The Kremlin likes to paint life on a Soviet collective farm as spiritually rich and financially rewarding. The kolkhoz manager is always a cross between Paul Bunyan and Luther Burbank, and his sterling example inspires glorious acts of self-sacrifice from the lowliest peasant. Though foreigners laugh off the myth as nonsense, millions of Russians are asked to swallow it. Hence the shocked incredulity of Russians who picked up the Leningrad literary monthly, Neva. There, in a short story by Fedor Abramov, was a startling indictment of the apathy, discontent and frustrating failure of collective farm life that still exists after more...
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