostro Yes, it is. I envy him. I’m becoming an un-person now.
Medv Really, you’re joining the club?
Rostro So it seems. I’m only allowed to perform in out-of-the way towns where no one appreciates me.
Solzh [looking at Nina and Rostro] I’m deeply sorry – it’s all because of me, and all your very noble support. How d’you think Shostakovich avoided getting permanently sidelined?
Rostro I think his international name’s the main reason. I s’pose it also helped that he kept such a low profile. But he truly is like a chameleon – he’s clearly needed to be at times. You can see that in his compositions. He can write light-hearted symphonies and alternate them with harsh ones, ostensibly about the war, but surreptitiously weaving-in disguised feelings about Stalin and his régime; he can write ebullient exciting concerti, often with lyrical passages; he’s written a lot for films; he can also write seductively in ‛easy listening,’ ‛palm court’, even jazz styles. He’s obviously brilliant at turning them on.
Solzh That must have helped him to make the necessary compromises...*
Yelena ... something you find more difficult, Sasha!
Solzh ... absolutely impossible.
Galina It’s not Slava’s forte either. I could have killed him when he wrote that open letter to Brezhnev in your defence. Looking back now, I quite see that he was absolutely right, but it’s cost us dearly.
Solzh I feel awful about that too. But there’s no doubt ‒ you’ve both achieved tremendous respect because of it – abroad as well as at home.
Sakha ... and richly deserved it too.
* Only two years later, Shostakovich allowed his signature to be added to letters condemning both Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn – which he bitterly regretted later.
With their towering international reputations, Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov became formidable allies in 1972 in the protests against the escalating Cold War, arms race and Soviet injustices; especially also against the forced detention of dissidents in ‟psychiatric hospitals,” a malpractice used once under the Tsars, more under Stalin, rarely under Khrushchev and extensively under Brezhnev. Later, the somewhat prickly Solzhenitsyn took great exception when Shostakovich signed a letter protesting against the imprisonment of Mikis Theodorakis in Greece, but never against the mass arrests in the USSR. Shostakovich’s overwhelming priority was to survive so that he could make a more lasting contribution to his Art.
Solzh What kind of a system is this that’s perpetually trying to control its best artists’ greatest efforts?…
Rostro ... and stifle their creativity.
Galina Mercifully, we performers get off much more lightly if we keep our noses clean.
Sakha So do some of the scientists. Even Beria allowed us a good deal of freedom when he was running our Atom Bomb programme.* They say it’s safest of all to be a mathematician.
Rostro Surely, our Great Leaders can see that people work best when they’re given the freedom to do what they really want? Can’t they understand that thinking people are sick of all this blatantly dumb didactic Socialist Realism?
Solzh But that’s just what they won’t see. The Party always knows best…
Yelena ... so it can never admit to mistakes.
Sakha Surely, they must realise that even the dumbest of us notice when Party dogma gets stood on its head, as it so often does.
Solzh And embarrassingly ignorant leaders like Khrushchev think they can lay down the law about what people want. More than that, they presume to control even what we all think?
Yelena Parents couldn’t even let their children hear their true feelings.
Solzh The Dictatorship of Thoughts ‒ just like what Dostoevsky said about the Catholic Church…
Sakha ... only worse. They have to infantilise us all. How dare they?
Solzh No wonder we get lumbered with mindless robots like Brezhnev.
Rostro By the time they reach the top, our leaders are totally brainwashed by their own propaganda. My friends say it’s much the same in the West. Their leaders all know best too – General de Gaulle was a good example.
Galina But at least there’s opposition parties and a free press to hold them to account before the public. Why can’t our people be allowed to decide for themselves for a change? For decades, we’ve had zero choice at the voting stations or in the shops...
Solzh ... or in the news we’re fed.
Sakha It’s so ironic. The Revolution was supposed to liberate us from capitalist domination. But it’s just replaced one set of chains with another.
Galina And you don’t see many people obviously having fun here, like you do abroad – all the time, actually. But our system certainly has improved our education.
Solzh But what’s it worth if we aren’t allowed to use the brains it’s educated? The Proletarian Dictatoriat has proved far more stifling than the old Empire and the Church combined.
* Beria knew so little physics that he couldn’t interfere.
Rostro Any creativity in the last fifty years has come in spite of the régime, not because of it...
Solzh ... or as a reaction against it. Repression’s certainly been an extremely fruitful
stimulus for our writers and poets as well as our composers.
Rostro What really gets me is that, by rubbishing and sidelining geniuses like Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Pasternak, our Dictatoriat makes not only itself but the whole nation into a laughing stock around the world. It’s painfully obvious to us on our travels. [Galina nods]
Solzh I don’t mind them making fools of themselves, but I do resent them doing it to us as well. Poor old Boris Leonodovich [Pasternak] was forced to refuse the Nobel Prize he was offered.
Medv I heard that Khrushchev regretted that – in retrospect.
Galina I guess it’s no surprise that the greatest successes the system can boast are in weapons – we have people like you to thank for that, Academician Andrei.
Sakha Not just me; I was part of a very big team; Kurchatov was the real mastermind.* He was brilliant not only at the physics but also the politics; I could never match him. But actually, we all relied very heavily on the information our spies got from the Manhattan Project in America. Without that, it would’ve taken us some years longer.
Rostro To be fair, I s’pose space travel was another genuine achievement.
Sakha But that only came about because of our army’s need for rockets to deliver the bombs, and the fantastic expertise of the Nazi prisoners we took such care to capture.
Solzh Typically cynical Soviet behaviour – blacken the capitalists in public and exploit their expertise in secret. Did you know – those huge rockets they loved to parade on May Day in Red Square were initially drawn by American Studebaker tractor engines! [the others laugh]
Yelena And didn’t old Khrushchev make the very most of every possible droplet of propaganda he could milk out of our Sputniks? No mention of the German rocket scientists.
Sakha Kurchatov was also extremely brave. He was the first to wade-in to get things back under control when there was a terrible nuclear accident back in nineteen forty nine. I’m pretty sure that’s what led to his untimely death when he was only fifty-seven.
Solzh Really? I’ve never heard about that.
Medv But there were other major nuclear disasters too, weren’t there?
Sakha Yes. But you’re not supposed to know about them. There was appalling radioactive pollution around our plutonium plants. It went on for years near Sverdlovsk. On top of that, there was another massive leak near there back in nineteen fifty seven.† They did nothing to prevent it. It was all hushed up. They never issued warnings. They didn’t clear the area like they should have done, or even give the local people cold iodine to protect their thyroids from fallout. They never told them why they were getting cancer. It was all top secret. [others gasp in shocked amazement]
Yelena Surely, the Americans must have built up a lot of experience in nuclear safety?
Sakha Yes, they did. I believe they had some fatalities too, but vastly fewer than here, where getting the bomb was Stalin’s overwhelming priority.‡ In fact, in that earlier disaster, Beria and his scientists – including Kurchatov – had to choose between saving the enriched uranium or protecting their workers. You can guess which way that went. To be fair, Kurchatov was the first to roll up his sleeves and start clearing up.
Solzh To hell with the American experience!
* Sakharov was in Kurchatov’s team that developed Soviet nuclear weapons.
† The clear-up was handled considerably better after the 1984 Chernobyl disaster.
‡ Tens of thousands of slave labourers were employed in the Soviet nuclear industry from 1945-1955. No one knows how many died.
Galina And not even you could help either?
Sakha When I tried to warn Khrushchev about the dangers of contaminating the environment, he told me to shut up, keep my nose out of Party and Government matters and stick to my own job description. That’s when I started to become an unperson. By then, I was dispensable too. [to Rostro] Welcome to the club!
Solzh [great gravitas] The fundamental tragedy is their mindset that people are disposable.
Rostro [to Solzh] You saw that with your own eyes in the Gulag.
Solzh Yes, and I’ve done a lot of digging into its past history. A classic case was the engineers in charge of building the Moscow-Volga Canal. Two days before the official opening, most of them were arrested on fabricated charges and many of them were shot shortly afterwards. And yet, at the opening ceremony, Stalin cynically milked their great achievement for all it was worth.
Medv Rule by Terror started with Lenin, and it continues. They still lock people away on trumped-up charges, or silence them with sedatives in mental institutions.
Sakha [nods knowingly] You know the main output of researchers is by publishing papers in scientific journals? And, in international journals, that is very competitive? [they nod] Well, very few of our Institutes get the most important journals like Nature, so many researchers have to go across town to see the latest edition.
Solzh And then, I bet it gets censored in case it includes forbidden news.
Sakha Yes, it does. Worse than that, any paper our scientists want to submit for publication must first be vetted by a local committee that includes a Party Commissar, who probably knows nothing about any science. The more original and exciting the paper, the more regional and national committees have to check it – and the longer it takes.
Yelena It must be extremely frustrating if the same thing gets published in the meantime by competitors abroad. [Sakha and Medv nod vigorously]
Solzh Another thing – Communism always has to be perfect – it can never admit to any mistakes.
Yelena It’s so childish. I gather we’re still systematically cheating at sport even into this decade.
Rostro Except at chess!
Sakha It’s symptomatic of their total contempt for the Truth. Isn’t it a weird irony that Marx was meticulous in accumulating his evidence and building up his case scientifically, whereas – right from Lenin onwards – the Truth could be bent, twisted, stood on its head – it was just as dispensable as human beings. It could be made to fit whatever was necessary at the time by sheer brute force. What’s more, it could always be changed when necessary too.
Galina In fact, entire generations have grown up with zero respect for the Truth. We’ve all had to learn to say one thing in public and the exact opposite in private with anyone we trust.
Medv I often wonder if that’s why there seems to be such an epidemic of schizophrenia lately. [the others smile] You know they said my twin brother Zhores had ‟Sluggish Schizophrenia” a couple of years ago? [they all nod] They couldn’t stand his devastating criticisms of Lysenko, so they locked him away in the funny farm in Kaluga. Curiously enough, that was thanks to a psychiatrist called Shostakovich. No relation, I think.
Yelena [pats him on back] But you made such a stink internationally that they had to let him out.
Solzh Their cult of standing the truth on its head is so embarrassing. They’ve long since ruined any semblance of credibility they had around the world.
Sakha That could’ve cost us dear in the case of nuclear weapons. [the others look surprised] It was already well known in the world of nuclear physics in the late nineteen thirties that The Bomb was a practical possibility. We could’ve started developing it on our own before the German invasion. It was proposed, and we did have the physicists to do it – brilliant men like Kurchatov and Kapitsa. But it was halted before it could even get started, because nuclear physics was deemed to run against Marxist dogma.* When it miraculously became compatible several years later, we had to play catch-up and make the most of drip-feeds from our sympathisers in America.
Solzh Dogma always trumped the truth.
Medv Exactly. For me, as a scientist, that’s just as disgraceful, especially in the long-term. Just look at how they fell for that vicious charlatan Lysenko – to the great cost of some genuinely brilliant scientists…
Yelena ... even some in his own field...
Sakha ... especially them...
Medv ... like my brother Zhores. Telling the truth about Lysenko was his one ‛psychiatric manifestation.’†
Sakha I’m so pleased that, at long last, poor old Nikolai Vavilov has finally been rehabilitated. [Medv and Sakha nod in recognition]
Medv [to the others] You probably know he was an amazing botanist who devoted his life to his research, mainly on cereals. He built up an incredibly valuable bank of seeds from different climates all over the world. Although the bank was in Leningrad, it survived the War, thanks to his equally devoted team.
Galina They must have been sorely tempted to eat those seeds during the siege.
Solzh In fact, several of them died of starvation while taking care of them.‡ So did poor Vavilov himself. He had dared to speak out against that same psychopathic fraud Lysenko a couple of years before. Even in the most desperate days of the war, the KGB spent about nine hundred hours interrogating him.
Rostro And did no one try to save him?
Sakha His younger brother Sergei did – he was a brilliant physicist; I knew him quite well.§ So did another even more senior colleague − Pryanishnikov. Their brave pleading got his death sentence commuted to twenty years in the Gulag. But it didn’t make much difference: instead of shooting him, they just starved him. He lasted about eighteen months.
* Hitler didn’t prioritise nuclear weapons, partly because they were based on Jewish thinking. † Zhores Medvedev’s 1962 samizdat account of Lysenko’s effects on Soviet science was attacked in the Moscow Party in 1963. He was detained only in 1970; Roy created such an international outcry that he was released after just 19 days. ‡ About nine curators starved to death rather than eat their seeds. § Sergei Vavilov helped develop Soviet nuclear weaponry, and must have acquiesced in the use of slave labour.
Solzh How ironic that this man who had dedicated much of his life to improving food production for all mankind should be starved to death by the Proletarian Dictators he was trying to help. That’s so utterly typical of the cruelty and wastefulness of lives, many of them brilliant
like his.
Medv All Zhores’ scientific friends find it deeply embarrassing that such a charlatan as
Lysenko should have been allowed to lead Soviet biology astray for two decades.
Solzh It just shows how Stalin made himself the sole arbiter of the truth, which only he and The Party had the power to determine. They knew better than Mother Nature herself.
Medv To hell with Her.
Solzh If Party ideology dictates that crops yield better when planted five or ten times closer together, so be it – no matter how much seed corn it wastes or how many millions starve as a result.
Medv If baseless claims fit better with Party ideology, they can be made to be true – by brute force if necessary. It’s just like the Inquisition and Galileo.
Galina I never quite understand why Lysenkoism appealed so much to Stalin?
Medv Let me explain. I’m sure Lenin, and then the others, realised that we evolved to look after our own, especially our families, above all others…
Galina ... that’s basic human nature...
Medv ... and not just human – it’s seen throughout the animal world. So, if Communism is ever going to work, it has to overcome that first of all. But it was absolutely crucial to them that Soviet Man can be changed – and changed fast. They abominated the idea that we’re all pre-determined by our genes...
Sakha ... they insisted that was just bourgeois propaganda.
Medv What’s more, they decreed that our genes – and those in all other forms of life – could be transformed almost overnight by outside influences, just as Lamarck had suggested a hundred years before. It must be applied to humans just as much as to crops. They could be Communised too – even unto the third and subsequent generations. If there was no evidence in either case, then it had to be fabricated.
Galina Aaaah, now I see.
Solzh There’s one other reason why Lysenko appealed so much. His parents were poor peasants, and it was only thanks to the Bolsheviks that he was educated at all...
Rostro ... so he was just the sort of man they were looking for...
Yelena ... very much like Khrushchev.
Solzh Exactly. Here was Soviet Man standing the bourgeois intelligentsia on its head! What more could they ask?
Medv Only a madman could swallow that...
Sakha ... and persist in doing so even when Lysenko’s wild promises of better crop yields failed time after time…
Medv ... only a madman or a blind ideologue...
Galina ... or both rolled into one.
Sakha But even The Grand Inquisitor must’ve been stung by the international concerns about Vavilov – his brother was made President of the Academy of Sciences just after the war.
Medv Despite the taste of fresh air he allowed us, not even Khrushchev could bear to admit that he was wrong about Lysenko.
Solzh But Khrushchev did tolerate some criticism of Lysenkoism by real scientists like you.
Sakha Only later and only grudgingly. In fact, I don’t think Khrushchev was that much better than Stalin. In truth, it was only after he was kicked out that Lysenko’s pseudo-science was officially repudiated – at last.
Galina At least he was finally put in his place.
Medv But, as I said, how much damage he’d already done to the lives and careers of so many really good scientists – over about thirty years!...
Solzh ... a lot of whom were shot or spent decades in the camps. I once shared a cell in the Lubyanka with a brilliant geneticist called Nikolai Timofeev-Ressovsky. He used to give talks about science to us cell-mates. He was such an enthusiast. I later heard that he was only just saved from starvation in the camps.
Medv As it was, Zhores says his eyesight was drastically affected by vitamin deficiency. But in other ways, he was luckier. He was put to work in one of the expert prisoner camps – the sharashki – during the atom bomb project, pursuing his studies on the effects of radiation on genes. That was the one place where ‛bourgeois genetics’ was still allowed!
Yelena How ironic!
Sakha To be fair to Khrushchev, those scientists were rehabilitated in the nineteen fifties, but only after many lives and careers had been ruined.
Medv But, as the survivors say, the drastic shift to Lysenkoism was also a devastating handicap to their own work, and made a global laughing stock of Russian science in general.
Sakha [nodding] It was partly Lysenko’s thinking that underlay Khrushchev’s failed efforts to cultivate the Virgin Lands.*
Solzh But at least Khrushchev released thousands of other prisoners from the camps. And he didn’t blatantly rewrite history like Stalin did. As they used to say, ‟the future is always bright, but the past keeps changing week-by-week.”
Yelena And at least he allowed men like Sasha and Roy to start opening up about the past.
Medv And at least he didn’t continue sending millions more to death or slavery for no valid reason. And he believed in the Rule of Law...
Galina ... in theory at least.
Medv One of his key decisions was to rein-in the KGB. By bringing it under the control of a ministry, it was no longer a law unto itself – at long last it was answerable to the Politburo.
Galina Oh, look! – there’s Ekaterina Furtseva. She’s gone to seed a bit.
Rostro She’s still quite pretty, but definitely aged...
Galina … unlike any of us! Shall I get her over?
Solzh No, she’s bound to remain a dyed-in-the-wool Communist to the bitter end.
Medv They used to call her Katherine The Greater†. She’s extraordinary, isn’t she? Why should she be just about the only woman to rise anywhere near the top? How did she do it?
Galina Well, she’s a real force of nature – a sort of counterpart to Khrushchev in many ways.
Rostro But even prettier, if that’s possible! [all laugh]
Galina She’s so full of bounce and energy, despite marrying such awful men. But she herself may not be so easy to live with.
Rostro We got to know her a bit when she sent us on tours abroad in the nineteen sixties. She was a very uncultured Minister of Culture, but an equally effective ambassadress.
Galina I bet she loved the shops in the West. [to Solzh and Medv] It’s just amazing the range of goods they sell − and the choice of different shapes and colours! They’re a stunning contrast with the few drab and monotonous things on our mostly empty shelves back here.
* Repeating Lysenko’s mistakes in China in the Great Leap Forwards, and in Cambodia 1975-78, contributed to disastrous famines in both.
† She was actually known as Ekaterina the Third.
Medv But why d’you think so incredibly few other women did anywhere near as well?
Sakha I guess a lot just were not that ambitious, or else they wanted to raise families.
Yelena And maybe others realized it’d be almost suicidal to aim high, looking at the very high mortality rate among the men who did. [Galina nods]
Galina Maybe many others just weren’t taken seriously – at home, at school, at university and at work – despite all the preaching about the new dawns heralded by the revolution.
Medv Or maybe they didn’t take themselves seriously enough. [Galina nods]
Galina
Looking back, I now realise
quite a few of my girlfriends could easily have risen higher if only they’d had
a bit more self-confidence and more backing from home and work.
Rostro … and more aggression. Galina blames all that on male testosterone – driving our ambition, and competitiveness – and willingness to take risks. We all love you girls because you’re gentle and considerate, while we charge ahead like rhinos. [Galina nods vigorously]
Galina I s’pose Khrushchev was a case in point. D’you think Furtseva takes testosterone?
Medv [laughs] I think old Nikita was a very telling example. His wife was quite a bit more educated than him, and much more balanced and reflective – and quite tough – but she just didn’t have his drive or his lateral thinking.
Solzh [whisper] She’d be a hell of a lot better than Brezhnev – and so might Katherine-even-Greater. How could someone like him get to the top?
Medv By being a Yes-man with very little mind of his own.
Yelena It seems all topsy-turvy.
Solzh It was even worse under Stalin, when there was active selection against anyone with the potential to outshine him – or, worst of all – to succeed him.
Sakha I’ve noticed another thing about Party bosses. They always think they know best.
Solzh Stalin knew he knew best.
Medv But at least Old Nikita listened to the advice he ignored. He had views on many things, even when he knew very little about them. But he, too, did love to learn from real experts about new methods in farming, metalwork and so on.
Sakha I s’pose he was unusual. A lot more hardly listened at all – or only to what they wanted to know. So, some were told only what they wanted to hear…
Medv ... even if it wasn’t true. Khrushchev wasn’t as bad as that.
Galina Did they even listen to their wives? That might’ve saved us a lot of misery.
Medv They were supposed not to discuss work at home. But I heard that Nadezhda Alliluyeva used to row a lot with Stalin – some of it about the horrors of collectivisation.
Yelena And he didn’t listen, of course. D’you think Khrushchev would’ve listened to Nina?
Medv Yes, I think he would. I’m sure Lenin listened to his wife, and I bet Molotov and Kaganovich would have to theirs too – they were all quite formidable minds and characters.
Sakha Some people say that Stalin didn’t realise the full enormity of the Great Famine until it was much too late; maybe no one dared tell him.
Solzh Well they bloody well ought to have done. I heard that Bukharin did try, but The Vozhd wouldn’t listen. It was pure madness. [pause] But tragically typical too.
Galina Don’t you think things could be so different if they would only promote more women, instead of packing the Central Committee and Politburo exclusively with men blinkered by dogma and fuelled by testosterone.
Solzh In what ways?
Galina Well, we’d be much more pragmatic and realistic for a start.
Sakha What kind of a system is it that promotes ghastly perjurers like Vyshinsky, sadistic torturers like Beria, mass-executioners like Blokhin and quack ‟scientists” like Lysenko?
Galina All men…
Solzh What kind of a genius was Lenin – claiming to liberate the downtrodden masses while – at the same time – pursuing such a vicious vendetta against the peasants – who formed an eighty percent majority...
Yelena ... blinded by dogma...
Solzh ... the very folk who should have been his most vital allies, feeding The People...
Galina ... but, instead, the whole population was on starvation rations for years on end.* Surely one of the most basic duties for any government is to make sure its people are fed.
Medv But Lenin did finally compromise with his New Economic Policy...
Solzh ... but only after sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives on the altar of dogma…
Galina [aside] ... dogma was the only thing that mattered to him...
Solzh ... however much it was disputed. But ten years later, Stalin went back to devastating the peasants, reducing them to cannibalism. Whose clever idea was it to requisition the seed corn? How idiotic can officials get?
Sakha Why were so many of our best brains constantly quarrelling with their best allies?
Solzh Stalin couldn’t bear to agree with anyone without picking a fight with them afterwards. It was his same paranoia that led to his devastating purge of the top ranks of the Red Army in nineteen thirty eight. That cost us millions of lives when the Nazis invaded.
Galina It’s got to be testosterone.
Yelena Look at how many children Uncle Joe spewed around. He should be Father Joe.
Galina Surely, government by consent is infinitely better.
Solzh That was one of Khrushchev’s dreams. Look where it got him.
Rostro And now we seem to be going back to Stalinism again.
Solzh What kind of a system is it that’s founded on millions of unjustly ruined lives and broken hearts? What kind of a ‟God” was Stalin if he was still demanding human sacrifice even in the twentieth century?...
Galina ... if he was wrecking families, separating babies from their mothers, creating orphans and destroying childhoods...
Sakha ... and all that on an industrial scale even greater than Hitler managed?...
Solzh ... and all that in the name of Communism and equality...
Medv ... whilst perverting it as hard as he could – and teaching Mao how to do the same.
Solzh Instead, he built a society permeated by distrust. And, all the while, he was creating a new undeserving aristocracy of Party hacks and informers, living in luxury, eating caviar and drinking Georgian wine while riding on the backs of new generations of serfs and donkeys...
Medv … whose lives were thrown away with a profligate abandon unknown since Genghis Khan.
Rostro What kind of a world is it that’s allowed to be controlled by unhinged megalomaniacs like Hitler and Stalin?...
Yelena ... and Chairman Mao...
Rostro ... who blindly pursue such crazy, even suicidal ‟ideologies.”
Solzh Often totally arbitrarily: Lenin and Stalin hated peasants, Mao idolised them.
Sakha I s’pose it’s an inevitable legacy of how we evolved – the survival of the nastiest.
Solzh Foxes will always apply for jobs in chicken farms. The more cunning they are – and the better disguised – the more likely they are to rise to the top.
Medv In theory, things might have been totally different if Bukharin had risen to the top instead. But, first, he’d have had to get rid of Stalin – and that wasn’t in his nature, so he probably wouldn’t have lasted long. He was too trusting. He even came back from Paris in nineteen thirty six, although he knew it was to virtually certain humiliation and death.
All [a regretful moan] Oh-Oh!
No comments:
Post a Comment