DMITRY SHLAPENTOKH
271
tinue
to
be popular in the country were present. During the event, sev–
eral speakers elaborated on Russia's problems.
According
to
one of them, the most serious problem is Russia's declin–
ing population. The birthrate is dismally low, he stated, and believed it to
be part of a malicious plot from the West-mostly from the U.S. The
Americans, he said, were lusting for Russian territory, but they understood
that they could not take it by force, hence they planned to depopulate it.
He maintained that American sexual culture had been exported
to
Russia for precisely this goal. America, he stated, due to the domination
of homosexuals and similar perverts, has ceased to be a country with a
normal sexuality. Allegedly, these groups hate normal sex and children,
and promote condoms and abortion. They had found converts among
Russians, especially doctors. The representatives of the medical profes–
sion were said
to
be central to their philippics, for it was American doc–
tors who promoted condoms and homosexuality, and who had made
abnormality normal and prevented childbirth. Russian doctors, having
been bought and paid for by the West, were following the American
trend. Due to their efforts, Russia's population decline was paving the
way for the country's final conquest. Russian nationalists were encour–
aged
to
fight these sex- and baby-haters.
There were two ways, he said,
to
fight the insidious plot. first, and
evidently the preferred way, was the extermination of certain doctors.
(Here an effigy of an American doctor was publicly destroyed.) Second,
Russians should be more sexually active. (A grand striptease sponsored
by the Party was announced at the end of the meeting, and all in atten–
dance were welcome. The stripteasers' intention was
to
encourage
females and males
to
engage in procreative sex.) Listening to this, I
thought once again of Comrade Stalin, who had been responsible for
the deaths of millions of his countrymen. Now that had truly been
depopula tion.
On the bus
to
the airport,
J
watched the lush hills and old churches of
Bled disappear. At that moment I realized that I did not want to leave
Europe: partly because I long for historical tradition, but also because
only in Europe do I feel truly free, in the deepest existential meaning of
the term. At the same time I loath anti-Americanism. Its more extreme
forms remain a marginal fringe and are largely ignored by the main–
stream European press. But, then, the Bolsheviks were mostly ignored
before
1<) 17.
(The
Londol1 Times
did not even mention Lenin's name
then.)
In
any event, most of these views will depend on the success of
America's war effort, and on the state of the economy.
