“We should organize social parties at the base and invite students so that our men can meet nice girls in a normal way. It is unnatural and unhealthy to try to keep our men from seeing girls.
“The forests and streams are full of deer, elk, rabbits, ducks, geese, quail, and fish. We should take our men to hunt and fish. It would be enjoyable for them, and the game would enrich their diet. We should start our own garden and plant our own potatoes right here on the base.
“Each weekend officers should be appointed to take groups of men on the train into Vladivostok and let them just walk around the city. We can ride the tram free, and we can sleep in the station, and we can take up a collection among the officers to buy them some sausage and beer instead of vodka. It will give them something to look forward to. It will show that we care about them.
“When we can, we should build a football field and a library so the men can improve their professional skills and education. And if they want to read detective stories, why not let them? That’s better than having them drink alcohol.
“If we demonstrate to our men that we are loyal to them, that we respect them, then they will be loyal and respect us and obey us. If we given them alternatives to alcohol, most will take those alternatives.
“Comrade Colonel, I have spoken frankly in the hope that my views will be of use to our regiment and our Mother Country.”
As Belenko sat down, the officers clapped their hands, whistled, stomped their feet, pounded the table until Shevsov stood and silenced them.
The visiting political officer, who had been taking notes, rose, his face fixed with a waxen smile.
“Comrade Officers, this has been a productive gathering. I find some merit in what each of you has said. I find that underneath, this regiment is imbued with determination to eliminate drunkenness, to enforce discipline, and to serve our Mother Country. That is what I shall report.
“But to you, Comrade Belenko, I must say a few words frankly, just as you spoke frankly. You do not ask, ‘What may I give to the Party?’ You ask the Party to give, give, give; give me Utopia, now. You show that you lack the imagination to grasp the magnitude of the problem, much less the difficulty of solving it. You do not understand that our country cannot build complex aircraft, modern airfields, and barracks all at the same tune, and your priorities are exactly the reverse of what they should be. You spoke of the principles of Marxism/Leninism. I urge you to restudy these principles until you understand that the Party and the people are one and that, therefore, the needs of the Party always must be first. We will do everything in time, step by step, and the Party wisely has decided which steps must be taken first, threatened as we are by the Chinese and the Dark Forces of the West.”
The faintest of hopes, the tinest flicker of light sparked by Belenko’s speech evaporated. Nothing would be done. They filed out silently, Shevsov among them and for once one of them.
Pig! No, that is an insult to a pig. In the order of the universe, a pig serves some useful purpose. You and all you stand for are to the universe like cancer.
I wish I could put you for one night in those barracks and see how you feel when someone shits in your boot. I wish I could march you into that mess hall where a maggot would retch. Oh, there you would learn the science of communism.
Well, go back to your fresh fruits and meat and perfume and lying while our men lie disabled by dysentery, cholera, and alcohol, while the Americans look down and laugh at us from the skies. But you leave me alone.
All my life I have tried to understand, tried to believe you. I understand now. Our system is rotten, hopelessly, incurably rotten. Everything that is wrong is not the result of mistakes by bureaucrats in this town or that; it is the results of our system. I don’t understand what is wrong; but it is wrong. It produced you. You, not the Dark Forces, have kidnapped our Mother Country.
Soon after this climactic and decisive intellectual rebellion, Ludmilla announced that she was leaving. They had tried as best two people could; they had failed; it was pointless to try anew. Her parents were overjoyed by the prospect of having her and Dmitri with them in Magadan, and they could guarantee Dmitri’s future and hers. She would stay until October, when her commitment to the dispensary expired. But after she left it would be best for all if he never saw her or Dmitri, who would only be confused by his reappearance.
Her statement was so dispassionate and consistent with previous demands for divorce that Belenko could find neither energy nor desire to try anew to dissuade her. Besides, she was right about Dmitri.
Conditions at Chuguyevka were not atypical of those throughout the Far East. Reports of desertions, suicides, disease, and rampant alcoholism were said to be flooding into Moscow from bases all over. In late June, Shevsov convened the officers in an Absolutely Secret meeting to convey grave news. At an Army base only thirty-five miles to the southwest, two soldiers had killed two other soldiers and an officer, confiscated machine guns and provisions, and struck out through the forest toward the coast, intending to steal a boat and sail to Japan. They dodged and fought pursuing patrols several days until they were killed, and on their bodies were found diaries containing vile slanders of the Soviet Army and the grossest misrepresentations of the life of a soldier. These diaries atop all the reports of trouble had caused such concern in Moscow that the Minister of Defense himself was coming to the Far East and to Chuguyevka.
The career of every officer would depend on his impressions, and to make a good impression, it would be necessary to build a paved road from the base to the helicopter pad where the Minister would land, about four miles away. The entire regiment would begin work on the road tomorrow.
It never was clear just where in the chain of command the order originated; certainly Shevsov had no authority to initiate such a costly undertaking. In any case, the Dark Forces, the SR-71s, the Chinese, the desirability of maintaining flying proficiency — all were forgotten now. Pilots, engineers, technicians, mechanics, cooks, everybody turned to road building — digging a base, laying gravel, pouring concrete, and covering it with macadam.
It’s unbelievable. For this we could have built everything, barracks, mess hall, everything. We could have built a palace!
But the crowning order was yet to come. Within a radius of about a mile, the land around the base had been cleared of trees to facilitate takeoffs and landings. The Minister, it was said, was a devotee of nature and its verdancy. He would want to see green trees as he rode to the base. Therefore, trees would have to be transplanted to line the mile or so of road.
You can’t transplant trees here in the middle of the summer! Everybody knows that!
But transplanted they were, hundreds of them, pines, spruces, poplars, dug up from the forest, hauled by truck and placed every fifteen yards along the road. By the first week in July they were dead, shriveling and yellowing.
Dig them up and replace them. So they did, with the same results.
Do it again. He may be here anytime now.
So again saplings and some fairly tall trees were imported by the hundreds from the forests. Again they all died. Finally acknowledging that nature would not change its ways for them, someone had had an idea. Leave them there, and just before he arrives, we’ll spray them all with green paint. We’ll drive fast, and he won’t know the difference.
It all was to no avail. In early August they were advised that illness had forced cancellation of the Minister’s inspection. He wasn’t coming after all. It was time to fly again.