bus he heard a heart-rending scream. «They have cut her up. Police! Ambulance!» Lying lifeless on a seat was a young woman, a large, wet crimson splotch on her thin pink coat. There were no public telephones on the streets, and calls for help had to be relayed by word of mouth or runners. The police arrived about an hour later. They could do nothing except haul away the body.
Viktor examined the newspapers the next day. They did not mention the murder, as he was almost certain they would not, for crimes of violence in Rubtsovsk never were reported. They did report the rising crime rate in Chicago along with the rising production of Soviet industry and agriculture.
Of course, I know there are many criminals in Chicago and everywhere else in capitalist countries. How could it be otherwise? They always are having one crisis on top of another. The people are exploited and poor and hungry and plagued by all the other ulcers of capitalism. We don't need the newspaper to tell us that. We need to know what's going on here.
Why do we have so many criminals, so many people who don't want to live openly and honestly? They say the criminals are the remnants of capitalism. But the Revolution was in 1917. That was nearly half a century ago. All these criminals grew up under communism, not capitalism. Why has our system brought them up so poorly?
Having fractured his wrist in a soccer match, Viktor took a bus to the dispensary for treatment. Although his wrist hurt, he recognized that his condition did not constitute an emergency, and he thought nothing of waiting. Ahead of him in the line, though, was a middle-aged woman crying with pain that periodically became so acute she bent over double and screamed. Her apprehensive husband held her and assured her that a doctor would see her soon. Viktor had been there about an hour when a well-dressed man and a woman appeared. A nurse immediately ushered them past the line and into the doctor's office. The husband of the sick woman shouted, «This is not just! Can't you see? My wife needs help now!»
«Shut up and wait your turn,» said the nurse.
If we are all equal, if ours is a classless society, how can this happen? And why do some people get apartments right away, while everybody else waits years? And look at Khokhlov [son of a local Party secretary]. He's a real murderer and robber; everybody knows that, and everybody is afraid of him. But every time he's arrested, they let him go. Why does the Party pretend everybody is equal when everybody knows we are not?
One of Viktor's political instructors, the teacher of social philosophy, genuinely idolized Khrushchev as a visionary statesman whose earthy idiosyncrasies reflected his humanitarian nature and his origins as a man of the people. Khrushchev had freed the people of the benighting inequities bequeathed by the tyrannical Stalin, and by his multifaceted genius was leading the people in all directions toward a halcyon era of plenty. On the occasion of Khrushchev's seventieth birthday the instructor read to the class the paeans published by Pravda. Everyone could be sure that despite advancing years, the Party leader retained his extraordinary mental acumen and robust physical vigor. We are lucky to have such a man as our leader.
Some months later the same instructor, as if mentioning a minor modification in a Five-Year Plan, casually announced that Khrushchev had requested retirement «due to old age.» For a while nothing was said in school about the great Khrushchev or his successors. Then it began. Past appearances had been misleading. Fresh findings resulted from scientific review by the Party disclosed that Khrushchev actually was an ineffectual bumbler who had made a mess of the economy while dangerously relaxing the vigilance of the Motherland against the ubiquitous threats from the «Dark Forces of the West.» Under Brezhnev, the nation at last was blessed with wise and strong leadership.
This is incredible! What can you believe? Why do they keep changing the truth? Why is what I see so different from what they say?
Recoiling from the quackery of social studies, Viktor veered toward the sciences — mathematics, chemistry, physics, and especially biology. Here logic, order, and consistency prevailed. The laws of Euclid or Newton were not periodically repealed, and you did not have to take anybody's word for anything. You could test and verify for yourself.
He shifted his reading to popular science magazines and technical journals, to books and articles about biology and medicine, aviation and mechanics. At the time, Soviet students were required to study vocational as well as academic subjects, and those who excelled could participate in an extracurricular club the members of which build equipment and machinery. Viktor designed a radio-controlled tractor which was selected for a Moscow exhibition displaying technical achievements of students throughout the Soviet Union. As a prize, he received a two-week trip to the capital.
The broad boulevards of Moscow, paved and lighted; subway trams speeding through tiled and muraled passages; theaters, restaurants, and museums; ornate old Russian architecture; department stores and markets selling fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers; traffic and official black limousines — all represented wondrous new sights. Collectively they elated him while they inspired pride in his country and hopeful questions.
Is not the Party right after all? Does not what I have seen prove that we are making progress? Will not all cities someday be like Moscow?
The final morning he joined a long line of men and women waiting four abreast outside the Kremlin to view the perpetually refurbished body of Lenin. The Kremlin, with its thick red walls, stately spires, and turrets, connoted to him majesty and might, and upon finally reaching the bier, he felt himself in the presence of history and greatness. He wanted to linger, but a guard motioned him onward. Leaving reverently, he asked the guard where the tomb of Stalin was. The answer astonished him. They had evicted Stalin from the Lenin mausoleum. Why, they've thrown him away like a dog!
While telling his classmates back in Rubtsovsk about Moscow, Viktor heard disturbing news. The KGB had arrested the older brother of a friend for economic crimes. He remembered how admiring all had been the year before when the youth had bribed a Party functionary to secure employment in the meat-packing plant. There, as everybody knew, a clever person could wax rich by stealing meat for sale on the black market, and procurement of the job had seemed like a triumph of entrepreneurship. He will be imprisoned. He will be one of them in the trucks. He will be a zek.
The specter shocked Viktor into recognition of a frightening pattern in the behavior of many of his peers. Some had taken to waylaying and robbing drunks outside factories in the evening of paydays. Others had stolen and disassembled cars and machinery, to sell the parts on the black market. A few, sent to reform school for little more than malicious mischief or habitual truancy, had emerged as trained gangsters, who were graduating from petty thievery to burglary and armed robbery.
They are becoming real criminals. They never will be New Communist Men. Nothing is going to fix them. How did our communist society do this to them? I do not understand. But if it can make them that way, it could make me that way. That I will not allow. It is as Father said. I must make my own way. I must start now before it is too late.
Always Viktor had received good marks in school without especially exerting himself. He attended to his homework dutifully but quickly so he could devote himself to his own pursuits. Frequently in class, particularly during political lectures, he read novels concealed behind textbooks. Now he resolved to strive during the remainder of school to earn the highest honors attainable, to obey all rules and laws, to try to mold himself into a New Communist Man. Through distinction, he would find his way out of Rubtsovsk and into the sky.
Faithful to his vows, he disassociated himself from most of his friends, studied hard, and parroted the political polemics, even when he believed them absurd. As part of the final examinations in the spring of 1965, he artfully wrote three papers entitled «Progress of the Soviet System,» «Crisis of the Western World,» and «Principles of the New Communist Man.» They faithfully regurgitated the dogma of the day and were brightened by a few original flourishes of his own. The teacher, who read portions of «Progress of the Soviet System» aloud, commended his selection of the tank as the best exemplification of the supremacy of Soviet technology. Although Viktor achieved his goal in social philosophy, a perfect grade of five, he was not entirely proud because he suspected that not all he wrote was true.
Certainly, his assessment of the crisis of the Western world was valid. The grip of the Dark Forces which controlled governments, policies, events, and the people of Western societies was weakening. The Dark Forces, that shadowy cabal, comprised of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the American military, the Mafia, Wall Street, corporate conglomerates and their foreign lackeys, clearly themselves were in retreat and disarray. Everywhere in the West, signs of decay and impending collapse were apparent. * However, he was not so sure that the progress of Soviet society was as real and fated as his paper asserted. And he personally doubted the
