"Solomon" and Consciousness: An Exercise in Nonscience Fiction
Arkanov, Arkadii
Although Soviet writers have been repeatedly exhorted to employ the "weapon" of satire, the range of its "permissible" subjects steadily shrank over the years. The New Economic Policy...
...Yes...
...For many years its inhabitants had worked on creating a portentous and absolutely top-secret product 164 • DISSENT GLASNOST WATCH code-named "marmotinium...
...No o-va-tions...
...the unit supervisors said...
...thought Solomon...
...he raged...
...People must not be allowed to agree with whatever I say...
...All Saturday and the whole of Sunday Solomon wracked his metal brains, trying to figure out how to awaken public selfawareness...
...All we know is that those who suffered most on this strange little planet were the workers in the gift section of the department store...
...He doesn't like ovations...
...Literaturnaia gazeta began running a humor column, under the title of "Twelve Chairs...
...blazed the neon letters...
...Yet who is "Solomon"—with his stern admonitions, efforts to "rouse initiative," and mounting frustration—ifnot Mikhail Gorbachev...
...The works of Ilf and Petrov were occasionally republished until 1948, when they were banned as "ideologically harmful...
...the neon letters blazed...
...It would be wrong to regard Solomon's short-circuited fate as the author's bleak prognostication of things to come...
...Solomon was beside himself...
...Until now we had closed our eyes to goudation even though it's clear that goudation is an objective factor that must be reckoned with," said the second...
...FOR 100 PERCENT GOUDATION...
...chimed in the third supervisor...
...Gathering his last strength, Solomon wrote back to Earth that everything on the little planet was a fraud...
...We must initiate a campaign for 100 percent goudation," chimed in the third...
...Finally, an electronic emissary was constructed on Earth...
...Others thought it was an ingredient of a skin revitalizer...
...And quite right too...
...But as soon as Solomon arrived, it became immediately clear to everyone that his human predecessors had been wrong...
...The most important thing," Solomon decided, "is to arouse initiative and self-awareness...
...The supervisors vigorously agreed...
...Although not suppressed, satire was severely circumscribed...
...Where is your self-awareness...
...Yet the local paper trumpeted the achievement of marmotinium "by the year 2981...
...No one knows who succeeded him or what happened next...
...AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR THE ERADICATION OF GOUDATION...
...Yet you go on praising to the skies every idiocy I utter...
...You think it's a joke...
...So the next day, at a general meeting, he proclaimed: "Less applause, more work...
...Solomon wished to affix his signature, but at the moment he suffered what is referred to in obituaries as "a sudden and untimely death...
...Literaturnaia gazeta, Moscow August 5, 1987 q 166 • DISSENT...
...GOUDATION CREATES MARMOTINIUM...
...How truly extraordinary...
...a new generation of satirists began to publish their work...
...In truth, none of the planet's denizens knew what "marmotinium" was...
...Now you're in for it...
...No o-va-tions...
...still others were convinced that it was a new key to longevity, but those who thought so kept their speculations to themselves...
...All unit supervisors should be fired immediately...
...cried the first supervisor...
...The machine was endowed with infinite wisdom, deadly logic, and the capacity for far-reaching analysis and global synthesis...
...The latter was more than just a plain old planet: it was a veritable enterprise...
...Yesterday's jubilation was transformed into today's exultation: "GOUDATION IS NONSENSE...
...Absurdity is an objective factor," observed the second...
...The warehouses were crammed full of stamps embossed with Solomon's image, and no one, no one at all, knew how much to charge for them...
...WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR GOUDATION...
...Yet the satirical sketch that appears below is something new, even in this era of glasnost...
...everyone shouted in unison...
...After 1932 the situation worsened perceptibly...
...In other words, he had to start from scratch...
...Solomon raised his voice: "Why don't you ask me the reason for firing them...
...On Tuesday he addressed a general meeting...
...painted placards demanded...
...It was thus not surprising that Solomon found the little planet braced for a "new and unprecedented phase of development" (as the local paper put it...
...And in the gift section of the planet's department store, stamps embossed with Solomon's image were selling at five rubles, thirty kopecks apiece (in our currency...
...Khrushchev's thaw liberated Soviet satire...
...So Solomon decided on a risky step...
...Marmotinium was barely in its embryonic stage...
...the unit supervisors cried rapturously, and organized a spontaneous meeting...
...The New Economic Policy of 1921-25, with its tolerance of a relatively pluralistic economic structure and literary and artistic diversity, was also a glorious period of Soviet satire, when prominent political figures, such as Trotsky, Zinoviev, and even Lenin, did not escape the irreverent attention of writers and caricaturists...
...He doesn't like ovations...
...Only yesterday we were closing our eyes to the fact that goudation is nonsense...
...Suddenly it dawned on Solomon why marmotinium had not yet been built—people spent all their time at meetings...
...And in the gift section of the department store, stamps embossed with Solomon's image went up by forty kopecks (in our currency...
...Think about what I've told you," Solomon told the supervisors, "and implement appropriate measures forthwith...
...demanded the painted placards...
...It must be admitted . . . We had underestimated . . ." "The fact that goudation is nonsense is an objective factor which must be reckoned with," said the second supervisor...
...Indignation and amazement set off Solomon's second-level alarm system...
...Zoshchenko was never to recover from the attack and died in virtual obscurity in 1958...
...He called himself a total idiot and the people not only agreed, they were positively overjoyed...
...Some said that it was an important part of a still more important part...
...And so at the first meeting, as an experiment, Solomon announced to those assembled that he was a total idiot...
...performers like Arkadii Raikin boldly—sometimes almost blasphemously—mocked the foibles of Soviet society...
...71 When Solomon's letter reached the Earth, it was decided that he had been too smart for his own good...
...Absolutely right...
...It's a piece of stupidity that I concocted...
...But that is absolutely absurd...
...On Monday he told the unit supervisors: "The main thing in building marmotinium is to ensure the quality of goudation...
...Again he summoned the unit supervisors and declaimed: "As of tomorrow all blue-eyed blondes must be fired from their jobs according to Article 47.b...
...Eleven emissaries, one after another, had been sent from Earth to govern the little planet, and all eleven, unable to cope, were eventually recalled...
...Zoshchenko's career ended in 1946, when he was savagely attacked by the gauleiter of Soviet orthodoxy, Andrey Zhdanov, and expelled, along with the poet Anna Akhmatova, from the Union of Soviet Writers...
...Of course they were wrong," the local paper wrote...
...exclaimed the first SPRING • 1988 • 165 GLASNOST WATCH supervisor...
...How could they have possibly been right, when they were wrong...
...Yet the fact that Arkanov felt no compunction about directing his wit at the gigantic problems facing Gorbachev is surely a tribute to the new winds of relative freedom in the Soviet Union...
...He was relieved of his duties "in connection with his transfer to another position...
...As evening approached, Solomon saw with horror that the whole little planet was lit up and festooned with huge slogans...
...Such applause erupted that Solomon's head, with its electronic brains, hurt all night long...
...A persuasive argument, and one that spurred people on to bigger and better things...
...He felt such excruciating pain that he immediately went home and lay down on his tachometer...
...And who are those mindless crowds cheering every new slogan proclaimed by their leaders—and then going about their business as if nothing had happened—if not some—many—of the citizens of the USSR...
...Its author, the well-known writer Arkadii Arkanov, eschews the customary targets, taking on, instead, the current perestroika campaign itself...
...No wonder...
...screamed the headline of that morning's local paper...
...It must be necessary," all three rapped out together...
...All night he'd been trying to find a way to provoke sensible disobedience to him, and toward morning he thought that he had found one...
...Wednesday, from morning on, Solomon's electronic pressure was rising precipitously...
...And in the gift section of the department store, stamps embossed with Solomon's image went up by yet another forty kopecks (in our currency...
...An extraordinary picture emerged: according to the plan, production of marmotinium should have been completed in the year 2965...
...A new and unprecedented phase of development" really meant "total collapse...
...At last...
...After all, that's what the local paper told them every day...
...Aha...
...said the first...
...GOUDATION DOES NOT CREATE MARMOTINIUM...
...Absolutely right...
...Until the early 1930s masters like Ilf and Petrov (The Little Golden Calf, 1928, and The Twelve Chairs, 1931) as well as the incomparable Mikhail Zoshchenko, whose acrid yet affectionate sketches chronicle the absurdities of Soviet life, survived and even flourished...
...Goudation is nonsense...
...I fired them," Solomon stormed, "because not a single one of them ever skipped work...
...he cried...
...Unfortunately, he was not able to go on with his speech because his words were drowned out by deafening applause, the echo of which resonates to this very day...
...JOSEPHINE WOLL or more than forty years this strange little miniplanet has been under Earth's control...
...Toward evening all of the planet's citizens would go home from work, reading the newspaper and certain that the production of marmotinium was approaching with each passing day...
...The next day Solomon called together the unit supervisors and declared that he did not like ovations...
...We must initiate a campaign for the complete eradication of goudation...
...He would issue such imbecilic decrees that even a wooden stool would be bound to object...
...In the past we closed our eyes...
...Plus 453 percent meant minus 453 percent...
...Everyone, however, was convinced that marmotinium was something at once magnificent and indispensable and that in order to produce it all citizens had to roll up their sleeves, harness the collective, catch up with the shock-workers, mobilize the stragglers and pull together—arm in arm, nose to nose...
...The wondrous creation was given the biblical name of Solomon and was duly dispatched to the faraway strange little planet...
...Blue-eyed blondes are an objective factor," agreed the second...
...We must initiate a campaign," chimed in the third...
...In the past we somehow closed our eyes to absurdity," the first said dispassionately...
...It was not until three years after Stalin's death, in 1956, that they again saw the light of day...
...The terms "marmotinium" and "goudation" (in Russian pablosurzhik and brynzovelost) are, of course, fictitious...
...Solomon's protective membrane almost burst at the ovation that greeted his words, and the little planet itself shook from the thunderous reverberations...
...Thursday was proclaimed a nonworking day because of the absence of absentees on the little planet...
...If they were fired because they never skipped work, it means that there have never been any absentees on our little planet, nor are there any now...
...Solomon received the final blow on Friday, when he read in the local paper that under his leadership the plan for producing marmotinium had been overfulfilled by 453 percent...
...proclaimed the local paper...
...We must initiate a campaign for 100 percent absurdity," the third added confidently...
Vol. 35 • April 1988 • No. 2
