exceeded. They would stop the furnace to extract a 200-kilogram mold “which was stuck” or change the stuffing box in the press cylinder because “the steam pressure is too low” or intentionally make something defective so that it would have to be remade.
An ironsmith in Viktor’s section was a veritable genius at his work and ordinarily discharged his assigned duties in an hour or so, then loafed the remainder of the day, smoking, strolling about, and chatting with friends. Out of curiosity rather than censure, Viktor frankly asked why he did not make a hero of himself by surpassing his quota, as the Party constantly exhorted everybody to do. “You know nothing of life, young fellow,” he replied. “If I chose, I could do ten times as much work. But what would that bring me? Only a quota ten times as high. And I must think of my fellows. If I exceed my quota, they will be expected to exceed theirs.”
The Educational Section of the Cultural Division of the tank factory employed ten or eleven artists full time to paint posters intended to correct such attitudes and inspire the workers. Some of the posters Viktor saw were labeled “Be a New Communist Man,” “Marching Toward True Communism,” “Building a New Base for Communism,” “I Will Exceed My Quota 100 Percent,” “Be a Hero of the Party,” “The Party and People Are One.” The posters and the weekly political lectures by Party representatives did provide conversation pieces, and a favorite topic they raised was the Utopian life True Communism would introduce.
The Twenty-second Party Congress in 1961 had proclaimed that the Soviet Union would largely realize True Communism by 1980. True Communism, by definition, would inundate the land with such a bounty of goods and services, food and housing, transport and medicine, recreational, cultural, and educational opportunities that each citizen could partake of as much of the common wealth as he or she wished. And all would be free! Born of an environment that fully and continuously gratified all material needs, a new breed of man would emerge — the New Communist Man — unselfish, compassionate, enlightened, strong, brave, diligent, brotherly, altruistic. He would be unflawed by any of the imperfections that had afflicted man through ages past. There would be no reason for anybody to be otherwise.
But on the oil-soaked floors of the factory, the assemblyline workers took their indoctrination sessions with more than a great deal of skepticism:
“Since everybody can have as much of everything as he wants and everything will be free, we can stay drunk all the time.”
“No, I’m going to stay sober on Mondays because every Monday I will fly to a different resort.”
“I will stay sober on Sundays; half sober anyway. On Sundays I will drive my car and my wife will drive her car to the restaurant for free caviar.”
“And we won’t have to work. The tanks will produce themselves.”
“Hey, this New Communist Man, does he ever have to go to the toilet?”
The irreverent mockery of the promised future usually was accompanied by obscene complaints about the real present. Someone’s mother still was not being paid the pension to which she indisputably was entitled. The facade of the apartment building had fallen off, and wind was blowing through the exposed cracks. Somebody had been informed he would have to wait another year for the apartment that was supposed to have been his two years ago and for which he already had waited five years. Some son of a bitch had stuffed up the garbage chute again, and the whole building was beginning to stink like a cesspool. Half the meat somebody’s wife had stood in line three hours for turned out to be spoiled when unwrapped.
The slogans, exhortations, theories, and promises of the Party were as irrelevant to their lives, to the daily, precarious struggle just to exist, as the baying of some forlorn wolf on the faraway steppes. To the extent they took note, it was to laugh, to jeer at the patent absurdities and hypocrisies. Yet in the tank factory, as on the
At the time, he had never heard of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, or any other dissidents. He had never read a
For all the unconcealable defects, the admitted mistakes of the past, the conspicuous inefficiencies, there was empirical evidence that the system, after a fashion, did work. The harvest, after all, had been gathered. Workers after some years did get apartments. Before holidays, meat and even toilet paper could be bought in the stores. Tanks were manufactured, and as he himself had written, they were the best tanks in the world, and the Soviet Union had thousands of them. Besides, things were worse in the West, where capitalism inexorably was disintegrating in accordance with the laws of history.
There remained in his mind, however, corrosive thoughts that he could not extirpate, contradictions that multiplied doubts while sapping faith.
Although Viktor did not try to be “a white crow among the black crows” at the factory, he did attract the attention of management. Noticing his mechanical aptitude and how quickly he learned, a supervisor made him a kind of utility man who substituted for absentees, and he became adept at a variety of jobs. Solely because he preferred to do something, anything, rather than lounge about idly, he always was willing to work. Sometimes on Saturday, when there was no DOSAAF class, he did contribute to the purchase of vodka and share a glass or two with his colleagues. Otherwise, he did not drink on the job, and he never showed up incapacitated with a hangover.
One morning in April his supervisor told him to report to the office of the factory manager. Also present were a Party representative, who was part of management, and the deputy personnel director, who probably was a KGB officer. The manager, an earnest man, stated that the factory required engineers combining the talents and personal qualities he exemplified. Therefore, the factory was willing to send him to a university to study industrial engineering for five years. It would pay him three-fourths of his present salary, plus an allowance for food, lodging, and travel. Because the factory was a vital defense installation and in light of his DOSAAF training, he would be exempt from military service. In return, he would have to commit himself to work at the factory for at least two years after his graduation. The manager said he realized that the offer was a surprise and that he wanted him to ponder his answer carefully. He would need an answer by June.
The honor and opportunity were enormous, and to almost any young man of his status, the offer would have been irresistible, as it was intended to be. Out of politeness, Viktor thanked the manager and promised to deliberate in the coming weeks. To himself, he instantly answered no.
Outside the factory Viktor did have something to look forward to — the possibility of entering the Air Force in the fall and, every week or so, a few hours with Nadezhda. From her manner in class no one would have discerned that they knew each other personally. But on Sundays, when they skated, attended a hockey match or the theater, to which she once invited him, or merely walked in the park and drank tea, neither disguised their liking for the other.
Toward the end of the month she called him aside before classes began. “Pay close attention tonight. This may be your chance.”
There was a special speaker, a colonel who had come to solicit applications for the Soviet Air Defense Command flight-training program conducted at Armavir in the Caucasus. The colonel was candid and businesslike in his briefing. Khrushchev believed that rockets alone could defend against aircraft, and consequently, he had cashiered thousands of fighter pilots who now were dispersed in civilian life, their skills rusted by disuse. The performance and tactics of American aircraft in Vietnam increasingly proved that Khrushchev was wrong. Valuable as missiles were, aircraft also were essential to combat aircraft. The Mother Country required a new generation of fighter pilots to rebuild its interceptor forces. Only the best would be chosen; their training would be long and arduous. But for those who succeeded, the career opportunities, material rewards, and honor of joining the elite of
