Anniversary of the Great October

An anniversary of the Great October - One more - Ever since childhood, I had been taught that everything before October 1917 had been wrong. All of humanity had been on the wrong track. But then Bolsheviks (also called communists) turned up and the wheel of history began to rotate the right way.

Back at school they taught me that the history of mankind was the history of exploitation of man by man. In ancient Rome the slaves dreamed of equality, happiness and freedom. The legendary Spartacus incited the slaves uprising against exploiters. They cut him up to pieces. What a sad story!

And then there were quite a few of them, the fighters for people's happiness. But all ended up badly. Some were put before the firing squad. Others were sent to the gallows. The lucky ones got prison terms. Walt Tyler, Ivan Bolotnikov, Yemelyan Pugachov their name is legion

But in October of 1917, the Bolsheviks headed by Lenin engineered a revolution and after a bloody civil war they established a new and just order. They gave peace to peoples, bread to the hungry, factories to workers, land to peasants. Thus began the really good life.  This, however, was true of Russia alone. In the rest of the world the working people continued to drag a miserable existence. They looked up with envy and hope at the thriving Soviet Union, the first country that reached what was destined to the rest of mankind - communism. They taught me so.

I lived my life. Life taught me lessons of its own.

Every year I was compelled to attend that demonstration. A few days prior to it, the Party organizer gathered our division.
"Comrades! We must display our political consciousness and turn out for this political event".

But nobody is burning with a desire to participate. The weather is lousy (what could be worse than early November in central Russia?). Either rain with snow or snow with rain. The Bolsheviks had chosen for their revolution such a nasty time of the year! But the Party organizer has his benefits to offer. For coming to tread the November mire you will be given a day-off. For carrying the picture of a member of the Central Committee or the shaggy leader of the world's proletariat you'll get an extra tenner on payday.
 
"Sure enough, the weather is something awful", says the Party organizer. - "We shall freeze to death waiting for our turn to go past the rostrum." But the trade union will heat us up a bit".

It means that somewhere round the corner there will be a small table, a rough and ready affair. You may come up to it and take a shot or two of vodka without asking who foots the bill. Somebody will thrust a piece of cheese into your hand for a chaser. Forming a merry column we shall move on towards the rostrum.

But the seemingly unthinkable had happened. The Soviet Union ceased to be. The great and powerful as it stood in the national anthem. Its holidays, however, have remained. Though remembered, they are celebrated more and more quietly with every passing year. The most important one and the one of symbolic significance is the day of the October revolution on November the 7th. Early on in my life I tried to avoid compulsory communist celebrations. I detest all manner of compulsion. Nobody compels me now. Off I go to the demonstration.

I get to the central square without difficulty. Unlike in the past when the police and plain-clothed people used to block the approaches, it's so simple now. Just get on the streetcar and in twenty minutes you will be at the meeting place.  I have arrived a little too late (creeping out of the warm bed was no easy task).

The meeting had already begun, but it was only the first orator making his speech. "Comrades! The anti-people Yeltsyn regime has landed the country in a deadlock. The economy is ruined. The country is robbed. A bunch of crooks has installed a criminal dictatorship in the country. We are kneeling before the West begging for alms from Americans. The great achievements of the Soviet power are defamed and trodden into mud. But our people who have liberated the world from fascism deserve a better life.  We are not slaves! Let's rise from the knees, comrades. Let's sweep our home clean of the Kremlin scum. Let's bring the power and happy life back to the working people." Loud applause and cheers. "Hear! Hear! It's high time!" I stand around. I listen to what is said and think about it.

How very bold we are these days! No fear to publicly call the leaders of the nation scum. Surprisingly, the police (they are close at hand) don't grab anybody. Nor do they push anyone into the paddy wagon. They watch the goings-on rather listlessly. A permitted show. Had you done it, however, in good old days of the Soviet power, you would have found yourself before you could say Jack Knife in an intensive care box of a lunatic asylum.   

A new speaker comes up to the microphone, a young man without a cap. His is an ebullient and forceful oration. A boyish resounding voice rips open the biting November cold.
The sailor Zheleznyak who broke up the Constituent Assembly had hardly turned 19. Arkadiy Gaidar, the heroic grandfather of the current traitor prime minister commanded at 16 a regiment during the Civil War. We, the Russian youth, won't stay away from the struggle. We are resolved to act with determination and our young age won't keep us from fight. Without hesitation we shall follow our elder communist comrades off into the thick of battle. We have no need for drugs and syringes. No need for smutty sex and violence overflowing the mass media. We need education, jobs, a normal life. We want to live a free and happy life. And we won't trade freedom for life!

The young man gets his share of applause. I too want to live a free and happy life. But somehow things never panned out well for me. Neither under the previous regime, nor this one. Incidentally, whose lives is the young man going to trade in? If his own  it's entirely his business. On mine, however, he shouldn't count. For all its uselessness and absurdity I'm set to be its one and sole master. And I'm not planning to part with it.

I look around the square. The huge White House, the former regional headquarters of the communist party, now the seat of the local administration, domineers the scene. Opposite it, stands an immense cast iron Lenin, hands stuck in pockets, unblinking gaze directed towards the better future. Located beneath the statue of the leader are the rostra for the local authorities and guests. Among them is our governor, a member of the last abortive pro-communist coup.

The square is lined with a row of stalls that offer hot cakes, tea and coffee.

Surprisingly, there has assembled here quite a crowd of people in spite of the piercing wind. Those are mainly elderly folks. Throw open their coats, and you will see the glitter of soldiers' medals. It's they who were burning alive in the tank battle of Kursk, forced a crossing of the Dnieper, took by storm Berlin. Millions of their comrades are buried all over Europe. All through their lives those people had been honestly working and genuinely believed that they lived and worked for the noblest of the world's causes, the liberation of man from exploitation. In the evening of their life, however, they suddenly discovered that the country they shed their blood for had disappeared, the state which they trusted had robbed them and declared chimera the idea which they so devoutly served. The new authorities began to assert that capitalism is a normal thing, a good one in fact, that the civilized world lives as prescribed by the law of the capital, and lives, reportedly, not badly. 

As for the revolution of 1917, it was, they say, a bloody mistake. What's to be made of this? 70-odd years of wrong living? A whole generation of the duped? They don't think so, not for a split second! They are indignant. They protest.

The next orator is on the rostrum.

"Comrades! There are now quite a few bright sparks that defame the previous life. They blame the Soviet power for queues and shortages. The say, the wretched sausage for two and twenty was hard to come by. Is it easy now? Here is a foreign sausage for a price which is not affordable to the working people. Fifty million Russian citizens live below the poverty line. Was it so in time of the Soviet power?"

The man is telling the truth. I know of poverty not by hearsay. I'm one of those millions. I eat bad food although I work a lot. My teeth are loose. My shoes are cracked. In the morning before making a dash for the bus, I pour thin porridge into myself. Tea goes on top. My little daughter nearby scratches her spoon against the plate without enthusiasm.

"Daddy, I want a chicken."

'Wait till the holiday, honey. We have chickens on holidays only."

Just standing around is cold. To get warm, I move about among those gathered on the square. I walk into acquaintances. This here is Sevka. We graduated from college together. The principal subject, English,was a torture to him. But for all that he was a born manager. He works now in the White House and holds an important post there. 
Once, as I was clean out of job (the spells of unemployment alternated in my life with periods of a nominal occupation for a pittance) I called on him at the White House. He met me like an old friend. "Upon my word, Sergey, can't offer a thing now. There were two vacancies, but all filled up now. I can't very well turn out people for old chums' sake, can I?" Turning people out or down is not Sevka's style. When Alec, our fellow student, got himself during his last year into a scrape in which even the KGB decided to interfere on a professional basis, Sevka rose with determination to defend the comrade. He even challenged the dean's anger. They threw all the book at Alec back then. Recalled his infatuation with Western music, his freethinking at the seminars of scientific communism, even his red beard (the dean hated bearded individuals) figured as a symptom of succumbing to the pernicious influence from the West. That he was a Jew was off the agenda, but was somehow implied. Alec got away with it, though not unscathed. The dean did flunk him at the last state exam. For perceived in him "a foreign element", indifferent if not ironical to the general line of the Communist Party. Considered it dangerous to issue the Red Degree, the sign of distinction in learning, to a political maverick like Alec. The latter made do with the standard blue one and left the college for God knows where.

One day (or rather night?) as I was fumbling the knob of my wireless, I heard Alec's voice on the short waves favored by the enemy propaganda. I couldn't believe my ears. That was him!  A short time later, my telephone rang. I picked up the receiver and recognized him at once.

"Alec? Where are you calling from?"

"From London."

"What are you doing there?"

"Working."

"Where?"

"At the BBC."

"How come?

"Ah.... It's a long story....

"Do you ever come to Russia?"

"Sometimes. Plan to be there next week."

"Drop by and stay at my place if you like. I could fix you up with a place to sleep."

Alec paid a short visit to Russia. But didn't call on me. Went for a meeting with Sevka.

Had the dean learned about Alec's whereabouts and doings, he would have turned several times in his grave.

Why, here's another familiar face. Vladimir T, my former senior colleague. At one time he was an inspector at the oblast committee of the party (communist, of course, for there was no other). When the party was scrapped he joined a commercial firm and headed its branch, a casino in Karl Marx Street. Casino went broke. V.T. returned to the White House staffed now with those referred to as anticommunists and democrats. I have no wish to meet him. I go past him without noticing.

Here's another old acquaintance, a young pensioner, a retired KGB colonel. He is the last man I should like to see, but I must use the opportunity and try to find out something.

"Hi! Congratulations!", I say, as I hold out my hand.

"Hi! How goes it?"

"Thank God, I'm still well and kicking."

After a bit of small talk, I ask him a question, which had been burning my insides quite some time.

"I say, B.B. When I was taken on at the plant where I work now, they gave me a questionnaire to fill out. At the end of it stood a postscript, which read, "I do not object to checks done with respect to me by the Federal Security Service." What could it possibly mean?

"Why does it interest you?"

"I started noticing strange things about myself. Hence I wish to know if my telephone is tapped. And if my mails are tampered with by certain people."

"And what do you think?"

"I think we have the law and the Constitution."

"How old are you?"

"What's my age to do with that?"

"You are a grown-up man. Why ask kids questions?"

The meeting goes on. A good-looking man in a smart uniform of a police officer comes up to the microphone. Must be a general, judging by the wide red trouser stripes.

"Comrades! Time is come to set things right in our country. The Ministry of Interior and the related agencies are determined to fight crime, corruption, and embezzlers of public funds. The plank beds are ready and await the guests. We will find them, we will put them in prison, we will!"

The search has been on for quite some time. No one has been found to date. Who killed the journalist Listyev and what for? Who murdered Starovoitova, the Duma deputy? And what about two guys caught red handed with a box full of dollars at the exit from government building? Where did the money come from and go to? A kind-hearted uncle gave it for carrying about for a while?

Somewhat aloof from others stands a man in a slouched hat. He is holding a notice that reads "Zionism is Russia's enemy". He carries on his propaganda. I come closer.

"Kikes ruin Russia. Kikes are the root of all troubles. Russia used to be a perfectly normal state. Zionists pushed her off the right track".

"The revolution of 1917 was a natural historical phenomenon," objects somebody with a knowing air.

"Rubbish! A Zionist plot! Just look! Who invented communism? Karl Marx. Who was he? A Jew! Who began implementing that heresy in Russia? Lenin and Trotsky. Who were they? Right you are, both Jews. They are everywhere. They spread around the world and suck the blood of the working people".

"Nonsense!" I say. "Jews are people like all others. I know quite a few quite decent Jews".

"There are no decent Jews. They are all cunning beasts. Could you name just one Jew working as a metallurgist or a miner? No such thing! Hitler did a good job exterminating the Jewish breed. Pity they didn't let him bring to completion the good initiative."

We know where we are with this gentleman. We can step away, and stop all manner of arguing.

.... The meeting is over. A group of comrades headed by the governor and escorted by the bodyguards make for the White House. After an hour's vigilance in the chilling wind, warming oneself over a festive table is just the right thing.

A woman mounts a rostrum. She asks the audience to stay a little longer - there's going to be some sort of concert. Should I stay or go?

An elderly man approaches the microphone. He has a big fleshy face with a gray handlebar moustache, the face of Taras Bulba, the main character of Gogol's heroic narration. Scanning the square, he knits his brow and pointing to the row of stalls with cakes says with evident displeasure: "Couldn't we do without that here?"

After a pause, Bulba began to sing:

"I have wandered the world quite a lot:

Lived in trenches, and froze in snow;

Twice been buried alive but survived,

Separation from home I know."

I too had knocked about the world quite a bit. Roasted in the sands of the Sahara. Was freezing on exercises in the Byelorussian forest. Sipping beer, wallowed on the sun-kissed beaches of the Persian Gulf. The beginning of my career was breathtaking. While still a student I'd been sent on a mission abroad. A boy in his salad days was allowed to peep from behind the iron curtain. An incredible stroke of luck! I saw foreigners, big bosses and ordinary workmen. They looked a far cry from what I was told they ought to be, the cheap workforce bled white by capitalism. They didn't want communism. They liked Russian people, and disliked Russian orders. They goggled at a woman with a sledgehammer, and were amazed by Russian men's ability to drink a sea of vodka.

Then something happened to me, or rather somewhere around me. The exit from the country became closed to me. Contacts with foreigners were cut off. Why? I don't know. Thus I vegetated the best years of my career at a chemical laboratory.

Bulba goes on singing. His words penetrate my heart:

"I love woods that embrace dear Moscow,

I love bridges with banks at all times;

I love Red Square with turrets in glow

And the sound of Kremlin chimes".

A long time ago, as I found myself in the wild Red Sea Hills of the Sudan, I suddenly felt terribly homesick. I sat down on the stone and made a promise that once I returned to my homeland, I would visit Red Square before everything. I am not a Muscovite, but like any Russian I hold dear this place from where on the anniversary of the October revolution our fathers were leaving for the war. It's here that many years prior to that (and again in October!) the great tsar Peter obsessed by reforms did not deem it beneath his royal dignity to cut off with his own hands the heads of strelets, soldiers of the army who rose in mutiny. All Russia's Sovereign loved his land to self-abnegation...

Bulba keeps singing:

"I love the Ukraine,

The waters of Baikal,

The peaks of the Caucasus scratching the skies".

The Caucasus today is a blood bath. Where are you now, my army buddy and a wrestling partner Hadji Hadjiyev from Grozny? Surely you are at war shooting and killing Russian soldiers if not yet shot and killed. Hadji, God forbid that in a year's time when my son is made to put on the uniform and sent to the Caucasus that you should set on him the sights of your rifle.

People listen, the piercing wind notwithstanding. I too listen. My eyes glisten. Is it the effect of the biting November wind or what?

The concert is over. Bulba retires to a bus nearby. I want to see him. I want to tell him that his singing is something remarkable Opening the bus door, I enter the saloon. Bulba comes towards me, wiping his moustache with the back of his hand. Plainly, he has just had a shot of it for the warmth's sake.

"You want something here, my good man?"

"Yes, sir. I want to thank you. You sing ever so beautifully"

"I can do it, surely. Used to sing solo arias at the Bolshoi in my time".

"It's obvious, that you enjoy what you are doing. You are a fine singer. You are a doing a great job".

"That's right, young man. One has to love one's job and put his soul in it. And then everything will work fine in our country."

I wish to tell him something pleasing and I say, probably very irrelevantly.

"Best wishes for the holiday! Good health to you and personal happiness".

Bulba frowned, waved his hand.

"What fucking hell do I want with personal happiness when a country LIKE THAT has gone to the dogs!"

I'm hurrying home. The wind forces its way to my bosom as if intent on taking out my soul. Huh! The month of November is not the best of times in central Russia! But if you are going to a warm home where you are welcome, and there's a hot chicken on the table awaiting you while cool vodka languishes in the frig in eager anticipation to be consumed. Well... under such circumstances life is not a bad thing, after all.