Cosmos…
Andrei: So, why was Lenin right, then?
Victor: He was right to a point because the degree of human receptiveness to Christ’s commandments, incidentally, based on love – that is, the capability of compassion and sacrifice – this receptiveness, indeed, depends on class consciousness: the more oppressed it is, the greater its capacity for compassion and sacrifice. It’s not so much our being, as our beatings, which determine our consciousness. Christ himself stressed that idea, remarking that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Andrei: It’s no use arguing with you.
Victor: Why not? It’s in dispute that truth is discovered. Though our cellmates with criminal records, like
Sasha, would say that «He who argues isn’t worth shit».
Andrei: I’m afraid they are more correct under the present conditions.
Victor smiling: I see you are already learning the principle of relativity and condition. Incidentally, if I got you right, you live in Star City?
Andrei: Yes.
Victor: And what did they try to prosecute you for?
Andrei: Easy question which is hard to answer. You see when the KGB tries to frame you, the formal charges they bring against you quite often have nothing to do with the actual cause for which you are being prosecuted. In my case the actual reason was so foul that they even were not unanimous on their formal charges and tried everything that might stick, from low parasitism to high treason, but finally decided on evasion of military service.
Victor: I see. A Russian continuation of Yaroslav Gashek’s story of the brave soldier Sweik: a spy, a lunatic and a deserter all rolled into one.
Andrei: Yes, sir.
Victor: So what did you do to them that they have such a grudge against you?
Andrei: Nothing. And that’s the grudge. As I said it’s a long story which started 15—17 years back when they began pressing me to snitch on my schoolmates, and my mother to inform on the cosmonauts, because, as they put, «some of them allowed themselves too much».
We refused – and were subjected to rabid harassment, which is easy in a closed garrison. In short, I was vaccinated against TB, although this vaccination was strictly proscribed to me on health grounds, and against which mother repeatedly warned the doctors. After their vaccination I developed problems with my lungs.