Midnight In The Century (NYRB Classics) - Plot & Excerpts
MESSAGES III. MESSAGES Every time Engineer Botkin had a questionnaire to fill out (. . . 15. What are your social origins? 16. What did you do before the Revolution? . . . 21. Have you belonged to any political parties? . . . 25. Have you been imprisoned under the Soviet regime?), he declared himself “Unaffiliated, sympathizing with the C.P.” In private, he was more precise: “strict-ly unaffil-i-ated”. His knowledge of foreign languages, his love of mathematics, a penchant for mechanical drawing which went back to his early childhood, the dreary pleasure he took in boring work, even at home, at night, when he forced himself to read the most insipid official speeches without skipping a line—made of him a valued specialist, confident of earning his thousand roubles a month without having to join the party of his sympathies. “And what else does homo sovieticus need beyond a thousand roubles a month?” Botkin would settle the question, after a short pause supplied for your meditation: “A subscription to the Technische Rundschau.”
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