Among all the idiotic buzzwords and phrases of the time— “perestroika,” “accelerated development,” “a socialist market,” and then “reforms” (but no one knew just what sort of reforms)—there was one that was remarkably intelligent and perceptive, if one truly grasped its meaning. It was addressed to factory managers: “Become the masters of your production!”
Absolutely true! It captured it all! That was the key.
~ * ~
But if you are the “master of production,” in name at least, then why not become one in practice?
Becoming a master, though—how does that happen?
It’s always more difficult for the first one who has to blaze a trail through unexplored territory. Still, he had won some time for the reconstruction of Tezar.
In fact, there were a few others like him in the “party of economic freedom.” He joined the group, but what he encountered was either a lot of empty talk or people who wanted political power. No, politics was not going to solve this problem.
At first, Yemtsov believed that he could get help from Western investors. When a group of Western bankers visited Tezar, he received them graciously and trustingly and entertained them lavishly, in Russian style. They smiled and were very polite; they enjoyed the caviar; but they offered not one penny of help.
Nor could the Russian government provide more than small change. He had to hurry.
Now that there were no travel restrictions, he decided to go to America himself. He was received very graciously, as a “progressive entrepreneur.” There were meetings and business breakfasts and lunches; he took advice from specialists. But there wasn’t a penny for investment. What he did hear, again and again, was the same piece of advice: No one would be willing to invest in such a giant as your Tezar; that could only be a losing proposition. You have to take it apart and create many separate enterprises; then each one of them will have to sink or swim on its own.
From his childhood in Poltava he recalled what Gogol had written: “I’ve given birth to you, and I can kill you as well.”
The Council of Ministers was a regular circus, everyone elbowing each other aside in their efforts to lobby officials. And so Yemtsov squeezed into an airplane with the vice premier, and while they were en route to a conference, he obtained permission to privatize Tezar and break it up into smaller segments.
If you cut up a living body, the pieces will still wriggle about in search of one another. But we had no other option.
And so now my principle will be this: No more of these inflated government contracts! First the money, then the order. You pay your money, then you get your goods—isn’t that the way it’s normally done? They had left us no choice: now it was money in advance. Tezar’s military manufacturing was reduced to only five percent—just spare parts for anti-missile defense and a few bits and pieces. He divided Tezar into sixty subsidiaries, but he remained general manager of all of them. Part of their authorized capital came from the former Tezar; the rest would come from wealthy backers they had to seek out on their own. The aim of each of these individual cells was to survive, and so they were left to “wriggle.” Each of these sixty firms had the same legal rights; the office of the general manager—now given the new designation of “holding company”—had its own legal basis.
There was one principle for all of them: Henceforth, we don’t care how you earn your money! You want to use UHF for processing buckwheat? Fine. Microwave ovens (something we hadn’t seen before) for the domestic market? Start turning them out! Someone wants to manufacture VCRs? Excellent. Plastic window frames, children’s toys. As for those who have nothing going and can’t pay wages, then don’t pay them. You’ll have to let your workers go.
The whole city was abuzz: “The electronics plant has switched to making garden rakes!” (That wasn’t far from the truth.) Those who knew more about what was happening—the electronics engineers or managers of defense plants all over the country—said: “Yemtsov is tearing the Tezar empire apart!” Those workers who had not yet been laid off but were on their second or third month with no wages, and those who had already been laid off, were seething with rage. They gathered in raucous crowds at the factory office, cursing the manager. Yemtsov set up a meeting with them in the factory recreation center.
Still agile in his old age, thin as a rail and with the same bright eyes and face of his youth, he went to face the storm. He felt the same devil-may-care boldness that had served him so well at other times in his life. He knew he had not lost his ability to think on his feet and knew he would now take them utterly by surprise.
The hall was filled with loud, angry voices. Yemtsov raised his hand with its long fingers as a schoolteacher might when demanding silence. Speaking with all the volume and clarity he could still muster, he said: “Who is responsible for all this? Is it the Supreme Soviet we have today? But who elected the Supreme Soviet? Is it the managers who are responsible? Or is it the workers? Whom did you vote for? Did you elect managers, organizers, and businessmen who knew what they were doing? No! You rushed off to elect some self-styled democrats, most of them former instructors of Marxism-Leninism, some economists, ivory-tower professors, and journalists . . . Khasbulatov, Burbulis, Gaidar, Chubais—and I can list thirty more. Who elected them? So now you can take your red banners and march off to these wise gentlemen and look for justice. But I can see farther than they can, and I’m saving you! I may be leaving you unemployed, but remember: it’s only for 1992 and no longer than that. Coming from Tezar, you’ll still manage to find work or adapt yourself to a new job. But anyone who goes marching off with a red banner to look for his wages will be left high and dry.”
~ * ~
It’s not difficult for a young man to rebuild his career and change his views and his plans. But a man of sixty-five?
You’re confident that you’re right. Yet you feel the bile rising in your throat when you think of how everything collapsed.
You have to have a mind that never loses its remarkable agility; you have to change, immediately, all those things that have guided you until now, as if none of them meant anything, and then set off marching briskly along some new path.
And you stumble at every step. A steady flow of microwave ovens and VCRs—better and cheaper than those Tezar produced—came from Japan. Well then, there’s no point wallowing about, we have to shut down our own amateurish production. (And lay off even more workers. In fact, many engineers, office staff, and workers did not wait for layoffs and left. But who were the ones who walked away? At first, the very best of them, then the second best. What remained was a gray mass, the ballast. Out of a workforce of eighteen thousand, only six thousand were left.)
A year passed, and one quarter of the fragments of Tezar had gone bankrupt, failed, or were dissolved. Some, though, had found a way to make a profit. It meant looking very closely, seeking out areas where no one had ventured, no one had anticipated, no one had explored; it meant digging up the earth itself and searching beneath it and even looking into outer space. Here was something new that had popped up: portable hand telephones working through satellites. Let’s look at that! We’ll build base stations for them and electronic switching systems and sell numbers to subscribers—there’s profit to be made! Even simple gas meters that Gazprom doesn’t have but that everyone needs—there’s profit!
Yes, gentlemen-comrades, we have nothing to be ashamed of; any sort of business suits us! Even garden rakes, even hats, even renting out our luxurious accommodations, our palaces and our kindergartens, even housing a store selling Scandinavian furniture! Even a supermarket! A casino or even a regular brothel! (Selling things is a way of life, but who will buy our old factory shops? And the state that’s refused to give us help is still eager to take from us—for debts, for electrical power.)
The most promising idea, though, was to create our own bank jointly with those elements of Tezar that were successful. Given his quickness and acuity he didn’t let pass that brief time when new banks were spr
inging up by the dozens. Those who waited too long could sit and chew their nails. A bank is a sensory system for everything that lives and creates! And (something they never expected) three years later, the Tezar Bank was awarded the American Torch of Birmingham Prize. (Years before, recovery from the Great Depression began in the city of Birmingham, Alabama; hence the prize.)
Those managers of defense plants who had waited for state contracts for a year or two, or who had built up debt by continuing production, were now floundering pitiably like frogs cast up on a sandy shore. Yemtsov, however, had not only managed to do what was necessary in time but had not even been weakened by the sudden fracture in the continuity of his life and in the life of his country. He would still walk about his former holdings looking even more proud and authoritative than before, when he was a famous Red manager. Sometimes he would frown as he passed the casino and think: “I’d be happy to pay those half-baked impotents not to listen to their music.” Once again he was a conqueror, though he kept all his old orders and gold “Hero” stars in the lower drawer of his desk. If your mind is agile and you keep your youthful passion for activity, you’ll never fail. He would say: “My view is that making money is an interesting occupation. No less interesting than being the beating pulse of the military-industrial complex or, say, understanding cybernetics.”
And when my son grows up, he should get some of his education abroad.
~ * ~
2
An attempt had been made on the life of a banker in the building at 15 Karl Marx Street. There was an explosion in the building’s lobby, but the banker was unharmed; he and his wife left immediately by car.
The call about the incident came to the oblast Organized Crime Division late in the evening. The duty lieutenant should have gone out to investigate immediately, but he knew how dangerous something like that could be at night, even with a backup of two policemen armed with submachine guns: where there had been one explosion there could well be a second and a third. And so the lieutenant waited until dawn—a late February dawn—and then set off.
The building was a co-op, and the tenants themselves had installed a steel exterior door to the lobby. The magnetized support for one of the two bombs that had been set off was still attached to the door. The interior wooden door had been blown through at the height of a man’s chest, and the whole lobby was lacerated by fragments that lay scattered across the floor. The lieutenant had warned the building staff not to touch anything during the night, and the tenants who returned the previous evening had passed through the lobby with great caution. The lieutenant took all the measurements and compiled a description of the incident. The banker himself (his name was Tolkovyanov; he was a younger man) was not at home. No one answered the door to his apartment, which turned out to be quite an ordinary one with just two rooms—something that surprised the lieutenant. The banker and his wife had not returned after the explosion; their two-year-old child, the building staff explained, was probably with his grandmother.
With that, the investigation was complete for the moment, and the lieutenant hurried back to his office in the Division to arrive before his two coworkers and the major came to work. He made it back in time. But for some reason the major did not come in, and at ten o’clock Lieutenant Colonel Kosargin himself arrived. The lieutenant ventured to report directly to him.
The lieutenant colonel was about forty and was now in civilian clothes; he was fit and neat with a distinct military bearing. He had spent fifteen years in the “Organs” and had left the state security service a year and a half ago. He had been here for the last year.
The lieutenant gave his full report and displayed the schematic drawing he had made. Kosargin’s eyebrows also rose as he wondered about the banker’s modest apartment.
“What would you like me to do now, Vsevold Valeryanych?”
Kosargin had a lean, energetic face, and his constant expression was one of immediate readiness for the task at hand.
“What was Tolkovyanov’s first name, did you find out?”
“Aleksei Ivanych.”
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-eight.”
A crease appeared across Kosargin’s smooth forehead. What was he thinking about? Was he trying to recall something?
“I think I’ll take this on myself. Call the bank and get hold of Tolkovyanov.”
The lieutenant readily turned to leave, relieved that he had not been blamed for his delay over the past night, and went off to carry out his instructions.
Kosargin remained seated. He had a very sharp professional memory. In ‘89 he had happened to question an Aleksei Tolkovyanov during the time the local university students were creating some disturbances, clashing with the cadets of the border guards’ school across the street. The cadets had taken it upon themselves to use their fists to put the students in their place. The information on Tolkovyanov was that if he was not the ringleader of the students, then he was at least one of their main instigators. In those days, interrogations were tough: Don’t lose your head over all this glasnost nonsense; don’t be taken in by the disgusting stuff they’re allowed to print in the newspapers these days; if you keep this up, we’ll find a nice little camp for people like you, the kind of place you won’t come out of alive.
Yes, in those days . . . Kosargin still could not comprehend how all this had come about. And the direction it had taken. And the speed with which it had happened, and the things that had been destroyed! The Organs themselves were thoroughly shaken, and one by one the cleverest and most energetic people within them had begun looking for something new and even resigning. Where could they go? Into these new private businesses and management boards. Some of them became nearly as wealthy as bankers and thus provoked the understandable resentment of their colleagues, who had stayed at their jobs and missed such opportunities. And now, it seems, even this ex-student has been able to move without a hitch into that world, unlike you.
This made him even more eager to take on the case and investigate, if only to satisfy his curiosity.
Tolkovyanov turned out to be at his job in the bank and was expecting visitors from the Organized Crime Division.
Kosargin went to see him. He left his driver on a quiet street near a new, seven-story bank building with a vast expanse of glass and one of the enigmatic names they were now inventing. He went inside. The reception area on the second floor had a Western-style counter, not glassed in. Despite his civilian clothes, the receptionist immediately knew who he was; then another young man greeted him and took him at once to the bank president; the president had come to the outer office to meet him.
Yes! Though that interrogation had taken place almost six years ago, Kosargin recognized him at first sight: it was he. That same tall fellow with a face that seemed a bit simple. He might have been a village cowherd dressed in city clothes. He was not, however, in a business suit, as one would expect from a bank president. He wore a loose, casual, olive green sweater, though his shirt collar—a lighter shade of the same color—was carefully arranged on the outside. He had a narrow gold ring on his finger, the sort they were now wearing as wedding bands.
The banker gave no sign that he remembered their past encounter.
They went into the president’s office. The furniture within was a mixture: there were some contemporary pieces—low, plump leather armchairs grouped around a small table covered with magazines, but also a few antique, or at least reproductions of antique, chairs with high, straight, carved backs and bare wooden seats; these were arranged around a table covered with a green cloth. On the wall hung an antique clock with a bronze pendulum and, when it now struck, a soft, ingratiating chime.
Kosargin declined an armchair and sat on one of the wooden chairs, placing his slender portfolio on the green cloth of the table; the banker sat at his desk, which was placed crosswise to the table.
He was in full possession of himself: he appeared entirely unshaken by his experience and his face showed no trace of fear, only
his undivided attention. And, even on such a morning, he had not neglected to shave. His long ears, set high on his head, accentuated the length of his face.
Kosargin mentioned only where he was from and did not give his name. Tolkovyanov did not ask to see his identity card, and it was only this that betrayed his preoccupation or uncertainty.
The circumstances? Well, this was how it happened. He had opened the steel door and was about to enter; his wife was following. Suddenly he realized that he had forgotten to take one of her bags and—did it take a second or half a second?—he stepped back instead of entering the lobby; the steel door had almost swung shut again when the explosion burst inside. Whoever had sent the signal had acted a fraction of a second prematurely, thinking that his victim would now be inside the lobby.
Apricot Jam: And Other Stories Page 33