Episode One: Red Rain
On February 25, 1956, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev made a speech that would be recorded as one of the most pivotal in the history of the Soviet Union. This event became known as the "Secret Speech".
It was the last day of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held to review the outcomes of the fifth five-year plan, and a private, unscheduled session for Soviet delegates was announced that morning. There, Khrushchev would denounce the personality cult and dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, and would call upon the Party to eradicate that cult of personality, the elevation of Stalin to such heights that he took on the supernatural characteristics of a god.
The term "Secret Speech", however, was a misnomer. The following night, Eastern European delegates were allowed to hear the speech, slowed down to let them take notes. Copies of the speech were mailed throughout the Soviet Union, marked "not for press" rather than "top secret". Soon, they were read at meetings of the Komsomol, the youth division of the Communist Party. Within a month, an official translation appeared in Poland, where 12,000 additional copies were printed. One of these reached the west, and so the entire world knew of the speech before Spring had even fully bloomed, quite possibly much to the pleasure of Khrushchev.
That day marked the beginning of a new era in the Soviet Union. Slowly but surely, censorship on the arts eased, leading to some of the Soviet Union's greatest artists emerging and creating art and literature that would be acknowledged the world over.
Soviet citizens were allowed to travel more than ever before, with 700,000 travelling abroad in 1957 alone. Khrushchev believed the Soviet Union could match and exceed the West's standards of living, and so was not afraid to let Soviets see Western achievements. Foreigners were allowed through the Iron Curtain, the true scope of which was seen when Khrushchev authorized the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students to be held in Moscow. Over 30,000 young foreign visitors attended, which served to shatter both Soviet and Western stereotypes.
But arguably the hugest achievement of this 'Soviet Renaissance" was the rise of the Soviet space program. The first man-made object sent into orbit, Sputnik-1, launched in 1957. Soon after, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly into space in 1961, and Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in 1963. The space program continued to make firsts as the Soviet people reached out and prepared to touch the stars. A future where space-travel would be as common as a trip on a plane no longer seemed so far off.
And so the defining words of this era, a bright future, seemed truer than ever. The first generation of Soviets who had never seen the horrors of the Second World War had grown up and were ready to create this future, to build a new country. The windows of enlightenment had been opened, and anything seemed possible.
January 1964
Bratsk, a relatively large town in mid-Siberia, began a steep increase in both population and size during World War 2, when Soviet industry had been moved east of the Ural Mountains on account of an advancing German army. Although this increase in development slowed after the War's end, when resources were needed to rebuild European Russia, Bratsk was finally put on the map when a 4500-megawatt power plant was built there between 1954 and 1966. It received town status in 1954.
Because of Bratsk's central location, it served as a favorable place to build military bases around. Although the area's major airfield and civilian airport, the aptly named Bratsk Airport, was built in 1977, many small bases already surrounded the town prior to the airport's arrival. Little more than outposts, these bases were equipped modestly because while the location was central, it was far from any borders or significant population centers. As was standard in the Soviet Military, the bases received the name of the largest nearby village, town, or city, and a number. One of these outposts was Bratsk-3. Located almost 200 kilometres northeast of Bratsk, it was the furthest of the Bratsk bases. The oupost closest to it was Bratsk-1, about 120 kilometres southwest. The small team occupying Bratsk-3 received the quiet (which happens to be a common synonym of 'boring') position for a reason: they were not the best of the best in any sense of the phrase. They were all deemed unfit for positions anywhere else, which stemmed from anything such as physical incompetence to an inability to retain any basic skills learned in training. However, the six occupants of Bratsk-3 wanted to be in the army for various reasons, and so did their jobs as best they could. Led by starshina Igor Bogdanov (a position that ranked slightly higher than a common soldier), the team essentially did three things: scanned the surrounding airspace, cut down firewood for additional heat, and occasionally shot a deer because canned food is boring (which is, in this case, not a synonym of quiet).
The other inhabitants of Bratsk-3 were two common soldiers, Kostya Sapozhnik and Maksim Glinka, a medic, Ilya Nikitsky, and two radio operators, Alexander Semenovich and Eva Anikina, the only woman. While one might have expected a considerable amount of sexism towards Eva, and although she did receive her fair share when the six were first brought to Bratsk-3, the others eventually treated her as an equal because any sort of conflict in an isolated place like a tiny clearing in the infinite forest they were based in could lead only to bad things (case in point: Eva physically assaulted and forced Kostya to sleep outside on a cold early-April night following an unappreciated crotch-grab a day after their arrival, much to the amusement of the others. It was at this point that Alexander fell into what he decided must probably be love. Ironically, and unfortunately for Alexander, she was the only one at Bratsk-3 who did not realize this). She was quite beautiful, but the lesson taught to Kostya stayed with the rest of the base, meaning that any advancements the men may have had in mind were dissolved quite early on. That, and Alexander was too shy to make any advancements. She translated thoughts into words quickly and perfectly, making her an excellent radio operator, and excellent at winning any argument at Bratsk-3, even if it had nothing to do with her.
Kostya Sapozhnik was everything you could ever want in an incompetent soldier: lazy, a joker, endowed with a painfully average intelligence, but endlessly kind-hearted. The skinny, blond-haired, blue-eyed bungle's 'tough-guy' routine had yet to fool anyone. He and Maksim were the ones who usually hunted for deer, having nothing better to do. They were occasionally joined by Ilya Nikitsky.
Maksim Glinka was actually Kostya's best friend since childhood. Although he was quite a bit smarter than Kostya (and indeed, most people he'd met in his life), he loved Kostya like a brother. When Maksim realized that his friend was to be shipped off into the forests of Siberia, he pulled some strings, which is another way of saying that he "accidentally" pushed the Polkovnik of his and Kostya's training camp into a septic tank. His fate was sealed then and there.
Ilya Nikitsky was a quiet, soft-spoken man, and an excellent medic. But he had a strong limp in his left leg that meant his speed was greatly inferior to his colleagues. And because a medic must be able to undergo the same basic training as a soldier, his limp quickly sent him to the bottom of the class, and to Bratsk-3.
Alexander Semenovich was born, so to speak, with a passion for electronics. And plants. He became a radio operator in the army because of this love of everything that had a current flowing through it. He also happened to be the only person at Bratsk-3 who was there voluntarily. Being a child of rural upbringing, he told his supervisors he wanted to be placed somewhere far from the city. So they did. He kept a small vegetable garden in the base, where he cultivated the greens that complimented quite well an occasional meal of fresh deer.
Starshina Igor Bogdanov was like the aging patriarch to the family that was Bratsk-3, in that his children were smarter and better than he in most respects. But although he was still young, a forty-something, he had amassed more wisdom than anyone else at the outpost, probably because of his duty in the War. He was the only one at the base who had ever seen people killed. He fought almost from day one to Berlin, a stubborn survivor, and returned home to Leningrad a decorated veteran. But like Ilya, he had an injury that made his career as a fighter come to an end. A splash of shrapnel covered his right hand, his shooting hand, in scars and made it virtually useless for battle. He could hardly make a fist without extreme pain, let alone pull the trigger on a gun. His dreams of rising higher than his wartime position of starshina died away. He couldn't lead soldiers if he couldn't fight with them.
But he refused to leave the Army, and by pulling some strings (this, in fact, did not involve "accidentally" pushing a superior into a septic tank), managed to receive a position at a tiny outpost somewhere in Siberia. And here we was.
There were no antagonists at Bratsk-3. And in the end there were no protagonists.
Bratsk-3 brought in the New Year of 1964 as they had done the past two years. They made each other the gifts that they could, considering their modest resources. Kostya and Maksim made a rabbit and elk dinner, with Alexander supplying the first harvest of a plant he had only recently planted: peas. Ilya wrote a long speech in the form of a poem, describing the friendship he had built over the past two years with the rest of Bratsk-3. When it brought Kostya to tears, he said it was caused by the onions he was cutting earlier. There were no onions for dinner that night.
Together, Igor and Eva managed to have the delivery truck driver, who drove in supplies every two months, bring some fireworks.
They stood together in the freezing cold and watched red sparks rain from the black night. They drank a toast to a bright future. The last year stepped aside, and 1964 began with a cherry downpour.
There are really only two phases to life: the calm, and the storm. When someone basks in joy for too long, life simply balances it out.
Life brings a storm.
Feo P-S
Tomorrow
Episode Two: Transmission Received
No comments:
Post a Comment