A Russian Drainpipe

NOT BY BREAD ALONE (512 pp.)--Vladimir Dudintsev--Dutton ($4.95).

No less a literary critic than Nikita S. Khrushchev has called this book "wrong at the root" and misrepresenting life "as through a crooked mirror." Before the Russian censors caught on to this view, the Moscow magazine Novy Mir published the novel in three installments last year. At the time, the world jumped with astonishment: a Russian novelist had not only written critically of the Soviet regime, but had done so bluntly, sarcastically, rudely. With Poland and Hungary threatening to tip the boat, Not by Bread Alone had a special menace because 1) it roused wild excitement among both intellectuals and ordinary citizens in Russia, 2) its blows against the order established by Stalin went a lot farther and deeper than even Khrushchev desired.

Soon the machine went into action, and both the Communist Party and Writers' Union denounced Author Dudintsev as a talented, well-meaning fellow who had fallen victim to "distorted and pessimistic'' notions. In a preface to this translation Dudintsev dutifully supplies a mitigating explanation of what his novel is all about. But no explanation is necessary. The book is a major, fascinating document of life in Soviet Russia.

The Forgotten Man. It is a plain tale with an ancient theme. A young schoolmaster, Dmitri Lopatkin. invents a machine for making drainpipes. He sends the drawing of his new centrifugal pipe-casting machine to the responsible bureau, receives friendly encouragement and has his project submitted to "expert" opinion. Promptly things start going wrong. Lopatkin, who has given up schoolteaching and is now wholly dedicated to the cause of drainpipery, falls victim to a mysterious bureaucratic runaround. Months and years pass in a silence punctuated only by official notifications: "It is not considered possible . . ." "Your complaint has been forwarded to . . ." Occasionally Comrade Lopatkin is summoned for discussion, is shunted from one official to another. Repeatedly he comes close to success only to be tossed into the street again. Gaunt, shabby, despairing, Lopatkin struggles on, ignoring hints and muttered warnings, until one day he finds himself sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. "It was as though he had been thrown overboard into the sea at night, while the brightly lighted ship . . . sailed on, leaving him behind.''

From the start of his novel Author Dudintsev describes, side by side with Lopatkin's progress, what is happening behind the scenes in ministries, bureaus and industrial institutes. All the timeservers and Organization Men in high places are aware of one thing--that a big shot in Moscow has a pet scheme of his own regarding drainpipes, and that no Soviet citizen should ever, if he values his security, "get in the way of influential people." As Bureaucrat Drozdov, the novel's villain, tells Lopatkin: "Your mistake consists in being an individual on his own. The lone wolf is out of date." To his wife Nadia. Drozdov is even franker. "Whenever [Lopatkin] came to see me," he says, "he always held his head like this" --and Drozdov throws his head up in a proud, arrogant gesture.

"And how ought he to have held his head in front of you? Like this?" asks Nadia, bowing her head with "exaggerated humility."

"I don't believe in the existence of socalled 'superior beings,' " snaps Drozdov.

"And yet they will still light the way for others," retorts the wife.

Dull as Drainpipes. It is Nadia who helps Lopatkin to light the way. When he is starving--before his imprisonment--she leaves potatoes outside his door; when he needs money for his machine, she gets it by selling her fur coat. Behind her husband's back she becomes Lopatkin's partner and mistress. A well-meaning army official, purporting to spot military potentialities of the drainpipe machine, puts Lopatkin on the army payroll and his machine on the secret list. Inadvertent result: Lopatkin is haled into court for confiding military secrets to Mrs. Drozdov. The man who pulls the strings and rigs the case is. of course, husband Drozdov.

Author Dudintsev himself so rigs things that by novel's end the Lopatkin machine is churning out drainpipes faster and cheaper than any other known model, while Lopatkin is out of jail and safe in Nadia's arms. An official commission has fired two underlings for causing "serious losses" to the State, but the facts about Drozdov are suppressed. "There was no point in making such facts public. People were often unreasonable and might interpret them incorrectly."

Not by Bread Alone is overlong, poorly written, and as dull, esthetically speaking, as the drainpipes round which it turns. What makes it highly instructive reading is not its art but its main accusations and the detailed background picture it supplies of life in the Soviet Union.

When Bureaucrat Drozdov marries Nadia, he already has a wife who refuses to divorce him, but the State sees to it that in "a few months" the new marriage is legal. When he goes to Moscow, leaving her to follow him later, he says: "Don't be afraid, you will have an escort." When Nadia has her baby, a whole room is cleared of patients to give her comfort and privacy. When she wants a baby carriage, Drozdov just orders one "from the machine shop ... It was made in three days--a tiny, streamlined carriage gleaming with nickel and blue enamel." When Nadia complains of their privileges, Drozdov replies bluntly: "Equalitarianism is something harmful."

In contrast with the luxurious life of the rulers, Lopatkin's existence is meager and miserable--mostly because he is a visionary who chooses the hard way when, by surrendering his ideals, he could be sitting pretty. This is a striking refutation of the widespread myth that the creative genius has an easier time of it in a Communist than in a capitalist society.

Frayed Sleeves & Fear. When, for whatever reason, Lopatkin is down and out, the physical details of his life are remarkably similar to those pictured in the Russian lower depths of Gorky or Tolstoy. Throughout the novel Lopatkin smokes cigarettes made of home-grown leaf rolled in newspaper. His usual food is potatoes ("sometimes with a pickled cucumber"); he is apt to live on cod-liver oil, black bread and salt ("the inventors' diet"). He trims his frayed sleeves with scissors; the buying of a suit, even of a shirt, is a rare, important occasion.

"Bourgeois" values appear to be of first importance among Soviet citizens; hard-headed Red females "never marry a penniless genius." Dangers lurk everywhere, along with "foreign agents." All official discussions are full of jokes--which cover up fear, insecurity, duplicity, menace. Lowered voices, mysterious phone calls conducted in innuendoes, pussyfooting, surreptitious side glances, all add up to a grim and unceasing fear of a power that is merely called "They." All this--the passionate appeal for individualism against collectivism, for asceticism against the life of fat cats--is the real meat of Not by Bread Alone. As British Journalist Edward Crankshaw puts it: "There are writers whose names live for centuries, but who, once they have died, are scarcely read. These are the men who, without being great creators, mark with their work a turning point or a new beginning. Dudintsev is probably one of these; and Not by Bread Alone . . . will come to stand for the awakening of the Russian people to the true nature of the regime of Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.