With the flowering of glasnost, some extraordinary things have begun appearing in the Soviet press. Among the more remarkable is this essay by Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko, 54, published last month in the journal Literaturnaya Gazeta. Excerpts:
I can't remember the first time I heard that profoundly Russian, tragically all-embracing word priterpelost ((servile patience)). But it came to mind of late.
"Forgive the present, Yevgeny Alexandrovich, but it's a precious thing nowadays," said a distant relative as she put a sack of sugar, almost impossible to find, on our May Day holiday table. This was in the 71st year of Soviet power, over 40 years after the war! And suddenly I caught myself happy with the small domestic predatory joy of obtaining, which for so many of us substitutes for any real joy of existence. The woman sighed and said, "Look what we've come to . . . And it's all the fault of our damned priterpelost . . ."
I couldn't put it any better. The word expresses respect for patience. There ^ is patience and tolerance worthy of respect -- the patience of a woman suffering in labor, the patience of real creators at work, the patience of people under torture who will not name their friends. But there is also useless, humiliating patience. How can we respect ourselves if we allow such disrespect for ourselves every day? Every queue, every shortage shows our society's disrespect for itself.
We're used to blaming others, in particular the government, for shortages and other problems. Now, thank goodness, we have begun speaking not only of Stalin's personal guilt, but of the guilt of his entourage for crimes against the people. Let's be honest and admit that it was not only the ruling clique that was guilty, but the people as well, who allowed the clique to do whatever it wanted. Permitting crimes is a form of participating in them, and historically, we are used to permitting them. That is priterpelost. It is time to stop blaming everything on the bureaucracy. If we put up with it, then we deserve it.
Let's take a seeming "trifle," the disappearance of sugar. Whose fault is it? The Central Committee's? The Council of Ministers'? Of course, they are at fault. But aren't you and I too? We have come to tolerate the disappearance of one item and then another. How can we be surprised at tolerating the disappearance of such relatively minor things when just yesterday we put up with the disappearance of so many people?
Let us get down to the causes of why sugar is a pathetically precious gift on the day of international solidarity of workers. Our new leaders took a fearless look into the eyes of statistical truth about alcoholism and its consequences. They gasped. A harsh, radical decision was taken. But the emotion, quite justified, was not supported, unfortunately, by a long-range, well-worked-out plan. An appearance of discussion was organized -- in the old way, by fishing for supporting voices.