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VASSILY AKSYONOV
603
Socialism is our Fatherland." Losoto finds it offensive that the pam–
yatniks constantly, and in vain, cite and refer to Lenin to strengthen
their own concept of patriotism. She believes that their concept has
nothing in common with genuine Leninist ideas and gives us to
understand that the pamyatniks use the sacred name of Lenin only
for cover or as a smokescreen for the attacking columns of dyed-in–
the-wool nationalists . But the fundamental pseudo-conflict of two
ideological currents is what's covered up here, the fundamentally in–
correct approach of Comrade Losoto . She seems to think that the
pamyatniks' apology to Lenin is insincere, that they are non–
Bolsheviks, when in fact they are thoroughly sincere and are very
Bolshevik indeed with only one distinction : in this scenario Losoto
represents pure but outmoded Bolshevism, while the pamyatniks
stand for Bolsheviks in the new stage, that is, national Bolshevism.
Some of Losoto's sayings exude this outmoded Marxist musti–
ness : " . . . patriarchal patriotism is the trail of dust left behind by
the rapidly advancing country [this is not bad stuff from a literary
point of view] that most recently was populated by an enormous
dark mass of almost entirely illiterate peasants who for centuries
believed in God [I automatically undo the backwater Marxist affront
to God by capitalizing the G] and Tsar and for centuries blamed all
evil on the devil and the heterodox. . . . "
This example of the ignorance of the masses is not very well
chosen; if not from the devil, then whence evil? As far as the
heterodox goes, the Marxist-Leninists have dumped all evil for the
last seven decades on him, on the one who thinks differently, who
holds different beliefs or any beliefs at all (outside their own). But
the biggest warp in the above lies in the speculative treatment of the
Russian past as if to imply that all heaven and earth opened up to
Russia after the introduction of Marxism-Leninism.
In one sense we can hardly disagree with Andreyev, a repre–
sentative of Pamyat. Losoto quotes him: "History was yanked out
from under the feet of the people.
If
you take a look at the calendar,
you'll see that our country was in an Ice Age before 1917.. . . "
Regardless of chic metaphors - "the rapidly advancing coun–
try," "the trail of dust of the past" - we hear a musty, agitprop
anachronism in Losoto's words. The anachronism is especially ob–
vious today when even official Party spokesmen find the courage to
talk of the monstrous stagnation both in the economy and in public
life, of signs of physical degeneration, of the colossal gap between
