WRITERS IN EXILE
515
a cynic for poking fun at him and his idols. He liked to tell me
that I was not progressive, that I was backward, and that I could
not properly assess events in their complexity, because I didn't
read Lenin. He said I would understand everything if only I
would read Lenin, since Lenin had the answers to all questions.
Although I was not opposed to Lenin, I couldn't believe he had
answers to all possible questions, and therefore I was in no mood
to read him more carefully. Years passed, and my friend did not
stand still ideologically. Lenin's portrait disappeared from the
wall, replaced by a portrait of Rosa Luxemburg. Next
to
the por–
trait of Mayakovsky there appeared a portrait of Brecht.
Later-sometimes together, sometimes replacing each other–
portraits of Hemingway, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Pasternak,
Akhmatova, and Solzhenitsyn made their appearances. For a
while there was even a picture of Sakharov. Marat held out longest
of all-perhaps because busts are more difficult to replace. I could
not manage
to
keep up with all the stages of my friend's develop–
ment, but I knew that one thing had not changed: my friend was
always, up front, a romantic. And I was a backward, retrograde
cynic. Finally we had a quarrel, and I did not drop in on him for
several years. When I did, I saw that the decorations had changed
radically: icons and portraits of Nicholas II and Father Florensky
had appeared. I found Marat behind a bookshelf, covered with a
thick layer of dust. We chatted for a while-until I expressed cer–
tain backward views, and my friend explained to me that my
misapprehensions were explained by the fact that I had not read
Father Pavel Florensky. And I realized that my friend had a new,
progressive world view.
My friend's development was characteristic of people of my
generation. Many of them radically altered their original views.
Some changed from Marxism and atheism to orthodoxy and
monarchism, others to Zionism, others to Buddhism, and still
others to cynicism.
It
all went according to schedule. Leo Tolstoy
once said, "People say it is shameful to change one's views, but I
say it is shameful not to change them."
Personally, I prefer doubts to convictions. I have met too
many people who are convinced that they are right in supporting
a cause that has made others unhappy.
If
a person does finally
realize that he has been in error all his life and been on the wrong
road, he ought to stop and think. And if he decides to rush off in
