Ah, Poor Anany

The Kremlin likes to paint life on a Soviet collective farm as spiritually rich and financially rewarding. The kolkhoz manager is always a cross between Paul Bunyan and Luther Burbank, and his sterling example inspires glorious acts of self-sacrifice from the lowliest peasant. Though foreigners laugh off the myth as nonsense, millions of Russians are asked to swallow it. Hence the shocked incredulity of Russians who picked up the Leningrad literary monthly, Neva. There, in a short story by Fedor Abramov, was a startling indictment of the apathy, discontent and frustrating failure of collective farm life that still exists after more than four decades of Soviet rule.

"Seventeen years after the war we are still fighting on the farm for every pound of bread," exclaims Anany Egorovich Mysovsky, chairman of the fictional New Life kolkhoz in Abramov's tale, entitled Round and About. In these excerpts, Abramov follows Mysovsky on a day-long inspection tour of a typical collective. It is the middle of the harvest season, but one of the farm's tractor drivers shows up drunk and the other is stuck in a ditch; villagers are lolling about in the community bath houses instead of working the fields; for five months they have not received a single kopek of advance wages because there has been no money to distribute.

Alone in the Fields. Mysovsky looks around at the fields, sees that in the section where peas should be harvested, only seven milkmaids are working. He muses:

"Seven young girls, just out of school, and they are the ones who really are holding the whole kolkhoz together. Each kopek is milked by their hands, and getting more milkmaids is one of his biggest headaches. The old women can't build a modern kolkhoz; that's why he had to argue for weeks to break down the resistance of schoolgirls. And then, if the girl was ready to sign up, her mother would hit the roof. 'What? My daughter muck around in the manure! Is that why my husband and I sweated our guts out and educated her?'

"So there he was alone in the fields with his sorrow. Where are all the people? Behind their own houses [working their private plots]. He had better get tough. It was the middle of August and there was no time to lose. He'd start to comb the upper part of the village, enter each house, and demand to know from each kolkhoznik why he is not working down at the silo. The farm workers' rejoinders, he knew, would be the same as always: 'Let the hay rot. let the peas go to ruin.' "

Same Old Talk. The chairman spots three women, who should have been working, returning from the forest, loaded down with mushrooms they have picked for themselves.

" 'Stop,' cried Anany Egorovich. The women disappeared around the corner. He ran up and blocked their way. 'You working?' The women were silent. 'So this is what you call work?' he repeated. 'Well, we aren't the only ones.' a woman retorted. 'If there were more kopeks in the kolkhoz, we would not have to go to the forest for mushrooms.' 'But where are we going to get these kopeks?' asked Mysovsky. 'You think they fall from the sky.'

"The women mocked him. 'We've been hearing that talk for 15 years.' retorted one. 'I've been in the fields all summer and what did I get for it? My children will be going to school soon, and they have no shoes or clothes. We go to pick mushrooms because we can sell them at the store and bring in a kopek or two at home.' Added another woman sarcastically. 'We don't have to eat at all. I suppose. This is my second year without a cow and it's been pretty bad.'

"Anany Egorovich bit his lower lip. He did not know what to do. Eight years ago he would have taken these women by the scruff of their necks and thrown them into the fields. But now . . ."

A Wife with a Job. Mysovsky visits a father and son who do not work regularly for the kolkhoz, yet occupy a good house. How do they do it?

"What are the means? Anany Egorovich asked himself. The kolkhoz wages? Certainly not. sadly enough. Who could build themselves a house? Those who have earnings on the side. There is a custom in the village: if you work in a kolkhoz, look for a wife who has a regular job in town."

Everyone would rather work for himself and earn more than work for the collective, he laments. "It's the same old story. A real vicious circle. In order to be paid well, people should work full steam, since the kolkhoz has no other resources but their work. But people will not work for the kolkhoz because they are not well paid. How can I break the circle? Party officials tell me. 'You're not a good leader. Your agitation-educational work is slack.' But how do you propagandize today's kolkhoznik? Without the ruble the agitation doesn't reach him . . . That's the whole question.''

Why Bother? Continuing his tour, Mysovsky stops of at the new home of a released inmate of a slave labor camp. The fellow has a doctor's certificate that he is too ill to work, lives lavishly by selling produce from his private plot.

"Everything at Petunya's place was geared to market needs. Instead of a small onion bed he had a real onion plantation, much better than the ones on the kolkhoz. Then there were cucumbers, potatoes . . . every inch was used." Naturally Petunya refuses to help bring in the harvest. " 'If I had a cow I might, but otherwise, why bother?' The chairman understands . . . Every year thousands of acres of hay are lost because kolkhozniki get only 10% of the hay they harvest. In order to feed his own cow he would have to harvest enough for eight or nine--and that's impossible. Each year it gets harder and harder to find workers for the kolkhoz silo.''

Meeting His Fate. At the end of his rounds Mysovsky is dog-tired and depressed, stops off at the recreation hall for a drink, and promptly gets plastered. While drunk he promises the workers 30% of the harvest instead of the regulation 10%, arid lo and behold, with that incentive, they are out in the fields early next day. Next morning, Mysovsky wakes up with a hangover, rubs his eyes at the sight of workers' kerchiefs bobbing like daisies in the fields. Then he remembers . . .

"Thirty percent? How could he have said anything of the sort? His head might fall for that. He could imagine the cries of the party bosses: 'You have unleashed property-possessing ideas. You let yourself be led by backward elements.' Just the same, thought the chairman, the workers were out in the fields just because of the promise of 30 % without shouting, demands or discussion."

Mysovsky hastily walked toward the home of the local party boss to explain things before they put him on trial. The closer he got to the house, the more frightened he became. On the way, an assistant stopped him. asked whether he wanted to send additional workers to outlying fields--naturally for the same 30%. "Mysovsky nervously licked his lips, then agreed. Now that I am 55. I should be courageous, he said to himself. He straightened himself up, and went inside to meet his fate."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.