Monumental Propaganda (13 page)

30

It was only now that Aglaya was able to appreciate what a good neighbor the deceased Telushkin had been. Never the slightest noise. But that Shubkin? A monster! If the radio wasn't blaring through the wall, or the typewriter clattering, then the bed started creaking. And sometimes the radio was blaring and the typewriter was clattering and the bed was creaking and something else was either panting or squealing or sobbing. Although she tried, Aglaya was unable to imagine how such heterogeneous actions—the possible causes of all these sounds—could be carried out simultaneously.

In such cases people normally express their dissatisfaction by banging on the wall. Aglaya didn't bang on the wall, thereby indicating to Shubkin that she didn't even notice his existence. When she ran into him by chance in the yard or on the stairs, she walked past him just as if he weren't there.

She wasn't the one who informed the local agencies that Shubkin listened to the foreign radio, but she was his closest neighbor and suspicion fell on her. From the agencies referred to by the people simply as “the organs,” the letter was forwarded to the Party agencies—that is, to the district committee—following which Porosyaninov called in Shubkin for a talk. Shubkin thought it was because of the poem by Bunin that he'd read at the district amateur concert on Teacher's Day. But his concern proved unfounded. Porosyaninov didn't give Shubkin a dressing down for Bunin, because he didn't know who Bunin was. He sat Shubkin down in a soft armchair, offered him tea with hard crackers and lemon, asked him how things were going in the children's home, about his personal problems and then hemmed and hawed a bit and went on to the main point, at the same time switching to a more intimate tone of voice: “You know, we've received a tip-off that you listen to hostile radio stations in the evenings.”

“Who was the tip-off from?” asked Shubkin.

“I don't know. It's anonymous. Our people,” Porosyaninov said with a smile, “like to write. Some people find it easier to tip us off than to tap on the wall.”

Shubkin understood the hint and began assuring Porosyaninov that he listened to the radio exclusively for purposes of counterpropaganda. He was a socially active individual, a propagandist of communist ideology. In order to struggle effectively against bourgeois ideology, he had to know the enemy's arguments.

“That's right,” Porosyaninov agreed. “But I think that the enemy's arguments will be just as clear to you if you place your radio by a different wall. And turn it down a bit.”

Shubkin took the advice and moved the table with the radio on it farther away from Aglaya and closer to Shurochka the Idiot, especially since the latter was a bit deaf and didn't hear anything she didn't want to hear. But even so, sometimes when something extraordinary happened, he would put the radio against Aglaya's wall in order to enlighten her too. And strange as it may seem, she didn't object, since she had also begun to feel a need for information from sources apart from the newspaper
Pravda.

31

Although events in general were developing in a direction that Shubkin found to his liking, certain isolated details put him on his guard, concerning which he anxiously informed the Central Committee of the CPSU. After writing one of his letters to the leaders of the Party, he would read it for a start to his Antonina to see how it was received by the simple people. He would strike a pose close to the window, the letter in his left hand and his right hand extended forward, and begin:

“Dear and highly respected Nikita Sergeevich!

“Are you aware. . .” That was the way he almost always began: “Are you aware . . .” An introduction like that sounded like a challenge. What did “Are you aware” mean? The very post that Khrushchev held assumed that he was aware of everything . . . Of course it was a rude way to begin, but if only he had continued a bit more softly. What came next, however, was even worse: “Are you aware that the Party which you lead is in the process of degeneration? . . .”

As he was reading, Antonina stopped knitting and frowned.

He asked in surprise: “Don't you like it?”

“Na-ah,” she objected quickly.

“You don't like it?” he repeated, even more surprised.

“Na-ah.” She paused before explaining, “I like it. But why strain your poor head like that? You know, Mark Semyonovich, for that they could . . .”

“What? Do you think they'll put me in jail again?”

“They could,” said Antonina, nodding. “Oho, they could.”

“No, surely not,” said Mark Semyonovich, dismissing the possibility, “the decisions of the Twenty-first Party Congress can no longer be revoked. But precisely in order to prevent that from happening, we, the rank-and-file communists, must not keep quiet—we have no right to keep quiet.”

“And do you think we'll live to see communism?” Antonina asked, pulling her legs up under her.

“Oh, Antonina!” Shubkin exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “What does that mean, do I think or not think? I know for certain that communism will come. Sooner or later, but without fail. You must understand that Marxism is not some religion made up of a load of cock-and-bull stories, but a science. Foreknowledge based on precise analysis. It's not very likely that I'll live to see communism, but you're young, you will. Do you know what communism is? Communism is . . .” And Mark Semyonovich would begin to walk around the room, telling Tonka the dreams of Vera Pavlovna from Chernyshevsky's
What Is to Be Done,
and he related them as colorfully as though he had just dreamed them himself the night before. She would listen in a trance, smiling gently, and when he finished she would inform him: “And last night in our buffet someone crapped another big heap right there on the table. But how it happened, who did it and when, no one saw, even with the station guard on duty and the police there. Just like real partisans, they are.”

32

They say that an individual's mental capabilities are determined by the weight of his brain. But a big brain can only be contained in a big head. Turgenev had a big head. And his brain, accordingly, weighed as much as two loaves of bread. Lenin had an even bigger head, and naturally no one in the world had a bigger brain than him, and in Soviet times it was dangerous even to doubt it. You could lose your own head, whatever size it was. But since Soviet power has run its course, I can share with you my observation, admittedly made by eye, that Mark Semyonovich Shubkin's head was perhaps even bigger than Lenin's. But then, how can you judge? I only ever saw Lenin from a distance and in his coffin, while I saw Shubkin alive and close up. No one, as far as I am aware, ever weighed Mark Semyonovich's brain (not even later, when it became a real possibility), but it was obviously also not small—and with an astounding processing capacity (that much I know for certain), thanks to which Shubkin did not read books the way we do, line by line, but entire pages at a time, as though soaking them up whole. One look at a page and he'd read it— he just looked and it was read. At first I thought he was just . . . how can I put it . . . sliding his eyes from the first line to the last, but he only laughed at me for that. “What you mean,” he said, “is speed reading; even you could master that method if you tried. But my way of reading is photographic. I look at a page, and I take in all of it from top to bottom in a single moment. One glance at a page and I've read it and remembered it completely. Do you want to check?” So of course I used to check. I took any book from the shelf and opened it at any page, allowed Shubkin just to glance at it, and then he would recite the entire text with his eyes closed. What an exceptional talent!

As we have already heard, Shubkin knew practically all languages, having learned the majority of them in the camp. Foreigners were not often encountered in Dolgov, but during the period of reduced tension they would sometimes arrive to familiarize themselves with our agricultural achievements. Then the bosses would immediately call in Shubkin. And he would explain the advantages of our collective farm system to these foreigners in any language, from English to some obscure dialect of the Finno-Ugrian group. Many people, astounded by the extent of his knowledge and memory, assumed it to be a sign of great intellect and preferred to remain modestly silent in his presence. And those who ventured to argue with him always lost. I used to lose too. Because he would crush me with his erudition, beat me down with quotations from the classic works of Marxism-Leninism. He simply laughed at my doubts concerning scientific and applied communism, regarding them as the product of ignorance.

“First, my dear fellow,” he used to tell me ironically, “you try reading Marx, Engels and Lenin, make an effort to grasp the essence of their thinking, and then you can argue. How can you judge the ideas generated by the finest minds of humanity if you're not even acquainted with those ideas?”

“I am acquainted with them,” I would sometimes be bold enough to argue. “I am acquainted with the effect of these ideas on my own hide, and in great detail.”

“You are acquainted with their deformations,” Shubkin would object, “but I appeal to you to acquaint yourself with the ideas themselves. To begin with, try reading
Das Kapital, Anti-Dühring
and at least half of the collected works of Lenin, about fifty volumes.”

I tried to follow this advice. I used to take the works specified out of the library, but every time reading them made me feel sleepy and I got nasty buzzing noises in my head.

And so I stopped reading these books and tried not to argue with Shubkin anymore because—well, what was the point, with my level of learning?

But one night I happened to visit the Admiral in his watchman's hut at the lumberyard. The hut was cobbled together from stripped timbers and faced with fresh planks of pine that still had a lingering scent. The Admiral had managed to transform even his watchman's hut into a ship's cabin. There were maps pinned to the walls; standing on the table there was a model of a seventeenth-century sailing ship; and lying on a stool by the trestle bed there was an old nautical almanac for the ports of the Azov Sea. The trestle bed itself was like a cross between a sailor's bunk and a hobo's doss: the Admiral was half-lying on a bundle of rags, covered with an old gray traveling rug with tassels and drinking tea brewed thick and strong in his aluminum mug. And for me he located among his household reserves a glass tumbler in a tea-glass holder. I also tipped some tea into it and then poured on some hot water.

It was wintertime. There was a hard frost outside, but here inside the blocks of birch wood blazed cheerfully in the little iron stove with its door standing open. It was hot, the Admiral was sweating and resin was oozing out of the pine planks of the walls.

We drank tea with Tula spice cakes and I told the Admiral about my conversations with Shubkin. I told him honestly that when I argued with Shubkin I sometimes felt that I was right, but I couldn't prove it because he crushed me with his authority. And the fact that he was older, and that he'd been in the camps for so long, and he knew everything. I'd express some thought, and he'd come back with a quotation from Lenin or from Marx, or even from Hegel or Descartes.

“Tell me,” the Admiral asked, breaking a spice cake, “does it not seem to you that this Shubkin of yours is an absolute fool?”

“But how,” I objected in confusion, “how can I consider him a fool when he's so learned?”

“Why, do you think learning and intelligence are the same thing?”

“Well . . .” I thought about it. “Of course, if a man is learned, he has a lot of learning in his head—when he's thinking something over, he can operate with a large quantity of data—”

“There you go!” the Admiral broke in cheerfully. “He can operate! But what if he can't? You talk about quotations. But has he ever told you a single idea of his own that he personally devised?”

“Why would he?” I asked. “If he has so many good ideas invented by other people in his head, why would he need to think up his own?”

“Ah, I see, you're also . . . how can I put it . . .”

“You're trying to tell me I'm a fool as well?” I put in, offended.

“No, no,” said the Admiral. “I'm a polite person and I wouldn't express myself so harshly in the present case, but you think it over for yourself. The human race has already expressed so many extremely clever ideas, but does that mean we don't need anything else? Why are you and I sitting here thinking, and not just firing quotations at each other? Although, believe me, I've got plenty of them in my head too. And some of them are quite brilliant. I can use some of them to corroborate my line of thought. But it's not possible to replace original thought with quotations.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because no thought is worth a damn unless it's born in the head of a concrete person in concrete circumstances on the basis of his own experience as a result of his own thinking. Perhaps,” he said with a condescending chuckle, “you should note that down as a quotation and then use it in an argument with Shubkin. But meanwhile, throw a bit of firewood in the stove.”

I rearranged the almost burnt-out embers with the poker, put on some fresh blocks of wood and took the kettle to the standpipe. I got chilled to the bone while I collected the dribble of water, then went back to the Admiral and said in Shubkin's defense: “You tell me that he's a fool, but he's got such a huge head, it must be full of something.”

“Yes, it's full of foolishness,” the Admiral said ruthlessly. “Let me tell you something. You've probably been out in the country. You may have noticed that every village has one idiot and one wise man. Some simple peasant. With a head the size of your fist and a brain that's probably not very big. But he thinks simply, clearly and soundly on the basis of his own knowledge of life and personal experience. So what I'd advise you to learn is this. The human brain is distinguished not only by its dimensions, but by its ability to assimilate input. The brain, crudely speaking, can be a warehouse, a mill or a chemical laboratory. A warehouse can be really vast and stocked with various kinds of items, but the more items there are, the harder it is to make sense of them. A mill can only grind up whatever is poured into it. It may be small and primitive, but it will still grind good grain into pretty good flour. But even if you take a big, modern mill, the very finest, with good grindstones and ideal sieves and load it up with bad grain, it won't turn out anything that's any good. The creative brain is the highest type, a chemical laboratory—load anything you like into it and it produces something fundamentally new, a synthesis. Everything in it works: knowledge, memory, the capacity for independent thought. That kind of brain is very rare, even among people with big heads.”

“I suppose Lenin must have had that kind of brain?” I suggested.

“Lenin?” the Admiral repeated in amazement. “Oh, come on! Lenin had an ideological brain. Yet another type that's not very common. Not a warehouse, not a mill, not a laboratory, but a kind of stomach in the head. Put in all sorts of high-quality foodstuffs and they're all digested and transformed into shit.”

“Well then,” I exclaimed, delighted to have discovered this definition, “that means Shubkin has a stomach-brain too.”

“No, no,” the Admiral protested. “What Shubkin has is a mill-brain. If you poured good grain into it, you might get good flour. But he's loaded up his mill with Lenin's shit, so what comes out is shit too.”

I scraped the used tea leaves out of my glass, threw them into the flames and brewed myself a new batch of tea.

“Shall I make you some too?” I asked the Admiral.

“Yes, please.”

“I'd still like to finish off our conversation though. So you believe a man can be very learned, know a great deal, possess a phenomenal memory and an exceptional talent for languages, and still be no more than a fool?”

“Why yes,” said the Admiral with a nod. “Your Shubkin's an example.”

“And Lenin?”

“Lenin's a fool too,” the Admiral said calmly.

I couldn't restrain myself at that.

“Look here,” I said, “of course, you're an original character and a paradoxical thinker, and I regard Lenin critically myself, but calling him a fool is going too far. He turned the whole world upside down.”

“For what purpose?”

“The purpose is a different matter.”

“No,” said the Admiral, finally growing heated. “It's not a different matter. I've already explained that to your Shubkin. An intelligent man is a man who sets himself a goal and achieves it. But a man who sets himself an unachievable goal and doesn't understand that it's unachievable cannot be regarded as intelligent.”

“Well, let's assume that in terms of everyday life you're right. But Lenin didn't just set himself a simple goal; he set himself a grandiose one.”

“Because he's not just a simple fool,” said the Admiral. “He's a grandiose fool. Put that down in your notebook too: Lenin is a grandiose fool.”

The Admiral paused for a moment; then he must have decided that he ought to offer some arguments for his idea after all.

“I . . .” he began, “. . . unlike you, I have had the time . . . I've read him from cover to cover. And he, begging your pardon, made a total asshole of himself. In every sense. He made a revolution and seized power and turned Russia upside down, but what for? Where are the things that he predicted? Where is communism? Why is capitalism still alive today if it had reached its final stage in his lifetime? Shubkin tried to prove Lenin's intelligence by saying that after the revolution he realized they'd gone too far and decided to make a partial return to capitalism and declared the New Economic Policy. But isn't it stupid to destroy something that existed in complete form in order to go back to it in partial form? In general, I repeat, your Lenin was a grandiose fool, or a brilliant fool if you prefer me to put it that way. But it seems so obvious to me that he was a fool, I can't even be bothered to argue about it.”

It was already late, but I took the risk of missing the last bus and asked the Admiral what he thought about Stalin. Was he a fool too?

“No,” said the Admiral, bundling himself up in the blanket. “Stalin was by no means a fool. He set goals that were quite clear to him and achieved them very precisely.”

“But in doing that he said—”

“What difference does it make what he said?” the Admiral asked with a tired yawn. “What matters is what he did. And he always did exactly what he wanted.”