I've always been interested in the Taverner primitive's enthusiasm for socialism, and while I was reading an old book last night (
Life in Russia, Michael Binyon, 1983, Pantheon), the Taverner primitive sprung out from the pages of the book.
Now, the book's nearly 30 years old and the socialist empire's in the dustbin of history, but I saw first-hand, up close, many of its features during the mid-1990s, including this:
.....But at the same time, there are thousands of people who never work despite the criminal charges and social disgrace hanging over social 'parasites.'
Yuri Antonov was one such parasite. He lived in a small storeroom in his parents' house in Voronezh for over a year. About once a week, he ventured furtively outside, to take a few breaths of air and dashed back inside, glancing around to see that no one had seen him. Every few months or so a policeman used to come to the house and call out for him, but his mother refused to let the policeman in without a warrant. [sic] The officer knew the son was hiding inside, but had no eye-witness proof from the neighbors.
Antonov, a plumber in his early thirties, had not deserted from the army or done anything for which he would have been punished in the West. Indeed, he had not done anything for a year--and that was why he faced imprisonment as an idler. He refused to apply for many plumbing jobs advertised in Voronezh, preferring to spend his time cooped up at home.
Under Soviet law a citizen may be legally instructed to look for work only if he has been idle without good cause for four consecutive months. He is then given a month to find a position, and after that is liable to arrest. Most workshy people find a job at the last moment. They register their employment with the police, begin at a factory and then a week later slip away without a word to anyone. Four more months pass, and if they are traced the process starts again.
People like Antonov are regarded as malingerers, anti-social elements who take advantage of the law to escape their obligations to work. And as the labour shortage worsens, so the campaign against them has intensified. Articles have portrayed idle young men as sick, filled with self-delusion and protected by indulgent wives or mothers.
Vladimir Popov, for example, was known as the 'fish-farmer' to the local Voronezh police. A college drop-out, his only passion was breeding tropical fish. He stayed at home all day, tending his aquarium. Occasionally his mother used to sell the fish in the local pet market, but when challenged to produce her license, quickly packed up her aquarium and turned herself into a park attendant.
The father of Nikolai, a 'parasite' in Rostov-on-Don, told a reporter from a paper campaigning against the workshy that he did not know how he had raised such a son. 'Imagine, he'll do the odd job for a bottle of wine. But real labour to provide for himself, establish himself in life? No.'
In another interview, Anatoly Litvinov was more sophisticated in justifying his idleness. He lived on his mother's pension and his wife's earnings. 'Someone has to stay home and look after the house,' he argued. 'The government isn't a housekeeper, is it? Where is it said that the housekeeper must be a woman? Isn't this the age of equality?'
The authorities argue that parasitism is usually the fault of the family's indulgence. Nikolai's father, for example, used his influence to find his son a sought-after job in a factory when he finished his army service. But when harvest time came and the workers were sent into the fields to pick potatoes--as most Soviet factory employees are--Nikolai quit his job rather than dirty his hand.
And his father agreed that he deserved a 'cleaner job'--which he never found.
In spite of the campaign to root out parasites, nobody wants to give work to the workshy. Factories are only too glad when poor and disruptive workers quietly disappear. Rather than report their absence, they allow their names to remain on the factory register, thus conveniently enabling the factory to draw state money for salaries, which are directed straight into the management's pockets to be used for the inevitable bribes and pay-offs.
The police also find the workshy an administrative nuisance. Many are armed with false medical certificates, forged documents giving them valid reasons to be unemployed, and phony addresses.
Many are drifters, who have abandoned families and personal responsibilities and taken to drink. They hang around shops and warehouses and pick up a few roubles unloading lorries and goods. The money is generally spent on cheap wine. Often they are picked up for petty crime, or else, undernourished, fall ill and die young.
Many end up in Siberia where, free from the all-seeing eye of the state, they move on from place to place.
Now, this is life for the Soviet Taverner primitives from the early 1980s, right after Leonid Brezhnev had died and Yuri Andropov taken over. Andropov had been head of the KGB, the secret police, and was fond of coercive manners to get things done. Penalties for being unemployed were increased, and workers were prohibited from quitting their jobs.
But Andropov was around too short a time, and by the time I was there 10-12 years later, the socialist empire had just shattered apart. But I myself saw laws against parasitism still enforced here and there, two specific times seeing a malingerer beaten to a pulp.
The Taverner primitive's socialist paradise.....
