YUZ ALESHKOVSKY
371
us country people parasites riding into communism on their hump
and extorting bestial prices from them for potatoes in the winter
markets and in the spring when the government potato turns into
horrible moldy rot? We village people curse the city folks since we
produce meat and milk but still have to tear around Moscow and
wait our turn in lines for vegetables ourselves, because in the village
store they only sell cans of seaweed. Even the flies in the village store
won't fly anywhere near it but keep close to the president's office,
where he and his brigade leaders grease their red faces at dinner lick–
ing the bones of the lamb they've snitched .
So what's the people to do with its dear potato if the rain, let's
say, does it in? What's it to do, I repeat, if instead of black flies,
white ones suddenly appear and cover all the tops with powder, and
before you know it, frost grips the field?
And the president and the red-faced party committee zip around
in their jeeps bursting their iron-lined throats: "All hands to the har–
vest ... not a minute's delay . .. work quickly and without spoilage
... we will dedicate our valiant labor to the anniversary of the revo–
lution ... we will quiver fraternally on our work shift in honor of
Soviet-Polish friendship ... ."
So one time, as a renowned tractor driver and mechanic of
labor procedures, I say : "What's going on in one-sixth of the world
and in the two-sixths more we conquered after sixty-five years of
Soviet power? Our submarines hang around under water for half a
year at a time like Captain Nemo. Number one . We're shooting the
cosmos full of holes with our rockets, so that hostile whirlwinds tear
in through the holes and ruin the harvests with the crappy climate.
That's two. We have so many bombs that they say you could shove
the planet earth together with our district of Tambov off its axis, and
not one tractor station could save the situation . That's three . But
why can't we think up a potato combine? What's the point of chasing
doctors of science out into the fields to harvest? You'd do better to sit
them down - the parasites - to the drawing boards and not let them
leave their work until they produce a design - the bastards - for a
clever machine which is essential to our people and the whole social–
ist camp ."
Well, at this the red-faced party committee came after me with
his fists, and I take up a crow bar, and with this crow bar in my
hands , I hear out the usual blab about capitalist encirclement and
the necessity for increasing military strength in preparation for the
victory of the workers over the whole earth's globe. I listen, and I
