Ayn Rand - We the Living

“Comrade Taganov!” roared the chairman. “I’m calling you to order!”

“Yes, Comrade Chairman.... Our Moscow chief cites the ... What was I saying, Comrade Chairman? ... Yes, the hoarders’ element in the villages ... Yes ... The Party has to take extraordinary measures against the counter-revolutionary element in the villages, that threatens the progress of our great work among the peasant masses.... Our great work.... We came as a solemn army and forbade life to the living. We thought everything that breathed knew how to live. Does it? And aren’t those who know how to live, aren’t they too precious to be sacrificed in the name of any cause? What cause is greater than those who fight for it? And aren’t those who know how to fight, aren’t they the cause itself and not the means?”

“Comrade Taganov!” roared the chairman. “I’m calling you to order!”

“I’m here to make a report to my Party comrades, Comrade Chairman. It’s a very crucial report and I think they should hear it. Yes, it’s about our work in the villages, and in the cities, and among the millions, the living millions. Only there are questions. There are questions that must be answered. Why should we be afraid if we can answer them? But if we can’t... ? If we can’t? ... Comrades! Brothers! Listen to me! Listen, you consecrated warriors of a new life! Are we sure we know what we are doing? No one can tell men what they must live for. No one can take that right — because there are things in men, in the best of us, which are above all states, above all collectives! Do you ask: what things? Man’s mind and his values. Look into yourself, honestly and fearlessly. Look and don’t tell me, don’t tell any one, just tell yourself: what are you living for? Aren’t you living for yourself and only for yourself? Call it your aim, your love, your cause — isn’t it still your cause? Give your life, die for your ideal — isn’t it still your ideal? Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn’t — doesn’t live at all. You cannot change it. You cannot change it because that’s the way man is born, alone, complete, an end in himself. No laws, no Party, no G.P.U. will ever kill that thing in man which knows how to say ‘I.’ You cannot enslave man’s mind, you can only destroy it. You have tried. Now look at what you’re getting. Look at those whom you allow to triumph. Deny the best in men — and see what will survive. Do we want the crippled, creeping, crawling, broken monstrosities that we’re producing? Are we not castrating life in order to perpetuate it?”

“Comrade Ta ...”

“Brothers! Listen! We have to answer this!” The two luminous white hands flew up over a black void, and his voice rose, ringing, as it had risen in a dark valley over the White trenches many years ago. “We have to answer this! If we don’t — history will answer it for us. And we shall go down with a burden on our shoulders that will never be forgiven! What is our goal, comrades? What are we doing? Do we want to feed a starved humanity in order to let it live? Or do we want to strangle its life in order to feed it?”

“Comrade Taganov!” roared the chairman. “I deprive you of speech!”

“I ... I ...” panted Andrei Taganov, staggering down the platform steps. “I have nothing more to say....”

He walked out, down the long aisle, a tall, gaunt, lonely figure. Heads turned to look at him. Somewhere in the back row someone whistled through his teeth, a long, low, sneering triumphant sound.

When the door closed after him, someone whispered:

“Let Comrade Taganov wait for the next Party purge!”

COMRADE SONIA SAT AT THE TABLE, IN a faded lavender kimono, with a pencil behind her ear. The kimono did not meet in front, for she had grown to proportions that could not be concealed any longer. She bent under the lamp, running through the pages of a calendar; she seized the pencil once in a while, jotting hurried notes down on a scrap of paper, and bit the pencil, a purple streak spreading on her lower lip, for the pencil was indelible.

Pavel Syerov lay on the davenport, his stocking feet high on its arm, reading a newspaper, chewing sunflower seeds. He spat the shells into a pile on a newspaper spread on the floor by the davenport. The shells made a little sizzling sound, leaving his lips. Pavel Syerov looked bored.

“Our child,” said Comrade Sonia, “will be a new citizen of a new state. It will be brought up in the free, healthy ideology of the proletariat, without any bourgeois prejudices to hamper its natural development.”

“Yeah,” said Pavel Syerov without looking up from his newspaper.

“I shall have it registered with the Pioneers, the very day it’s born. Won’t you be proud of your living contribution to the Soviet future, when you see it marching with other little citizens, in blue trunks and with a red kerchief around its neck?”

“Sure,” said Pavel Syerov, spitting a shell down on the newspaper.

“We’ll have a real Red christening. You know, no priests, only our Party comrades, a civil ceremony, and appropriate speeches. I’m trying to decide on a name and ... Are you listening to me, Pavel?”

“Sure,” said Syerov, sticking a seed between his teeth.

“There are many good suggestions for new, revolutionary names here in the calendar, instead of the foolish old saints’ names. I’ve copied some good ones. Now what do you think? If it’s a boy, I think Ninel would be nice.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“Pavel, I won’t tolerate such language and such ignorance! You haven’t given a single thought to your child’s name, have you?”

“Well, say, I still have time, haven’t I?”

“You’re not interested, that’s all, don’t you fool me, Pavel Syerov, and don’t you fool yourself thinking I’ll forget it!”

“Aw, come on, now, Sonia, really, you know, I’m leaving the name up to you. You know best.”

“Yes. As usual. Well, Ninel is our great leader Lenin’s name — reversed. Very appropriate. Or we could call him Vil — that’s for our great leader’s initials — Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin. See?”

“Yeah. Well, either one’s good enough for me.”

“Now, if it’s a girl — and I hope it’s a girl, because the new woman is coming into her own and the future belongs, to a greater extent than you men imagine, to the free woman of the proletariat — well, if it’s a girl, I have some good names here, but the one I like best is Octiabrina, because that would be a living monument to our great October Revolution.”

“Sort of ... long, isn’t it?”

“What of it? It’s a very good name and very popular. You know, Fimka Popova, she had a Red christening week before last and that’s what she called her brat — Octiabrina. Even got a notice in the paper about it. Her husband was so proud — the blind fool!”

“Now, Sonia, you shouldn’t insinuate ...”

“Listen to the respectable moralist! That bitch Fimka is known as a ... Oh, to hell with her! But if she thinks she’s the only one to get a notice in the paper about her litter I’ll ... I’ve copied some other names here, too. Good modern ones. There’s Marxina, for Karl Marx. Or else Communara. Or ...”

Something clattered loudly under the table.

“Oh, hell!” said Comrade Sonia. “Those damn slippers of mine!” She wriggled uncomfortably on her chair, stretching out one leg, her foot groping under the table. She found the slipper and bent painfully over her abdomen, pulling the slipper on by a flat, wornout heel. “Look at the old junk I have to wear! And I need so many things, and with the child coming ... You would choose a good time to write certain literary compositions and ruin everything, you drunken fool!”