The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов

talking to myself in my mind… Besides, my helpers were replaced way too often. Their rotation was seen to by Narcological Department 2, shortened to Narco-2.

Narco-2 constituted the crucial part in the conveyor production of slaves.

Slaves in the epoch of Developed Socialism? Well, let’s not forget the spiral-like advancing of the historical progress. The system worked as follows: a militia van rushed into a village and grabbed a pair of mujiks indicated by the village council chairman as prone to alcohol consumption. (And who is not?)

The catch was brought to Narco-2 for the treatment of alcoholism. Anyone entertaining an indecently high opinion of his human rights got a shot of sulfur and, until the end of the treatment, he carefully avoided risks of picking up the subject any more…

The treatment term spanned from 2 to 3 months. The patients lived in the hostel, ate their havvage in the canteen, worked wherever they would send them.

NO PAYMENT FOR THEIR WORK

All of their payment was withheld as reimbursement for their accommodation, havvage, and medical care. The mentioned medical care was the pills dispensed to the patients after the working day, which they immediately flushed down the toilet.

If keeping a low profile, they were allowed to visit their villages on weekends…

In cities, Step 1 in the procedure was simplified. The precinct militia officer announced to the drunks on his beat whose turn it was to go for the treatment and they knew they'd be better off if falling in line.

(…the first Marxist group in Russia bore the telling name of “Liberation of Labor” and—lo!—with the inexorable historic logicality, one hundred years later, the Land of Victorious Socialism effectively liberated labor from payment for it, and, in the same breath, Narco-2 with the host of same institutions covering the boundless USSR became the brilliant realization of the cherished dream of the founders of scientific communism about erasing differences between City and Village.

Donnerwetter! Who’d ask for better proof that Ewige Weibliche means business and pedantically does its job?.

Both the Russian Empire and the United States of America abolished slavery in the early ’60s of the XIX-nth century, well done! Three cheers for each!.

It’s only that Russian mujiks were enslaved many centuries before the first Afro-American slave was ever born.

I mean, old habits are die-hard customers indeed…)

Each person certainly has their own story and if you keep quiet and don't interrupt them by attempts at narrating some of your own, they will eventually tell theirs to you.

Not necessarily about themselves, maybe about a relative or a neighbor. For example, about a German soldier from an infantry squad occupying a village khutta. Each morning he yelled something to which his comrades responded with their laughter. One of them had a little Russian and explained to the landlady the content of his yells, "Gimme those two bitches – Hitler and Stalin, I'll give them short shrift with my Schmeisser!"

The story was told me by an old woman preparing to retire from the Construction Shop Floor, who, as a small girl, saw Germans living in her mom's khutta.

(…the question is: for how long they would tolerate such an entertainer in the Red Army?..)

Or about a mujik who made friends with a stranger at a beer bar. They went out together and strolled along the street until the new acquaintance had to loosen his bowels. He dropped in a nearby yard with a promise to be back in a moment. On taking a leak, he tried to nick a carpet from the linen rope and was arrested…

As for the mujik waiting for his gossip on the sidewalk, he got four years of prison as the accomplice. Yes, there still occurred some happenstance mistakes even under the most human judicial system in the world…

And the executioner was simply proud to tell his story because he considered himself a hero, not an executioner.

He served at the front Smersh battalion mopping up the areas taken control of, and whenever they happened to capture an RLA soldier, he personally and heroically took the traitor to a nearby wood. Although at the headquarters there was a special platoon with sub-machine guns for the purpose.

Now, they two would walk there arm in arm, only the hands of one in the pair were tied behind his back. And on the way, the hero began a casual talk about the family and kids, so that some of the captives even started to hope for something.

And then he said, "Why do you, bitch, betrayed our Motherland?" And he shot his TT pistol, not to kill though, but make a hole in the liver with his bullet so that the bastard wriggled for 10 minutes before dying of the lethal wound.

After the war, he wanted to become a diplomat, but they explained to him that a Soviet diplomat, being an embodiment of our Homeland abroad, should be flawless. Unfortunately, his body was missing three fingers cut off by a bomb fragment when already in Germany. How would he waltz another country ambassador's wife at a diplomatic rout with such a claw? He saw the point and entered an institute for economics to get the diploma of a middle-rank manager…

I slightly knew his son who was always ready with slogans like "we'll not allow the bitches to trample our native land!", because he flawlessly memorized and kept to his dad's ideology…

In Konotop, the ideology was hardly ever viewed with much of reverence. When in the heat of an argument, folks did not choose some high-flown words. Thus, for example, to upbraid a female, they would say, "You are a Newsya Kamenetskaya!"

Newsya was a city idiot. She silently walked the sidewalks, no one addressed her and she addressed no one because she was a quiet case. But a single look at her hat was enough to see that she was nuts, sort of a red bonnet with a bouquet of artificial flowers. By that bonnet, she was recognized from afar, and small kids in the street would run after her and shout, "