TIME, FORWARD! VALENTINE KATAEV TIME, FORWARD by the author of THE EMBEZZLERS AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE RUSSIAN BY CHARLES MALAMUTH INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington & London First Midland Book edition published 1976 by arrangement with Holt, Rinehart and Winston Copyright 1933, © 1961 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. Published in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Don Mills, Ontario Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kataev, Valentin Petrovich, 1897- Time, forward ! Translation of Vremia, vpered ! I. Title. PZ3.K153TÎ7 [PG3476.K4] 891.7’3’42 76-11933 ISBN 0-253-36018-8 ISBN 0-253-20204-3 (pbk) 1 2 3 4 5 80 79 78 77 76 FOREWORD Valentin Kataev’s career as a writer spans a half century, and he is still writing, and even publishing, important literary works. He has exhibited a rare talent not only for literature but for survival, having practiced his craft during the relative freedom of the twenties, under the icy rigors of Stalin, in the liberal period of the mid-sixties, and even under Brezhnev. While a certain sensitivity to external pressures can often be detected in his work, Kataev never abandons the craft of literature. In fact each of his important works is striking and innova­ tive in both style and form. The Embezzlers (1927), a novel of the NEP period, satirizes the Soviet bureaucracy in the person of two officials who defraud the Soviet state; told for the most part from the viewpoint of the absconding and drunken officials, the novel is a kind of absurd travelogue in which all events are refracted through an alcoholic haze. Peace Is Where the Tempests Blow (1936) describes the events of 1905 as apprehended by children who witnessed them. Kataev’s work of the sixties and seventies is also original and arresting. A Little Iron Door in the Wall (1964), a study of Lenin in Paris, Capri, and other foreign parts, is a parody of Soviet Lenin hagiography so subtle in its ironies that it was even published in the USSR; very few readers have understood it. Like the Spanish painter Velasquez, whose traditional canvases depicted court personages in their regal ambience and rich garments while at the same time reveal­ ing them as dull fools, so Kataev, never once abandoning the proper hagiographie stance, manages to contrive a dismal portrait of Lenin as a hard-headed and narrow dogmatist, indifferent to higher Parisian culture but fascinated by music halls and the guillotine.* The Holy Well (1966), The Grass of Oblivion (1967), and The Graveyard in Skulyani (1975) are all experiments in the treatment of time which use the technique of abrupt juxtaposition—the montage—to develop startling temporal interrelationships. Time, ForwardI (1932), reprinted here, is an important historical document as well as a literary performance of the first order, prob­ ably the best of the Soviet “industrial” novels. It describes the build- *1 am indebted to Dodona Kiziria, who pointed this out to me. ing of the huge metallurgical plant at Magnitogorsk in the Ural mountains and succeeds in conveying the atmosphere of feverish hurry, of time itself made to move faster, in which industrial projects were undertaken during the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932). The prin­ cipal text upon which the novel is based is an address delivered by Stalin in 1931 in which he characteristically distorts the facts of Russian history for his own purposes: “Russia . . . was beaten by Mongol khans, ... by Turkish beks ... by Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry . . from this he draws the important conclusion that Russia must liquidate her indus­ trial backwardness or be beaten again and again. The central event in Time, Forward! is a successful attempt by a brigade of workmen at Magnitogorsk, in competition with a brigade working in Kharkov, to break the world’s time record for pouring concrete. The vivid action reveals the mechanisms developed in the USSR during the First Five-Year Plan in an effort to motivate workers to outdo themselves: shock brigades, socialist competition, Sta- khanovism, slogans, public acclaim of “heroes of labor” and oppro­ brium for “shirkers.” The dominant image is the speeding up of time in the Soviet Union, where a century’s work must be done in ten years. Kataev utilizes techniques learned from the cinema to suggest the confusion of “normal” space and time concepts under revolutionary pressures. Objects and persons are shown always in motion ; landscapes are seen through the windows of moving trains. The camera eye itself is constantly in motion : the metallurgical plant seen from a distance is a tiny object ; then in a sudden closeup it becomes a huge, unencom- passable mass; and when the camera moves inside the structure, the interior dimensions are enormous beyond belief. The great plant itself, a twentieth-century industrial giant rising out of a primitive steppe wilderness, is presented as order growing out of chaos, and the naive eye of the camera distinguishes, only with some difficulty, evidences of plan and purpose in the tumble of freight cars, cement-mixers, iron girders, barracks, and sheer junk. Kataev’s literary celebration of mod­ ern socialist industry is a first-rate modern novel. EDWARD J. DROWN TIME, FORWARD 1 PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS Seroshevsky, chief engineer in charge of the entire construction Nalbandov, Georgi Nikolayevich, assistant chief of the con- struction Margulies, David Lvovich, engineer in charge of the sixth sector Korneyev, superintendent of the sixth sector Mosya, foreman in charge of the shift Ishchenko (Konstantin, Kostya) } brigadiers, or pace-setters, Khanumov y each in charge of a shock- Yermakov ) brigade Smetana j çommunisi Youth members of Ishchenko's Olga Tregubova V . , , . , XT I shock-brigade Nefedov ) Sayenko, a kulak's son ) recalcitrant members of Ishchenko's Zagirov, the Tatar } brigade Foma Yegorovich (Thomas George Bixby), an American engineer Ilyushchenko, testing engineer at the construction laboratory Kutaisov, editor 'J of the editorial staff of the Slobodkin, a poet v local travelling edition of Triger, secretary j the “Komsomolskaya PravdaV Vinkich, correspondent of the Russian Telegraphic Agency Georgi Vasilyevich, famous novelist Semechkin, correspondent of the regional newspaper Filonov, secretary of the construction's Communist Party nucleus Fyenya, Ishchenko's wife Shura Soldatova, in charge of the art shop Klava, Korneyev's sweetheart Ray Roupe, a wealthy American tourist Leonard Darley, an American correspondent Katya, Margulies's sister in Moscow Professor Smolensky, of the Institute of Construction in Moscow I The first chapter is omitted for the time being. n THE alarm clock rattled like a tin of bonbons. The alarm clock was cheap, painted, brown, of Soviet manufacture. Half-past six. The clock was accurate, but Margulies did not depend on it. He was not asleep. He always rose at six and was always ahead of time. There had never yet been an occasion when the alarm clock had actually awakened him. Margulies could not really have faith in so simple a mechanism as a timepiece ; could not entrust to it so precious a thing as time. Three hundred and six divided by eight. Then sixty divided by thirty-eight and two-tenths. Margulies calculated this in his mind instantly. The result—one and approximately five-tenths. The figures had the following significance : Three hundred and six was the number of mixtures. Eight was the number of working hours. Sixty was the number of minutes in an hour. Thus the concrete mixers of Kharkov made one mix­ ture in one and approximately five-tenths of a minute, that is, in ninety seconds. From these ninety seconds deduct the sixty sec­ onds of compulsory minimum necessary for each mixture accord­ ing to the book of instructions. There remained thirty seconds. Thirty seconds in which to wheel up the material, to load, and to lift the scoop! Theoretically it was possible. But—practically? That was the question that had to be answered. 3 4 TIME, FORWARD! Until now the best brigades of concrete mixers on the construc­ tion made no more than two hundred mixtures per shift. This was regarded as an excellent record. Now the situation had altered radically. With a safety razor blade, Margulies sharpened his yellow pencil. He sharpened it with the smartness and careless dex­ terity of a young engineer, removing long, amazingly thin and polished slivers. On the hill, ore was being blasted. Frequent uneven explosions followed each other. The air broke softly—like a slate. Margulies browsed through about five thick books with stiff bindings and silver titles, making notes and calculations on the margins of a yellowed newspaper. The newspaper dispatch explained virtually nothing. Its figures were too inaccurate. Moreover, the necessary sixty seconds taken from the official book of reference likewise seemed highly de­ batable. Naked and dirty, Margulies sat before the wobbly little hotel table. The little round table was unsuitable for work. Margulies sat there, wrapped in a soiled sheet and looking like a Bedouin. Stinging flies swirled around him in loops and rummaged in his rearing shock of hair. He removed the spectacles from his large nose and placed them before him on the tablecloth with the shafts down, so that they looked like a tortoise shell cabriolet. He struck his shoulders, his neck, his head. The assassinated flies fell on the newspaper. Much was not clear. The labor front? Transportation? The capacity of the ma­ chinery? The number of men? The distance to the place where the concrete must be poured? The height to which the scoop would have to be lifted? All of this was unknown. It had to be guessed at. Margulies tentatively sketched several of the more likely variants. He pulled on his trousers, shoved his feet into boots with sharp