When flagrant excesses occurred during the period of out-and-out collectivization, Sagaydak – before the publication of Stalin's article 'Dizziness from Success' [14] – wrote that the reason for the famine of this period was that the kulaks were burying their grain and refusing to eat, that whole villages – little children, old people and all – were dying, simply to spite the State.
At the same time he included material about how the children in kolkhoz crèches were fed chicken broth, pirozhki and rissoles made from rice. In reality they were withering away, their bellies distended.
Then came the war, one of the most cruel and terrible wars that had befallen Russia during the thousand years of her history. The ordeals of the first weeks and months brought the true course of events into the open; the war was now the arbiter of all fates, even that of the Party. But, as soon as this terrible period came to an end, Korneychuk explained the reason for the military disasters in his play The Front: incompetent generals had failed to carry out the orders of the infallible High Command…
Nikolay Terentyevich was not the only one to experience some unpleasant moments that evening. Mashuk had been leafing through the thick pages of a large leather-bound photograph album. He suddenly raised his eyebrows so expressively that everyone craned over to look. It was a photograph of Getmanov in the office he had before the war as secretary of the obkom; he was wearing a semi-military Party tunic and sitting at a writing-desk as vast as the steppes; above him hung a portrait of Stalin of such huge dimensions as could be found only in the office of the secretary of an obkom. Stalin's face in the portrait had been scrawled over in coloured pencil; a blue pointed beard had been added to his chin and light-blue ear-rings hung from his ears.
'What has the boy gone and done now!' exclaimed Getmanov, wringing his hands womanishly.
Galina Terentyevna fell into utter confusion; she kept looking round and repeating: 'But before he went to sleep last night, he said, "I love Uncle Stalin as much as my own papa." '
'It's just a child's prank,' said Sagaydak.
'It's not just a prank, it's malicious hooliganism,' said Getmanov with an angry sigh.
He looked searchingly at Mashuk. They were both thinking of an incident that had occurred before the war: a polytechnic student, the nephew of someone they knew from Kiev, had fired an air-rifle at Stalin's portrait in the student hostel.
They knew that this halfwit of a student had been playing the fool, that there was no political or terrorist motive behind his act. Their friend from Kiev, a splendid fellow, the director of the Machine and Tractor Station, had asked Getmanov to intervene on behalf of his nephew.
After a committee meeting Getmanov had mentioned this affair to Mashuk. Mashuk had replied: 'We're not children, Dementiy Trifonovich. Whether or not he's guilty is hardly the point. If I do get this case dropped, someone will inform Moscow – they might even tell Lavrentiy Beria himself- that Mashuk took a liberal attitude towards someone shooting at a portrait of the great Stalin. Today I'm here in this office – tomorrow I'll be dust in a labour-camp. Will you take the responsibility? They'll say the same thing: today the student's shooting at portraits, tomorrow he'll be shooting at Stalin himself; and as for Getmanov – either he likes the boy for some reason, or else there's something about the act that appeals to him. So? Is that what you want?'
A month or two later Getmanov had asked Mashuk: 'Tell me, what happened to that student with the air-rifle?'
Mashuk, looking at him very calmly, had replied: 'Don't trouble yourself about him. He turned out to be a scoundrel, the son of some kulak whore. He confessed everything during the investigation.'
Now, Getmanov stared at Mashuk and repeated: 'No, it's not just a prank.'
'Come on!' said Mashuk. 'The boy's only four. You have to make allowance for his age.'
With a warmth and sincerity that everyone could feel, Sagaydak said: 'Let me say it straight out: I just don't have the strength to be strict with children. I ought to, but I haven't the heart. All I care about is that they should be in good health…'
They all looked at Sagaydak with compassion. He was not a happy father. His eldest son, Vitaliy, had been a troublemaker even while he was in the ninth class. He had once been picked up by the police during some brawl in a restaurant. His father had had to phone the Deputy People's Commissar for Internal Affairs in order to hush up a scandal that turned out to involve the children of several prominent people – the daughter of a writer, the daughter of the People's Commissar for Agriculture and the sons of various generals and Academicians. During the war young Sagaydak had decided he wanted to join the army as a volunteer; his father had managed to fix a place for him on a two-year course in an artillery school. He had been expelled for indiscipline and sent straight to the front.
Now, for the past month, young Sagaydak had been doing a mortar course; to the joy of his parents, no awkward incidents had yet occurred; they hoped for the best, but remained anxious.
Sagaydak's second son, Igor, had caught polio when he was two and the after-effects of the illness had turned him into a cripple – his withered legs had no strength in them and he walked about on crutches. Poor Igor was unable to go to school and the teachers had to come to his home. He was a keen and hard-working pupil.
There wasn't a famous neuropathologist in the Ukraine, or even in Moscow, Leningrad or Tomsk, whom the Sagaydaks hadn't consulted about Igor. There was no new foreign medicine Sagaydak hadn't managed to procure through either an embassy or a trade delegation. He knew that he could be reproved for his excessive love, but he also knew that this was not a mortal sin. He himself, coming up against very strong paternal feelings in several oblast officials, had made allowances for the fact that people of the new type had a particularly deep love for their children. He knew that he too would be forgiven the folk-healer he had brought from Odessa by plane and the herbs from some Far-Eastern holy man that had been delivered to Kiev by special courier.
'Our leaders are very special people,' said Sagaydak. 'I'm not talking about comrade Stalin – that goes without saying – but about his close aides. They even place the Party above their feelings as parents.'
'Yes, but they know one can't expect that from everyone,' said Getmanov. He went on to talk about the severity one of the Secretaries of the Central Committee had shown to a son of his who had been fined.
The conversation about children continued in a different tone, intimately and without pretension. One might have thought that all the strength of these people, all their joy in life, depended on whether their Tanechkas and Vitaliks had good colour in their cheeks, whether their Vladimirs and Lyudmilas were getting good marks at school and successfully moving up from class to class.
Galina Terentyevna began talking about her daughters. 'Svetlana was very poorly until she was four. She had colitis the whole time – the poor girl was quite worn out. And do you know what cured it in the end – grated apple!'
Then Getmanov joined in. 'This morning before school she said to me, "In class they call me and Zoya the general's daughters." And then Zoya, the cheeky little thing, started laughing and said: "General's daughter – that's no great honour. We've got one girl in our class who's a marshal's daughter – that really is something!" '
'I know,' said Sagaydak gaily. 'One can't satisfy them. Igor said to me the other day, "Third secretary – that's no big deal." '
There were many amusing little stories Nikolay Terentyevich could have recounted, but it wasn't for him to bring up the intelligence of his own children when the conversation was about the intelligence of Igor Sagaydak and the Getmanovs' daughters.