An itinerant nihilist-communist found a road which led into Russia's past. He walked along it until he reached the 1860’s. It was Easter and snowflakes were being shaken over the world, like the last contents of a great emptying sack. The itinerant’s expressed intention was to disrupt the legacy of the Narodnichestvo by inserting a minor categorical alteration into the coding of all subsequent revolutionary ideas.
He thought this intervention would have a good chance of influencing the Russians into taking a different path towards communism. ‘It would only need to be a small change,’ he argued, ‘a subtle suggestion that could be introduced into nascent revolutionary consciousness and which would naturally increase in its effect as the moment of the Russian crisis approached.’
Evidently, Chernyshevsky's ‘What is to be done?’ of 1863 had transformed itself into a branching bush of idealist imperatives by the early decades of the Twentieth Century, so it was reasonable to assume, or so he then thought, that the 1860’s had to be the perfect moment to introduce a nihilist-communist proviso concerning the fabled 'Russian Road to socialism.'
‘If I could step on the butterfly of Leninism at the point of its emergence, and before it has even dried its wings. If, far out in deep space, I could heat with lasers one side of the asteroid of Bolshevism that is hurtling towards us, and cause it to slightly deviate from the course of its predicted impact on earth, then might not this in itself establish the ground and possibility for another communism?’
To this end, he invited the people of the next village to assemble together and listen to his warning. What he said to them was not worth the recording, he was not a natural public speaker and anyway, the message was too complex to be conveyed under those circumstances. However, from out of the silence which then greeted his words, one voice did call out, ‘I have a question for you.’
'Please, speak freely,' said the nihilist-communist, not recognising another version of himself amongst the villagers, nor understanding that he had taken the same road back on a previous occasion, arriving at a neighbouring village in the same moment and equally preoccupied with infiltrating history. However, his other self, who chose then not to reveal either his identity or purpose, had already given up on his quest to change the future and now lived a simple peasant life.
'Please, speak freely,' said the nihilist-communist, not recognising another version of himself amongst the villagers, nor understanding that he had taken the same road back on a previous occasion, arriving at a neighbouring village in the same moment and equally preoccupied with infiltrating history. However, his other self, who chose then not to reveal either his identity or purpose, had already given up on his quest to change the future and now lived a simple peasant life.
His question to the first nihilist-communist was as convoluted as had been the other's message to the villagers. ‘Comrade, if as you say, communism begins with the conscious suppression of waged labour by the proletariat. And, if as you also say, there is some other malignancy in history, aside from the commodity form, which we will then have to confront in our engagement with electrification subsequent to the abolition of waged labour. And, if as you say wherever this other malignancy takes the form of a materialised sequence of irrescindable commands issued from the past to lived relations now. Then, might we not also encounter in our relentless struggle yet another obstacle, which we might then call a third malignancy?’
‘I am not sure what you are referring to,’ replied the first nihilist-communist, who did not suspect the doppelgänger's anachronous presence and was surprised and pleased by the question. He dearly wished not to appear before the assembly as an overbearing know-it-all, and eagerly sought out every opportunity to facilitate active involvement in communist theory, ‘We are all familiar with the first problem which is the wage relation and we are becoming acquainted with the second problem, which is the imperative of repressive power. But would you be so kind to tell us more about what this third problem might be?’
‘It is the unavoidable weariness of life lived according to a fixed purpose,’ replied the man from the crowd, ‘what is communism but good works by another name? How tiring it is to wake up each morning, and realise that we have to implement our beliefs. What is the point in making reality conform to our idea of what it should be and then, every day, finding a new break, a new rip, a new puncture in the fabric of our project? Realising an ideal is fine for a day or two. In our early and clamorous enthusiasm we will inscribe our principles onto a banner. We shall hold impassioned meetings and ardently announce our resolutions. But later, only a few days later, all these slogans and principles will have already become a toilsome burden to us. Why should we try and live what we believe? Why seek to suppress work as an external imposition, only to realise it again as a self-producing ideal?’
The gathering reverberated with the noise of his question for a short while, and then became quiet again. And the first nihilist-communist, he too became quiet. He nodded to his double in the crowd, little suspecting that he had made this journey to this encounter many times. He turned his face away from the public space and began to think out his honest response, not wishing to do the question an injustice.
Whilst he thought, the crowd became restive and then quietly went back to their everyday lives. The day found its end and then another began. As first light spread across the fields, the nihilist-communist remained fixed in his place, seemingly caught up in the problem that had been presented to him. In the village, the cocks crowed. A man walked beside his horse to the field. The smoke of morning drifted from the huts and the icy village track lapsed into a melting mire.
Whilst he thought, the crowd became restive and then quietly went back to their everyday lives. The day found its end and then another began. As first light spread across the fields, the nihilist-communist remained fixed in his place, seemingly caught up in the problem that had been presented to him. In the village, the cocks crowed. A man walked beside his horse to the field. The smoke of morning drifted from the huts and the icy village track lapsed into a melting mire.
And Father Frost dressed the good stepdaughter in a blue sarafan which was ornamented in silver and pearls. And the proud and well-dressed merchant became the victim of black crows with iron beaks. And a dense forest, full of crows, grew so thickly from a comb thrown upon the ground that the witch Baba Yaga could no longer pursue the orphans. And the forty vagina’s intended for Tsar Nikita’s forty daughters flew from the basket containing them into a birch tree and could not be enticed to return. And the orphans did return from the forest to their father, armed with accusations and mystified questions. And the rich brother discovered the mystery of the gold, the Bogotir and a lifetime of misery from underneath a single stone.
And the nightingale predicted that Ivan, the merchant’s son, would become Ivan, the king’s son and that his own father would serve him as a simple servant. And the years went by. And the nightingale sometimes sang, and sometimes did not. And the nihilist-communist remained, suspended within his reply - not quite understanding the necessity of not meeting himself coming the other way along that ancient track.
And so the fatal moment fast approached when everything that belonged to the eternal would fall into mere history. Even so, or so it seemed, the seasons turned as if this would never happen. Perhaps it never would. The mud track froze and the mud track melted. Fleeting time travellers, like glowing bugs, sought a way through to salvation along the eternal road. And smoke curled up from the huts. And the time came closer, or it was deferred. It seemed he had not done enough.
And so the fatal moment fast approached when everything that belonged to the eternal would fall into mere history. Even so, or so it seemed, the seasons turned as if this would never happen. Perhaps it never would. The mud track froze and the mud track melted. Fleeting time travellers, like glowing bugs, sought a way through to salvation along the eternal road. And smoke curled up from the huts. And the time came closer, or it was deferred. It seemed he had not done enough.
