Monumental Propaganda by Vladímir Voinóvich Read Free Book Online

been asked, neither one of them would have been able to say what a shnoot was.
    Aglaya left the courtyard and set off across the waste lot along the still firm and icy path that was beginning to thaw in the sun. Her steps were rapid and light; she rejoiced in the sunlight and the colors and the smell of spring, without actually understanding the reasons for such keen feelings. But her body understood. Her body knew the illness had been serious and Aglaya’s recovery was a miracle, and now every cell in her body was rejoicing at its good fortune in still being alive.

9
    At its non-dead-end, Komsomol Cul-de-Sac emerged into Rosenblum Street, which ran out onto Stalin Prospect not far from Stalin Square.
    The monument stood facing the building of the district committee of the CPSU, her very own old territory. In her time Aglaya had made her way here (actually, she had been driven; her position did not allow her to walk) as if she was coming home. The policeman at the door had stood to attention and saluted her, the secretary in the waiting room had jumped to her feet and tidied her hairdo and the fat local bigwigs she came across in the corridor had pressed back against the walls, exuding a smell of garlic and raw vodka as they opened mouths crammed full of gold or more base metal. They smiled or even laughed, with their bellies shaking, showing how happy they were to see her, and some even performed something like a curtsey.
    In her time Aglaya had occupied the very largest office here, with walls paneled in walnut and numerous telephones. Here, enveloped in dove-gray cigarette smoke, she had sat behind the broad desk under the portraits of Lenin and Stalin, looking like some frenzied Pasionaria. To this office she had summoned those who distinguished themselves by their labor efforts, but there had always been fewer of them than those who had committed an offense of some kind, and at these she had hammered her fist on the desk, bellowed and cursed obscenely. Here men with high positions and large physiques used to tremble before her, sweating and stammering, clutching at their hearts and losing consciousness. There was even one occasion when one of them had quite simply messed his pants, and another—the director of a state farm who was unable to explain how he had managed to drink the farm’s entire six-month budget—had collapsed on the spot, felled by a stroke.
    Parting with great power is as hard as parting with great wealth. It is unpleasant and even humiliating to walk where you used to be driven in an automobile, with all that speed and commotion and blaring of the horn: Stop, make way, can’t you see—it’s Revkina’s car? It is hard to grow used to the fact that you can’t give out orders left and right: serve, bring, take away, show, report. It was strange not to see flattering smiles on approaching faces or an obsequious question in other eyes. But gradually Aglaya had become accustomed to her lowly position, comforting herself with the thought that she had done a lot of good in her life. She had introduced the collective farm system, and participated in the rout of the opposition, and fought as a partisan, and rebuilt the district from ruins, but she believed the very greatest service she had rendered, the crowning achievement of all her efforts, was the erection of the monument, without which the town would quite simply not have been what it was.
    As for the district committee—what of it? It had been her home; now it was someone else’s. There was nothing for her to do in there. And she wasn’t going there now, she was going to see Stalin. But she paused at the Avenue of Glory, which was located in front of the district Party committee building. The first object worthy of note on the alley was the Board of Honor, on which the portraits of labor heroes and industrial shock workers were displayed in two rows: the faces, well known to Aglaya, of progressive collective