Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

This was not a personal philosophy designed to endear him to his fellow citizens, many of whom regarded him as a stranger who had somehow succeeded in outwitting the whole town and was now laughing at their stupidity. Berezovo’s hospital administrator did not mind: he would willingly exchange popularity for influence any day of the week.

From an early age, Modest Tolkach had realised that the crib into which he had been born would bring him neither noble title nor easy preferment. Determined that if he could not be counted amongst the ranks of great men – the personages he regarded as men of note – then his best policy was to enter the service of those who were. As soon as he could, he had left his humble birthplace and enlisted as a drummer boy in the Sibirsky, remaining with the regiment for nearly fifteen happy years. Although never rising above the rank of corporal, the drummer boy had been content to serve what he saw, even then, to be his apprenticeship; bribing his way into a safe billet within the commissariat and then leaving it only to become the colonel’s batman. Alone amongst his contemporaries who had joined the colours at that Fair day, he had never seen a shot fired in anger nor endured a day’s sickness or punishment. When eventually the colonel retired from the regiment and had been appointed Head of the Provincial Health Service, Tolkach had promptly obtained his own papers and followed his superior officer as his secretary into the more turbulent and uncertain waters of civilian life.

It had taken almost a year of bullying and cajoling to establish his authority within the provincial headquarters. Twelve months of carefully sifting the documents that daily landed upon his desk so that his master could be protected from the more revealing details of his fiefdom. In all this time, he never once lost sight of where his direction lay. Men of position and power were to be cultivated; favours granted; influence widened; horizons extended. He gained access to the offices of other functionaries like himself; secretaries and assistant secretaries who advised their masters and who drew up the final drafts of important documents. Amongst them he discovered the same spirit of free enterprise that he had known in his days at the army commissariat. Effortlessly, he had kept himself afloat in this bureaucratic demi-monde for a further six years, jealously protecting his master’s interests from his desk in the ante chamber; acting both as guardian and adviser. In return, he had been rewarded with a standard of living far beyond the expectations of his lowly birthright, enabling him to acquire a lease on a modest house in the suburbs, a respectable pony and trap and finally (a mixed blessing, this, he was later to realise) a wife.

Such expenses, even the last, were easily met. Manufacturers of medical supplies submitting tenders for provincial contracts were not unwilling to provide a small commission to guarantee their acceptance. Builders of local and regional hospitals and those concerned with their maintenance were not slow to attach attractive inducements to their estimates. Doctors paid their licence fees. Medical colleges wishing a favourable quinquennial report contributed an unofficial capitation fee. Insurance schemes made ‘presentations’. Even those independently minded citizens who, tiring of the delay in official action, banded together in a spirit of self-help to defray the cost of such works were made to understand that centres of medical excellence must be regularly inspected by a recognised official of the ministry, and that concomitant with such a duty arose the inflated expense of his visit.

Knowing that corruption is tolerated only for as long as the money is generously spread around, Tolkach took care that his master received a reasonable share of each donation and that he acknowledged that he was doing so. A lesser man might have taken all and fallen, but the ex-corporal was scrupulous and too circumspect for such a temptation. As a result, when the day came for his superior once again to retire from his post on a government pension, Tolkach had been ready. Anticipating that the colonel’s successor would bring his own man with him, he had had himself appointed as the new hospital administrator for the district of Berezovo.