The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

My last order of the day is to the superintendent’s unit: not to use firearms under any circumstances. That is it. There is nothing to be done here at night. We leave through an exit to Kuznetskii Most [a street]. The streets are deserted with only an occasional passer-by and a group of police at a distance, closer to the square. This is my city. I was born and have lived in it but at this night hour I sense its cold alienation. Lines from the poet Blok come to mind: “Night, a street, a lamp, a pharmacy,// A meaningless and murky light.”

We hear the footfalls of history but do not know where to hide so as not to be crushed.

I am tormented not by the future (it is all in God’s hands) but by the present and the not so distant past. I see myself immeasurably humiliated, deceived and robbed. The remnant of my human dignity is outraged at its treatment. After all, I did not live merely to fill my stomach with food and to sleep soundly. I considered myself a reasonably educated, rational, and reasonably decent person. It has seemed to me that I and those like myself have been perceived thus by others. The betrayal by Kriuchkov turned out to be the last in that long chain of betrayals of which my generation had been victim.

We were betrayed for the first time when we were made to believe in the semi-divine genius of Stalin. We were then too young to be cynical or to

Leonid Shebarshin, Three Days in August

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doubt the wisdom of our elders. (Was I the only idiot? I don’t think so. What I say is true for a whole generation.) In March of 1953 my classmates and I wept real, bitter tears. Stalin had died. A black cloud of imminent ills was moving upon our country and ourselves, its miserable children. We were too inexperienced to see beyond the funereal bunting. Otherwise we would have seen the frenzied gleam in the eyes of the successors to the leader of all eras and all nations.

It is demeaning even to recall the mini-cult of our dear Nikita Sergeevich [Khrushchev], and after him the hero of the Great Patriotic War [WW II], the hero of virgin soil [previously uncultivated land], the hero of the Soviet renaissance, the dyed-in-the-wool apparatchik [functionary] Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev, and the pitiful figure of Chernenko. In February of 1984 when the death of Iu.V. Andropov was announced we sat in a small room of the information service trying to guess who our next leader would be. We tried not to admit to ourselves that it might be an ex-manager of a garage and Cher-nenko’s one-time office manager.

Was it different under Andropov? He was a far-sighted, practical and clever man who spoke simply and to the issue. In conversing with him no one ever resorted to slogans or the usual hollow rhetoric. Had that happened, there would have been no subsequent conversations with that person. But Andropov lied as well and, voluntarily or involuntarily, had us believe in lies and lie to ourselves. (Incidentally Andropov once remarked in passing: “What gives you the idea, that you know what power is?” Once, in Afghanistan, the taciturn Kosygin said something similar. And Kriuchkov developed the theme further: “At that level, i.e., at the very top, there is no human friendship nor human devotedness.”)

These are new times. If falsehood has not been annulled it has, at least, been reduced in its rights to the level of truth. The compulsiveness of a single, canonized, absolute truth, the bearer of which was a high priest with a mysterious conclave of wise elders, called the Politburo, was vanishing. It was becoming clear that each person may believe in whatever seems to be the truth and may speak of it openly. A timid hope appeared that even if our leaders are not very wise, they, at least, might be honest. But the right to the truth was again used for deception. We were betrayed yet again.

Fifty-six years constitutes a fairly long life. In it there has been war, starvation, poverty, the death of dear ones, artillery barrages and long sieges, disillusionment in myself and others—the usual events in the life of a Russian of my generation. There is nothing to especially grieve for or be especially joyous about.

One’s own conscience should be one’s master. And to be farther from people who lust for power. Farther from power and its companion—falsehood. That is all.