Read Online A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir by Elena Gorokhova - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elena Gorokhova
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kind today, when simply to enter the Hermitage you must put on cloth slippers, cinch them around your ankles, and glide slowly under the gaze of a million babushkas in the corner of every room, making sure that you don’t come too close to the royal china or priceless oils.
“Tomorrow, November seventh,” she says, “all across the Soviet Union, from our glorious capital to the permafrost of the Siberian taiga, we will celebrate the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.”
“Why is it the October Revolution if we celebrate it in November?” asks Dimka the hooligan from the last row.
Vera Pavlovna stops in the middle of her story and looks at him with disbelief. The Julian-Gregorian calendar change is first-grade information, but even back then Dimka obviously wasn’t listening.
“Shame on you,” she says, pointing at him Lenin-style. “Shame on you and your ignorance.”
She pauses to let Dimka’s shame and hopelessness sink to an appropriate depth in each of us. After a minute of silence, as the train of her narration is irrevocably off track, she turns to more recent happenings.
“In two days, when we return to school after the holiday, we’re going to have a celebration of our own. A great honor will be bestowed upon you—you will all become Young Pioneers.”
Every year in the school gym, three sections of third-graders, lined up in perfect rows, take the Young Pioneer Oath and have red kerchiefs tied around their necks by the seventh-graders, who in their turn, at fourteen, rotate out of the Pioneers to join the Young Communist League. It’s as much a school ritual as the annual visit to the dental clinic, a day in the middle of March that everyone hates.
“All of you will take the oath in two days, the first step on the great road to becoming a communist,” continues Vera Pavlovna as she looks at Dimka. With a shake of her head she lets us know that, despite school policy, he is obviously undeserving of this honor.
The Code of Young Pioneers, which is posted on our classroom wall, requires good behavior and good grades of all its prospective participants, so technically Dimka is not eligible; but in reality every person in every class gets a red kerchief, and Vera Pavlovna can do nothing to stop Dimka from joining in. We all know, of course, that she would never try. She understands the necessity of diverging in practice from what’s been written on paper, of rules being something you recite and aspire to, not something you follow. It is clear to everyone that it wouldn’t look proper if some people during the ceremony remained unkerchiefed, raising all kinds of questions about their intent and allegiance.
“Look at our Pioneer hero of the past,” says Vera Pavlovna and points to the portrait of Pavlik Morozov hanging on the wall next to Pushkin. His story is in our textbooks, but Vera Pavlovna recites it again. “A son of wealthy peasants, Pavlik found out that his father was hiding sacks of wheat in his cellar—while people were starving. At night, this brave boy ran across the fields to the local Soviet and told them about the grain. The next morning the soldiers came to his house and confiscated the wheat. The local Commissariat gave Pavlik Morozov a medal.” Vera Pavlovna nods her head to punctuate the last word.
I glance at Pavlik’s solemn head looking down on us in a red Pioneer kerchief and a halo of righteous superiority, as perfect as Zoya Churkina’s.
“What happened to the father?” asks Dimka from the last row. Vera Pavlovna pauses and looks at him with a hopeless smile. Even if you don’t know what happened to Pavlik’s father, everyone knows what should have happened to him for hiding wheat from starving people.
“For this serious crime, and for breaking Stalin’s decree to give up all the harvest to the people, Citizen Morozov the elder was arrested and served ten years in the camps,” announces Vera Pavlovna.
I am not sure that ratting on your father and
“Tomorrow, November seventh,” she says, “all across the Soviet Union, from our glorious capital to the permafrost of the Siberian taiga, we will celebrate the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.”
“Why is it the October Revolution if we celebrate it in November?” asks Dimka the hooligan from the last row.
Vera Pavlovna stops in the middle of her story and looks at him with disbelief. The Julian-Gregorian calendar change is first-grade information, but even back then Dimka obviously wasn’t listening.
“Shame on you,” she says, pointing at him Lenin-style. “Shame on you and your ignorance.”
She pauses to let Dimka’s shame and hopelessness sink to an appropriate depth in each of us. After a minute of silence, as the train of her narration is irrevocably off track, she turns to more recent happenings.
“In two days, when we return to school after the holiday, we’re going to have a celebration of our own. A great honor will be bestowed upon you—you will all become Young Pioneers.”
Every year in the school gym, three sections of third-graders, lined up in perfect rows, take the Young Pioneer Oath and have red kerchiefs tied around their necks by the seventh-graders, who in their turn, at fourteen, rotate out of the Pioneers to join the Young Communist League. It’s as much a school ritual as the annual visit to the dental clinic, a day in the middle of March that everyone hates.
“All of you will take the oath in two days, the first step on the great road to becoming a communist,” continues Vera Pavlovna as she looks at Dimka. With a shake of her head she lets us know that, despite school policy, he is obviously undeserving of this honor.
The Code of Young Pioneers, which is posted on our classroom wall, requires good behavior and good grades of all its prospective participants, so technically Dimka is not eligible; but in reality every person in every class gets a red kerchief, and Vera Pavlovna can do nothing to stop Dimka from joining in. We all know, of course, that she would never try. She understands the necessity of diverging in practice from what’s been written on paper, of rules being something you recite and aspire to, not something you follow. It is clear to everyone that it wouldn’t look proper if some people during the ceremony remained unkerchiefed, raising all kinds of questions about their intent and allegiance.
“Look at our Pioneer hero of the past,” says Vera Pavlovna and points to the portrait of Pavlik Morozov hanging on the wall next to Pushkin. His story is in our textbooks, but Vera Pavlovna recites it again. “A son of wealthy peasants, Pavlik found out that his father was hiding sacks of wheat in his cellar—while people were starving. At night, this brave boy ran across the fields to the local Soviet and told them about the grain. The next morning the soldiers came to his house and confiscated the wheat. The local Commissariat gave Pavlik Morozov a medal.” Vera Pavlovna nods her head to punctuate the last word.
I glance at Pavlik’s solemn head looking down on us in a red Pioneer kerchief and a halo of righteous superiority, as perfect as Zoya Churkina’s.
“What happened to the father?” asks Dimka from the last row. Vera Pavlovna pauses and looks at him with a hopeless smile. Even if you don’t know what happened to Pavlik’s father, everyone knows what should have happened to him for hiding wheat from starving people.
“For this serious crime, and for breaking Stalin’s decree to give up all the harvest to the people, Citizen Morozov the elder was arrested and served ten years in the camps,” announces Vera Pavlovna.
I am not sure that ratting on your father and
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