For the Good of the Cause (11 page)

Fyodor walked slowly because he wanted to get a breath of fresh air. The lack of sleep, the two Nembutals he had taken, and all the things that had been going through his mind for the last day or so had given him a feeling of discomfort, of being somehow poisoned. But the fresh air gradually blew it away.

Oh well, he thought, we’ll just have to start all over again. We’ll get all nine hundred of them together and tell them frankly: “We haven’t got that building any more. We’ve got to build another. The harder we work, the sooner we’ll have it.”

It wasn’t going to be easy at first.

But they’d soon be just as enthusiastic as ever about it. That’s the effect work always has on people.

They would have faith.

And they would build.

All right, they’d put up with the old place for another year.

And now, before he knew where he was, Fyodor found himself at the new building. It shone with metal and glass.

The other one, next to it, still just a mass of earth and clay, had scarcely gotten above ground level.

Grachikov’s questions about Khabalygin had set off a train of half-formed, nagging thoughts in Fyodor’s unsuspicious mind, and he was now beginning to piece them together: the way Khabalygin had delayed signing for the building in August, and how cheerful he had been with the commission.

Oddly enough, the first person Fyodor saw on the grounds at the back of the site was the man in his thoughts, the man he had just begun to fathom. Vsevolod Khabalygin, wearing his green hat and a good brown overcoat, was striding about the sodden grounds, ignoring the mud he was getting all over his shoes and giving orders to a group of workmen, apparently his own. Two of the men and a driver were unloading stakes from a truck. Some of the stakes were freshly painted, others were rather grubby, as though they had already been in use—you could tell by their points, which had rotted and then been trimmed again. Two other workmen were bending down and doing something under Khabalygin’s direction; he gave his orders with rapid movements of his short arms.

Fyodor went closer and saw that they were driving the stakes into the ground. But they were cheating. Instead of placing them in a straight line, they were being crafty and putting them up in a long, sweeping curve, so as to take in as much of the land as possible for the institute and leave as little as possible for the school.

“Listen, Comrade Khabalygin! Be fair! What’s all this?” the principal shouted upon seeing this swindle. “Kids of fifteen and sixteen need space to breathe and run around in! Where will they go?”

At that moment, Khabalygin had planted himself at a strategic spot from which the last section of his misbegotten fence would run. Straddling the future boundary, he had already raised his arm to give the signal when he heard Fyodor just behind him. With his hand still poised at eye level, Khabalygin turned (his thick neck didn’t make it easy for him to turn his head), bared his teeth slightly, and snarled:

“What? What do you say?”

And without waiting for an answer, he turned away, checked the alignment of his men with the palm of his hand, signaled one of them into line by quick movements of his fingers, and finally cut a swathe through the air with a sweep of his short arm.

It was as though he had sliced not just through the air, but the very ground on which he stood. It was the sort of grand gesture that would accompany the opening up of some great new route. It was the gesture of the warrior of ancient times blazing a trail for his armies. It was the gesture of the first mariner to open up a passage to the North Pole.

And only when his task was done did he turn to Fyodor to say:

“That’s the way it has to be, dear Comrade.”

“Why does it
have
to be?” Fyodor asked angrily, with a shake of his head. “For the good of the cause, I suppose. Is that it? Well, just you wait!” And he clenched his fists. But he could no longer speak. He turned away and strode off quickly toward the road, muttering to himself:

“Just wait, you pig! Just wait, you swine!”

The workmen went on carrying the stakes.

WHAT IS “RIGHT”?

The writing career of the author of
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
evolved in so dramatic and unusual a manner, and his talent is so individual and so interesting, that nothing which now flows from his pen can fail to excite the liveliest interest.
An Incident at Krechetovka Station
and
Matryona’s Home
, whatever your opinion of them, showed that we are in the presence of a gifted writer who has not the slightest intention of confining himself within the limits of the prison-camp theme. Now we have a new story. And, it would appear, a “new” Solzhenitsyn-writing about present-day Parry officials, the youth, and so forth …

The words “right” and “wrong” occur several times in Solzhenitsyn’s story, and always with special significance and emphasis. “It’s all wrong!” shouts one of the story’s heroines, while one of the heroes feels that he, too, must proclaim the same thing. And later, in the course of a quarrel that flares up in the office of the Secretary of the District Committee, we read: “Once again it was a clash of right and wrong.” This remark is intended to define the approach to life of one of the characters, but the reader is left in no doubt that it also expresses the author’s own point of view on the essence of the conflict.

The conflict revolves around a technical school that is in terrible need of new premises and has those very premises taken away from it and given to a research institute at the last minute, literally on the eve of moving in. Well, is that really just?

Indeed, both teachers and pupils had pinned high hopes on the transfer to the new building: spacious and comfortable lecture halls, well-equipped laboratories and workshops, a dormitory (which meant an end to being scattered all over the place, an end to expensive private accommodations!), a large athletics field, and a big courtyard… So much effort and enthusiasm had been put into the new building by the students, whom the author depicts with much love and sympathy, to speed up the completion of the new building. They themselves had worked on it both before and after classes, on Sundays, and during their vacation… And how we sympathize with the principal, Fyodor Mikheyevich, to whom the loss of the building is a great personal tragedy. His trembling hands are still vividly before my eyes…

Indeed, just a little more and we would cry out together with Lidia, “It’s all wrong!” Such is one’s first emotional reaction, the first inner response.

Grachikov, the Secretary of the Town Committee, is entirely at the mercy of such emotions. When Fyodor Mikheyevich, his wartime friend, rushes to him in great agitation and asks, in search of support: “Honestly, Ivan, don’t you think it’s stupid? I don’t mean just for the school, but from the point of view of the state, isn’t it plain stupid?” Grachikov replies sharply and firmly, without a moment’s hesitation: “Yes, it’s stupid.” And he immediately joins in the battle for the building on the side of the school. It is Grachikov’s quarrel with Knorozov, the Secretary of the District Committee, that Solzhenitsyn presents as a clash between right and wrong.

The scene in Knorozov’s office is the culminating point of the story. At this juncture, the conflict over the new building becomes more than just a private misunderstanding; it is transplanted from the moral to the political sphere and is interpreted by Solzhenitsyn as a conflict between two styles of Party work, between two political lines: Lenin’s and the one that was decisively condemned at the Twentieth Congress.

Who is this Knorozov?—“As it had once been in Moscow with Stalin’s word, so it was still today with Knorozov’s word: It was never changed and never taken back. And, although Stalin was long dead, Knorozov was still here. He was a leading proponent of the ‘strong-willed school of leadership’ and he saw in this his greatest virtue. He could not imagine any other way of running things.” Solzhenitsyn depicts Knorozov with sharp, almost caricature touches (“His face seemed cast forever in one mold, never betraying any trivial or momentary emotions… He was truly made of steel and all of a piece.” His voice is “metallic,” his words fall “like steel girders.”) not bothering to portray him as a real, living person; we see him not so much as a human being, but as a symbol of the era of the cult of personality.

There is far more of the real and the individual in Grachikov, but he and Knorozov are contrasted by the author not just as individuals but as new types: the new Party official as opposed to an embodiment of the methods of leadership typical of the period of the cult of personality. Solzhenitsyn several times refers to such qualities of Grachikov’s as his democratic way of working, consideration for people, his ability to hear them out and to work, as Grachikov says, “in the Soviet way.” … “Grachikov much preferred to decide things without rushing—giving himself time to think and letting others have a say.” Such qualities are indeed excellent, and the author’s attempt to understand the new type of Party leader as a product of our times is worthy of every encouragement. But the trouble is that Grachikov’s actions and behavior are completely at variance with this intention.

What is the distinguishing feature of the Party official of today? It is primarily the effort to analyze profoundly and to understand the essence of any problem, to get down to its roots and to grasp its meaning in all its complex relationship with the world around it. Bur there is not the slightest suggestion of anything like this in Grachikov. We are presented with an impulsive person who surrenders easily to fleecing emotions and makes rash, irresponsible decisions. It is strange that, having learned of the proposed transfer of the building to the institute, Grachikov does not even try to probe the merits of the affair and ponder it seriously. After all, the Secretary of the Town Committee knows perfectly well that the institute is “important.” (“Once you know that its address is a P.O. box number, you don’t ask any questions.”) … Incidentally, the following detail is typical: While the author rightly condemns Yakov Ananyevich, the Secretary of the school’s Party Buro (by the way, this episodic figure in the story is sketched laconically but extremely effectively) , who is not prepared to speak frankly to the students and explain to them what has happened, he does not seem to mind that it does not occur to Grachikov (or, incidentally, to Fyodor Mikheyevich) to take this logical and very important step, which could well have taken the edge off the sharpness of the conflict. Furthermore, something that can be excused in the principal, who is blinded by his sense of grievance and who is thrown off balance, is quite inexcusable in the Secretary of the Town Committee. What sort of “Soviet” work is that?

No, if we are going to talk about a new type of leader, then Grachikov as depicted in the story is the last person to be pitted against a Knorozov. The day of such people as Knorozov is past—and there Solzhenitsyn is absolutely right—but he has not succeeded in describing those who are actually taking their place.

In Solzhenitsyn’s story there is one circumstance that, in his opinion, provides ample justification for resolving the question of “right” and “wrong” as Grachikov and Fyodor Mikheyevich see it. This is the personal involvement of Knorozov and Khabalygin, the director of the relay factory, in the transfer of the building to the research institute. The former dreams of the elevation of “his” town to a higher status and of the consequent enhancement of his own power; the latter counts on being put in charge of the new institute.

It is interesting to note, however, that both Grachikov and Fyodor Mikheyevich express their opinion of the proposed transfer of the building to the institute even
before
they learn of Khabalygin’s careerist ambitions. Moreover, the very appointment of the non-specialist Khabalygin (“He ran a transformer plant before this. He’s just an experienced executive.”) to the directorship of a major scientific research institute does not look very credible, it must be said.

But even this is not the most important aspect. Most important of all is that neither Knorozov’s ambitions nor Khabalygin’s careerism can obscure, nor ought they to obscure, the basic questions, which must be answered if talk of “right” and “wrong” is ever to emerge from the sphere of general abstraction. After all, is it right, is it possible, is it reasonable to discuss seriously whether the outcome is right or wrong without having a clear idea of what exactly the new institute is, what significance it has, whether its immediate opening is dictated by pressing necessity, whether it isn’t just possible that the school’s interests will be safeguarded, and so forth?

Unfortunately, not only those characters in the story whom the author presents as positive heroes, but the author himself for some reason, avoid these questions. The phrase “for the good of the cause,” which Solzhenitsyn has made the title of his story, has an obviously sarcastic undertone—the words are discredited by the demagogue Khabalygin. Yet these words are not only mouthed by demagogues; they have a real, and most important, meaning. But this is completely ignored by the author. So what happens? Real, living bonds and relationships are destroyed, and we are presented with an artificially constructed, imaginary world, where honest, decent, but weak-willed champions of justice are found to be helpless, not so much in the face of the Knorozovs and Khabalygins as in the face of some indifferent, unfeeling force, which can be sensed behind the faceless, nameless representatives of unnamed institutions (“a Comrade from the Department of …” and “the Head of the Electronics Section from …”).

It would be wrong to suppose that these serious defects in the very conception of Solzhenitsyn’s story do not affect its literary qualities. Truth to life is an intellectual and aesthetic category, and the slightest deviation from it is fraught with failure in the “purely” artistic sphere. Here and there in the story
For the Good of the Cause
, in the occasional vivid touches or observations or in a particular word, we can detect the hand of Solzhenitsyn, but the plasticity and organic qualities of the language which won us over in the best pages of his other prose are lacking on this occasion.