There are fourteen of them, but the tables are only meant to seat twelve, so they have to crowd together. Gindin figures it doesn’t really matter, hoping they’ll be out of here and back to their quarters in a few minutes, maybe a half hour.
“We ought to have a few drinks tonight,” Firsov says, sitting down with his roommate. “Proshutinsky was right: You’ve got enough spirt to go around.”
“We’ll see when we get done with this stupid meeting,” Gindin replies half under his breath. He looks over his shoulder as the last of the officers come in. “Where’s the captain?”
“He’ll be here,” Firsov says.
Everyone is talking at once, ignoring the zampolit. Yesterday was a holiday and no one is in a mood to listen to what is probably going to be another patriotic speech about serving the great Soviet people.
Sablin holds up a hand. “Settle down, please. This is important.”
“Pardon me, Comrade Sablin,” Gindin speaks up. “Where is the captain?”
“Stop talking now, so we can get on with this meeting,” Sablin says.
Gindin looks over his shoulder just as Alexander Shein, one of the ratings, closes the door on them. Their eyes meet for just a moment, but then Shein slips into the projection booth and closes that door. “What the hell—?”
“What’d you say?” Firsov asks.
“That was Shein. He’s in the projection room.”
Firsov glances over his shoulder at the door, a look of puzzlement on his face. “What the hell are you talking about? What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Gindin says, but his stomach is doing a slow roll.
Every sailor aboard is assigned a duty area that he has to keep clean. Shein’s duty area includes Gindin’s and Firsov’s cabin. He did his job without complaining, but he’s also struck Gindin as being a little bit sneaky. The other sailors are watching a movie in their own dining hall, so what is Shein doing up here, closing the door and hiding in the projection room?
No one else has noticed, but gradually the other men begin to settle down, until finally the dining hall is quiet.
“To answer your question, Lieutenant, Captain Potulniy is in his quarters resting,” Sablin says. He isn’t smiling, like usual. “In fact, he told me that I was to conduct this meeting and he did not want to be bothered.”
“Why is the door closed?”
Sablin shrugs indifferently. “So we will not be disturbed, Lieutenant.” He looks at the others crammed together at the tables. “What I have to say to you tonight is very important; I want you to know that from the start.”
“This is a holiday; what’s the problem?” one of the other officers asks. Gindin isn’t sure who it is, but the others grumble their agreement.
There is a tightening in Sablin’s eyes, as if he is a little uncertain what to do next. Gindin has never seen this look of hesitancy on the zampolit’s face before, and it adds to Boris’s already tense mood.
Something wasn’t right. But Sablin was a senior officer and they had to follow the chain of command. If he said there was to be a meeting of all officers, then there was no questioning such an order. But all of them thought it was a damned odd thing just then.
All of a sudden Sablin stops his fidgeting and stands a little taller, his shoulders squared, his expression set. It’s as if he’s made a difficult decision and he’s just realized that it’s the right one. He blinks as if he’s coming out of a sleep, but he is not smiling, and this is the most disturbing thing of all. The Sablin standing in the middle of the room, facing the eight officers and six midshipmen, isn’t the Sablin whom they have come to know. He is a completely different man, all of a sudden.
“His face did not reflect any holiday mood,” Gindin relates. “There wasn’t so much as a hint of a smile, or some kind of friendliness, his usual sociable self. Nothing like that. He was different. It was like seeing another side of him that we’d never seen before.”
Gindin looks around the room at the other officers, and he can see that they share his misgivings.
“What I am saying to you tonight, and what I am asking you to do, is not a betrayal of the Rodina. I want to make that very clear. I’m simply making a political declaration about the bureaucracy and the corruption that has taken over our country.
“Everyone here knows exactly what I am talking about. The great principles of Marx and Lenin have been totally perverted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party.”
Gindin cannot believe what he is hearing. He glances over at Firsov and then at the other officers, and he can see by their expressions that they are as confused as he is. Is this some sort of a test that Sablin is giving them? To find out how deep their loyalty to the Motherland runs?
“You know that all Russians are not treated equally. You can see that very problem here aboard ship, and everywhere you go you can see that the poor dumb muzhiks never have their day in court. They never have the same rights as we do.”
Firsov catches Gindin’s eye and he shrugs. Eb tvoiu mat, what the fuck is going on?
Gindin shakes his head, completely baffled. It’s even possible that Sablin has lost his mind. It’s happened to other sailors and officers during or just after a difficult rotation. Maybe Sablin is having troubles at home with his family. Maybe he’s just found out that he has an illness. Maybe cancer.
“Each of us has to admit, to honestly confess, that we have no control whatsoever over what happens in the Kremlin or anywhere else in the Soviet Union. That means we can’t do a thing to help fix the problems the Rodina is faced with. We are powerless to force our state and political institutions to make right what is wrong.”
Gindin suddenly begins to get a glimmer of where Sablin is going with this speech, and his blood runs cold. There is a sharp, hard knot in the pit of his stomach that feels like a ball of molten steel.
For the first time in his life Gindin is truly frightened to the depth of his soul. Not only for himself but also for all of his fellow officers in this room, including Sablin, who most certainly has lost his mind to even hint at criticizing the Party.
It’s treason!
“I have studied the problem for a long time. Our leaders over the past fifty years have done nothing more than produce a system in which the Russian people are trapped in a foul atmosphere where they are required to blindly follow orders with never a question.
“We live in a system of censorship and tyranny where everyone is afraid to make any criticisms of the Party, even though we can all plainly see that the Party has lied to us. Is lying to us!”
“Just wait a second,” someone from Gindin’s left shouts. Maybe it’s Kuzmin, but whoever it is, he’s angry.
Some of the others are grumbling, too.
Sablin holds up a hand for silence, and after a few seconds the room settles down.
“The system needs to be changed, Comrades. We are quick to make jokes, but we are just as quick to shed tears when we think of the future of the Rodina. The situation in our country has become dangerous. The Party tells us that everything is fine, yet the people can see that is a lie. The older people are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their pensions. And the young people like you know the difference between Party slogans and Party deeds.”
“What are you saying, Comrade zampolit?” one of the officers asks.
“The system must be changed in order for us to achieve the true democracy that Lenin promised us,” Sablin says, his voice clear and firm, totally without doubts. “The Party must be overthrown. It is time again for revolution.”