Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes
Caroline Walton, Ivan Petrov
Language: English
Pages: 153
ISBN: B00LLOT898
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
For forty years Ivan Petrov careered, stumbled, staggered and rampaged all over the vast Soviet empire. Homeless (an illegal condition in the communist utopia), in and out of prison camps, almost always drunk, and with a gift for hilariously sending up the tragic absurdities of Soviet life, Ivan was a real-life Svejk. This is his unforgettable story, as told to Caroline Walton just before his death. The text is complemented by twelve original illustrations by Natalia Vetrova.
insane. Thoughts of cigarettes fill my days and my dreams at night. I pull out all the butts that have fallen between floorboards. I remember a place near the river where I tossed a half-smoked cigarette three weeks ago. When daylight comes I go out and fill a bucket with snow from that spot. I melt the snow on the stove and strike lucky, fishing out the soggy butt, drying and smoking it. I’ve never enjoyed a smoke so much in my life, but within ten minutes I’m prising up floor-boards again I
am drunk. I say straight out to the examiners: “Yes, I’m drunk, but I came here to sit my exams instead of having a hair-of-the-dog. Ask away, and if I get the answers wrong, fail me.” The strangest thing of all is that I pass. However, I fail the essays. By the time I sit these I’m quite incapable of writing. Of course I drink a bit, especially on payday which my workmates and I celebrate wherever we can. We usually go to the barracks where there are several single women who are glad of some
camphor and makes us lie on mattresses with our left arms above our heads in order not to strain our hearts. Then he takes us all outside. We sit under trees, feeling life return. The doctor shows us slides of swollen livers and the abnormal brains of the children of alcoholics. That night we take our trains home, clutching our supplies of Antabuse. As Burenkov’s popularity grows throughout the country he stops practising. An unknown number of people die after anxious wives and mothers slip
stifling van. No one takes any notice of our cries for help. The old zek raises his voice: “Okay lads, start rocking.” We lean first to one side of the van and then the other. The vehicle begins to tilt dangerously and the driver stops. The guards unload the sick man and send him to hospital. Then they punish us by taking away our tobacco. “We once derailed a train this way,” says the old man. “When you’re looking at 25 years’ hard labour you don’t care what you do.” *** Corrective Labour
robbed of my documents. In Krasnovodsk I meet an alkash with a cruel hangover and invite him for a drink. While we are seeing off our third half-litre he crowns me with a bottle. I wake up to find my pockets empty. At least I had the foresight to hide my money in a pouch under my collar. I’m not badly hurt but a few splinters of glass have embedded themselves in my scalp. ‘Well, old son,’ I tell myself, ‘they say you’re never too old to learn, but it seems you’ll remain a fool till you die.