44
PARTISAN REVIEW
with the "sixth layer." Between the disreputable, thievish, drunken
sanitation technician of the housing administration and the average
factory technician lies an abyss. They belong to different nations. The
humanistic intelligentsia, however, whose daily contacts are mostly
with the "sixth layer," bases its evaluation of the entire people on such
encounters . On the whole, the' 'sixth layer" really does present an
unattractive picture and it fills the intellectuals with panic. The" sixth
layer" has become morally alienated and has learned less than the
other social categories, but it is just this group which Sinyavsky,
Amalrik, and many others use as their model. Lumpenproletariat
remains the same everywhere and always . The Soviet lumpenproletari–
an is, of course , even less attractive since he has kept no inner resource
to hide behind as defense against the influence of the Soviet way of
life, a way of life described in the folk saying , " Dog eats Comrade
dog."
Nadezhda Mandelstam (and she is certainly no materialist) writes,
"Wherever an iron discipline reigns 'the masses' emerge, but people
in the factories live their own life and
remain people ..
. .
live their
special, perfectly human life which does not mechanize them in the
least. They do not become part of 'the masses .''' She means "the
masses " of inborn slaves.
Remember the types of workers with whom Nadezhda
Mandelstam lived and worked during the most terrible years! There is
nothing unstable , disreputable, frivolously irresponsible or slavish
about them! How closely, on the contrary , do they resemble the
, 'Sakharov type ." Mrs. Mandelstam repeatedly stresses the absence of
any alienation from or hostility toward the intelligentsia, especially
toward their own, the factory intelligentsia, on the part of the workers.
For about five years I worked as a teacher of chemistry and physics in
workers' youth schools and, later, for ten years I was a correspondent
reporting on industry and science . I fully share Mrs. Mandelstam's
views and am convinced that the intensive and clearly visible lessons of
the fifty-five years of Soviet rule have not been wasted on the majority
of people from the category " engineers and factory workers." What
they learned is of vital importance, since it is the base on which it will
be possible to establish democracy in Russia . They learned to loathe
