"Ah, ah! What a heartless, cruel young man, this Arkadiy Averchenko! Now why would he stick a knife into the poor revolution's back -- and not one, but a whole dozen?"
It is, indeed, a harsh action to take; but let's thoughtfully examine it.
First of all, let's honestly ask ourselves: do we even have a revolution, today? All this rot, stupidity, garbage, and darkness that surrounds us -- is this what a revolution should be like?
A revolution is a sparkling lightning-bolt, a revolution is a divinely beautiful face lit up by righteous anger, a revolution is a blindingly bright rocket that rises like a rainbow amidst the damp fog!
Do these shining images resemble what we have today?
I will further say this in defense of a revolution: its birth is as beautiful as that of a child, his first silly smile, his first inarticulate words, which are so touching when uttered by a little pink tongue that is still unsure of itself...
But when the child is in his fourth year, but he is stuck in the same cradle; when it's his fourth year of sucking on his (by now, fairly large) foot; when it's his fourth year of babbling the same unintelligible words like "SovNarKhoz," "UyeZemel'Kom," "SovBur," and "RevVoyenKom" -- then this is no longer a cute little baby, but a strapping lad that has (forgive me for saying it) fallen into quiet idiocy.
Very often, however, this quiet idiocy turns violent, and then the lad is out of control.
It's not funny but touching when a baby reaches towards the fire with his tiny fingers, and mumbles with his unsure tongue, "Daddy, daddy, gimme, gimme..."
But when, in a dark alley, an ill-groomed fellow with murder written on his face stretches his crooked paw towards you and grumbles, "OK, daddy-o, gimme a light, and your coat" -- excuse me, but I simply cannot find this adorable.
Let's not fool ourselves, or others: the revolution has ended, and it ended long ago.
Its beginning was a clear, cleansing flame; its middle, foul smoke and soot; its end, cold burnt-out embers.
Are we not, now, wandering around amid the ashes, without food or shelter, with dull disappointment and emptiness in our hearts?
Did Russia need a revolution? Of course it did.
What is a revolution? It is a turnaround and a deliverance.
But when the savior, after turning things around and delivering you, has himself so firmly latched onto your back that you are, once again (and even worse than before), suffocating in deathly anguish, tormented by cold and hunger, and when there is no end in sight to his sitting on you -- then to hell with him, this savior! I, and you too, I suspect -- if you are not fools -- will be happy to stick not just a dozen, but a whole gross of knives into him.
There are still many people who, like badly-trained parrots, keep repeating the same phrase: "Comrades, defend the revolution!"
I'm sorry, but you yourself used to say that a revolution is a bolt of lightning, that it is the thunder of primordial divine ire... How is it possible to defend lightning?
Imagine a man who, standing in a thundercloud-darkened field, spreads his arms out, yelling: "Comrades! Defend the lightning! Do not let the lightning be extinguished by the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries!"
Here are the words of my fellow writer, the famous Russian poet and citizen Konstantin Bal'mont, who, like myself, had struggled against the ugliness of the former tsarist regime:
"A revolution is good when it tosses off a yoke. But it is not revolution but evolution that makes the world go forward. Harmony and order are what we now need, as badly as air or food. Internal and external discipline, and the knowledge that the only notion that we must now defend with full force is that of Russia -- a notion above any individuals, or classes, or any specific tasks, a notion so important and all-encompassing that everything melts inside it, and there are no enemies within it, only people who understand each other and work together: merchant and peasant, worker and poet, soldier and general.
When a revolution becomes a satanic whirlwind of destruction, then truth falls silent or turns into lies. Wild folly transforms crowds into mobs, and all words lose their meaning and persuasiveness. When such a misfortune befalls a people, it inevitably comes to resemble the proverbial demon-possessed herd of pigs.
A revolution is a thunderstorm. A thunderstorm ends quickly and refreshes the air, and this makes life brighter and the flowers more beautiful. But nothing can survive if thunderstorms occur continuously; so anyone who wants to prolong the thunderstorm is clearly dead set against us building ourselves a better life. And the expression 'defend the revolution,' I must say, seems to me both meaningless and pathetic. What kind of thunderstorm is it, if it needs to be wrapped in a comforter, like a little old lady?"
This is what Bal'mont says. And he is only wrong about one thing -- his comparison of our overgrown revolution to a helpless little old lady who needs to be wrapped in a comforter.
It is not a little old lady -- would if it were! -- but a drunken brigand; and it is not you who will wrap him, but he who will wrap himself in the coat he has pulled off your shoulders.
And maybe he'll then poke you in the side with a knife, for good measure.
And we are supposed to defend this bandit? To protect him?
He doesn't need a dozen knives into his back: he needs a hundred, he needs to be turned into a porcupine, this drunken, lazy thug who is clinging to us -- so that he can't stop us from building a new, free, great Russia.
Am I right, friends and readers? Eh?
So those of you who are neither senseless idiots, nor crooks who benefit from all this disorder and all this "defense of the revolution," must -- one and all -- yell out the answer:
"Right!!!"
-- Arkadiy Averchenko