64
PARTISAN REVIEW
troops from Iranian Azerbaijan. When Kennedy showed some resolve,
Khrushchev pulled the rockets out of Cuba....
When we flew over the Mamaevsky cemetery on return from a mis–
sion, hedge-hopping in a bullet-riddled plane, our hearts would beat
with pride when we spotted the red stars below. We were even proud
of the star on our army caps. Now it drips with shame, having become
for the Afghans what the spidery swastika was for us, a symbol of en–
slavement.
Will I ever have that shot of vodka with the Soviet tank driver?
Certainly not on the Place de la Concorde - he will never make it
there. Without the capitalist world (American credits, Canadian wheat,
Argentine meat, Finnish eggs, French chickens), our developed socialism
would be finished overnight. Perhaps I will meet him somewhere else,
who knows where, and I'll have that drink with him. He will tell me ..
. but what can he say? A photograph which appeared in magazines all
over the world hangs from my bookshelf in Paris. It shows a young So–
viet tank driver in Prague, in the unforgettable year of 1968. He is
smoking a cigarette in his tank turret while looking at this unfamiliar,
foreign city, glancing at the people whom he has come to liberate, or
.defend, or punish. His boyish forehead is wrinkled, and his expression
suggests only bewilderment, uncertainty, and a deeply disturbing thought.
Why am I here? To do what?
In 1952,
For aJust Cause,
Vassily Grossman's novel about the battle
for Stalingrad and the war, appeared. Were he alive today, he would
shudder from the very title. Vasily Semyonovich was smart, even wise; he
knew a lot more than the rest of us and wrote an utterly truthful book.
Yet even he believed that he had fought for a just cause.
The enemy will be defeated! Victory will be ours! But our cause
turned out not to be so just. Which is the great tragedy of my
generation. And of myself as well.
Translated from the Russian
by
Charles Allen
