‘The shamans use the mushrooms to discover their totems and to form a bond between the tribe. They claim it as their magic, when of course we know it is merely the physiological effect of the drug on the brain. It allows the individual to escape his own consciousness, even if only for a few hours, and to experience a sense of union with all existence. Shamans and witch-doctors of all religions see this as oneness with God. We understand it in simpler terms – it is the sensation of Communism.’
‘Might it not damage the brain?’
‘Oh no, the physical effect wears off within twenty-four hours. I have discussed it with Marina. But the psychological effect can be life-changing. This, after all, is what we are hoping for.’
There was a pause, doubt in the air.
‘I didn’t know you were planning something like this,’ murmured Fyodor, always cautious.
‘Count me in,’ said the dancer, Ivan. ‘Nina?’
‘Darling, you know me, I’m ready for anything.’
‘Me too,’ drawled Volodya from the corner.
‘How about you, Gerty?’ asked Sonya.
I took a deep breath and glanced at Nikita. ‘Yes. I’ll do it.’
‘Bravo, Gerty!’ Pasha smiled at me. ‘If Gerty can overcome her fears, then you all can.’
One by one, they agreed, even Fyodor. We ate the dried mushrooms then and there, before anyone could change their mind: all of us except Slavkin and Marina, who were to look after us. While the drug took hold, on Nikita’s instructions, we prepared ourselves by loosening our clothing and removing our shoes and stockings; washing our hands, face and feet; carrying out a few of the Model T exercises and drinking a glass of water. Nikita attached three rubber pads to our foreheads, and two behind each ear, to monitor our neurological energy patterns. Then we waited to take our turn in the PropMash. As I wrote in my account some time afterwards:
My mind feels beautifully relaxed and I stare at the halo of light around the lamp when my name is called. My limbs are heavy and I am glad of Nikita’s guiding arm as he helps me into the Propaganda Machine. The helmet presses down on my head as though the whole weight of the atmosphere were concentrated on me and I am suddenly very afraid, but Nikita’s eyes are fastened on mine, infinitely reassuring, and I find myself saying, ‘I love you so much.’ And he gazes back at me without saying anything but in his eyes is written clearly that he loves me too, more profoundly than I have ever been loved. And I relax into the seat and relinquish myself to the pain and horror of the Machine, because I know it is an expression of his love, and even the screams that I hear coming from my mouth, and the sweat, and shudders of terror that rend my whole being, are enfolded and cushioned in the vast sensation of warmth and tenderness that I feel from him. And therefore when the Crisis is over, and my tears are drying on my cheeks in the soft breeze of Socialism, my heart almost bursts with joy.
And when we had waited while Nikita took further readings of neurological energy patterns, he and Marina led us gently across the courtyard to the banya, the steam bath, which they had fired up, using some joists from the stable roof, and we gasped at the delicious sensation of heat. We shuffled off our clothes, and splashed water onto the stove. Nakedness, under the influence of the drug, felt like perfection, like innocence. We were in the Garden of Eden again. After a few moments of blindness a leg emerged, a breast, a dangling arm, with bony joints sliding under the skin or smooth and massive. We were quiet and utterly at peace.
Later Slavkin spoke. ‘Each time we – just we few – allow ourselves to imagine a harmonious world, we bring it closer. We are creating the future here, in our minds. The neurological patterns you are now experiencing will be its foundations. Just share your thoughts with us. You know the answer, if only you can discover it within yourself. Inside your imagination lies the blueprint for the future. How, why, what you will into being – this is the choice that confronts you, and all of us.’
This journey was followed by several more. They played a remarkable part in bonding our small community together, at least in the short term. No one reported any ill-effects from the narcotic. Volodya and Vera acquiesced to the will of the commune. Fyodor accepted Slavkin’s leadership. Ivan and Nina co-operated more fully. I felt happier, less suspicious of Sonya. We worked together harmoniously, and when Slavkin began to talk to us about his plans for the Socialisation Capsule, they did not seem far-fetched in the slightest.
11
Slavkin now made an extraordinary leap from his work on iridium alloys into quantum mechanics. His notes on the Socialisation Capsule have been much reproduced in the decades since his disappearance and the scholarly literature on them is extensive. Nonetheless I reproduce below the text of the final lecture he ever gave, in January 1919. This was what Slavkin was working on in his workshop during those cruel winter months – his last, astonishing achievement before what many consider the greatest feat of all, his disappearance.
Particle physics was in its infancy, yet in this text Slavkin intuited truths about the quantum world that mathematicians and scientists would begin to understand only decades later. Indeed, there is a school of thought in the Soviet Union that suggests the real proof of Slavkin’s success with the Socialisation Capsule lies right here, in this lecture – in these ideas that are so flagrantly anachronistic they can have only one possible explanation. He must have achieved his aim and returned to write the lecture later. They also point to his apparent foreknowledge of Eisenstein’s theory of montage in the Propaganda Machine, and the amazing farsightedness of many of his other inventions. However, as one who saw a number of the early ideas in development, this seems to me to be stretching things too far.
Still, how did he do it, on our miserable diet of millet porridge, in a collapsing city, among our endless arguments? How did he even have time, after his long days at the Centre for Revolutionary Research and our meetings stretching far into the night? I know he hardly slept, waking at three or four in the morning and padding down to his workshop in his dressing-gown. I know he also made frequent use of the Siberian mushrooms. By the time he woke the commune he had already completed four or five hours’ work. Fizzing with energy, robe flying, eyes glittering in his pale face, laughing and jumping about on his bare feet with their long toes, he smashed the gong like a djinn, or an Orthodox saint.
The radical problem of Communism is in fact the problem of time. The key to constructing Communism lies therefore in a solution to this problem – a means of distorting or evading time.
Darwin’s discoveries did not, as it first seemed, paint a picture of a world solely based on ‘survival of the fittest’. Quite the contrary, evolution has given humans (and all living things) a dual strategy for survival – on the one hand, a ferocious survival instinct where it is a question of kill or be killed; and on the other hand, the instinct to work within a community for the benefit of the group as a whole, when that group provides a safeguard for the individual. This last instinct, which is present in the huge majority of living things – from plants to insects to communities of fish or mammals and to humans as well, of course – is the dynamic force behind Socialism.
In general, the history of mankind is the story of the suppression of the ‘kill or be killed’ instinct and the cultivation of the communal instinct – millennia of slow progress towards humanism, away from barbarism. In this sense the battle between the two impulses is already won; only the march of time stands between us and the ultimate victory of Socialism.