Are There Any Communist Party Members Here?
On learning that my old friend Grisha Pozhenyan was planning to make a film himself, I asked him how he had found the courage for such a thing: After all, he was only the author of the scenario, and not a director.
He replied, "I can screw actresses and shout 'Roll the cameras!' as well as any of them."
"Well, well," I thought ironically. "If the profession of film director only amounts to those two activities, then, what the heck."
I had almost no doubt that nothing would come of this brazen venture of his.
But I had underestimated Grisha.
Just the same, he made the film. And, as witnesses told it, he felt absolutely confident in the role of director.
Here is how he began his activities in his new capacity.
Arriving in Yalta, where filming was to take place on location, he ordered the entire cast and crew to gather. Looking around at those who had gathered, he asked, "Are there any Communist Party members here?"
"Yes, yes... There are...," voices rang out.
The members of the ruling party, naturally, had decided that they would now be told that they should always be out in front, that the production commander placed special hope in them and special responsibilityin general, all that mumbo jumbo that they were used to hearing in such instances.
But what they heard was something else entirely.
"All right," said Pozhenyan. "Remember this: For the entire time of this filming your party is to go underground!"
The Voice of the People
On the night of the day Khrushchev was removed, a loud, sharp male voice rang out in the inner courtyard of our writers' building.
"Writers! Do you hear me?!"
The awakened writers pressed themselves to the windows. A few even leaned out of their windows.
The voice said clearly and distinctly:
"You're all pieces of shit!"
No objections were forthcoming.
The writers sprang back from their windows and went back to bed.
We Need To Help Our French Comrades!
Once a group of Soviet writers came to Paris. At that time a strike was going on there. The Renault factory workers were unhappy that the administration had located their parking lot too far from the factory gate.
Our writers were greatly amused at the cause of the strike. Several of them even permitted themselves to joke a little about it, which greatly displeased the group's leadership.
The group's leader was Aleksandr Isbakh, who was more guileless than he was smart. (His former cellmates told how, on returning from a routine interrogation beaten half to death, he would keep repeating, "We should help the investigation; it's our duty as Party members.")
The main joker was Aleksandr Alfredovich Bek. He was a deadpan artist of the very highest caliber; you could never tell when he was joking and when he was not. He would contrive to talk the most incredibly funny baloney with such seriousness and conviction that even people smarter than Isbakh would fall for it.
And so Bek said, "I'm very concerned by this strike. I think we don't have the right to remain on the sidelines."
"What are you trying to say?" Isbakh asked in fright.
"I think we should help our French comrades," explained Bek.
"Comrade Bek!" Isbakh nervously tried to put him in his place. "This is a profoundly internal matter for French workers. We are absolutely neither here nor there."
"What do you mean, we are neither here nor there?" Bek asked in surprise. "Then what about international proletarian solidarity?"
"Comrade Bek!" Isbakh said even more nervously. "We do not engage in the export of revolution."
"But after all, we just helped our Czech comrades,"i objected Bek.
Mention of the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia deprived poor Isbakh of his last shreds of intelligence.
"Our Czech comrades asked us... They appealed to us..." he babbled, not finding any other arguments.
"Oh, that won't stop us," parried Bek. "I'll arrange it for you right now! We'll go to the strike committee and say that we want to support their demands, and they will naturally agree to pretend that it was their initiative."
Isbakh was close to a heart attack or a stroke when Aleksandr Alfredovich finally took pity on him and admitted he was joking.
But Isbakh didn't really believe that. To the very end of the trip he kept glancing at Bek warily. Who knew! What if Bek did just up and go to the French and ask them to appeal to us for help?
The Optimist
At an important writers' meeting in Tbilisi the report on poetry was made by Iosif N., a poet of exceedingly modest giftedness, not greatly successful either in his writings or in his personal life, and moreover, to put it mildly, rather unattractive in appearance.
His report properly consisted of a string of appeals for the triumph of life-affirming, buoyant poetry.
"We are optimists!... Soviet poetry must be infused with the spirit of optimism!..." he declaimed emotionally.
When the report was over, one of those who had listened attentively to the speaker said pensively, "Just think! Byron, a lord, a handsome fellow, rich, intelligent, a genius, was a pessimist! And our Iosif, a freak, an idiot, a no-talent, and a beggar, is an optimist!"
They Ought To Dance a Little!
At a large Kremlin reception, Stalin, walking past two dignitaries standing in the center of the hall and peacefully conversing about something, tossed some remark their way. Right then and there, with everyone looking on in horror, one of these middle-aged, rather portly men (Chairman of the Committee on the Arts Khrapchenko) took the other (Minister of Higher Education Kaftanov) by the waist, and they slowly began circling in a waltz.
It was later learned that when walking past them Stalin had said, "Alvays biznes, biznes... They ought to dance a little!"
iWe just helped our Czech comrades: The reference is to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.
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