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PARTISAN REVIEW
think, it's really strange. It's clear from the map that it's not them
surrounding us now, but we're squeezing them everywhere, in Africa,
in Asia, in Europe, and even in America itself. But they've got a po–
tato combine, while besides tanks and planes and figure skating, we
haven't got a fig. How can this be?
It's understandable that the directors couldn't help harboring
wild dogs at me in its heart. An accident helped them out. The
weather conditions turned unbelievably terrible, with rains, winds,
and frosts at night. The roads were washed out, and what kind of
roads we have, you know as well as I do. But here I understand the
arguments of the party committee.
If
the enemy attacks us and man–
ages to penetrate deep into the Tambov district, we'll meet him with
such roadlessness and brigades of!van Sussanins [a peasant who de–
liberately misled some of Napoleon's officers into the woods where
they perished during the war of 1812] that the enemy's compasses
will only crack and their needles whirl in terror. The enemy will be
forced to begin road construction all over Russia, and we don't have
the least intention of getting in his way, using Kutuzov's tactic. Let
him pave our highways and pour enemy asphalt on our pot holes.
Pour away, dear comrade. And when you've finished, we'll chase
you along the central Russian highway through the Tambov district
to the very border and that way kill two birds with one stone: we'll
deal with the invaders and finally get some roads without putting the
people's dough into expensive road building and cutting off the
means of support for defending our motherland.
That's about the way the party committee talks when he carries
out political discussions stone drunk in the field camps.
In a word, the government also has to bring in the potatoes, of
course, and not spite itself, so that it won't have to cart potatoes from
the city in the winter. It's a disgrace to the peasant.
So my heart is full. I don't sleep for four days. I grab a couple of
hours, I rush back and forth with four trailers between the fields and
the store house. The kolhoz girls are standing with sticks over the
doctors of science, the office rats, and the depraved students who
drag our milkmaids away from their work to dances and drinking
parties. Because without these incentives, the city dwellers don't
want to work but only to guzzle vodka, dump on the government in
an uncensored fashion, and sing songs by Vladimir Vysotsky [a
semi-official bard whose songs painted a dim picture of Soviet life],
may he rest in peace.
Of course, I drink too, regularly taking a slug from my soldier's
