Monumental Propaganda by Vladímir Voinóvich

throughout the sixties and halfway through the seventies, he remained faithful to SCOSWO, and moreover, in doing so he behaved almost entirely in accordance with the behest of Christ, who had told his apostles: Go forth and preach. Shubkin preached to the old and the young, even to children of preschool age, hammering SCOSWO into childish heads in a form accessible to them.
    For instance, in the form of folktales. Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina had been right when she suspected Shubkin of investing the apparently innocent tales that he told to children with far-from-innocent meaning. That was precisely it. When he told them about the wolf and the three little pigs, Shubkin did not make the gray wolf into the embodiment of American imperialism, as Aglaya wanted, or even a simple predator of the forest, but Stalin and the little pigs represented a trio whom he now regarded as faithful Leninists—Trotsky, Bukharin and Zinoviev.

18
    The first person in Dolgov to make the acquaintance of Mark Semyonovich Shubkin had been the girl behind the counter at the railroad station buffet, Antonina Uglazova, usually known by her diminutive “Tonka,” a short, plump woman of thirty-five with sad eyes who had been treated badly by life. On that calm, cobweb-tangled summer day she had been feeling bored, standing there with her fulsome breasts propped up on the counter, when a passenger who had got off a train suddenly appeared in front of her, dressed in an old army greatcoat and a cap with long earflaps made out of the same material. He took off the cap and wiped his extensive bald patch with it (even at this stage Tonka noticed that his head was unusually large), then asked how much the cabbage pies cost.
    Tonka was about to reply out of force of habit, “Look for yourself, can’t you, you blind or something?” and nod at the price list standing there in front of his eyes. But she took a look at him and changed her mind, snatched up the price list and said, “Four a roople,” although they cost twice that much. He was surprised: “Why so cheap?” She shrugged her shoulders: “That’s what they are.”
    â€œGive me four pies and a glass of tea.”
    â€œWith lemon?” she asked genially.
    He fumbled in his pocket and said, “Lemon would be good.”
    â€œWe’re out of lemons,” she sighed, spreading her hands.
    He took the four pies and the tea and installed himself at a little table by the window that looked out onto the dusty station square. In the middle of a flowerbed in the square, he could see a monument to Lenin representing the days spent by the original hiding from the Razliv police in the forest near St. Petersburg on the eve of the revolution. The plaster Ilich, perched on a plaster tree stump, was writing his “April Theses” in a plaster notebook, while a drunk clutching a bottle lay slumped in a doze against the foot of the pedestal with two goats grazing beside him. The new arrival looked out of the window, Antonina looked at the new arrival, and although he was eating his pies carefully without chomping, and drinking his tea in little sips, she realized that he was from that place. How could she not realize, when she herself lived in the world that people left to go to that place and to which they returned, or failed to return, from that place? One of those who had left and not yet returned was her husband Fedya, who had first beaten Antonina half to death, then taken a mistress and beaten her as well and finally hacked her to pieces with an ax. At the time, her women friends had been delighted for her: “Ooh, Tonka, what a stroke of luck! If he hadn’t had Lizka, he’d have hacked you to bits.”
    This newcomer was not one of those men who resolve their relationships with the help of an ax, but Antonina had met men like him as well: they had been called “politicals,” “contras” or “fascists,” but all in