and hatred.
The sharp blade of their youthful enmity flashed out anew, as though cutting through whole decades; this meeting in a concentration camp reminded them not only of years of hatred, but also of their youth.
This man, for all his hostility, knew and loved what Mostovskoy had known and loved in his youth. It was Chernetsov – not Osipov or Yershov – who remembered the First Party Congress and names that everyone else had long ago forgotten. They talked excitedly about the relations between Marx and Bakunin, about what Lenin and Plekhanov had said about the hard-liners and the softs on the editorial staff of
Evidently sharing the same feelings as Mostovskoy, the one-eyed Menshevik grinned and said: 'Touching accounts have been written of meetings between old friends. What about meetings between old enemies, between tired, grey-haired old dogs like you and me?'
Mostovskoy glimpsed a tear on Chernetsov's cheek. They both knew that they would die soon. The events of their lives would be levelled over; their enmity, their convictions, their mistakes, would all be buried beneath the sand.
'Yes,' said Mostovskoy. 'If you fight against someone all your days, he becomes a part of your life.'
'How strange to meet in this wolf-pit,' said Chernetsov. Then, apropos of nothing at all, he murmured: 'What wonderful words: 'wheat', 'corn', 'April showers'.'
'This camp's a terrible place,' said Mostovskoy. He laughed. 'Anything else seems good in comparison – even meeting a Menshevik.'
Chernetsov nodded sadly. 'Yes, things are hard for you.'
'Hitlerism!' said Mostovskoy. 'I never imagined there could be such a hell.'
'Don't try and fool me,' said Chernetsov. 'There's not much you don't know about terror!'
The melancholy warmth of only a moment before might never have existed. They began to argue furiously and without mercy.
The terrible thing about Chernetsov's slander was that it contained an element of truth. What he did was to extrapolate general laws from occasional mistakes and incidental cruelties.
'Of course it suits you to think that some people went too far in 1937,' he said to Mostovskoy, 'that the success of collectivization went to people's heads, that your great and beloved leader is perhaps just a little cruel and megalomaniac. But the truth of the matter is very different: it's precisely Stalin's monstrous inhumanity that makes him Lenin's successor. As you love to repeat – Stalin is the Lenin of today. You still think that the workers' lack of rights and the poverty in the villages are something temporary, just growing pains. But you're the true kulaks, you're the true monopolists – the wheat you buy from a peasant for five kopecks a kilo and sell back to him for a rouble a kilo is the foundation-stone of your whole socialist edifice.'
'So even you, an emigre and a Menshevik, admit that Stalin is the Lenin of today,' retorted Mostovskoy. 'It's true: we are the heirs to all the generations of Russian revolutionaries from Pugachev to Razin. The heir to Razin, Dobrolyubov and Herzen is Stalin, not you renegade Mensheviks!'
'Fine heirs you make!' said Chernetsov. 'Do you realize the meaning of the elections for the Constituent Assembly? After a thousand years of slavery! During an entire millennium Russia has been free for little more than six months. Your Lenin didn't inherit Russian freedom – he destroyed it. When I think of the trials of 1937, I remember a very different legacy. Do you remember the secret-police chief Colonel Sudeykin? He and Degaev hoped to terrify the Tsar by inventing conspiracies, and then seize power themselves. And you think of Stalin as the heir to Herzen?'
'You must be mad,' said Mostovskoy. 'Are you serious about Sudeykin? And what about the great social revolution, the expropriation of the expropriators, the factories seized from the capitalists, the land seized from the gentry? Has all that passed you by? Whose legacy is that? Sudeykin's? And the way the workers and peasants have entered every sphere of social activity? Do you call that a legacy from Sudeykin? I almost pity you.'
'I know, I know,' said Chernetsov. 'One can't argue with facts. But one can explain them. Your Marshals and writers, your doctors of science, your people's commissars are servants not of the proletariat, but of the State. And as for the people who work in the fields and on the shop-floors! I don't think even you would have the nerve to call them masters. Fine masters they make!'
He leaned towards Mostovskoy.
'Incidentally, there's only one of you I really respect – and that's Stalin. He's a real man! The rest of you are just cissies. He understands the true basis of Socialism in One Country: iron terror, labour camps and medieval witch-trials!'
'I've heard all this shit before,' said Mostovskoy. 'But I must say, there is something particularly nasty about your way of putting things. Only a man who's lived in your home since he was a child and then been thrown out onto the street can be that despicable. And do you realize what that man is? A lackey!'
He stared hard at Chernetsov.
'Still, I'd wanted to talk about what brought us together in 1898, not what separated us in 1903.'
'So that's what you wanted, is it? A cosy little chat about the days before the lackey was sent packing?'
At that Mostovskoy really did get angry.
'Yes, that's just it! A runaway lackey. A lackey who's been thrown out onto the street! Wearing kid gloves. We don't wear gloves – we've got nothing to hide. We plunge our hands into dirt and blood. We came to the workers' movement without Plekhanov's kid gloves. What use have those gloves been to you, anyway? Thirty pieces of silver for some articles in the
'And is that how it's always been?' interrupted Chernetsov. 'What about the pact with Hitler and the invasion of Poland in 1939? And the way your tanks crushed Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia? And the invasion of Finland? Your army and Stalin have taken back everything that was given to the small nations by the Revolution. And what about the suppression of the peasant rebellions in Central Asia? And Kronstadt? Was that in the name of freedom and democracy?'
Mostovskoy held his hand up to Chernetsov's face.
'I've already told you – we don't wear kid gloves.'
Chernetsov nodded.
'Do you remember Strelnikov, the political-police chief? He didn't wear kid gloves either. He had revolutionaries beaten up till they were half-dead and then wrote out false confessions… What was the purpose of 1937? You say you were preparing to fight Hitler. Was your teacher Marx or Strelnikov?'
'None of your filth surprises me,' said Mostovskoy. 'It's what I've come to expect. But you know what does surprise me? Why should the Nazis put you in a camp? They hate us frenziedly. That's clear enough. But why should Hitler imprison you and your friends?'
Once again, as at the very beginning of the conversation, Chernet-sov smiled.
'Well,' he said, 'they haven't let me go yet. Maybe you should get up a petition for my release.'
Mostovskoy was in no mood for joking.
'No, you shouldn't be in one of Hitler's camps – not with the hatred you bear us. Nor should this character.' He pointed at Ikonnikov who was making his way towards them.
Ikonnikov's hands and face were smeared with clay. He held out some dirty sheets of paper covered in writing and said: 'Have a look through this. Tomorrow I might be dead.'
'All right. But why've you decided to leave us so suddenly?'
'Do you know what I've just heard? The foundations we've been digging are for gas ovens. Today we began pouring the concrete.'
'Yes,' said Chernetsov, 'there were rumours about that when we were laying the railway-tracks.'
He looked round. Mostovskoy thought Chernetsov must be wondering whether the men coming in from work had noticed how straightforwardly and naturally he was talking to an Old Bolshevik. He probably felt proud to be seen like this by the Italians, Norwegians, Spanish and English – and, above all, by the Russian prisoners-of- war.
'But how can people carry on working?' asked Ikonnikov. 'How can we help to prepare such a horror?'
Chernetsov shrugged his shoulders. 'Do you think we're in England or something? Even if eight thousand people
