Ricardas Gavelis - Vilnius Poker

“He tried to escape the surge of the inevitable progress of history. A few individuals still can. For the time being.”

It’s a pity I can’t recreate all the nuances of his newspeak lexicon. No matter how much I’d try, the Lithuanian language just isn’t suited for it.

“I explained to that emissary of yours that the historical process is inevitable. That Lithuania can only exist as part of Russia. I showed him maps printed a year earlier, in which Lithuania was already a part of Russia. I explained that a great war would soon start, after which at least half of Europe would belong to us. That, uh. . Krėva’s historical task was to avoid bloodshed, if he wanted that breed of his to survive a while longer. . A Bolshevik demands voluntary obedience first. Yes, almost always. . We’re humane. We got Lithuania back without spilling any blood. .”

But he hadn’t brought me home to listen to his memories. He wasn’t in the least interested in the past. His gaze was turned towards the future. Moscow, the third Rome, was victoriously marching through the world: towards the Indian Ocean, towards the Dardanelles, through Africa. But I was much more shocked by the theory of the New Man, since it concerned children directly.

The Iron Ass was firmly convinced that children are their, that is, the iron asses’, future. Listening to him, it suddenly occurred to me that all the principles of raising and educating children crawled out into the world from this room. I realized what boundless foolishness I had been full of until then.

I had quite sincerely supposed that my dissertation would open people’s eyes, that everyone had merely been mistaken, and now they would willingly and quickly correct their unfortunate mistakes.

I really did think that way. Word of honor.

I thought this world needed intelligent people.

But the Iron Ass convincingly explained that you need to destroy even the most pathetic shoots of good sense, starting in infancy. He was programmed that way. That day I asked myself for the first time: who programmed these people? That is the only societal question a decent person must be concerned about: who programmed all of this? Who really rules the ROF?

Not even once did he say “the new man,” certainly he didn’t say “Soviet man,” he simply constantly repeated “man.”

The trouble is, he explained, man is born with a real muddle in his head. He called the intellect, or at least its rudiments, a “muddle.” This muddle must be rigorously corrected. Children’s preschools, schools, and universities are designed to do just that. The first steps in this direction should be taken while the child is still in nursery school. A child must absorb the correct ideology and the scale of values on the level of a reflex — like a trained puppy. The conditional reflex must become unconditional. To never pity a class enemy, to sincerely love the wise Party, to gladly execute the international responsibility of freeing nations — these must be neither thought out nor learned. They must lie at the level of a reflex; they should appear naturally and unavoidably, like saliva when a hungry person sees a cooked piece of meat.

Technology that allowed the dissemination of information irritated him to no end. He was preparing to entirely block the ether, leaving only a cable system that broadcast a single, solitary program.

He was similarly plagued by the problem of mathematics and computers. Abstract mathematics made him physically ill, because it was ideologically indifferent. But the most pressing problem was how to eliminate computers.

“Koba was entirely correct,” he repeated, sighing, “to prohibit all of those cyberneticians. We’ve reached the point where they say a computer can verify the correctness of Marxism-Leninism. Of course, we won’t allow it to do that.”

I’m quoting him exactly. He did not say, “prohibit cybernetics,” he said, “prohibit cyberneticians.” That wasn’t a casual mistake, but rather the expression of an inner concept. He was to speak again, and more than once, of the prohibition of people, entire nations, and even states.

“It was time to prohibit the Lithuanians a long time ago,” he declared to me.

By no means did the Iron Ass think of himself as a tyrant, or as an advocate of a complete dumbing-down. He went by the Michurinian slogan: “We won’t wait for blessings from nature, we’ll modify it ourselves!” It’s just that he was aiming to change humans, not a strain of apples. All of Judeo-Christian morality, love of one’s neighbor, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” became obsolete a long time ago, he explained. It suited the old society, but hampered the new. That’s why it’s crucial to fundamentally change children while they were still in infancy. “Love,” “brotherhood,” “courage,” must signify something entirely different than they had previously. In a friendly way, he suggested I take up an interest in precisely these things, that is, in the creation of newspeak and its implantation from infancy on. He vision was profound.

Newspeak isn’t just some ordinary system of lies; it’s a powerful weapon. All those Molotovs understood they wouldn’t succeed in forbidding words. So they didn’t forbid them; they did something much more clever — they stole or deformed the real meaning of words. They left the old words, but gave them their own meaning. A devilish invention: you can talk any way you want, but your words won’t mean what they ought to anymore.

Clever Molotovs!

But I was particularly charmed by love for the wise Party on the level of a reflex.

From my collection:

A certain Marius Škėma graduated in history with honors. He was the Komsomol Secretary; he joined the Communist Party while he was still studying. When he finished his studies, regardless of his tender age, he was assigned the job of assistant to the director of the Revolution Museum. His work was thorough; the museum’s collections and expositions constantly grew and improved. Marius Škėma was already approved for the directorship, but he suddenly disappeared. A letter was found in his apartment, in which Škėma vaguely explained that he had grasped the meaning of life and had left to carry out his great mission. It was also discovered that the museum women had seen him after work hours associating, in a singularly intimate way, with various images of Lenin.

Digging deeper, it slowly became clear that Marius Škėma had fallen in love with Lenin some time before. A union-wide search was quickly declared. His traces were found in Uljanovsk, Shushenskaya, and other Leninist places. Witnesses told of him explaining that he had to acquaint himself with every minor detail of the bearer of cosmic harmony. An absolute knowledge would eventually meld the seeker with the one sought; crudely speaking, Marius Škėma would turn into Lenin.

All that is known precisely is that Marius Škėma was captured and confined in a psychiatric hospital. Everything else I can only call a legend, even though all of this was sworn to by this old KGB agent named Mackus, a Narutis drunk, who never lied.

Mackus tried to convince us that Marius Škėma entered the Lenin Mausoleum along with the general public and tried to become completely one with the exhibit, considerably damaging the mummy in the process.

It’s an incontestable fact that precisely at that time the Mausoleum was quite unexpectedly closed down for a long time.

Probably there’s no need to relate what else the Iron Ass said. At the time it seemed horrifying to me; now it’s simply boring.

Just one more interesting detail: he was completely convinced that only the Russian language suited the true teaching and upbringing.

“You Lithuanians, clinging to your flawed language, are perilously blocking progress,” he said.