The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

But, evidently, irrespective of the effort made to attract the working masses to our institute, it was destined to remain one hopelessly comprised of intelligentsia. Languages are not in vogue now. The industrialization of the nation is taking place and youth storms the doors of the technical institutes. This is where the newly promoted party and labor administrators hope to wind up as well. By means of its allotment, the Komsomol sent us its children, but they drowned in the general mass of the “working intelligentsia.”

Ivan Mikhailovich Siiak, a Galician [from western Ukraine] and old Social Democrat, was appointed director of our institute. During the winter of 1919, he was a prominent participant in a revolt against the Romanian rulers in Bessarabia. Later he commanded some sort of “steel detachment” of Galician railroad workers, and then joined the Bolsheviks. He is handsome, smart, has the habits of an experienced demagogue, and the energy of a schemer. He was able to convince the People’s Ministry of Education and the students of the almost world-wide significance of the institute and, rather quickly, in an overcrowded Kiev, was able to get a building, in the center of the city, no less. Prior to the revolution, this had been a respectable bank, but was now occupied by a scientific research institute of water resources. Rather unwillingly, the latter ceded us two halls, and calmly continued to occupy the rest of the building despite the fiery tirades of Ivan Mikhailovich and stern notes from the city soviet [council].

Plywood partitions were quickly put up in the halls which converted them into a semblance of classrooms. But since materials were scarce and the partitions just slightly above human height, students in one place could easily hear neighboring lectures. Thus we very plausibly joked that even the teaching of German in our institute was permeated with dialectical materialism, which was passionately taught by the very same Ivan Mikhailovich Siiak.

Actually, he and his auditors quite rapidly became convinced that the unity of opposites is not always one of nature’s basic laws, and that it is impossible to bear both linguists and hydrologists under one roof.

Having lost patience with fruitless negotiations with a venerable and grumbling academic, Ivan Mikhailovich decided to go on the attack. True, his “army,” consisting principally of timid teachers, was fundamentally different from his brave “steel detachment.” But Siiak was uncontrollably drawn to the romanticism of the civil war. Once after lectures, with face aglow, he led us into “the attack.” The desks of the hydrologists were opened, and their tables, files, and books, were taken to the furthest room on the top floor with utmost care. Then, Ivan Mikhailovich made a speech from the stairs and ordered us not to dissolve but to spend the night “on liberated territory.” The hydrolo-gists tried complaining, wrote letters somewhere regarding arbitrariness, but

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Chapter Twenty-One

the building, nevertheless, remained in the hands of the victorious students. For a long time, as a payback, the hydrologists did not remove their remaining furniture and Siiak appointed students to keep guard and maintain protection so that not even an ink well could disappear.

We were split into brigades and it was announced that studies would proceed under collectivist principles—via the laboratory-brigade method. Of course, Lena and I rushed to sign up for the same brigade but Shura Zapiller boldly cancelled the composition of the brigades as submitted and announced that the professional group and the party-Komsomol community would be vigilantly checking to see that the brigades be structured on sound production principles and not on the petty bourgeois bases of personal affinity.

“We will not permit exclusive, individualistic groups of so-called friends to form under the guise of brigades. Therefore, we will now vote on those brigades which the action committee feels it necessary to present to the general meeting.”

The vote was taken, as usual, by commencing with the question “who is against?” In each brigade, the most talented and mature student was appointed brigadier, then came two or three of the middling students, and then the inevitable “blockhead for shaping and finishing.” That was what the un-talented and uneducated were called by students. They had obtained entry into institutions of higher learning as a result of recruitment or being pushed into it at work.