Free For the Good of the Cause by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Page B

accepted anybody that young—“and in the space of four years you turn them into first-class specialists. I was there when your kids were taking their examinations in the spring, remember?”
    “I remember.” Fyodor nodded unhappily. Seated at his large desk, to which another covered with a green cloth stood at a right angle, Ivan Grachikov spoke with such warmth you might have thought that instead of an inkwell, pen-holder, calendar, paperweight, telephones, carafe, filing basket, and ashtray, the desks were covered with white tablecloths and delicacies, which the host was offering his guest, even urging him to take some home with him.
    “There was a boy of about nineteen, maybe, who was wearing a tie for the first time in his life, with a jacket that didn’t match his pants—or is that the fashion now? He hung his diagrams on the board and set up on the table some regulator or calibrator or whatever you call it that he had made himself. This thingamajig clicked and flashed while the young fellow walked around waving his pointer at the diagrams and talking away like nobody’s business—I was really envious. The words he used and the things he knew: what was wrong with existing indicators, the principle on which his thing worked, the power of the anode current, the meter readings, economic efficiency, coefficients and goodness knows what else! And he was only a kid! I sat there and I felt sorry for myself. After all, I thought, I’ve been around for fifty years, and what’s my specialty? That I once knew how to work a lathe? But the sort of lathe I operated is a thing of the past. That I know the history of the Party and Marxist dialectics? But that’s something everybody ought to know. There’s nothing special about it. It’s high time that every Party official should have some special knowledge or skill. It was boys like him who were running things in my factory when I was Party secretary. Who was I to tell them to increase productivity? I had to learn the ropes as best I could by keeping my eyes and ears open. But if I were a little younger, Fyodor, I’d enroll in your evening classes right away …”
    And seeing that Fyodor was now thoroughly depressed, he added with a laugh: “In the old building, of course!”
    But Fyodor couldn’t manage even a smile. He drew his head in, hunched his shoulders, and just sat there with a dazed look.
    At this point a secretary came in to remind Grachikov that there were other people waiting for him.

Chapter 5
    Nobody had told the students what was going on. Yet by the next day they already knew all about it.
    In the morning the sky was overcast and there was rain in the air.
    Those who turned up at the school gathered in groups outside, though it was pretty cold. They were not allowed into the lecture rooms because the students on duty were cleaning them, and the labs were out of the question because apparatus was being set up there. So, as usual, they hung around the stairway in a crowd.
    There was a hum of conversation. The girls were moaning and groaning. Everybody was talking about the building, the dormitory, and the furnished rooms. Mishka Zimin, a very strong boy who had broken all records digging ditches at the site, hollered at the top of his voice: “So we put in all that work for nothing, eh? For nothing at all! Well, Igor, how’re you going to explain this one?”
    Igor, one of the Committee members, was the dark-haired boy in the red-and-brown checked shirt who had drawn up the list of people for moving the labs. He stood on the top landing looking rather sheepish.
    “You’ll see, it’ll all be straightened out.”
    “But who’s going to straighten it out?:’
    “Well, we will… Maybe we’ll write a letter to someone or something.”
    “That’s a good idea,” said a prim and serious-looking girl with hair parted in the center. “Let’s send a protest to Moscow! They’ll surely listen to us.”
    She was the meekest of them all, but now even