Sunday, February 10, 2002		Literature

A much delayed analysis of Soviet collapse
Rajesh Kathpalia

A Time to Remember: My years in Russia
by Sukirat. Brunel Academic publishers, Middlesex, UK. Pages 151. Rs 160.

THE Indian boy of Marxist parents, who spent a good part of his adolescent years in Russia of the seventies and early eighties returns to it after many years. He is bewildered at the pace and expanse of changes happening in Yeltsin’s Russia.

"My pension is still seven days away. If possible, please buy me something to eat," appeals an emaciated old man with shame and humiliation in his eyes. A beggar in Moscow asking for food! And he comes across some well-dressed elderly people searching the waste bins for half eaten hamburgers. Beef costs 1800 roubles a kilo (used to be two), bread 60 roubles (earlier 13 kopecks), eggs 300 a dozen (earlier a rouble and 30 kopecks). This is equivalent to a bus ride in Delhi begins costing Rs 2000 instead of two in a span of less than two years — the shock of it, you imagine!

But then, there are no queues — notorious in Soviet times. Everything from Mercedes cars to Italian shoes to Danish ham and Swiss cheese is available on the shelves against payment in roubles. You can get a pair of Italian shoes for just about 62,000 roubles! And why not? There are people who can afford this. There are people who, after dining in a fashionable restaurant, may leave a tip larger than the waiter’s salary.

No wonder, shootouts are common. No part of the city is now free of danger. Is he, the boy, suggesting a linkage between disparity and rising crime graph? The boy argues with his friends that the changes are a manifestation of a society breaking up. This social turmoil is an inherent part of the capitalist system that widens and perpetuates economic inequality — the kind of argument we all know. But the Russians are looking down upon communists with suspicion or even with condemnation.

The boy is disturbed. He has many questions but no answers. The historical materialist in him relives the journey of his personal experience in Moscow in particular and socialism in general from 1973 onwards. The 17-year-old boy (sent through ISCUS, the Indo-Soviet Culture Society) arrives at Lumumba University of Moscow along with students from different countries having varied complexions and speaking myriad languages. In 1973 Moscow is one of the largest metropolises in the world and is extremely green, clean and accessible.The public transport system is highly organised and inexpensive.

You cannot spot poor people in Moscow, let alone beggars. The education system is highly developed and multi-dimensional. Education and medical help are almost free. Housing is highly subsidised and basic food items are sold at fairly affordable and controlled rates. So an average Soviet family can afford to spend most of its current income on travel and other luxuries "A world that was my grandfather’s dream, a world which my parents had been struggling for all their working lives; it appeared to me I had found that world."

But then he starts seeing the contradictions also. An artificial scarcity of goods of daily use in the market and non-availability of quality goods for individual consumption, even good clothing, entertainment equipment and furniture. All the classic conditions that cause inflation are present, but the prices are being rigidly controlled. Black market inflation is already existing. People are willing to pay and — indeed pay — a higher price for quality goods from the West.

There is no room for dissent. Pravda (truth) and Izvestia (news) are two major national newspapers. The joke doing the round is: there is no news in Pravda and there is no truth in Izvestia. People start reading newspapers from the sixth or seventh page, devoted to international news. Front page is reserved for communist party propaganda and praise of "advanced socialism". There is so much bureaucracy that society has become kind of depoliticised. In this climate, half-truths of western propaganda become gospel truth for the common people.

Apart from this Soviet Union, with both its positive and negative aspects, the boy is acquainted with the Soviet Union of Stalin and Beria through Mama Toma, his father’s friend in Russia and lovingly called Mama by the boy. In fact, this warm relationship and the deep bond, which the boy returns to frequently, is the high point of the book. Mama Toma comes across as a woman of great spirit and grit, still warm but somewhat shaken by what she had to undergo in Stalin’s Russia.

Born in 1927, she fell in love with an Indian embassy personnel. It was 1948, the era of Stalin and Beria when every foreigner was suspected to be a spy. Toma was declared an "enemy of the people" and condemned to life imprisonment. The prime of her youth was spent in Stalin’s prisons and labour camps. Her father died during this period and her near and dear ones cut-off all relations with her. She was released only during Khrushchev’s period of "thaw". Her youth taken away, her health taken away (her back was severely injured in prison, and her uterus had to be removed) and with no degree or diploma to her name, she carried on with offbeat jobs.

Through Toma, the boy is acquainted with many "underground" facets of Soviet life, the underground press and forbidden arts. The boy is set on thinking. He feels suffocated and like a cog in a wheel moved by unknown forces. The book is a personal account and touches on the feelings, emotions, hopes and frustrations of the people the boy meets in an intimate manner. It is an advantage of a personal account that the subjects are real life people and in the mirror of your relationship with them, you can penetrate very deeply. You are face to face with their small joys as also small embarrassments.

Wherever one goes one finds that similar concerns move the people. The question of physical and psychological security, freedom and urge for happiness are the same everywhere. Higher living standards do not necessarily create a new man. If one is better off in material things, one moves on to eternal and more deeper concerns. This is very natural. Without addressing these questions head on, without understanding these, one is bound to be superficial and cosmetic in one’s approach. How come a whole generation of people who passed through the era of "socialism" and "advanced socialism" turn so blindly rancorous and unbalanced that they lose sight of many of its distinct and visible advantages? Writing of Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost, the boy, the author, is all praise for it. But he adds "Gorbachev’s perestroika was late in arriving by at least a decade and a half. "Well, this can be said of this book too!