--- Lewis Higgins <wsm_mod at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > out here!)
>
> So, by your logic, nobody can criticise Nazi Germany
> unless they've lived there.
>
> --
> Lew
No, by my logic, nobody can criticize Nazi Germany who doesn't have adequate information about Nazi Germany. Since the USSR was a closed country and little information about it was available to the outside world, and what was there was largely speculation and ideologically distorted, very few people know anything about what it was actually like.
In my opinion one of the best descriptions of deily life in the USSR available in English that I know of is Eduard Limonov's wonderful autobiographical account of growing up in 1960s Ukraine, translated in part by the eXile's John Dolan:
A Young Scoundrel by Eduard Limonov John Dolan University of Otago Department of English jdolan at gandalf.otago.ac.nz Deep South v.2 n.1 (Autumn, 1996)
Chapter I
(Extract)
Chapters 5 and 6 of Eduoard Limonov's A Young Scoundrel, translated from Russian by John Dolan. Chapters 1-4 appear in Vol 2 No 1 of Deep South
Further chapters will appear in later issues of Deep South
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 5
At any rate, Borka Churilov established his lifelong protege as bookseller. In store No. 41, which had branched off from The Poetry Shop. The boss, Liliya, was a mean little blonde, whom Anna christened "The Little Fascist." She accepted "the little boy" willingly. Only "little girls" worked in the store. Liliya, Flora and "The Zombie" in a scraggly fur coat.
Every morning he came in on the trolley from the Saltovka district. Every morning he would pick up his stock and take it to the place where, having put it on a folding table, he would sell it. After completing the transfer of the books, he would begin arranging them on the stand. At first, while they were still explaining things to him, he set up his stand on Sumskii Street, right at the very doors of Store No. 41. Afterwards, he operated in the foyer of the Komsomolskii Theatre and at other crowded spots.
The bookseller's profession has some similarities to that of street-hawkers or snack-vendors. The bookseller recieves a paltry salary, but has the right to keep a certain percentage of the take. The outstanding bookseller in Kharkov, at the time Eduard Savyenko joined the profession, was the former railwayman Igor Iosifovich Kovalchuk, who had sold, at one time or another, for all the bookstores in the city. Of course, neither at the beginning of his career as a bookseller nor at its end could Eduard Savyenko compare in productivity with Igor Iosifovich. They hired Igor Iosifovich when they needed to fulfil their quota. They offered him higher salaries or bribed him. Because Igor Iosifovich could sell any book. Usually he set up his several tables in the center of Tevelyev Square, like an Asian vendor, crying out to the sky, about his books, hawking his wares in a hoarse voice: "Look! A history of the most terrible crimes in Antiquity! The battle between black and white magic!" It was difficult for passers-by to withstand these lures. There were always crowds gathered around Igor Iosifovich's stand. The "Story of the Greatest Crimes in Antiquity" might turn out to be simply a volume from the textbook, "Treasury of World Literature," issued by the Academy of Sciences.
"Ed," as Anna called him before the adoption of the last name, "Limonov," was shy. He hunched timidly behind his book-covered display table. Sometimes there were two tables. Ed sat timidly and, for the most part, said nothing or smiled diffidently. Despite the straight-razor the bookseller often carried in his pocket, the bookseller of store No. 41 was not an agressive young man. Sometimes Liliya would send out, to reinforce him, "The Zombie"--a skinny being of the feminine variety, always wrapped in a shabby old fur coat. "The Zombie's" nose was always frozen, and its long tip was of a bluish color.
Eduard Savyenko didn't earn much money. To speak more precisely, he earned almost nothing. Yet the rapid pace of events managed, in October, November and December, to transform the half-criminal young worker into something else, something not quite clear--but at the very least, he entered, in those cold months, an entirely new social class. Imagine, reader, how difficult a process this is. Sometimes this sort of transformation requires several generations!
Every evening the bookseller hurried to get the stacks of books, and the tables, back to Store No. 41. Like a worker-bee hurrying back to the hive, like a bird to its nest, a jet to the airport. The bookseller hurried along--awaiting him was an appointment with the future, concealed in the alleys of Shevchenko Park, in the "automaticic snack-bar" on Sumskii Street, and in several Kharkov apartments. The future was hidden in the murky urban twilight, draped in rather old-fashioned clothes--symbolist, surrealist clothes. Though provincial, Kharkov, former capital of Ukraine, knew how to play cultural games.
There were many people around. Hundreds, at the very least. New, interesting people, unlike anyone else. In the little "storeroom" of Store No. 41 there were always lots of people sitting, avidly reading manuscripts. Poems, for the most part. The clean-shaven physicist Lyev, who had just returned from an expedition to Leningrad, brought back five or six examples of Brodskii's poem "Procession". An early poem, an imitation of Tsvetaeva, this poem lacked artistic integrity, but suited very well the socio-cultural stage which was occupied (better to say, at which will always be occupied) by Kharkov and the majority of the "Decadents," who tramped along the triangle formed by Bookstore No. 41, The Poetry Shop, and the Automatic. So the poem enjoyed an unusual popularity. People stood in line to read Brodskii, from the time the bookstore opened to the time it closed. One of these readers was the poet Motrich.
Looking back and placing Motrich's greatness in historical perspective, it is necessary to note that at that time, Motrich was not the genius his worshippers considered him in 1964; he was not even known as a poet by many people. If there was a spark of genius in him, it was unnoticed. Yet Vladimir Motrich--as the past master again reminds us of his "Hammer and Sickle" factory (later Eduard Savyenko suddenly remember remembered, that Boris Churilov took him to the furnace, where the "real poet" Motrich still worked in l963) was, beyond any doubt, a POET. An original POET, since a poet is not merely a certain number of verses, but a soul, an aura, a taut field of passion, a radiant personality. But Motrich worked at it, oh yes...
http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/vol2no2/limonov.html
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com