The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

It was a spotlessly clean, bright room. The divan was covered with a gay rug; books neatly ranged on the desk between book-ends; a few flowers in a colored pitcher. On one wall hung several family pictures, one of them of

Viktor Kravchenko, Youth in the Red

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Lazarev himself as a boy, in gimnazium uniform, a dog at his feet; another of a pretty sister, also in student garb. On another wall were framed photographs of Lenin and Marx and between them—this was the touch that warmed me and won me over, though I did not know exactly why—the familiar picture of Leo Tolstoy in old age, in the long peasant tunic, his thumbs stuck into the woven belt.

This isn’t an obscene sailor attacking a nurse at night, I thought to myself. [Here Kravchenko is referring to an earlier incident.] I could follow this kind of Communist.

“Since I have to live here for several months,” Lazarev explained, “I’ve tried to make the place homelike.”

We talked for hours that night, about books, the Party, the future of Russia. My place was with the Communist minority who must show the way, Lazarev said, and I ought to join the Komsomol and later the Party. Of course, he conceded, the Party wasn’t perfect and perhaps its program wasn’t perfect, but men are more important than programs.

“If bright, idealistic young people like you stand aloof, what chance will there be?” he said. “Why not come closer to us and work for the common cause? You can help others by serving as an example of devotion to the country. Just look around you in the barracks—gambling, dirt, drunkenness, greed where there ought to be cleanliness, books, spiritual light. You must understand that there’s a terrific task ahead of us, Augean stables to be cleaned. We must outroot the stale, filthy, unsocial past that’s still everywhere, and for that we need good men. The heart of the question Vitia, is not only formal socialism but decency, education and a brighter life for the masses.”

I had been “pressured” by Communists before this. But now, for the first time, I was hearing echoes of the spirit that had suffused my childhood. I argued with Comrade Lazarev; I said I would think it over, but in fact I agreed with him and had already made up my mind.

When Comrade Lazarev departed for Moscow some weeks later, I was in the large group—ordinary miners and office workers as well as the top officials of the administration—gathered at the station to see him off.

“There you are, Vitia,” he singled me out. “I head by accident that you’ve joined the Komsomol. Good for you! Congratulations! But why didn’t you tell me? I would have recommended you.”

“I know, and I’m grateful, but I wanted to do it on my own . . . without patronage.”

Now life had for me an urgency, a purpose, a new and thrilling dimension of dedication to a cause. I was one of the élite, chosen by History to lead my country and the whole world out of darkness into the socialist light. This

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Chapter Eighteen

sounds pretentious, I know, yet that is how we talked and felt. There might be cynicism and self-seeking among some of the grown-up Communists, but not in our circle of ardent novitiates.

My privileges, as one of the elect, were to work harder, to disdain money and foreswear personal ambitions. I must never forget that I am a Komsomol member first, a person second. The fact that I had joined up in a mining region, in an area of “industrial upsurge,” seemed to me to add a sort of mystic significance to the event. I suppose that a young nobleman admitted to court life under the Tsar had that same feeling of “belonging.”

There was no longer much margin of time for petty amusements. Life was filled with duties—lectures, theatricals for the miners, Party “theses” to be studied and discussed. We were aware always that from our midst must come the Lenins and Bukharins of tomorrow. We were perfecting ourselves for the vocation of leadership; we were the acolytes of a sort of materialist religion.

Having discovered that I could write and speak on my feet with some natural eloquence, I was soon an “activist.” I served on all kinds of committees, did missionary work among the non-Party infidels, played a role in the frequent celebrations. There were endless occasions to celebrate, over and above the regular revolutionary holidays. The installation of new machinery, the opening of new pits, the completion of production schedules were marked by demonstrations, music, speeches. Elsewhere in the world coal may be just coal—with us it was “fuel for the locomotives of revolution.”