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mythology. Walesa represented the working class, which, it turned out,
rebelled against its own proclaimed dictatorship. Havel proved to be the
epitome of the resisting artists and intellectuals, a stratum which has never
been honored with the designation "class," but regarded only as a
"layer" between workers and peasants, a symbol of those people whose
stamina has been always underestimated by the rulers. As far as Boris
Yeltsin is concerned, he ascended to his supreme position from the lower
depths of the high Party hierarchy. In other words, he represented the
ultimate corrosion: the uprising of the rulers against their own rule.
These three people's faces, their gaits, their inner gestures still speak about
their past, even though they belong to the brave new world.
Today, some people inside and outside the former Soviet Union are
dissatisfied with the democratic regime, because they see quite a few
ap–
paratchiks
of the old structures within the ranks of the new government.
Yet this was 'unavoidable, considering the proportions of this historically
unprecedented upheaval, of this gigantic, tectonic shift. It was a virtually
bloodless upheaval, featuring the most fantastic, maybe even mystic design
of a genuine spiritual revolution. All of our lives, if we ever dreamed of
the demise of totalitarian Communism, it was assumed that the monster
would never surrender without a devastating fight, horrible casualties,
scorched cities. Then the wildest dreams of my generation of Russians
came true. The
plltsch
has taken place, and at the dawn of the total
collapse of the Communist party, only three lives had been
10~J:.
Russia
was miraculously given a chance to solve its problems in peace, without a
bloodbath, as though Providence had decided, "They've had enough."
The Communist Party devoured itself from the inside out. First, it
outgrew its logical proportions. [n order to act properly, the Commu–
nist or Fascist parties must know their limits. They must comply with the
meaning of "fascista," a bundle of closely-tied, springy twigs. Glorifying
the Party, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky once said: "The Party is a mil–
lion-fingered hand clenched in one crushing fist!" A million fingers was
probably the limit. Having twenty-five million "fingers," that is, ten per–
cent of the entire population within its grasp, the Party was inadvertently
transformed into a multitude of hands grabbing in all directions.
In fact, the Party turned into a sort of self-promoters' club. One
virtually could not pursue a substantial career without having a Party
member's card. One could not be promoted to the position of, say, a
theater's artistic director, or a magazine's editor-in-chief, or a chairman
of a collective farm, or a construction manager, or a laboratory director,
or a fishing boat captain - without joining the one and only Party.
Once, shortly after I became a member of the Writers' Union, [ was of–
fered a further promotion, membership in the Party. [ politely turned it
