S.

KONDRASHOV

Crossroads of
America

Journalist's Notes

Moscow • 1969
PUBLISHED BY
POLITICAL LITERATURE
32И
К64

Stanislav Nikolaevich Kondrashov.

К64 Crossroads of America. Journalist's Notes. Moscow,
Politizdat, 1969..
208 pages.
•
In his essays, S. Kondrashov tells about the complex and contradictory
life of contemporary America. The Vietnam War and its various societal
perspectives, the rapid growth of the African-American movement, the power
of predatory ideologies of owners and businessmen, the tragedy of the youth -
readers will discover many new and interesting insights on these and other
topics.

1—11—5
32И
9—БЗ—74—68
 FROM THE AUTHOR

The author's preface can be likened to a kind of letter of trust. By

offering this letter of trust to the reader, I want to convey that I
worked in New York for six and a half years as a correspondent for
"Izvestia" and, in that capacity, traveled extensively throughout the
United States. In general, these were long years for me, but I
wouldn't want to shield myself with them as a protective shield. It's
not so important how many years have been lived, but what has
been understood. It's up to the reader to judge that.
From the first days in New York, it became clear to me that in
this city and in this country, a journalist will never lack for the
daily bread of events and sensations. However, to understand this,
one doesn't need to cross the ocean - it's enough to unfold almost
any morning or evening newspaper. Who doesn't know that
America is the world's greatest supplier of sensations?
Like flashes of furious lightning, sensations tear secret images of
American life out of the darkness. But where do the storms that
bewilder and sometimes terrify the rest of the world originate? In
quiet America, quiet Americans. In the social system of the
country, dynamically torn apart by the struggle of people,
antagonistic groups, classes, races. They take shape at the large and
small, visual and figurative crossroads of America, where the good
and bad, the honest and selfish, the great and base collide and repel
each other.
Americans are different people. This truth is so obvious that it
borders on banality. But each of these different people are
"funneled" through a complex system based on private ownership
and capitalist competition, and in turn, they refract this system in
different ways. The longer I lived in the USA, the more the theme
of the American character, its connection and interaction with
American reality, and the search for the everyday elements that
explain the sensations fascinated me.
The notes presented to the reader are primarily about this.
I should note that these notes are far from a complete
culmination of my travels, encounters, observations, and the
ongoing, challenging process of understanding this vast and
incredibly diverse country in its hundreds of dimensions. They are
like mosaic stones, sketches for a painting that must inevitably be
collective, as one person alone cannot write it—this is what I see in
these notes.
 Vietnam Mirror

Three years ago, the police of the resort city of Miami, located
in the state of Florida, arrested a man named Lon Show, an
electronics engineer. He had an unusual hobby. He would rent an
airplane and drop homemade bombs from an altitude of three
hundred meters onto city homes. His bombing runs were precise:
the engineer targeted houses where, in his opinion, communist
"agitators" and African American "rebels" lived. The story
continued for nearly a year. Lon Show became so skilled at
dropping his makeshift bombs that he could guarantee hitting
within "plus or minus ten meters." At the press conference (which
was unavoidable), they asked the arrested engineer about his
motives. "I believe I was providing a service to society," he said.
How astonishing is every detail of this already forgotten
sensation! A press conference—isn't that evidence of democracy, a
sign of respect for the rights of citizens and the press? Renting an
airplane, an electronics engineer—are these not indicators of a
high technological civilization? The bombs and the motivation
pinpoint the target. This is about American civilization, about
American democracy. They made Lon Show an electronics
engineer, taught him to pilot an airplane, and turned him into a
wild man. Can't an electronics engineer be a wild man?
They arrested Lon Show, a lone anti-communist. He chose the
wrong means, and his targets and authority were not approved. But
if we multiply individual and state-sponsored anti-communism, we
get half a million Lon Shows, at least 3,000 military planes and
helicopters, dozens of military ships, and 12 tons of bombs for
each
a square mile of Vietnamese territory, thousands and thousands of
killed women, children, and elderly, burned villages, and destroyed
cities. And, of course, press conferences, not at the police station, but
in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department. We get
Vietnam and the same motivation, but on a global scale: rendering a
service to the "free world." The engineer merely borrowed it from
Washington and narrowed it down to his own peril. We get the
American world that the film director Stanley Kramer famously
referred to as the "crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy world."
Of course, this is just a figurative description, coming from a
person who avoids dull political terminology. But it is very
expressive. If we continue this parallel, the Washington style could
be called surrealism in the spirit of Salvador Dali. The famous
Spanish painter not only declared himself paranoid but also acted
accordingly. In one of his noisy visits to New York, this artist with a
wild look and upturned mustache carried reporters into the city's
sewage pipes, and snobs into the fashionable "Philharmonic Hall,"
where he demonstrated the art of instant painting inside a large
inflated plastic ball, and then relaxed on stage in front of the
audience. Funny, isn't it?
And there was a time when President Johnson often proclaimed
himself a revolutionary, seemingly oblivious to the ironic glances of
his millionaire colleagues. Especially during the period when he
ordered an air war against North Vietnam and the deployment of
20,000 Marines in Santo Domingo, where in 1965 they discovered
either 55 or 58 "unconfirmed" later communists.
A fourfold crazy world is the world of imperialism. Bourgeois
America is as terrified of the revealing power of this word as of fire.
At the end of 1967, the progressive West German poet Hans Magnus
Enzensberger was invited to give lectures at Wesleyan University in
Connecticut.
He stayed there for only three months and left before his term was
up, believing that the very fact of his presence in a country engaged
in an aggressive war compromised his anti-war stance. Upon leaving,
he published a sharply critical letter in an American literary journal.
He astutely noted that in a society where there are no taboos on using
the most indecent words in print, there is a taboo on another group of
words, expelled "by common consent from polite society: words like
'exploitation' and 'imperialism.'"
It's not surprising that with such a taboo, it's easy to manipulate the
minds of Americans. There are countless examples. Here's one rather
curious instance. One day, the New York architect Robert Nichols
noticed a situation that was clearly not humorous. A specialist in
landscapes, Robert Nichols served as a paid consultant to the White
House on a commission for "beautifying" America, overseen by the
president's wife. With some delay, it occurred to the architect that his
fellow countrymen were embellishing Vietnam in a very different
way. He demanded an explanation from the political surrealists in
Washington: how to reconcile the deliberate destruction of crops in
South Vietnam by American aviation with the president's promise to
increase yields in South Vietnam. Emphasizing the seriousness of his
question, the architect took refuge in the Judson Memorial Church in
New York and declared a hunger strike until he received an
explanation.
They sent it to him on the eleventh day of his fast. The State
Department can explain anything! They explained to the architect
that the "deforestation" program in South Vietnam was necessary to
prevent guerrillas from hiding in the dense jungle, and that in
general, "it is necessary to distinguish" between the practice of
destroying rice fields and the words about increasing yields. They
said, "it is necessary to distinguish." Poor Nichols and his moral
dilemma received the highest public sympathy. "It is regrettable that
he has chosen a path that threatens his health to express his
dissatisfaction," said a statement from the State Department
representative.
The naive architect stopped his fast. However, was he really that
naive? After all, he only demanded an explanation, not the cessation
of barbarism, or he would have had to die of starvation. He only
remembered the rice-killing herbicides, forgetting the bombs and
napalm that killed the producers of that rice. But how splendidly they
relieved his moral ailment. Democratically. In public. How they
cared for the physical and moral health of a citizen of the empire!
Since then, the logic of "it is necessary to distinguish" has gone much
further. In February 1968, the Americans completely destroyed the
city of Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta, killing no fewer than a
thousand civilians and injuring one and a half thousand, all to rescue
their garrison of forty people besieged by guerrillas. After this
Vietnamese Guernica, a certain lieutenant colonel told reporters, "It
became necessary to destroy the town to save it." Destroy to save—
that's how they "must distinguish."
I cited the example of Robert Nichols, remembering that much can
be revealed through a small example, in this case, substantial
hypocrisy.
America, given to us by history as a social and political antipode,
is a country that is both simple and complex. It ranks first in the
number of automobiles and mentally ill, the number of gangsters and
Nobel laureates. Technically, it is devilishly advanced. In recent
years, even at the household level, you can see how it becomes
increasingly saturated with "computers" – electronic machines.
People's connections with corporations take the form of perforated
cards. Electronic machines keep track of your bank debit-credit,
record your magazine subscription and when it expires, and send you
the telephone company bill.
In a test, electronic machines in some places are entrusted with
organizing college love affairs. Enterprising Harvard graduate Jeff
Tarr coined the amorous slogan of the electronic age: "We're not
stealing love from love. We're making it more efficient." Data on
hundreds of thousands of individuals of both sexes are stored in the
machine. Paying $3, you instantly receive at least five potential
candidates for a date and further, non-electronic, closeness. "I
remember the magical moment: you appeared before me," wrote the
poet. Of course, this new form of love is still in the experimental
stage. But sometimes it manifests itself through electronic mystery,
uniting two previously unfamiliar people for better or for worse.
American politicians openly operate under the assumption that the
average voter has fewer wrinkles in their brain than semiconductor
connections in an electronic brain. Preparing for the 1966
congressional elections, the Democrats installed an "IBM 1401"
machine in their Washington headquarters, an electronic deity named
Lyndon (after the president). This "Lyndon" stored the names of six
million Americans in its memory and could print a "personal" letter
for any of them within six seconds, bearing the signature and
facsimile signature of a Democratic congressman and a personalized
greeting like "Dear friend," or more formally, "Dear Mr. Jones," or
very familiarly, "Dear Bill." This solved the complex problem of
individual interaction with voters.
Electronic brains evaluate political situations for the State
Department and the military for the Pentagon. In the Pentagon, these
brains are more expensive, complex, and sophisticated, and even
Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense, came as close as
possible to the finished product of the electronic age. But why was
McNamara "asked" to leave the Pentagon? Why do machines often
fail? The blame lies not with the machines but with the programmers.
The paradox is not of the man but of the system, which consists of
this: the closer McNamara got to his electronic ideal, the more often
his predictions didn't come true in the jungles of South Vietnam. In
the end, he left the Pentagon, and the famous humorist Art Buchwald
wrote a satire about an electronic machine that "failed." McNamara is
not mentioned, but there is probably no more deadly political
obituary for Robert McNamara.
Buchwald writes about a machine into which they input all the
Pentagon's information about the Vietnam War in 1968, asking it:
"When and who will win the war?" The machine replied that the U.S.
had won the war back in 1966. McNamara didn't say this, but the
"electronic brain" retroactively copied McNamara's predictions,
which, based on the same Pentagon information, forecasted in the fall
of 1963 that the U.S. would win in Vietnam within two years.
The errors of electronic machines and electronic people can be
explained by the fact that the worldview of programmers lags behind
technological advancements. This is dangerous, and the danger is
greater, the more potentially dangerous the technology is.
Inside America, machines cannot solve one problem: where to
place people displaced by machines. Outside America, its leaders
want to use technological advancement to refute the fact of global
development. This is evident once again in Vietnam and the
unprecedented concentration of American weaponry in the jungles.
Excluding nuclear weapons, they used everything that the generously
paid military-industrial complex had developed over the years. For
instance, sensitive electronic gadgets that detected even slight
temperature fluctuations on the ground within a few degrees. Were
these fluctuations caused by a guerrilla bivouac or a nomadic refugee
camp? For those who operated the bomb-release levers, these were
idle questions.
My thoughts cannot help but return to Vietnam. The years of
escalation I spent overseas were like a mirror reflecting American
society, including the honest people who deeply cared for their
country, enduring its shame, the fervent chauvinists who adhered to
the principle, "Right or wrong, it's my country," and the complacent
masses living in a state of lethargic sleep, saturated with comfort and
selfishness. The dirty war exposed all the nooks and crannies of
American life, all its astonishing contradictions. There are statistics
on the fantastic material wealth accumulated in America: about the
gross national product, which exceeded $800 billion per year, about
nearly 100 million registered cars, about 70 million televisions, and
so on. This is remarkable statistics. But it's one-sided statistics. It is
impossible to express a person and a society in numbers, whether it's
billions of dollars or millions of cars. This statistics might satisfy
only the cold residents of other worlds looking for signs of material
civilization on Earth. It does not provide synthesis. But there is one
synthesized figure that reflects not only America's wealth but also its
imperialist policy. "The New York Times Magazine" once provided
this figure. By comparing expenses and "income," the magazine
calculated that in 1965, the American war machine spent $351,111 to
kill or capture one South Vietnamese partisan. If you consider the
"collateral damage," meaning the civilians killed "accidentally," the
number rises to half a million.
That's wealth!
And here's how it's being used!
These are very meaningful half a million. You can construct very
serious moral and philosophical treatises about American civilization
using them. For example, a comparative treatise on the half a million
spent to kill one defiant patriot and the paltry cents that Washington
spends on the daily ration (the "survival") of each of the 4 million
Vietnamese refugees, as well as the $53 spent per year on each of the
30 million officially recognized American poor.
The search for truth, the search for proper proportions, is always
difficult. The years of escalation in Vietnam became years of
unprecedented rise in the anti-war movement in America, and its
participants, in the noblest sense, are upholding the honor of their
country, which appeared before the world in the guise of an
imperialist predator. Peace marches, university teach-ins that
enlightened tens of thousands of Americans about the true nature
of the dirty war, thousands of draft cards torn up in protest,
hundreds of young people going to jail rather than put on military
uniforms, the Senate opposition of Fulbright, the pre-election
battles of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, who spoke out
against Lyndon Johnson on a platform of criticizing the war, and
the genuine anti-war uprising of students—there has never been
anything like this in America.
This true essence of American soil loudly and promisingly
declared itself in the early days of the election year 1968. The
actions of honest Americans, their energetic efforts to establish
the triumph of reason over madness, were observed with
sympathy and hope by all honest people of the world.
Unfortunately, hope is easier to arouse than to justify. The
political big year turned out to be a leap year of gloom, and its
outcomes are not comforting. People who embodied hope for
change were either rejected or physically removed. Martin Luther
King Jr., a man who arguably had more right than anyone else to
be called America's conscience, was killed twice: first by a deadly
bullet in Memphis in April, and then by ten million votes cast for
his opponent and arch-enemy, the fervent racist George Wallace,
in November. Robert Kennedy was removed from the political
scene with the bullets fired in Los Angeles at the very moment
when he was rising to offer principled criticism of the Vietnam
adventure and America's internal evils. Eugene McCarthy came
close to tears during the August days of the Democratic National
Convention in Chicago when the party machine rolled over him,
and the police ruthlessly crushed his young and enthusiastic
supporters.
It turned out that the years of escalation, national division, and
painful search did not affect the traditional rotation of the two-
party system of the ruling class, and by November, it offered the
voter two of its very loyal pets: the Republican Richard Nixon and
the Democrat Hubert Humphrey. To the White House, Nixon was
led by the quiet American provinces and prosperous suburbs
demanding "law and order," implying a conservative social status
quo.
What happens next? We'll live and see. We'll see what lessons
the new president will draw. He cannot abstract himself from the
failures of his predecessor, which helped him come to power. We
will see, in particular, how the Vietnam mirror reflects his
policies.
For now, without succumbing to the ever-changing waves of
political currents, let's not forget what has already been seen in
this mirror.
 BUTTE'S CHROMOSOMES

A mile up, a mile down, and all level.

The motto of the town of Buteut, Montana

Mr. Tom Weigle of the "Anaconda" company, upon seeing us on

that beautiful morning, became wary, and a shadow of annoyance
crossed his face: as if he didn't need these "reds" now! But Mr.
Weigle is a "public relations man," which means that getting along
with the public and the press, no matter what their color, is his
direct business. He stepped out for a moment into the adjacent
room, and when he returned, we noticed that he had composed
himself. His face now displayed the famous "flash smile" – you
know, that professional smile that flashes and fades like a camera
flash, always ready during business hours – from nine to five. The
very same "flash smile" that the kings of toothpaste and chewing
gum put into mass production.
So, we descended together from the famous sixth floor where
the "Anaconda" office is located, and in Mr. Weigle's car, we dove
up and down the famous Butte Hill – the cradle of "Anaconda." At
the cut-off top of the hill were mine heads, mine yards, railway
tracks, and dusty roads. On the slopes of the hill lay the town of
Butte, but the mines lorded over it, invading the town unexpectedly
and flickering behind the turns of its steep streets.
The highlight of the Butte concert by "Anaconda" is now
"Berkeley Pit" – a gigantic quarry, with a steep amphitheater that
descends into the depths. On its uneven steps, massive trucks crawl
like tiny ants. These ants carry not honey but copper. Their buzzing
can be heard from behind the fence. "Berkeley Pit" is held behind
bars like a dangerous beast: this is how boldly man has turned the
earth.
What could be compared to this pit? The Grand Canyon of
Yellowstone National Park comes to mind. Tiers of colorful rock
formations rising from unimaginable depths, displaying all the
colors of the rainbow. At the very bottom, an emerald river with
meandering paths shimmered like polished malachite – the creator
of this wonder.
"Berkeley Pit" still has a long way to go before it can be
compared to the Grand Canyon. But, as with a mountain river,
human determination is great. A mile up, a mile down – that's how
they talk about the copper ore reserves on the hill in Butte.
Geologists claim that there is more copper in the earth than has
been extracted, although what has been extracted is by no means
insignificant. One Butte mine has already gone a mile deep.
"Berkeley Pit" stretches beyond it. In other words, Mr. Weigle, the
advertising man from "Anaconda," could be satisfied: he had won
cheers of approval from the "reds."
But now, sitting at my desk, I think not so much about human
determination as I do about nature and the purpose of this
determination. And oddly enough, the majestic, unrefined, working
beauty of "Berkeley Pit" is overshadowed by a 12-year-old boy
named Bobby Chase. I feel no enthusiasm for this.
At that moment, Bobby Chase stood under a wooden canopy,
overlooking the pit. On a small table covered with oilcloth were
pieces of Butte minerals. Next to the table, there were also ore
samples in a cardboard box. They were glued to neatly cut pieces
of cardboard with "The Richest Hill on Earth. Butte. Montana"
stamped on top. Bobby was selling all of these items.
"Meet Bobby," Weigle said playfully. "Two communists,
journalists from Russia."
Bobby glanced at us from under his Finnish cap, a look similar
to the one Mr. Weigle gave us on the sixth floor of "Anaconda"
during our first meeting. However, just like Weigle, he quickly
recovered; there was business to be done. He chartered away with a
boyish voice, licking his lips and touching the stones on the table.
— All these minerals from Butte Hill... Butte Hill... the richest
on Earth... In 82 years, from 1880 to 1961, inclusive... they
extracted copper here... 15 billion 459 million... 962 thousand 615
pounds... of zinc…
—Wait, Bobby, — I said
 I wanted to talk to the kid. But it wasn't that simple. Bobby
worked like an automaton, like a mechanical toy that won't stop
until the winding down is finished.
— 4 billion 584 million... 104 thousand 699 pounds of zinc... 3
billion 667 million 17..
When the winding down was over, I bought for a dollar and a
half cardboard with glued-on samples. I realized that with the
cardboard, I could buy the right to talk to Bobby. He answered
reluctantly, using well-rehearsed words for tiresome questions, his
hands gluing rocks onto a new piece of cardboard, and his eyes
looking for new buyers. When cars pulled up, and people came to
see the pit, Bobby, cutting himself and us short, would start
shouting his short, number-filled saga about Butte Hill. He had
already done business with us; now, others were important. This
12-year-old boy's psychology, reduced to a desire to use others for
his gain, was evident, not yet masked by the clever trappings of age
and experience. And at the same time, his round childlike face, an
ice cream on a stick, and he was embarrassed about that ice cream,
hiding it behind his back. And in his sharp, somewhat sullen eyes,
there was a disdain for the ironic looks of adults. He was occupied
with a serious, not trivial, task, occupied with conviction. Our irony
and condescension offended him. In Butte, he was spoiled with
admiration.
Before us stood a small, but well-established dealer, with
determination that even the Yellowstone River would envy. Bobby
Chase's family wasn't in poverty; his father worked in the mine, his
mother was a bank clerk. Since the age of three, like all Butte boys,
he collected rocks on the hill. At nine, he started selling them. He
not only found rocks but also extracted them, he had his suppliers.
The centerpiece of Bobby's tray was a nearly pure copper ingot
weighing four pounds, bought for five dollars. Now, Bobby wants
to sell it for 25 dollars. He ordered cardboard pieces with his own
design from a printing press. Bobby is well-known. Boys selling
rocks at the "Kelly" mine desperately envy him. Yes, Bobby
Chase, they wag their tongues, earned 2,300 dollars last summer.
Don't believe it?... Tom Weigle, it seems, understood long ago that
the stars in the American sky weren't enough for him. He speaks of
Bobby with adult respect and even reverence: this one might just
make it. When the "sixth floor" wanted to chase away the underage
vendors from the platform in front of "Berkeley Pit," Bobby
managed to talk to them as a dealer with dealers: he wouldn't
hinder but would help - he'd add his own touch.
And what about Bobby's parents? They are shocked by their
offspring's enthusiasm. Bobby's father forbade him to stay by the
pit for more than fourteen hours. But Bobby stays here for sixteen
hours, the entire long summer day, all summer vacation.
Unfortunately, this is not a small philosophy at the deep pit. I
want to emphasize: Bobby Chase is a phenomenon. He is the type
that illustrates America more vividly than many good but abstract
discussions. There's the touching half-truth: oh, poor boy, he
dreams of becoming a mining engineer in a country where, alas,
there are so many paid colleges, and he has to save money for his
education. Bobby Chase has already outgrown this half-truth with
his psychological shifts during his three-year stay at "Berkeley Pit."
There's the harsh truth: from one generation to the next, Bobby
Chase carries the chromosomes and genes of American capitalism.
What is the determined Butte boy set on? Judging by the
fanaticism with which he has dedicated his life to trading, he is
firmly, if not permanently, set. Let's turn the story around, step
away from the seed, and take a closer look at the Butte tree from
which it fell—the "Anaconda" tree.
"A mile up, a mile down, and all on the same level." This
boastful aphorism conceals a sinister smile because the historical
cross-section of Butte Hill is a cross-section of American
capitalism. A hundred years ago, Butte Hill stood in the
southwestern part of what was not yet the state of Montana,
untouched, just like its surrounding brethren stand today. A spirited
horde of gold prospectors headed west, rushing for specks of the
yellow metal in the narrow Butte valleys of Dublin and Missoula.
The gold rush didn't disturb these parts for long, as the horde,
having picked up their specks, moved on. Then, silver deposits
were found, and once again, there was a short-lived, drunken craze
and a game of fortune on Butte Hill. The era of silver mining
abruptly began and ended. The web of fate was woven around the
log cabins abandoned by prospectors and saloon-keepers. Nevada
City (a few dozen miles from Butte), where there was also a gold
prospectors' camp back then, is now nothing more than a tourist
attraction, a so-called "ghost town." In the old store, which has
become a museum, if you put ten cents into the slot of the machine,
a voice from the past will tell you who, when, and whom they
killed and how justice replaced vigilante justice.
Butte Hill, only slightly scratched by enthusiasts of the noble
metal, awaited its long copper age. The real history of Butte began
in the 1870s when copper mining began. This is a bloody history,
although in a country that not only continues but also sanctifies it,
greed and violence are covered with romance and colorful
characters. The bones of the "copper barons" cracked in the
embrace of two "copper kings" – Marcus Daly and William Clark,
but even they couldn't divide "the richest hill on earth." Clark, with
his dollars, elected himself to the U.S. Senate, and Daly, with the
help of dollars, caught up with him in the capital, ejected him from
the Capitol dome, and eventually from Butte Hill. To the miners
who flocked from all over the country and the world, the hard
work, injuries, silicosis, the demagogy of their masters, and, of
course, the romance steeped in the colorful bars of "Graveyard"
and "Slagheap" and the prostitutes in the red-light districts fell.
Here's a charming detail from those times: silver dollars were
hidden in the prostitutes' stockings. By the end of their shifts, the
stockings sometimes tore, and the silver earned from copper jingled
on the cobblestones.
Amidst this jingling, Marcus Daly founded a copper ore
company in 1879, aptly named "Anaconda." It not only ruled in
Butte; it controlled Montana for decades—with its elected
governors, legislators, judges, newspapers, and lawyers. It silenced
protest voices and crushed competitors who tried to lure its miners
away. It bled the state economically and in terms of human
resources: Montana, the fourth-largest state by area, ranked 41st in
population among U.S. states (around 700,000 people). Then,
"Anaconda" crawled out of the Montana mountains into fifteen
other states, where it had mines, factories, and plants, and onto the
international stage, encircling Chile, Mexico, Canada with its coils.
People were already talking about a copper ore empire, and the
empire grew so much that it made more sense to observe it from
the skyscrapers of Wall Street, where the company's main
headquarters moved. In Butte, only its "Western Operations"
remained. Then...
But let's return to the present day and to the city that even in the
names of its streets has immortalized the geological section of the
hill: Copper, Granite, Quartz, Platinum, Silver, Gold...
The bars have become dreary, prostitutes have disappeared, and
gambling is prohibited. In the evenings, Butte is empty, quiet, and
dark.
Miners buy houses on installment, and after work, they sit in
front of their family televisions, where, as the president of the local
union, Reginald Davis, is convinced, they have their minds
"washed" by programs paid for by the National Association of
Manufacturers.
The mayor of the city, Thomas Powers, diplomatically reassures
visiting journalists that "Anaconda" has become more
accommodating. His diplomacy, however, does not detach from
Butte's copper land.
"I won't say that 'Anaconda' supported me during the elections,"
the mayor told us in his pristine twilight office, "but it wasn't
against me either. If their people were against me, they certainly
would have found someone else; they are very powerful."
In the miners' union office, a faded portrait of an activist who
was savagely murdered by the company's agents even before
World War I hangs above the stage. This is a reminder and a
warning, a presentation of facts. The union leaders have the mood
of soldiers on a perpetual front. They are disoriented by the calm
and wonder what tricks the adversary is preparing for them.
In a prominent place in the city stands a monument to Marcus
Daly, the victor over Clark and others, the forefather of the serpent-
like corporation. He is made of unyielding bronze and is immortal.
Yes, he is immortal until he serves as a hero and an example to
Bobby Chases.
But let's not offend Butte by equating it with "Anaconda."

***
 There are cities that are hard to remain indifferent to. Butte is
among them, with its detractors and devoted supporters.
John Hunter, an American who traveled the world, in his book
'Inside the USA,' firmly and irritably checked Butte: 'The rudest,
most indecent city in America, possibly with the exception of
Amarillo, Texas... At night, it's the only graveyard lit by electric
lights in the United States. In daylight, it is one of the ugliest places
I've ever seen.'
Mr. Nelson edits the Butte newspaper 'Montana Standard.' He
told us that John Hunter never stepped out of the 'Finlen' hotel, and
all the dirty details about Butte were gathered in the 'Gun Room'
bar. Nelson was deeply offended by the outsider writer's criticism
of Butte.
And Bill Burke created a sentimental myth in verses about
Butte's birth: angels in the heavens painted a masterpiece for the
'Earth' saloon, using colors from the generous palette of a summer
rainbow, and God, after affirming their masterpiece, named it
Butte. Bill Burke had a naive imagination. He was a miner, a
miner's grandson, son of a miner, and father of miners.
In his old age, Burke took up the pen, a tool quite unfamiliar
and heavy for him. Don't seek elegance in his 'Rhythms of the
Mines.' But there's so much unsentimental warmth, so much
awkward pride for the rough but loyal folks who descend each
morning into the depths of the Butte hill, and after emerging from
the 'hole,' clink glasses of 'Sean O'Ferrel' at the familiar bar, joining
for a second — 'a bird cannot fly on one wing' — once a year, on
June 13, they gather for the miner's parade, they suffer and rejoice,
and after raising successors for the mines, they finally depart not to
the hill but under crosses on the plain — descendants of Irish and
Finns, Germans and Serbs, Italians, Greeks, Scots, Norwegians,
Swedes.
In its diversity, Butte is like a miniature New York, even with
its 'Chinatown.'
— Russian? — an old man in the Finlen hotel elevator asked me.
— From where?
— From Gorky.
— Isn't that in Kiev?
 His ancestors were from Kiev, but he had already forgotten —
whether it was a city or a country.
Fathers came from different lands, yet their children became
Butte patriots. Americans are mobile, adaptable people. But in
Butte, ask anyone — born and raised on the hill. Their love for
Montana's vast sky, the expanses, and the nature of this 'godly land'
holds them here. Those who leave often return. But 'Anaconda'
introduces changes even to this attachment. Gustav Hastvedt, a
miner with 25 years of experience, told us that miner's sons leave
Butte — there's no work.
Who is right — John Hunter or Bill Burke? What is Butte —
the most indecent city or God's masterpiece? Each is right and
wrong in their own way, the cold snobbish know-it-all and the
excessively passionate old miner.
Union leaders say that miners' relations with 'Anaconda' are
determined by two factors. True to its nature, 'Anaconda' stings,
and it hurts. But it provides employment. Miners are compelled to
both fight and coexist with 'Anaconda.' The union, one of the oldest
and most militant in the USA, has its glorious traditions and
significant merits. It has often achieved salary increases and
improved working conditions. But considering the long and never-
ending war, the historical curve of Butte, the victor emerges as the
company.
Since the first gold vein on the Butte hill, the city's history has
been a cycle of ups and downs. The company, the main employer,
swung the pendulum. Thanks to mechanization, ore extraction
grows while the number of miners dwindles. Shifts in other areas
of the Anaconda empire reverberate with tangible jolts in Butte. In
1915, the city housed about 100,000 people, now it's around
45,000. There were 15,000 miners, now there are 2,300. A fierce
confrontation occurred in 1959-1960 when 'Anaconda,'
maneuvering skillfully, coerced the union into an exhaustive six-
month strike to rid itself of copper surpluses and conduct a massive
lockout. The number of miners decreased from 5,600 to 1,400. An
economic crisis engulfed the city, traders fled because there was
nothing to take from the cashless striking miners, and construction
sharply declined. 8,000 people left Butte.
 Of course, a regional tragedy is seen philosophically from a
distance, but it had its victims who fell and never rose again.
Currently, it's a period of uncertain growth. 'Anaconda' expands
its operations in Butte; new banks open in the city, road
construction is revived. Union leaders rack their brains: what does
this mean? They presume the company fears nationalization in
Chile and is preemptively preparing backup positions in Butte.
Ah, Chile, Chile, a distant land! Butte miners remember it more
often than the lands from which their fathers came. What's in
Chile? They are politically blind and isolated, deprived of any
contact with their Chilean class brothers. Justifying their tough
policy in Butte, 'Anaconda' instills in the miners the idea that it's
losing money here, that it only benefits in Chile, where labor is
much cheaper. Butte miners don't believe in this benevolence.
'There, of course, they claim the opposite,' says John Glayse, the
union secretary. 'We are confident that everywhere 'Anaconda' only
takes, not gives.'
A Butte saying goes: 'A mile up, a mile down, and all at the
same level.' Tom Waigle, a man of 'Anaconda,' was at the level of
his tasks when he took us to 'Columbia Gardens.' Who said the
company gives nothing? There it has given the citizens and their
children an entire park. Not bad, right? But, according to union
leaders, this is just a drop in the ocean, from those billions of
dollars 'Anaconda' extracted from the hill.
Jimmy Shay, the long-standing mayor of the mining outskirts
of Walkerville, took it upon himself to show us the true gifts of the
copper kings. We saw strange, empty streets almost in the heart of
Butte: abandoned buildings with shattered dusty windows, cracked
residential houses, sunken sidewalks. It's as if there had been an
earthquake. For decades, 'Anaconda' waged an underground war
against the townspeople, digging its shafts beneath the streets.
Homes collapsed and cracked, sidewalks crumbled when dynamite
blasted ore near the surface. Miners from the 'Emma' shaft, earning
their livelihood in the 'hole,' didn't know they might be digging
under their own homes. And try to seek justice when the company
has compliant lawyers and geologists and the entire state of
Montana in its pocket.
 Jimmy Shay drove us through the streets but talked about the
people: people should be treated humanely. He hates 'Anaconda' as
an inhuman monster, an enemy of the people. Jimmy Shay is a true
friend of the people.
'Hey, Jimmy! How's it going, Jimmy?' — that's all you hear
walking with him along Butte's streets.
'Hello, Jimmy!' — kids in Walkerville shout to this man with a
simple face and gray temples as if he were their peer.
Everyone knows him. No wonder! Jimmy accomplished a feat
that reverberated throughout Montana — he fought 'Anaconda' and
made it retreat. A mile up, a mile down, and Jimmy — truly at the
same level.
It's quite an epic, but Jimmy calls it a war — a favorite word in
Butte. In 1958, 'Anaconda' began developing the 'Ellis Pit' literally
under the windows of Walkerville residents, just seven meters from
the houses on the outskirts of the mining village. Copper once
again devoured people, boldly and aggressively. Bulldozers plowed
through the highway, cut off Walkerville, ruptured water and gas
pipelines. The calculation was clear: make life unbearable, create a
threat of house collapse, and offer residents a cash compensation
when property prices plummet.
But the son of a miner, an insurance agent, Jimmy Shay took
up the challenge on behalf of the 1,400 Walkerville residents. He
arrested the bulldozer operators and sued the company. 'Anaconda'
was left speechless by such audacity, and when it regained its
voice, the local newspaper, a company servant, began to smear the
mayor of Walkerville and his constituents. They were disgracefully
accused of wanting to reduce employment in the city. At night,
Jimmy's phone rang off the hook. Threats and indecencies filled the
calls. Miner's wives urged Jimmy's wife: 'Your husband wants to
deprive our husbands of work.' Jimmy and his wife pleaded with
them: 'Be humane, put yourselves in the shoes of those under
whose homes a pit is being dug.' Instigators from 'Anaconda'
played on the old, the eternal, that man is a wolf to man.
And Jimmy Shay bet on solidarity and didn't give in. His voice
was silenced in Butte, but he broke through in another Montana
city newspaper — Great Falls, he made it onto television. He
boldly engaged in a two-year legal battle. The case ended with an
honorable compromise: houses were bought out for a decent
compensation, and a fence was erected around the pit for safety.
Jimmy took us to his humble Walkerville. The pit is now abandoned,
only the collapsed foundations of houses remain on Willis Street. We
climbed the spoil heap, from where rocks and debris were dumped. Down
below, almost under the heap, stood the brown school building. Rocks
were almost flying onto children's heads. An old case, but the mayor of
Walkerville was indignant hotly, as if he still saw the dump trucks going
along these abandoned tracks. 'Children's lives were in danger!'
You're a good person, Jimmy Shay, and please forgive me for this
direct compliment. What were we to you? Just two unknown journalists
from a distant country that also frightens your compatriots. But you're full
of human solidarity. You had business at your insurance agency. You
were worried because on that day, your daughter was supposed to arrive
from Paris, from her first trip abroad. But you dropped everything and
didn't go to meet your daughter. To us Russians, you wanted to provide
the information about Butte that 'Anaconda' people with their 'flashy
smiles' keep hidden. You never thought about the fact that, God forbid,
after our meeting, your enemies from the sixth floor might label you as a
'red.' Is there a more dangerous label in America? You didn't think about
yourself but about the people of Butte.
Here's a child of Butte, raised next to 'Anaconda,' yet maintaining a
sacred and simple faith in justice. In 1960, when the company was taking
striking miners by force, Jimmy Shay sent telegrams to Washington:
'Children are hungry! Children are hungry?' This phrase won't touch
officials who know that thousands of children have long been habitually
hungry in the mining settlements of Appalachia and in African American
ghettos across the country. But Jimmy Shay doesn't know anything
stronger than this phrase. And then, a telegram flew to the Chilean
Information Minister from the unknown mayor of Walkerville: 'Be
vigilant, don't trust 'Anaconda.' Naive? Yes, naive, but he couldn't be
otherwise.
In Butte, Jimmy is respected, yet looked at somewhat as an oddball.
But the people of Walkerville apparently agree that such oddballs
beautify the world. They firmly stand by their mayor and have been
electing him since 1941. Jimmy tried to refuse twice, didn't put forth his
candidacy. After all, one needs to feed their family, and the mayor of
Walkerville receives not a cent. But both times his name was written on
the ballots, both times he was elected regardless.
'This is still America!' — Jimmy loves to repeat, leading his local wars
for justice. He means the democratic traditions of the American people,
the ability of American workers to defend their rights. But when friends
suggest Jimmy run for something higher, like governor of Montana, he
throws up his hands. 'That takes too much money,' he says, 'and I don't
have it.'
He is made entirely of simple truths, and unfortunately, that's one of
them...
And when I remember Butte, I recall the determined mayor of
Walkerville and a resolute 12-year-old boy who, in the summer twilight
beneath Montana's vast sky — the 'land of God' — walks home, jingling
dollars in memory and pockets. Yes, this is still America. America, where
the spiritual heirs of Marcus Daly are stronger than the miner's son,
Jimmy Shay.
 Death of the King

It was a quiet April day without much news, and it transitioned into
the evening just as calmly, not promising any urgent nighttime
reporting. Sergey Losev, the head of the TASS department in New
York, and I were sitting in the Izvestiya newsroom discussing the
details of a long and rather exhausting visit. Then Sergey hurried
home, but I persuaded him to stay for another half-hour to listen to
the evening news program on the CBS second channel, hosted by the
famous Walter Cronkite. Cronkite, as always, appeared on screen
precisely at seven – the familiar, trustworthy face with broad bushy
eyebrows, a network of wrinkles around the eyes, and graying
mustache – and began speaking with his trained, clear, and concise
voice about America and the world of that departing day. We listened
to Cronkite and the CBS correspondents, whom he manipulated on
and off the screen like a magician. They convinced us that nothing
significant had happened during the day that would change our
evening plans, reminding us of the familiar truth: events dictate a
correspondent's time.
As Cronkite neared the end and the news, arranged by their degree
of importance, became less and less significant, almost ready to
conclude with some customary humor, Sergey glanced away from the
screen and went into my office to make a call. Suddenly, in the last
minute of the half-hour program, Cronkite abruptly interrupted some
short, trivial TV footage and, excitedly and hurriedly – almost
shouting, as his time was running out – announced that in Memphis,
Tennessee, Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and seriously
wounded, taken to St. Joseph's Hospital.
I leaped up. I shouted to Sergey, "King has been critically
wounded!"
 Sergey rushed into the living room. Sergey was beside himself:
"Bastards! Damn bastards! They killed him!"
Cronkite squeezed into his tight half-hour slot, and in the last few
seconds, as the news, ranked by importance, became smaller and less
significant, and was about to conclude with some humor, he gathered
wrinkles around his eyes, tapped his desk professionally, and tersely
compressed his lips before the traditional parting phrase: "That's the
way it is, Thursday, April 4, 1968..."
Immediately, the automated system, safeguarding precious
television time and leaving no idle moments, kicked in. Upbeat,
spirited music burst forth, accompanied by the catchy, drawn-out
words: "Stre-e-etch your coffee break..." And just like that, Walter
Cronkite disappeared, replaced by a full-screen image of a steaming
cup of coffee, followed by an optimistic gentleman. Without wasting
a moment, the gentleman elegantly pulled a strip, freed the paper-thin
tile of "Peppermint" chewing gum from its wrapping, and tucked it
into his fragrant mouth, typical of a gentleman from 1968. And the
coffee cup stretched, oh, it stretched, widened with indescribable
pleasure at the sight of that thin tile: "Stre-e-etch your coffee break..."
We rushed to the garage and drove through the evening Manhattan,
just relieved of the rush hour burden, heading to the TASS
department, to the teletypes that, with lightning speed, mercilessly
and soberly predicted King's fate.
And as echoes of these thunderous teletype messages flew to
Moscow in Sergey's telegrams, I quickly returned to my newsroom
spot, tethering myself to the TV screen and radio receiver – the
evening had changed, turned upside down, the evening was sending a
storm.
At 8:40, the regular broadcast on the seventh channel of ABC was
abruptly replaced on the TV screen by gray, repetitive words:
"bulletin... bulletin... bulletin..." The announcer hurriedly, so as not to
be beaten by other announcers on other channels, reported that Martin
Luther King had died. Behind the announcer, the TV studio was
visible, bustling with people in a workmanlike manner, without
jackets, wearing white shirts with loosened ties.
Immediately after the bulletin, relentless as bullets from a machine
gun, an advertisement for a Chevrolet car began airing: "Hurry!
hurry!—you can buy it right now on a particularly advantageous
credit." A young beauty with flowing hair, an object of pleasant,
publicly permissible desire, sat behind the wheel of the discounted
Chevrolet. And with her, of course, was the brave and strong, crisply
ironed, perfectly groomed male of 1968. To triumphant music, they
cruised down a road, akin to a road to paradise, while the announcer
extolled the remarkably robust tires, the power hidden in the engine,
and the astonishingly easy credit terms. The couple also assured that
this was the way things were meant to be. She beamed with a radiant
smile—where do these smiles come from?—and, stretching her long
legs in tight pants, swung on a swing, sometimes approaching, almost
popping out of the screen – there she was, ready for an embrace! –
and sometimes soaring to the seventh heaven. From there, from the
seventh television sky, she happily gazed at her partner and the
gleaming, nickel-plated, high-quality car.
The tragic bulletin, followed by this advertisement entangled in
prosperity and lust, struck me twice as if I were slapped across the
face, as if crossed with a whip, and I understood, not just understood,
but instantly horrifically realized that this overlay of advertising on
tragedy, this unstoppable commercialism—like the rotation of cosmic
worlds—smirkingly triumphs over King's death, just as it triumphed
over his life and struggle. Bitterness choked my throat, the pain of the
thought that they wouldn't learn anything, couldn't learn anything, as
long as it remained this way. There is a time to live and die, and
there's the longest American time of commerce: let the paid
advertisement pass, let's praise and sell the product, no matter what
happens, because everything in the world is trivial compared to
buying and selling.
Then, until April 9, for five whole days, television familiarized
Americans with King's death, vigorously, actively, sometimes
touchingly to tears, eulogizing Martin Luther King on TV. The ads
withdrew (later, traders would calculate what profit they reaped from
mourning and condolences), and on the day of the funeral, from ten in
the morning until six in the evening, it vanished completely from the
screen. But none of this erased the initial impression, the desperate
feeling that nothing could change for the better as long as
consciousness was shattered, parceled, cut into pieces by the sharp
blades of commercial "commercials," which, like professional
executioners, quartered the integrity of tragedy. Everything will
quickly be forgotten, will be overshadowed by other news, will be
buried in memory, and in a month or two, the Memphis murder will
be hidden behind the ridges of new events. Was King ever here at
all?..
This evening of April 4 stuck with me. The responses were prompt.
Soon after the news of his death, cameras in the White House showed
President Johnson. Five days before Memphis, he announced that he
wouldn't seek re-election for a second term. The country hadn't yet
managed to digest and absorb this stunning news when King's murder
pushed it to the background. Johnson swiftly left his office for the
podium with the presidential eagle: a brief condolence, a call for
calm, an announcement that due to the Memphis killing, he canceled
his planned trip to Hawaii to meet with General Westmoreland and
Admiral Sharp. The president was deeply concerned, didn't allow any
questions, and disappeared into seclusion.
Reporters flew to Memphis. TV reporters worked swiftly. Excited
witnesses to the murder cooled down under the gaze of TV cameras
and obediently laid out their testimonies. They searched for the killer
—a person who had hidden in a white Mustang. The first to be
concerned were the Memphis African Americans, and the governor of
Tennessee immediately ordered the deployment of National Guard
units into the city. Urgently edited special programs about King's life
and struggle aired across all channels. His friends and acquaintances
were in high demand. The shot rang out at 6:05 in Memphis – 7:05 in
New York. The evening hadn't yet turned into night, and yet the
whole world knew about the murder. Newspaper headlines were
redesigned, struggling to keep up with the expanded flow of
information; teletypes of agencies clattered. There were protests and
obituaries. Shock was followed by analysis. Commentators
scrutinized the ghetto—the death of King was already a fact, but its
consequences were still unclear and frightening. Enhanced police
patrols were sent to New York's Harlem.
It was heavy for me, all these six and a half years in America, now
overshadowed by the tragedy in Memphis. The old thought, often
relegated to the background but now refreshed and reaffirmed by
King's blood: one can expect anything from this country, and thus
from this country that, by the way, possesses nuclear weapons. Yet, at
the same time, there was work to be done—keeping an eye on the
television screen, calling colleagues, capturing and processing the
flow of facts, assumptions, rumors, fetching a fresh newspaper at the
corner of 72nd Street and Broadway, and compressing everything into
concise, meager, narrow lines of newspaper correspondence. But it
didn't fit...
Why am I adding this personal touch now? The correspondent's
right to emotions is limited because they shouldn't overshadow the
country and the people they're writing about. I apologize, reader. I
began these notes about King with how his death shook me and my
colleague. I will return to the usual course and tell how it shook
America.
Martin Luther King... I saw him at press area rallies. I knew the
silence that would sweep through the hall when he appeared at the
podium—the silence of attention and respect. Once we briefly met at
the University of Chicago, and I felt the grip of his hand, saw up close
his calm, serious, dark shiny Negro eyes, firm full lips, and heavy
chin. I heard the restrained baritone rumble that thundered at rallies,
tensely swinging like a loud bell reaching everyone yet containing an
excess, an untapped force. Dr. King, as always, was in a rush, nudged
along by an assistant dressed like him, in a strict black coat of a
Baptist minister. I asked for an interview for my newspaper, and King
agreed. But his days were scheduled far in advance, American-style,
and the schedule wasn't at hand. He advised me to write to his
headquarters in Atlanta. A response came from his secretary—King
wasn't in Atlanta, she asked to wait until his return. He was always on
the go, always occupied, and after Memphis, unfortunately, the
meeting won't happen. I wanted to talk about the living King. Now I
have to write about the King who was killed.
***
When King was assassinated, he was 39 years old—an age when
American politicians typically launch their careers and seek attention
from voters. However, King sought not personal career advancement
but justice for millions of African Americans. This man from Atlanta
was known in nearly every American household. Global fame wasn't
his primary aim either; it unexpectedly arrived after enraged
Birmingham police released equally furious dogs on participants of
the 'freedom march' in April 1963. He received the Nobel Peace Prize
in December 1964 at the age of 35, yet he didn't rest on his laurels.
His greatest acknowledgment and weighty responsibility were the
love of African American masses from the North and South of the
United States, who pinned their hopes for a better life on him. He
ignited these hopes, understood the arduous task of fulfilling them,
and pursued them to the end, sacrificing his life for them. They called
him Moses, a prophet leading his people to the promised land.
How colorful this hyper-industrial country was when, in the latter
half of the 20th century, millions of its offspring still held a religious
ecstasy, relying solely on God and miracles! It's easy to mock their
naivety. More important is to understand that within it, like in a drop,
reflects the tragic sea of suffering of the 22 million African American
population of America.
His life—especially his political life—was brief, yet incredibly
rich, and King had long been prepared for its violent end. Narrating
this life isn't easy because the story inevitably transcends into the
history of the African American movement during the last 13
dramatic years. In a way, King was a mirror of this movement with all
its successes and failures, hopes, and disappointments, with all its
strength and weakness.
The great-grandson of a slave, the grandson and son of
sharecroppers on cotton plantations in the South, Martin Luther King
Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, into a
relatively affluent family. His father, Martin Luther King Sr., who
outlived his son, was a Baptist pastor and held significant authority
among the four thousand congregants of the Ebenezer Church at the
corner of Jackson Street and Auburn Avenue. King Jr. completed
school and the historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta,
where, following his father's footsteps, he studied theology. In the
segregated church environment, a black clergyman, incidentally, was
spared competition from white Christian colleagues. He continued his
education in the North—in the theological seminary of Chester,
Pennsylvania, and at Boston University, where he defended his
dissertation in 1954 and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy.
King Sr. did everything to elevate his son, but what does it mean to
'make it' in society? Even a Ph.D. doesn't grant the simple title of
being human if you're black in America's South, where your rights are
judged by white racists. King realized this long before he embarked
on his dissertation.
Life's schooling begins in early childhood, especially for a Black
child. Five-year-old Martin learned his first lesson when he was
deprived of playmates, two white boys, the sons of a neighboring
grocer, who used to joyfully play with him in the streets. Suddenly,
they began to avoid him. He'd run to their house, calling them out to
play, but their parents, for whatever reason—perhaps due to societal
pressures—no longer allowed them to play with him. Perplexed, he
went to his mother and, sitting on her lap, for the first time learned—
what else could his mother have done?—about slavery, about the
Civil War between the North and South, about being born Black
while his friends were white, and the implications of that. What could
comfort him? Loading the terrifying burden of the past and present
onto the shoulders of a child, a burden she herself had long carried,
one that subjugated every Black American, she said, 'You're no less
than anyone else...' And it was true, but it didn't negate the realities of
life, which manifested at every turn.
King remembered another scene from his childhood. With his
father, a tall, strong, respected man, they entered a shoe store to buy
shoes. Dollars from a black pocket or a white one were equally good,
and the shopkeeper was ready to serve them, but they sat at the
entrance on chairs meant for whites, and the shopkeeper asked them
to move to the back where 'colored' people tried on shoes.
— What's wrong with these seats? — said King Sr. — We're
comfortable here.
— I'm sorry, — said the polite shopkeeper, — but you'll have to
move.
— Either we buy these shoes here, or we buy no shoes at all, —
King Sr. retorted angrily.
The shopkeeper shrugged, and the father and son left without
buying anything. When a father is humiliated in front of his son, it
sears both of them, stays in their memories. They walked down the
street. Little Martin had never seen his father so furious. King Sr.
protested: 'No matter how long I have to live under this system, I'll
never accept it.'
 The educational force of humiliations... They didn't pass in vain.
Once, the father skipped a stop sign while driving. 'Pull over, boy,
and show me your license,' said a policeman upon seeing a black man
behind the wheel. 'I'm no boy, no kid,' retorted the father. 'I'm a man,
and until you call me by that name, I won't listen to you.' He
demanded respect for his dignity—a significant act of bravery in
1930s Atlanta. The fearlessness of the young King, one could say,
was inherited. The father fought alone, the fight that his son later
carried forward with thousands. The father boycotted buses, once
witnessing brutal treatment of Black passengers. He led a campaign in
Atlanta for equal wages for Black teachers, fought for desegregating
elevators in the local courthouse.
When your first name becomes 'n****r,' your middle name
becomes 'boy' (however old you are), and your last name becomes
'John,' then you know why waiting has been impossible.’ These words
belong to Martin Luther King Jr. They were written in the spring of
1963 from the jail in Birmingham, Alabama.
Waiting became impossible in December 1955 when the recent
seminarian and inexperienced priest Martin Luther King received the
pastorship at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery,
Alabama.
Rosa Parks, a resident of Montgomery and a seamstress at a local
department store, boarded a city bus on the evening of December 1,
1955, on her way home. At the end of the workday, the bus was
crowded. The driver ordered Rosa Parks and three other Black
passengers to stand and give up their seats to white passengers. The
three men complied as usual. Rosa Parks did not—she was tired after
a long day, and her feet hurt. Enough was enough! She was forcibly
removed from the bus and arrested. Buses in Montgomery, like
everywhere in the South, had 'Colored' sections, but a Black person
first paid the driver at the front door, then, 'not to offend' the whites,
had to exit the bus—assuming it didn't drive off—before re-entering
through the back door and taking an empty seat at the rear.
Eventually, they had to relinquish even these seats if the bus was full
and a white person needed it. Surrender to any sixteen-year-old
layabout, even if you had grandchildren that age.
 Montgomery had about 50,000 Black residents, one-third of the
population, and for understandable reasons, most preferred taxis or
their personal cars over buses. Rosa Parks's arrest filled the cup of
patience, and people decided waiting was no longer an option. The
idea of a one-day boycott of Montgomery buses was born. Young
King, one of its early supporters, offered his church for the
organizers' meeting. The boycott was scheduled for December 5,
hoping for at least 60% Black participation. However, the local police
chief unintentionally aided them, advising Black residents to refrain
from the boycott and promising support for those who broke it. On
December 5, each bus was escorted by a police motorcycle, and even
the compliant Black individuals, seeing this, feared trouble. To the
surprise of the organizers, the boycott was a complete success.
At six in the morning, the young King, having hardly slept,
consumed by the anxious excitement of the first confrontation, was
drinking coffee in the kitchen.
— Come here quickly, Martin, — called his wife, Coretta.
Outside the window, at the bus stop, it was empty. And the bus
passed by completely empty, although at that hour it was usually
filled with Black people—maids, cooks, janitors—headed to work for
the white residents of Montgomery. Another bus—empty, completely
empty. In the third one, there were two passengers—both white. They
had access to both front and back seats. They could dance in that bus
if they wanted, but unseen by them, the pastor of Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church danced in front of the window from joy and
excitement.
On that same morning, Rosa Parks was tried and fined $14. And in
the afternoon, King was elected head of the boycott committee, and
the boycott was declared until victory. They chose King simply
because, being a newcomer in Montgomery, he hadn't yet made
enemies among the authorities or competing Black groups. They
needed someone acceptable to all. ‘And what we got was a Moses,’
said later E.D. Nixon, a Black activist who proposed the boycott. Yes,
they got more than they expected.
The boycott lasted not a week or a month but 381 days before the
racist stronghold found its match.
 Threats, lawsuits, attempts to divide the Black community failed.
In compliance with the US Supreme Court's decision from December
21, 1956, Montgomery Blacks gained the right to sit anywhere on
buses and not give up their seats to white passengers. The young
pastor who led this unprecedentedly long and successful boycott
attracted attention. Now, he was known in the city, and with the fame
came both respect from some and hatred from others. He learned that
hatred is more tangible and effective than love. On January 30, 1955,
when the boycott was two months old, racists threw a bomb into his
house, the first bomb. It exploded on the porch, and his wife Coretta
and their young daughter were unharmed. At that moment, King was
speaking at a meeting. He felt fear and didn't hesitate to admit it, but
fear was just a prelude to courage, only sharpened the choice. There
was no turning back.
Life as a fighter began. He learned to sleep less, catch glimpses of
his family, prepare not sermons but political speeches, rightfully take
his place at the forefront of 'freedom marches' — an enticing, visible
target. He understood the power of organized thousands and mastered
the basics of mass action, testing and developing tactics of nonviolent
resistance applied to American conditions. His mentor in tactics
became the Indian Mahatma Gandhi, who used the method of civil
disobedience in the struggle against English colonizers. Why
nonviolence? King explained this more than once. Here's his latest
explanation, published in the 'Look' magazine after the assassination
in Memphis: 'In the South, nonviolence was a creative doctrine
because it paralyzed the rabid segregationists who thirsted for an
opportunity to physically crush the Negroes,' he wrote. 'Direct
nonviolent action gave Negroes the opportunity to take to the streets
with active protest and, at the same time, disarmed the oppressor's
rifles because even he could not kill unarmed men, women, and
children in broad daylight. That's why in 10 years of protest in the
South, there were fewer human casualties than in 10 days of riots in
the North.' King's understanding of nonviolence did not mean
acquiescence to evil. 'Passive cooperation with an unjust system
makes the oppressed as morally corrupt as the oppressor,' he
emphasized. King refused to acknowledge racist segregation laws and
attacked them using mass marches, boycotts, and sit-in strikes. He
took on an open yet nonviolent confrontation, consciously creating
resistance against racists, crises, and tensions in the racist South,
considering these crises as a means to negotiate the abolition of unjust
laws. He relied on the masses, and this was his difference from
traditional bourgeois-liberal African-American leaders (known by the
nickname Uncle Toms) who, not believing in the African-American
mass, servilely approached ruling America, timidly knocking on the
doors of desegregation in the stale atmosphere of courtrooms. King
loved talking about 'direct action' and chose the arena of confrontation
visible to the entire country and the whole world — the streets and
squares of American cities, big and small.
According to a Chinese proverb, a journey of ten thousand miles
begins with the first step. Taking that first step, Martin Luther King
did not yet know if he was facing ten thousand miles or how long
they were. Initially, the road seemed short.
So, Rosa Parks and 50,000 Montgomery Negroes could occupy
even the front seats on the bus, although angry glances compelled
them, in the old way, to move towards the back seats. But in
restaurants, cafeterias, motels, public parks, as before, signs hung:
'Whites Only.' I saw them in Montgomery in December 1961, six
years after the famous boycott. In those days, while we traveled with
a friend through the states of Georgia and Alabama, learning about
the customs of the South, King called on President Kennedy after 100
years since the first one signed by President Lincoln. There was less
irony in his appeal. In those days, he led 'freedom marches' in Albany,
Georgia. March participants sought desegregation of city parks,
hospitals, libraries, buses, and equal employment for Negroes in city
institutions. The tactic of direct mass action was opposed by Laurie
Pritchett, the police chief of Albany, with the tactic of mass arrests.
Albany's jails and those of neighboring counties barely held 700
arrested Negroes. King — for the umpteenth time! — ended up in
jail, which, ironically, was called 'Americus.' He was already 32 years
old, but the prison guards, as before, called him boy, a kid. What had
changed? He knew all 13 Southern states like the back of his hand,
traveled and worn out by dozens of brave 'freedom rides.' The weight
of a club on his back, spit in the face — he experienced this. Under
the heavy hand of a policeman, the black pastoral suit tore more than
once, the piercing cold came from the cement prison floor, the deep
Southern sky was streaked with prison bars. He had four children, and
each night carried the danger to the modest home in Atlanta, where he
moved to preach in the Ebenezer Church with his father and found the
headquarters of his own organization, the 'Southern Christian
Leadership Conference.' Ku Klux Klan crosses flared up more than
once on the lawn in front of this house, warning that the family of an
unruly 'n****r' would not live in peace, and the eternal wanderer
King, from a distance, checked by phone if his wife and children were
alive and well. But 'the heavy hammer, shattering the glass, forges
steel.' He was made of that very rare metal that makes activists,
heroes, the conscience of the nation. The more he wandered, the
deeper he plunged into the sea of African-American despair, the more
he saw before him black eyes, millions of black eyes, in which shone
centuries-old longing and renewed hope. When he was killed and
became safe, the bourgeois press UNANIMOUSLY celebrated him as
a great American, as a man with a dream. He indeed had a dream, but
not a selfish dream of an individualist. He revealed it in his most
famous speech on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington, before 250,000 participants of the grand
'march for freedom.' Bursting with passion that thundered in his bell-
like voice, Martin Luther King charged this huge audience with his
dream, in front of which stood the white dome of the Capitol, deaf to
this dream.
Although today and tomorrow we will face difficulties, I still have
a dream," he said. "I dream that one day this nation will rise up and
realize the true meaning of its creed. 'We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal...'"
He quoted the Declaration of Independence — the political bible of
American freedom, proclaimed in 1776. But the declaration did not
abolish slavery, and most of its creators did not consider Negroes as
people.
The year 1963 was very turbulent. The events in April in
Birmingham, Alabama, proved how alive American racism was and
how abhorrent it was. The police attacked Negroes with dogs, sprayed
them with high-pressure streams of icy water from fire hoses, and
racists bombed a Negro church, killing four children. Shame! Shame!
— this word echoed in newspapers across all continents. King
followed his familiar path from the forefront of the march to a prison
cell. Kennedy's administration managed to take lessons from the
African-American revolution, which advanced despite atrocities:
either grant rights to Negroes within the halls of Congress or they,
responding to police violence, will try to take those rights to the
streets. The Civil Rights Act was sent to Congress. It once again
promised Negroes their right to vote, which had been so often
violated, desegregation in public places — restaurants, cafeterias,
hotels, motels, cinemas, concert halls, sports arenas — and banned
discrimination in employment, etc. The Attorney General was granted
the right to prosecute lawbreakers in court. The bill lingered in
Congress for a long time. John Kennedy was assassinated in
November 1963, not living to see its passage. It took almost a year
before the bill, diluted by obstruction from Southern racist senators,
became law.
There was talk of a new era. King, a recent prisoner in
Birmingham, was celebrated as one of the main organizers of this
constitutional blow against racism. In Oslo, in December 1964, he
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — as a person who proved that
the fight for equality could be won without violence. But these were
weak proofs, which life contradicted, in spite of the Nobel Peace
Prize. It was easier to chastise the Birmingham police and its chief,
Connor, known as "The Bull," than to eradicate the racism that had
poisoned millions of souls. King was courted by the White House,
where he became a welcomed guest, but taming him was impossible.
Giving everything, down to the last cent, of the $54,000 Nobel prize
money to the needs of the struggle, he had already in February 1965
chosen another "conversation partner" — Jim Clark, the sheriff of
Selma. The laureate led his people to the streets of this small Alabama
town, starting a lengthy campaign for the right of Negroes to register
as voters without discriminatory literacy tests, property qualifications,
loyalty, etc. In Alabama, Negroes constituted more than 40 percent of
the population, but their political weight in the electoral bodies
equaled zero. Jim Clark was as brutal as Birmingham's "Bull"; Selma
was indifferent to the truths proclaimed in Oslo — about the
effectiveness of nonviolence. The police violently dispersed the
march, racists vindictively killed a white housewife, Viola Liuzzo,
and a white priest, James Reeb. Laurels turned into thorns. King was
thrown into jail again. "When the Norwegian king took part in
awarding me the Nobel Peace Prize, he certainly did not think that
less than 60 days later I would be in jail again... Why are we in jail?...
This is Selma, Alabama. There are more Negroes in jail than on the
voter rolls," King wrote from prison.
The road to justice and equality was getting longer. The 22-million
African-American people were united by the color of their skin, but
this unity was fragile, as it was divided by class. The removal of
discriminatory signs 'Whites Only' mainly benefited the African-
American bourgeoisie, for whom questions of social prestige were
acute. I remember another trip to the South, to Tennessee, which later
became fatal for King. It was in the spring of 1964, the culmination of
the struggle for the desegregation of public places. Having observed
the dilapidated shacks of impoverished Negro outskirts, we asked
liberal whites in Nashville: what to do next, after Nashville's
restaurants will be open to "colored," but racial animosity and
oppression will remain? This question stumped them. They believed
that everything boiled down to signs. It was there, in Nashville, that
we met a Negro radical, Paul Brooks. He outright rejected
Washington's tossed bone of desegregation; he wanted to be
recognized as an equal human being and did not settle for less. Paul
Brooks ridiculed the tricks of corporations that placed one Negro in a
high position to absolve themselves of exploiting thousands, the
television that admitted one Negro reporter to their state, preferably
lighter, to align themselves with the civil rights movement. He
choked on the pervasive American materialism. (It turns out that
authorities in the South made dollars even from the mass movement
for desegregation: the more arrested, the higher the bail was set to
release them from jail, and the money collected went into the local
budget.)
As primary tasks of desegregation were resolved, on one hand, it
was discovered that it yielded little, and on the other hand, the
division within the African-American movement and among its
supporters intensified. The difference between the prevailing trend of
conciliatory, vague liberalism and the activated stratum of radicals
became more noticeable and fundamental. The former stood against
racial inequality but for the preservation of the capitalist society,
believing that proclaiming its ideals of freedom and equality is
damaging them. The latter, more emphatically, emphasized
opposition to the very tenets of society, seeing racism as a form of
capitalist exploitation, and rejecting the ideals of this society as lies
intended for the gullible.
Where was King? The son of a priest, from a bourgeois family, he
started as a liberal, offended by the daily humiliations of racism. The
Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, adopted
after clashes in Selma and other Southern cities, were perhaps his
merit more than that of any other black leader. But he became a
symbol of lost hopes when it was discovered that these rights did not
give everyone the right to be human, that they left poverty,
unemployment, and the lack of education among black poor
untouched. In early 1965, summing up the struggle, King bitterly
remarked: 'What good is it to have the right to dine in a cafeteria at
the intersection if you have nothing to buy a cutlet with?'
Meanwhile, the center of the liberation struggle shifted from the
rural South to the urban North, where the layer of the black
population was rapidly increasing. When the 'freedom marches'
exposed the falsehood and lacquer of American democracy, it turned
out that in the North, that very North that went to war against the
South a hundred years ago to abolish slavery, the situation of blacks
was no less desperate than in the South.
In 1910, 91 percent of the 10 million American blacks lived in the
South. By 1961, the black population had more than doubled,
reaching 22 million, and the number of blacks living in cities (with a
population of more than 50,000) had increased more than 5 times
(from 2.6 million to 14.8 million). The number of blacks living in the
North increased 11 times from 880 thousand to 9.7 million, with 7
million concentrated in the country's twelve largest cities. (Already
now, blacks constitute the majority in Washington and Newark, and
according to forecasts for 1985, they will also be the majority in
Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Gary, Cleveland, Oakland,
Richmond, and St. Louis.)
According to official data, in 1967, the unemployment rate among
blacks was twice as high as among white Americans. But this is one
of the statistical tricks. They consciously do not take into account
'partial employment,' i.e., slightly camouflaged unemployment. In the
twelve largest cities in the United States, unemployed blacks aged 16
to 19 make up 32.7 percent (whites - 11 percent). 40.6 percent of
'non-white' Americans live below the official 'poverty level', and
almost half of them live in large cities.
The growth figures and statistics of unemployment among the
black population in Northern cities prove that both black masses and
black despair are concentrated there. In the South, blacks are
territorially dispersed, but politically still suppressed. In the North,
the mentioned double concentration in the ghetto provides a critical
mass for explosions. Sparks? There are plenty of them in the heated
atmosphere of the ghetto. Above all, these are atrocities and even the
mere fact of the presence of 'cops' - police officers, white police
officers, in black ghettos. One country, and all - blacks and whites -
its citizens by law, but in fact, a 'cop' in the ghetto is like a foreign
soldier on occupied territory. Behind him is the power of the police
and legal machinery, but at his intersection, he is alone and
surrounded by hatred. Warningly playing with his club, he rotates at
his post like a radar, detecting threats. Danger breeds fear, fear - hasty
actions. Firing a gun at a black person is ten times easier than at a
white person because he knows it will be easier for him to get away
with it. But blacks also know how cheap their lives are to the 'cops,'
and every act of police arbitrariness ignites the hatred accumulated by
generations and replenished every day.
Ghetto explosions... By the mid-60s, their frequency and strength
had increased incredibly.
1965. August riots in Watts - the black ghetto of Los Angeles,
fueled by police lawlessness. Fires, raids on stores, indiscriminate
police gunfire. 34 killed. Hundreds wounded. 4 thousand arrested.
$35 million in property damage.
A flash in Chicago on a hot noon on July 12. 4200 National
Guardsmen were called in to assist the police. 3 blacks killed, dozens
wounded, 533 people arrested. Racial unrest in Cleveland, Ohio.
Record-breaking. Spring riots in Nashville, Jackson, Mississippi,
Houston, Texas. They escalated into a 'long hot summer,' the longest
and hottest on the racial front in the USA. Tampa, Florida...
Cincinnati, Ohio... Atlanta, Georgia... June 20 was followed by an
unprecedented explosion in Newark, just next to New York - 23
killed, hundreds wounded, fires, deployment of the National Guard,
fear that the sparks might reach Harlem in New York. The
culmination of 1967 was the multi-day riots in Detroit. In addition to
the police and 5 thousand National Guardsmen to quell the rebellious
ghetto, for the first time since the post-war years, 3 thousand
paratroopers, regular troops who had been in Vietnam, were
deployed. 43 killed. 7200 arrested. Fires for whole square miles. In a
sense, Detroit is the Mecca of American civilization. They make
millions of cars there. These are excellent cars, but it so happened that
the propagandists of the 'American way of life' found an auxiliary
purpose for them - to throw dust in the eyes of simpletons abroad.
The more cars, the better they are, the denser the dust. From the ruins
of Detroit, there was a biting smell of fire, and not only houses but
also myths were burning. On a smaller scale, Newark and Detroit
were repeated that summer in dozens of American cities. The country
teetered on the brink of civil war.
I give only a very brief chronology, limiting my task to notes about
King. Black riots were qualified as rebellions. And indeed they
cannot be called uprisings because an uprising implies the existence
of organization and authoritative leaders, a program, and coordination
of actions. In the ghetto, however, the element of despair raged much
more decisively and blindly than in Rosa Parks, who refused to give
up her seat on the bus. The weapon of despair is cobblestones, bottles
of flammable liquid, less often revolvers and rifles, its targets are the
police and white exploiters in the ghetto.
President Johnson appointed a special commission chaired by
Illinois Governor Otto Kerner to investigate 'racial disorders' and their
causes after Detroit. The commission published its report in February
1968. This document, coming from eleven loyal, moderate appointees
appointed by the president himself, sounded like a slap in the face of
American society.
'Our nation is moving toward two societies, black and white,
separate and unequal,' was the commission's main conclusion.
Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghettos
conditions that are absolutely unknown to the majority of white
Americans,' the report said. ‘White Americans have never fully
understood, and blacks can never forget, that white society is deeply
involved in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions
maintain it, white society condones it.'
The report included a characterization of the ‘typical rioter’, based on
a detailed study of the unrest in Newark and Detroit and interviews
with hundreds of blacks.
Here's the characterization: ‘The typical rioter of the summer of
1967 was a black, unmarried, male aged 15 to 24... He was born in
the state where he lives and has lived his whole life in the city where
the riot occurred. Economically, his situation was roughly the same as
his black neighbors who did not actively participate in the riot.
Although he usually did not finish high school, he was somewhat
better educated than the average urban black and attended high school
for some time. Nevertheless, he usually is an unskilled worker
engaged in manual or menial labor. If he worked, it was not all the
time, and his employment was often interrupted by periods of
unemployment.
He is deeply convinced that he deserves a better job and that he is
excluded from it not because of a lack of qualifications, ability, or
ambition, but because of discrimination by employers. He rejects the
prejudiced notion of whites about blacks as ignorant and lazy. He is
very proud of his race and believes that in some respects, blacks are
superior to whites. Towards whites, he is extremely hostile, but his
hostility is more a product of social and economic class (to which he
belongs — Ed.) than race; he is almost equally hostile towards
middle-class blacks (i.e., black bourgeoisie — Ed.).
In political matters, he is much better informed than blacks who
were not involved in the riots. It is more likely that he is actively
involved in the struggle for civil rights, but he is extremely distrustful
of the political system and political leaders.'
This expressive characterization given by the presidential
commission essentially depicts the portrait of an untrained soldier of a
not yet formed army, displaying, however, a spontaneous class
intuition, rejecting the capitalist system (although sometimes only
from the position of belonging to the black race), not believing in the
institutions of this society — from the president to the policeman,
ready to declare war on this society even alone.
Stirring active reactions in the country, this new type of black
sharpened the positions of other social figures, removing the blurry
tones. Open racists, pointing a finger at the ‘typical rioter,’ affirmed
their creed: ruthlessly deal with blacks who have broken free. A more
mass category of apolitical commoners leaned towards open racists,
ready to see the desperate black man as a rampaging criminal
attacking ‘sacred property’ and citizens' safety. Bourgeois politicians,
registering the moods of the common mass, if only because millions
of votes belong to it in elections, began, playing into these moods and
fueling them, to push the thesis of ‘street crime,’ which was clearly
anti-black. The commoner prepared for both ‘self-defense’ and attack;
a network of shooting clubs grew in the country, housewives from
Dearborn (a white suburb of Detroit), supported by instructors,
practiced shooting at targets. Bourgeois white liberals, these
unreliable fellow travelers, wavered in their sympathies for the black
movement, believing that blacks were ‘rushing too much’ and
pushing their struggle.
Among black people, on the contrary, the 'typical rebels' were
gaining increasing sympathy. Representatives of the bourgeois layer
of the Negro population like Roy Wilkins, heading the 'National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People,' and Whitney
Young, president of the 'Urban League,' were quickly losing their
authority among the masses, exposing themselves by compromising
with the ruling America. Organizations such as the 'Congress of
Racial Equality' and especially the 'Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee' (SNCC), which previously collaborated with King in
'marches' and 'freedom rides,' were turning towards radicalism,
criticizing nonviolent methods and seeking more active forms of
struggle. Young leaders of SNCC like Stokely Carmichael and Rap
Brown, speaking in the ghettos, called for an armed 'guerrilla war'
against authorities and racist America. Their appeals appealed to the
youth.
King understood that the unrest in the ghettos symbolized a crisis
in his nonviolent strategy. In the face of growing polarization, he
grew into a tragic figure at the intersection of two Americas, trying to
delay the impending collision and reconcile the irreconcilable. His
position was ambivalent. He condemned the riots in the ghettos,
believing that they only intensified the resistance of racists and
authorities and provided a pretext for physical violence against black
people. From this point of view, he considered violence simply
'impractical.' But he understood the legitimacy of the despair and
growing impatience of the black youth, concluding that his
nonviolence needed to become more militant and pursue more radical
goals.
Racial tensions escalated against the backdrop of ominous
escalations in Vietnam. There was a connection between them,
increasingly evident. The same force, the same Janus-faced nature of
American imperialism, sowed violence in the rice fields and jungles
of Vietnam and, through the police revolvers and rifles of the
National Guardsmen, suppressed black people. White protesting
America, concentrating its efforts in the anti-war movement, was less
interested in the struggle of black people than before. On the other
hand, many black leaders, focusing on the interests of their own
struggle, did not immediately realize that the anti-war movement was
their natural ally.
King did not immediately realize this connection. But from the
beginning of 1967, he increasingly and sharply opposed the war. In
April, he came to New York, walked the streets of Harlem, and was
directly asked by 'desperate, rejected, angry young people' how he
could discourage them from violence against the America that
oppresses black people and sows violence in Vietnam. 'Their
questions hit home,' said King, 'and I realized that I could never speak
out against the violence used by the oppressed in the ghetto without
clearly pointing out the greatest purveyor of violence in the world—
our own government.'
In mid-April, he was seen for the first time alongside Dr. Spock—
among the ranks of an anti-war march on Fifth Avenue in New York.
Initially, opposition to the war was dictated by narrow practical
considerations: the more billions spent on the destruction of a distant
nation, the fewer millions were allocated by Washington for the needs
of the ghetto. He saw that the so-called 'Great Society' of Johnson,
which included programs to aid black people, was 'shot down on the
battlefields of Vietnam.' Then he saw the unjust, imperialistic nature
of this war.
Moral courage—a quality even higher than physical courage.
King's new anti-war position alienated many of his moderately
liberal supporters. He was accused of dividing the Negro movement,
of being unpatriotic; contributions to his organization's fund sharply
declined—almost three-quarters of previous donors returned the pleas
for financial assistance unopened. However, by dissociating himself
from the imperialist America, King moved forward.
He said:
— The war has intensified the despair of black people to the point
where unrest in the cities has become a terrible feature of American
life. How can the government vehemently condemn violence in black
ghettos when in Asia it sets such an example of violence that shakes
the whole world? Those who use naval artillery, millions of tons of
bombs, and the appalling napalm have no right to talk to black people
about nonviolence... I don't want to be misunderstood. I don't equate
so-called black violence with war. The acts of black people are
incomparably less dangerous and amoral than the deliberate
escalation of war... They destroy property, but even in rage, the vast
majority of black people direct their anger at inanimate objects, not
people. If the current events are regrettable, then what can be said
about the use of napalm against people?
These are words from King's speech in Chicago in November
1967. He flew there to address participants of a conference of anti-
war union activists, to support them, and to throw a bitter, just
accusation at the majority of union bosses who openly or silently
supported the war. It was a powerful speech. It was met with ovation.
King was criticized, just as those gathered in Chicago, the union
activists, who seemed to feel the tight grip of George Meany, the
president of the AFL-CIO, a seasoned ultra-conservative in the noble
attire of an ultrapatriot. Sensing the audience, the black leader at the
end of the speech deviated from the pre-distributed text for reporters.
I remember this moment. He spoke slowly, firmly, angrily,
condemning those politicians who justify vile acts with practical
expediency. There are moments, he emphasized, when you have to
state directly where you stand, whether others like it or not. Let your
popularity decrease, but there are principles, deviation from which is
akin to moral suicide...
These words were spoken a few weeks before Senator Eugene
McCarthy, disregarding career considerations, openly challenged
Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Party leadership, announcing
that he would run for president as a critic of the war in Vietnam. This
was months before Senator Robert Kennedy also decided to speak out
against Johnson.
 The priest from Atlanta, killed at the age of 39, had a great
potential for political growth. Starting with the seductive breadth of
bourgeois-liberal views, he came to precise, albeit less popular in
America, formulations. Late King's goal for the black revolution was
to 'transform from within the structure of racist imperialism.' From
the struggle for bus desegregation to the fight against the domestic
and foreign policies of American imperialism—this was his path. His
last prepared campaign was called the 'Poor People's Campaign'—
blacks and white poor people—because King began to speak on
behalf of all the underprivileged in America. The last act he intended
to wrest from Congress, which, in his words, waged war against the
poor, was the Economic Rights Act. According to his thoughts, this
act should guarantee jobs and income for the poor. He certainly
wasn't a Marxist, this Baptist preacher of non-violence, who became
the tribune and leader of black America, but tireless searches for
truth, instinctively, by touch, through a hard-earned experience, led
him to the Marxist thesis that a people who oppress other peoples
cannot be free. Four days after his assassination, his wife Coretta said
at a memorial meeting: 'My husband gave his life for the poor of the
world, for the sanitation workers of Memphis and the peasants of
Vietnam.'
So, after thirteen tense years, King entered the final stage of his
struggle, more than ever realizing the difficulties of the chosen path
and the modesty—compared to the unresolved challenges—of the
scale of achieved successes. Equally determined and brave, he looked
at his country more soberly and harshly, abandoning the rose-colored
glasses of initial illusions. 'America is sick; the disease has struck it
much deeper than I had assumed when I started my work,' he
confessed to a friend shortly before his death. And behind the familiar
faces of his adversaries—the Birmingham police chief Bull Connor,
the sheriff from Selma, Jim Clark, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley,
who derailed a prolonged campaign to improve housing conditions
for blacks in Chicago—loomed the dry, sharp, unflinching face of the
criminal—James Earl Ray, the assassin, the last enemy King never
came face to face with, the 'apostle of nonviolence.'
At the end of March, things were fairly quiet on the racial front.
They were waiting for April 22—Washington's 'battle' signal. King
had been preparing for it since autumn. Strictly speaking, not a battle,
but a prolonged, several-month war called the 'Poor People's
Campaign,' under the slogan 'jobs or income.' They needed to shake
up the Washington bureaucracy, which had forgotten everything for
the Vietnam War. Two and a half billion dollars for the destruction of
another nation, crumbs for healing the ulcers of the ghettos. How to
make them see and change the order of allocations? Three thousand
activists, mostly from King's organization, the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, were to arrive in the capital, set up a shanty
town camp near the monumental facades of the ministries. Then,
through picketing and delegations, they would block their work,
throwing a protest sand into the well-oiled wheels of the soulless
mechanism to make it creak, halt, and contemplate: do American
poor, black and white, have the right to 'guaranteed work or income'?
And from June 15, as a culmination at the end...
There was a planned march of hundreds of thousands of black and
white Americans, no less massive than the famous march on
Washington in August 1963, but with a demand not just for civil but
economic rights for the poor.
Since autumn, King and his associates had been preparing a cadre
of activists: the operation was not supposed to exceed the bounds of
nonviolence.
— Why do you want to disrupt and upset the life of Washington?
— The lives of the poor are disrupted and upset every day, and we
want to put an end to that.
Such an answer was recommended in a special questionnaire
provided to the activists. King himself considered this the final
decisive attempt to extract major concessions from ruling America
using nonviolent methods. A new 'long hot summer' was approaching,
promising new Newarks and Detroits.
But at the end of March, there was silence. Only in Memphis,
Tennessee, were the city sanitation workers on strike. Tennessee—a
gateway to the South. Memphis, located on the Mississippi River, has
550 thousand residents. Forty percent are black—more than 200
thousand. A city like any other. Entangled in southern traditions, but
its white rulers have typical justifications: even Negroes are
integrated into the police force, there are 13 Negroes in the city
council, public schools, please note, were desegregated as early as
1961—and, mind you, without scandals. Blacks, like everywhere,
complain about low wages, high unemployment, poor housing, and
about the police, who won't miss a chance to 'club a black head or
shoot a black body.' As everywhere, there's a law in force, clearly
formulated by Mayakovsky: 'White work is done by whites, black
work—by blacks...'
Street cleaning is black work, and almost all are black. They are
employed by the municipality. Their supreme master is Mayor Henry
Leb. 1,300 strikers demanded a pay raise from the mayor and the
recognition of a union, which means an end to their state of
powerlessness. Government recognition of the union would imply
that workers could not be hired or fired without its consent and that
strikebreakers would be outlawed. The strike began on a holiday—
Lincoln's birthday. But the mayor didn't grasp such a hint. The strike
dragged on for more than forty days, without any chance of success.
Only in Memphis did they know about it, where firefighters were
more often called out—citizens were burning fires with garbage.
King arrived in Memphis, announcing a march of solidarity—a
necessary rehearsal, by the way, before the 'showdown' in
Washington. He applied his long-standing method—dramatizing the
situation, creating a crisis in the city, or as he put it, 'creative tension,'
which would force the authorities to negotiate with the sanitation
workers and make concessions. He sometimes referred to himself and
his supporters as gadflies, disturbing their white fellow citizens,
rousing them from their slumber. The average citizen may feel
awkward because there is a ghetto nearby, but above all, they cherish
peace in their home and city, the social status quo that works in their
favor, the 'law and order' that suits them. These are the main bastions
and reserves of rampant racism. In his famous letter from the
Birmingham jail in the spring of 1963, King provided an insightful
assessment of such Americans. 'I have almost reached the regrettable
conclusion,' he wrote, 'that the greatest stumbling block for Negroes'
freedom is not the White Citizens' Council (racist organizations in the
US South—Ed. note) or the Ku Klux Klansman, but the moderate
white, who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a
negative peace, meaning the absence of tension, to a positive peace,
meaning the presence of justice.'
On March 28, a week before the fatal shot, the 'negative peace' in
Memphis was broken by protest marches and solidarity. In the
morning, thousands of people moved to Beale Street, passing
pawnshops and cheap stores. King, as determined as a battering ram,
was at the front, arm in arm with Ralph Abernathy and Ralph
Jackson. Police were alongside the column. Batons at the ready,
revolvers on their hips in open holsters, sergeants holding portable
walkie-talkies with antenna needles in their palms. Helmets, gaiters
on thick calves, numbered plates on their chests... White Memphis
cops, sturdy and picturesque, like all American law enforcers. March
guardians. March witnesses. March punishers. They were cocked and
ready. They walked, closely eyeing the marchers. They were waiting
for their moment. And it came.
Where did they come from, these agile and desperate black
teenagers? From Hamilton High School. There were thirty to forty of
them. They ran out of class and wanted to join the marchers, but it
was not to be. Police escorted the column like a convoy of prisoners
—there was no place for outsiders. And like a gust of wind swept
over Beale Street, where the renowned jazzman W. Handy once
created his blues. But here it wasn't the sweet melancholy of blues but
a frenetic shuffle. And bricks at the police, at the windows of
pawnshops and stores, and splinters of glass...
Hooliganism? Revenge? Or a brief, reckless elation of
temperamental youths who suddenly felt that Beale Street, with its
pawnshops and the shops of white bloodsuckers, belonged to them for
a moment, given the many black people around? But the moment was
intercepted by cops. And the cops plunged into this dance, into this
ecstatic and deadly twist that so often sweeps the streets of the ghetto.
Oh, these contorted, fear-twisted bodies, dodging the whistling
batons... Oh, this trembling and sweat under the barrel of a gun... Oh,
this curtain of tears on the faces, enveloped in the acrid smoke of tear
gas...
The next day, Earl Lanning, president of the Memphis Chamber of
Commerce, announced his business calculations. He reported that
windows were broken in 155 commercial establishments. The police
provided their statistics: one killed—a 16-year-old black boy, 60
injured, 200 arrested.
The Tennessee State Legislature immediately granted mayors the
authority to impose a curfew. Henry Leb was the first to use it. From
seven in the evening on March 28, the streets of Memphis were
empty, except for 4,000 National Guard soldiers mobilized by
Governor Buford Ellington of Tennessee. Another 8,000 soldiers
were on standby.
White Memphis armed itself in case of a black explosion. But the
explosion didn't happen.
The march was disrupted, dispersed. King was hurriedly put into a
car and taken in an unknown direction. His friends were protecting
him, but the authorities also had their motives: if anything happened
to King, it would be hard to avoid a massive explosion. King didn't
anticipate this frenzy with bricks thrown at police and bullets in
response. 'If I had known violence would occur,' he said the next day,
'I would have canceled this march.'
On March 29, the strikers went on picket lines. They walked in a
long, rare chain down the street. Just as long, but motionless, stood
National Guardsmen beside them. Bayonets were dramatically
displayed. And the shadows of bayonets pierced the placards on the
chests of the strikers. In bold letters on the posters were two words: 'I
am a man.' The photo made its rounds in the newspapers.
But they spoke of something else—the Negro 'anarchy' which had
once again shown itself in Memphis and which 'had long needed to be
stopped.' The veins of righteous anger swelled on the forehead of
Washington. Robert Byrd, Senator from West Virginia, proposed a
court order to ban the 'poor people's campaign.' 'If this self-styled
chieftain is not stopped,' he lashed out at the King, 'the same thing
could happen in Washington—violence, destruction, looting, and
bloodshed.' Edward Brooke, the only black senator among a hundred
in the US and quite moderate, doubted King's ability to contain the
protest within nonviolence. Any spark could cause an explosion in the
'easily inflammable conditions' of Washington, where two-thirds of
the population were black. Brooke wondered who would ensure that
such a spark wouldn't come from the multitude of participants.
President Johnson, three times in a day, warned that he would not
tolerate 'senseless violence,' called on law enforcement to act firmly
and without fear, and promised federal aid if needed.
So, the familiar slogan of 'law and order' was once again raised to
overturn King's slogan of 'work or income.' The country was wielding
a 'white boomerang.' It was time to arm themselves and put blacks in
their place. Such was the prevailing mood in those months when
factories fulfilled government orders for special armored vehicles and
for the miraculous gas 'mace,' disrupting the nervous balance of the
'rebel,' and for other perks for the upcoming 'long hot summer.'
The shadow of what happened in Memphis fell on the Washington
operation, and there was no retreat. 'We are determined to go to
Washington,' King declared on March 29. 'We consider it absolutely
necessary.' In Memphis, he counterattacked too. He announced
another march of solidarity with the sanitation workers, wanting to
prove to them, his critics, and adversaries that he could ensure a
peaceful procession. The march was planned for the coming days, and
King, postponing his affairs in Washington, flew back to Memphis. It
was the last march he prepared.
And the march took place, peacefully, as the King had dreamed.
The march was more massive than he had anticipated—35,000 black
and white Americans from all corners of the country. They walked
along the streets of the deserted Memphis. Stores were closed, and
even the residents didn't peek from their windows: the police ordered
them shut. National Guardsmen stood on the sidewalks. And they
marched along the road through the ranks of tense soldiers, carrying
placards, many with the same inscription: 'Honor King—end racism!'
In rows of eight, and in the first row, just like on March 28, marched
Ralph Abernathy and Ralph Jackson. But the familiar, stocky,
decisively triumphant figure was no longer with them. Martin Luther
King lay in his coffin in his native Atlanta. Walking with the
marchers was his widow, Coretta. She resembled her husband and
knew that he would have wanted effective mourning, mourning
intertwined with the struggle. The march of solidarity with the
sanitation workers, which King had prepared, became a memorial
march in King's memory. It took place on April 8, four days after his
assassination. But the Memphis sanitation workers were not
forgotten: on April 16, they emerged victorious. It was King's final
success, and he paid for it with his life...
 So, on April 3rd, he flew back to Memphis, unaware that he
was flying toward death.
The departure from Atlanta was delayed. The pilot apologized
over the radio to the passengers, saying, "We apologize for the
delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on board. Therefore,
we had to check all the luggage. To be sure that nothing happens
on the plane, we had to check everything very carefully."
There was nothing unusual about this announcement.
Whenever King was a passenger, planes were always checked. By
the way, he and Coretta never flew together on the same plane—
they didn't want to leave their children as orphans. On the evening
of April 3rd, while giving a sermon in a black church in Memphis,
King talked about this incident on the plane and openly reflected
on life and death.
He said:
- "Well, I made it to Memphis. And they say here that I am
being threatened, that our sick white brothers might do something
to me. Well, I don't know what might happen now. Ahead of us,
we have difficult days... Like everyone else, I would like to live a
long life. There are advantages to longevity. But now I'm not
concerned about that. I only want to do God's will. He's allowed
me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen
the Promised Land. Maybe I won't get there with you, but as a
people, we will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm happy
tonight. Nothing worries me. I'm not afraid of anyone..."
Later, these words turned out to be prophetic. If he was
haunted by premonitions, it was far from the first time. Almost
every day, he received anonymous threats, and he had this
inclination—to openly discuss the possibility of premature death.
In his musings, religious mysticism mixed with political realism
because he knew the country where he lived the dangerous life of
a fighter. But he couldn't live any other way and had long been
prepared for anything; his fatalism was not affectation but a sober
awareness of a constant real threat. And the King preferred to
speak of death rather than bravery— it was implied.
Friends booked him a room in the cheap "Lorraine" motel,
owned by a black man. Whenever possible, King stayed in black
hotels. Room 306 was on the second floor. Its door opened onto a
long balcony with green railings. To go down, you had to walk
along the balcony to the stairwell. Saying that he wasn't afraid of
anyone, Martin Luther King returned to room 306 at the
"Lorraine" motel.
That same evening or the next morning, James Ray knew
where King was staying, that his room was on the second floor,
and that he couldn't avoid the balcony, making him an easy target.
All he needed to find was a path for the bullet. In front of the
balcony below, there was a parking lot, and behind it—narrow
Mulberry Street and a wall about two meters high, on the top of
which bushes and grass grew. Further on the slope of the hill,
there were trees, and beyond them was a wire fence and an
unsightly backyard of a two-story house that faced South Main
Street. There, on April 4th, in the early afternoon, a fairly young
man in a black suit arrived. He said he wanted to stay for a day.
The landlady, Mrs. Brewer, led him to a room with a window
facing north, but the stranger didn't like that room. He preferred a
room on the south side. And he was lucky. He was given a room
from which the "Lorraine" motel was visible. Mrs. Brewer
remembered that the stranger had dark hair, was about six feet
tall, and spoke with a Southern accent, something not surprising
in Memphis. She also remembered that the stranger paid in
advance—eight dollars and fifty cents.
And even better, the "Lorraine" motel could be seen from the
communal bathroom. From there, through the optical sight of a
Remington rifle, the metallic numbers 306 were visible on the
brown door of one of the rooms. And justifiably, as a guest who
wanted to shake off the road dust, a man with a Southern accent
soon locked himself in the bathroom. It was about seventy meters
to number 306 from there…
King spent the whole day in the room, attending to business.
Unfortunately, Memphis was taking time away from preparing for
the confrontation in Washington, and to make matters worse, the
situation became complicated because the Memphis authorities
obtained a court order banning the second march. Throughout the
day, King conferred with his colleagues. They were invited to
dinner by a black Memphis priest named Kyle. He arrived around
six in the evening to take the guests to his home. In the room was
also Abernathy, King's right-hand man, an inseparable comrade
since the days of the Montgomery bus boycott. Getting ready to
go out, King, standing in front of the mirror, tied a black tie with a
golden stripe around his powerful wrestler's neck.
"Is your wife too young to prepare soul food for us?" King
chuckled at Kyle while tying the tie. "She's only 31, isn't she? Can
she understand soul food at that age?"
In truth, he himself was young—only in terms of years.
"Exactly," Abernathy joined in the jest. "We're not coming for
filet mignon. We need vegetables. Soul food. Does Gwen know
how to cook such food?"
"Don't worry," Kyle reassured them, understanding the
seriousness behind these jokes.
King lived modestly; even extravagance in food seemed to
him a deception of the poor people who followed him and
believed in him. When, after King's death, the prominent political
figures of the USA hurried to offer condolences at his home in
Atlanta, they were struck by the modesty of his residence. A small
note in the newspapers, stating that after King's death, his family
had only $5,000 in savings—a paltry sum by American standards
—speaks more about this man than a mountain of touching
obituaries. One needs to understand America, where involvement
in any public cause doesn't stop bourgeois politicians from
making dollars and increasing their wealth, to understand this
selflessness and greatness of King.
Finally, King and Kyle left the room; Abernathy lingered a
little. Kyle immediately went downstairs, but King lingered by the
balcony's green railings. It was 6 o'clock in the evening, starting
to darken, a hint of coolness in the air.
At the last moment, his premonitions, apparently, left him, and
King didn't look toward the ridge of the wall on Mulberry Street,
slightly upward and to the right, at the sunlit eastern wall of the
two-story house. He looked down at his departing companions.
Down by the balcony stood a black Cadillac sent for King by the
owner of a black funeral home in Memphis. Helpers awaited near
the Cadillac—Jesse Jackson, Andrew and Young, and the driver,
Solomon Jones. They were ready for "soul food," dinner
conversations, and jokes, and for the late-night rally. King stood
by the green railings, waiting for the delayed Abernathy.
"Are you familiar with Ben, Martin?" Jackson asked, pointing
to Ben Branch, the Chicago black musician. Ben was supposed to
perform at the meeting.
"Well, yes," smiled King, leaning against the railing. "Ben is
my man."
"Sing for me tonight," he addressed Ben. "Sing for me, please,
'Precious Lord, take my hand.' Sing it better."
"I will, Martin," responded Branch. He knew this sorrowful
African-American spiritual.
"It's getting chilly. Wouldn't it be better for you to wear a
coat?" the driver advised him.
"Right. I'll put it on," replied King. Saying these two words,
he leaned slightly over the railing, as if wanting to be closer to
these dear people who loved him, cared for him, and took pride in
him, like caring for older, respected, wise, yet scattered
companions.
He leaned slightly towards them, holding onto the green
railings with his hands, and at that moment, a bullet struck him.
His friends heard the sound of the gunshot, and the deadly force
of the swiftly flying nine-gram lead knocked down his stocky
figure. With his arms spread, King fell face down onto the cement
floor of the balcony.
Blood gushed from his neck. James Ray turned out to be a
first-rate killer. The bullet hit the right side of King's neck,
piercing the vertebrae. King couldn't speak. Clinical death
occurred an hour later, but he bid farewell to life at that very
moment when the bullet knocked him down. His friends rushed to
the balcony, surrounding his lying body, reaching their hands
slightly up and to the right, towards the sunlit wall from where the
sound of the gunshot came. Police cars were already buzzing.
Cameras clicked, film cameras hummed, but the ambulance had
not yet arrived. He still lay face down, knees bent, arms
outstretched, wearing a black suit and his face covered with a
white towel, blood spreading on the cement floor near his head...

***
 The poet is right: sorrow runs wild, especially in the age of
television. America was like a person suddenly confronted by a
formidable, irrefutable judge, shaken so violently that the fluff of
pretense scattered away, demanding: Look into your soul! Can't
you see what's happening there?
Across the country, waves of shock and mourning rolled,
although, for millions, for entire millions — who would dare to
deny it? — there was a vengeful joy, a satisfied malice: finally,
this irritating troublemaker, this 'nigger' who needed it more than
others, got what was long due to him.
And somewhere, evading the Memphis police, James Ray sped
in his white half-sports car, listening to the feverish talk of
announcers, smirking, assured that the job was done and done
well.
Fear dominated the White House amidst mourning: what echoes
will come from the ghettos? However, predicting the echo was not
difficult. It needed to be anticipated or at least softened. The
president, appearing before the television cameras, urged
Americans to 'reject the blind violence that struck Dr. King, who
lived by nonviolence.' And thus, dominant America found the
necessary resonance — violence versus nonviolence. Violence —
nonviolence... These words were repeated millions of times
during the days of mourning, on the airwaves, in newspaper
columns, heard from television screens. What violence? What
nonviolence? In the name of what? The killers condemned
violence, not to abolish the hourly violence of the system against
the underprivileged but to dissuade them from violence.
Commentators, like Navajo shamans, chanted, chanted, chanted
the unbearable Negro pain.
However, the authorities knew the weaknesses of verbal therapy.
Mayor Henry Leb of Memphis and Governor Buford Ellington
were the first to react. Doctors recorded King's death at 7:05 in the
evening Memphis time, but as early as 6:35, Mayor Leb imposed
a curfew in the city. The Memphis police were torn: either catch
the murderer or maintain order in the black neighborhoods?
Governor Ellington appeared on television to begin with
condolences but ended with the announcement of deploying 4,000
National Guardsmen in Memphis, who were only mobilized the
day before, on Wednesday. National Guard planes carried police
officers specially trained to suppress riots to Memphis. The area
around the Lorraine Motel was sealed off and cordoned by police
barriers. This area became as dangerous as a magnet, attracting
broken-hearted blacks. They went there to straighten up in anger.
Black mourning was driven from the streets into the houses,
breaking, dividing. Shots were fired from rooftops at police cars.
In one car, a bullet shattered the windshield, and two policemen,
scratched by shards, ended up in the same hospital where King's
body lay. Bricks flew at the police in some places. 60 blacks were
arrested.
Official mourning was haunted by fear, while black mourning
was filled with anger and fury, yet that fury revealed
powerlessness. I remember the rally on Friday afternoon in
Central Park in New York City. Accusations were angry, but how
to avenge? How to teach this country, this stepmother homeland?
Thousands marched on Broadway, moving toward City Hall. The
New York police kindly halted traffic. But they were used to
thousands; you can't impress with thousands, actions of millions,
united around the core of thousands, were needed. They were
absent.
Stokely Carmichael held a press conference in Washington. In
the African-American district on 14th Street Northwest, where
walls were already plastered with portraits of the "apostle of
nonviolence," the air crackled with electric excitement emanating
from swift groups of black people. The first bricks flew into the
shop windows of white shopkeepers. Tall, impulsive, with a light-
brown face, Stokely Carmichael believed his moment had arrived.
His words sizzled like a fuse, reaching toward the dynamite on
14th Street, to the half-million-strong African-American
population of the capital. These were not questions and answers
but calls to action, a bubbling hatred towards white America.
"When white America killed Dr. King yesterday, it declared war
on us... The riots happening now in the cities of this country are
just flowers compared to what's about to happen. We must avenge
the deaths of our leaders. We will pay our dues not in courtrooms
but on the streets. White America will yet mourn for killing Dr.
King. The black community knows it must get weapons. Blacks
die every day in Vietnam. Well then, let them take as many whites
as possible with them to the other world..."
"Black nationalist" Carmichael accused all whites, opening the
path for counter-accusations of black racism. "Black nationalism"
was the ideology of a growing group of black radicals, who, in
effective collaboration with white Americans, had become more
violent. It was another level of desperation, but desperation
doesn't save. There was plenty of dynamite, but it couldn't replace
an organized army ready to advance against American capitalism,
which ultimately benefited from this pseudonym of "white
America." The call to armed struggle fell on unprepared ground.
The fiery desperation was capable of outbursts but not of
prolonged effective fighting.
Getting weapons... That was the biggest fear. Those days of
mourning pleaded with blacks to refrain from violence, not only
by ruling America but also by most black leaders. Roy Wilkins
and Whitney Young, giving obituaries on television, were deader
than King— the black movement had long left them behind, had
stripped them of their authority. The ghetto no longer recognized
"white Negroes." But even New York activists of the Congress of
Racial Equality, which criticized King's nonviolent methods and,
with its radicalism, aligned with Stokely Carmichael, took to the
streets of Harlem, urging the agitated crowds to remain calm. In
New York, storm clouds were dispelled by the efforts of many.
Mayor John Lindsay, displaying considerable personal courage,
walked the streets of Harlem and the Brooklyn ghetto of Bedford-
Stuyvesant for three days and nights, pleading, pleading,
pleading…
But Washington smoked already on Thursday evening and
erupted on Friday. By three o'clock, smoke from fires hung like
mourning banners over the African-American quarters of the
capital, and the spring wind carried them toward the center, to the
White House, to the Potomac River. Shops of white traders
burned in the ghetto, stones showered the police, gunfire was
heard.
Sparks of disorder flew into the city center, and panic raged
there. Thousands of government employees fled their offices
before the end of the workday. It seemed as if the ship had tilted
and was about to sink, that in panic, fires, and shooting, the
flagship of the American empire would drown. Thousands of cars,
bumper to bumper, slowly left the city on major highways,
cautiously avoiding the ghetto. Servile Washington fled to
neighboring states Maryland and Virginia. Officials and
businessmen, unable to find taxis, not getting into overcrowded
buses, hurried on foot across the Memorial Bridge over the
Potomac, to the other side, away from the blacks. It was an
unprecedented symbolic exodus of America that Dr. King wanted
to shake with his march of the poor and which was now scared to
death by the raging mourning storm of the ghetto.
O, had King witnessed the contradictory and expressive symbols
of mourning, hypocrisy, and protest that filled the American
capital the day after his death! Soldiers in helmets and combat
attire stood by machine guns on the broad steps of the Capitol,
which remained deaf to his demands for work and income for the
poor. The White House—the prime residence of White America
—stood against the backdrop of black plumes of smoke released
by black Americans. Over the White House, a flag flew at half-
mast, while 75 soldiers formed a chain guarding its gates—a dual
response of mourning and caution.
Everything doubled, and doubled contradictorily. On April 5th,
the President issued two proclamations: one for national mourning
on Sunday, April 7th, and an immediate deployment of regular
troops into the capital. Two thousand soldiers took positions near
government buildings and foreign embassies. Five hundred
soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Regiment were moved from Fort
Myer, near Washington. These tall, groomed, polished soldiers
were usually kept for ceremonial duties and meetings with heads
of other states on the White House lawn. Now they were dressed
in everyday khakis to meet the common folk. An additional two
thousand National Guard soldiers were put on standby. Walter
Washington, a namesake of the first American President, Mayor
of Washington, and incidentally an African American, imposed a
curfew from 5:30 PM to 6:30 AM in the city.
At noon, a mourning service was held at the Washington
National Cathedral, and the church choir sang that very African
American spiritual King never heard from Ben Branch. 'Oh,
precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand; I am tired,
I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead
me on to the light, precious Lord...'
There were four thousand people in the cathedral, led by
President Johnson. Whites outnumbered Blacks. In police
precincts, of course, it was the opposite: two thousand arrests by
the end of the first day of unrest. Five deaths. The police proudly
boasted this figure as evidence of their moderation. Official
mourning was armed to the teeth, marching ten abreast, rifles
slung, gas masks like pig snouts on soldiers' faces. Official
mourning was loud, nervously screaming with crazed police and
fire trucks, screeching brakes, heard in radio dispatchers' voices.
Additional troops were called into the capital overnight—a
paratrooper division that quelled Detroit's Black unrest in July
1967.
A mile-long African American mourning stretched with the
smoke of fires, fresh burnt ruins, surviving steel beams stark
against the orange sky. Mourning protest was blind, unbridled,
and hopeless. Criminality was added to the grief. Suits, hats, ties,
and color TVs were looted from stores. They were still the
children of their 'consumer society', fueling passion for
possessions and closing the path to satisfying that passion.
'We are in deep pain. The country is in pain if, upon learning of
the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's death, everyone fears it signals
violence and arson, with the first monument being children
running out of a burning house,' wrote columnist Murray
Kempton.
'When a Black rises now in powerful rage, he is spurred by three
centuries of injustice. Against this ominous history, what is
remarkable is the patience and decency of most Blacks and the
unimaginable generosity of their fallen leader,' wrote journalist
Harriet Van Horne.
On Friday night, America became a place where you understand
the meaning of the word 'anarchy,'" wrote the renowned reporter
Jimmy Breslin, having witnessed the burning streets of black
Washington.
From dozens of cities came the chronicle of mourning—church
services, fires, lowered flags, gunshots, silent marches, the howl
of police and fire sirens, portraits in black frames, tear gas, the
wails of black women, frozen smiles of naked mannequins thrown
out of display windows... The ghettos wept and exploded for a
long five days until April 9th, the day of the funeral, when finally,
a silence prevailed. Bell tolls floated in the air, and thousands of
voices across the country sang 'We Shall Overcome,' the beloved
anthem of equality fighters. Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit,
Cincinnati, Buffalo, Kansas City, Newark—protests erupted in
over a hundred cities. They were quelled by the police and sixty-
one thousand National Guard soldiers—the largest number of
troops ever deployed in American cities. Thirty-nine dead. Two
thousand wounded. Over ten thousand arrested…
And perhaps, only one person out of 200 million black and white
Americans was at peace in those days. Flown back to his native
Atlanta, he lay in a brown casket with bronze handles amidst
chrysanthemums and gladioli. He lay in a glass-topped coffin—a
black pastoral suit on the white lining of the coffin, a broad
forehead, a stiff brush of short black hair, rough bumps on his
cheeks, thick, firmly sealed lips of a large mouth. The 'Apostle of
Nonviolence' was unaware of the hurricane his death had caused.
He lay peacefully, and on the black cemetery stone at 'South
View,' the words were inscribed: 'Free at last. Free at last. Thank
God Almighty, I'm free at last.' And at the chapel of the spiritual
college, weaving through the streets of Atlanta, a queue formed a
mile and a half long. It moved day and night without shortening,
and many black paupers bid farewell to their Moses. Meanwhile,
on television screens, in newspapers, and magazines, the
memorial face of the living King appeared—strong, the intense
yawning mouth, the yawning of a fierce, raging orator.
He was buried solemnly and broadly, unlike any other black
person in American history. A hundred and fifty thousand people
walked the four-mile procession behind the coffin through the
streets of Atlanta, from Ebenezer Church, where he was a pastor,
to Morehouse College, which he graduated from twenty years
ago. In the mourning service at his church, the elite mixed with
the common folk—from former President Humphrey to the late
King's widow and his four children. Ralph Abernathy and close
friends and allies. King Jr., who had outlived his son, fainted
when he first saw the deceased King Jr. Jacqueline Kennedy, the
widow of the slain president. Robert Kennedy, not yet slain,
unaware that his death awaited him in Los Angeles two months
later. There were all the other contenders for the White House—
Richard Nixon, Senator Eugene McCarthy, Nelson Rockefeller.
They declared a mourning pause in their election campaigns and
now agitated by the fact of their presence at King's coffin. Black
voices won't interfere with the elections, and Richard Nixon
vividly remembered one costly mistake in 1960 when he fought
for the White House against John F. Kennedy. Shortly before
election day, Kennedy aided King in getting out of another jail,
and according to many American politics experts, it was this step
that gave him a slight edge over Nixon by a hundred thousand
votes—votes from blacks who thanked the Boston senator for
caring for their leader. And now, the disguised eye of the TV
camera captured familiar faces.
And the people in the church, where both Martin Luther King Sr.
and Jr. had preached and where now Pastor Ralph Abernathy led
the service, heard once more the impassioned, mystical yet earthy
eloquence of King. It turned out that this man, who had walked so
closely with death, speaking in February at this very church, had
talked about the kind of speech he wished to be delivered at his
own funeral. They played a tape recording, and over King's coffin
echoed the words of King, tremulous like the pulsations of a bare
heart:
'I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King
Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say
that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I
want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war
question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed
the hungry. I want you to say that day that I did try in my life to
clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I
did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. I want you to
say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a
drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I'm
not concerned about that now. I just want to leave a committed
life behind. And that's all I want to say...'
 His voice rose and fell, the words pulsating into the ears and
hearts of this diverse audience, uniting some and distancing
others. These words were unfamiliar to politicians and political
speakers raised in the spirit of cold advocacy rhetoric, ignorant of
passion and the open heart of a fighter.
Yes, these were grand funerals, yet somehow peculiar. What was
their peculiarity? What was the touch of unreality, destined to be
short-lived? They were peculiar because now that America, which
had been deaf to King's struggle, the America that, with armored
vehicles, police units, and anti-black articles in the press, had
created an atmosphere for the Memphis shot, now came to King's
coffin, respectfully but not without intent, aiming to canonize him
in their way, to posthumously secure him, taking away from the
underprivileged in the name, of course, of 'brotherhood and unity
of the nation.' A struggle for King's legacy continued at the coffin,
and alongside the genuine heirs, false heirs emerged,
hypocritically anointing him with a pretend anointing of the very
system against whose vices he vehemently rebelled in his final
days.
These false heirs could not be driven away from the coffin, but
they encountered silent, firm resistance. Not in a solemn hearse,
but on a pair of mules harnessed to a simple farm wagon with
high wooden sides, they carried the coffin from the church to the
college where the mourning gathering took place. On these mules,
this working yoke of American Southern mule skinners, who had
received nothing of their country's automotive abundance.
Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, and other friends of King
deliberately dressed in farmer's overalls, worn amidst the black
mourning suits. It was a sunny day, sharp shadows on the
sidewalks. In the silence, the wheels of this strange, taken-from-
dusty-backroads wagon clattered on the asphalt. And in it, without
flowers, lay the coffin, and on its sides were friendly, loyal hands.
And similar hands held the reins of the floppy-eared peaceful
mules.
TV networks set up their posts all along the route. The vigilant
eye of the TV camera suddenly caught senators, forgetting the
mourning, with trained, clever-tired or triumphant smiles, and
then, sensing themselves on the screen by the sixth sense of
politicians, they submitted to the commanding controller and
hastily wiped the smiles off their faces. But tens of thousands of
real people, honest Americans, crossed the television screen with
broad steps, arriving in Atlanta from everywhere to defy racism at
King's coffin.
"We Shall Overcome..." - this song soared over the column that
seemed endless. This song concluded the mourning meeting on
the lawn of Morehouse College. For the first time since the march
on Washington in August 1963, such an immeasurable gathering
of fighters for equality, both black and white, assembled. Joining
hands, swaying to the rhythm of the melody, they solemnly,
proudly, and decisively sang out, "We are not afraid. We are not
afraid. We are not afraid today. Deep in my heart, I do believe, we
shall overcome someday."
President Johnson had scheduled a speech before both houses of
Congress for April 8, indicating a forthcoming significant
program to aid African Americans. However, after quelling the
riots and facing opposition from congressmen against rushing
things, the presidential speech was postponed and eventually
canceled.
A week after King's funeral, I had the opportunity to visit
Washington. Smoke from fires no longer obscured the April blue
sky. Troops had disappeared, and the "rebels" either awaited trial
or went into hiding. Law enforcers were showered with
compliments for their moderation. Along 14th Street, collapsed
walls formed uneven piles of bricks along the sidewalks.
Passersby hurried about their business, seemingly unaffected,
immersed in themselves, paying no heed to the fires or ruins. How
quickly the average American gets accustomed to everything!
Several days after the assassination, Mayor Lindsay of New
York City's bitter truth began to show. He labeled the national
mourning as a "one-day spectacle of conscience." The time of
touching obituaries for the "apostle of nonviolence" swiftly
passed. Discussions about the fate of the ghettos fell into familiar
patterns: to shoot or not to shoot at black individuals when they
attempt to seize property? The same question, but in a more
practical form: is shooting profitable, or does it increase the
number of such attempts? Finally, Congress, after much agitation,
passed a desegregation law for the sale and rental of houses. They
hastily declared it a monument to King, despite objections from
black leaders who saw it as another half-measure. Legally, the
locks of the invisible gates of the ghettos were removed, but
where were the dollars to step out through these gates? Billions
still flowed toward the killings in Vietnam. Ralph Abernathy,
King's successor, knew that the best monument to the deceased
leader would be a "poor people's march" on Washington.
Preparations for the march were coming to an end, but it was
already clear that things were not going well, and that Congress,
the White House, and, of course, the Washington police were
firmly opposed to the march.
I revisited Washington in the latter half of June, just before
departing from the U.S. At Arlington National Cemetery, grass
peeked through the sparse, rough slabs on John Kennedy's grave
and those of his two children. And to the left, on the slope of the
hill, about fifteen meters from these stones, a modest white cross
stood among the grass, marking Senator Robert Kennedy's grave,
which had not yet become monumental. A tourist crowd in casual
summer clothes snapped photographs. On the other side of the
Potomac, at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, where the marble
stern lumberjack, grown from a president to a liberator of African
Americans, sat, resting his long, lean hands on the armrests of his
chair, a makeshift, wooden, tent-like city of the poor sprawled
out. If you stepped outside the fence of this city to the long
rectangular pond, encased in granite, Lincoln loomed on the left
above you, while far to the right, the dome of the Capitol
triumphantly floated in the air. But Lincoln has long been silent;
he has long ceased to be the guardian. Congress was furious at
this wooden-and-canvas monstrosity that marred the capital's
finest view.
When we approached the pond, surrounded by a cluster of
reporters, stood a man with a broad dark face dressed in farmer's
garb. Ralph Abernathy. He was speaking to the journalists. There
were few of them. The town had already been raided by the police
several times; this sensation was becoming monotonous, losing its
appeal. The pickets of the poor at ministries, the delegations
kindly heard by the ministers—why not dedicate an hour or two to
Blacks, Mexicans, Native Americans?—yielded no result. The
authorities menacingly demanded an end to this campaign, citing
unsanitary conditions in the town that, God forbid, might infect
the bureaucratically sterile Washington, and the expiration of the
permit. Abernathy did everything he could, but hints of
uncertainty seeped through his determination. The absence of
King was felt. There was no expected mass of participants, no
former dynamism, and broad support.
I returned to New York and a day later, scanning through the
newspaper, I saw Abernathy's broad face behind the bars of a
police van. The poor had been dispersed with batons; their town
was destroyed and burned. Amidst the rapid-fire barrage of
newspaper headlines, two caught my attention: "House
Commission Cools to Johnson's Call for Tighter Gun Sales
Control," "Abernathy Gets Twenty Days; Disorder in the Capital
Subsided."
That's how the poor people's march ended.
Will they overcome it? They must overcome it. They cannot not
overcome it. They will overcome "someday," as their song
cautiously stipulates.
 THREE DAYS IN DEARBORN

Like the Russian saying goes, 'You don't take your samovar to
Tula,' similarly, as per the State Department's directive, our
brother doesn't drive to Dearborn. We had to fly there. In the
automotive empire of Detroit, ruled by three competing emperors
—General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Chrysler—only
Ford's dominions are open to us, namely Dearborn, a Detroit
suburb. Yet even there, you can't get in any other way but by
plane, because Dearborn itself is encircled by closed-off areas.
Want to go to Dearborn? Welcome, but without a car.
From Buffalo to Detroit, it's a 40-minute flight over the whitish
Lake Erie. At Detroit's 'international airport,' I didn't waste any
time; I hurried to Dearborn, away from sin, although sin is
sanctioned by the same State Department—after all, they won't
parachute me into Dearborn in the end. I took a cab, and along the
roads of the automotive Mecca, we made our way to the Dearborn
Tavern Hotel. Surely, that should be in Dearborn.
The taxi driver was Black. I introduced myself and asked how
things were in Detroit.
— Alright, although not booming.
— Were you born here?
— No, from the South.
— So, is it better for Blacks here than in the South? — Better.
— And finding work is probably harder than for a white
person?
Oh, yes. You have to be twice as smart to get the same job.
— Why is that? Is it about education or skin color?
Certainly, education matters, but most importantly, it's about
color. In Dearborn, they especially don't like us.
— Why?
 — Well, it's everywhere, softened the Black man's assertion
against Dearborn. During the war, I was in England, France, Italy.
Everywhere, a Black man is treated poorly. And how is it in
Russia for you?
I assured him that in Russia, it's different, and there's a full
'okay' with finding work for Blacks, although there are no Blacks
except for students and diplomats.
— Why? — His question was accusatory, suggesting that
they've already transferred our brother.
I explained that we didn't import their brother from Africa. He
didn't know that. Everywhere, other unfortunate Blacks haunted
the Black man's imagination. And Indians to the Indians. I
realized this once near Kansas City when an Indian sat next to us
in the car. When he found out where we were from, he started
from afar: Do you have mountains in Russia? What about forests?
And reindeer? Do you have trout? This shy lad left without asking
the crowning question, although this question obviously spun on
his tongue: Do you have Indians in Russia, and how do they, the
unfortunate, live there?
— And what about you? — the Black man inquired. —
Newspapers write very unfavorably about you. Is that true?
— What's true?
— Well, how should I put it... Here, we can curse the president.
Can you do that in Russia? They say you can't.
The Black man needs to be 'twice as smart as the white man' to
get the same job, but he has consolations that he values: he can
curse the president; it's safer than sending his boss to hell. Just
prove that you're a loyal American and not 'red,' otherwise
complications may arise.
We arrived at the 'Dearborn Tavern' along a luxurious oak
alley. In the old-fashioned, divan-carpeted lobby, portly, painted,
almost immortal-looking old ladies sat in armchairs under colorful
covers. Deceptively, they didn't seem like idlers. No, such old
ladies don't sit still; they're rich and as mobile as ever. With their
husbands gone, separated from their children, and feeling
absolutely no longing for grandchildren, these vigilant old ladies
flutter around their country and the world, as if checking to see if
their ideal is intact. And that ideal, absorbed at the turn of the
century, boils down to one persistent and narrow falsehood: that
poverty is a sin and wealth is virtue.
And counting on the wallets of these daughters of the old, as if
it had never happened, revolution, here stand behind the main
hotel building the neatness of red-brick houses with little
palisades and idyllically white picket fences. Silence. Finally, I
achieved it.
They led me into the bright room, that is, the room in the
cottage "named after Walt Whitman." There are three more rooms
here, but the guests are quiet as mice. Only occasionally behind
the wall, the rattling of an elderly voice and the muted noise of a
television set. In the bright room, there are vaulted ceilings,
frequent intersections of window frames, muslin curtains, a
pseudo-kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling, a wrought iron
chest, an armchair, a bed, a dresser—all carved, not furniture, but
the embodiment of walnut tree's nostalgia for the past. And the
invisible offended spirit of Walt Whitman, the singer of great
roads and human freedom.
But the television and telephone, the toilet and bathroom
gleamed with plastic, nickel, and enamel. They didn’t joke or part
with convenience and hygiene here, even when imitating
antiquity.
Suddenly, I felt uneasy. I felt sorry for Whitman. Even for
Ford, who in my mind didn't fit in with antiquity in any way. By
the way, where's Ford? After all, the tavern is part of his Dearborn
complex. And Ford appeared. I found him—in the drawer of the
faux-antique desk. "Welcome to Ford in Dearborn!" exclaimed
the dark-haired man with a broad face from the rough cover of the
brochure. Henry Ford II himself. The grandson of the dynasty's
forefather. To Ford in Dearborn! He pulled me out of the bright
room into the second half of the 20th century.
And obeying Ford, I stepped out onto Oakwood Avenue—the
boulevard near the tavern and strode towards Greenfield Village,
where the Ford museums are located. It was a Sunday. The
industry was silent. Low brick buildings of Ford's research centers
stood comfortably behind low fences. I walked along the sidewalk
next to the highway. The sidewalk was abandoned, unused, and
the road darkened from the tires. And Henry Ford II, having
peered into my visit, explained from the brochure's pages: "...the
automotive transportation has become the most important
economic and social force in modern life, and all of us here in
Dearborn are proud of the long-standing contribution of the Ford
Motor Company to the cause of progress and prosperity of our
country and its people. While you are here, we will make every
effort to make your visit pleasant, informative, and, as we hope,
truly rewarding."
It was a serious conversation. And Oakwood Avenue was filled
with evidence. And I mentally thanked the State Department for
its veto: for making me leave the car in Buffalo and for depriving
me of the right to rent a car in Dearborn. Walking, I could better
assess what the old Henry Ford, his prematurely deceased son
Edsel, and his grandson Henry had done to their country and their
people.
I was the only pedestrian, and I didn't count. A stranger! All
around, cars, everyone in cars, the mechanical rustling beneath the
frightened oaks. I was a deviation from the norm, a scare, a
wildness, I grew into a solitary rebel challenging everyone.
I walked and walked, and each step became heavier for me.
Between me and the people in the cars, there was such an
obviously intimidating mental field, a state of tense, on-the-edge
anticipation that was fraught with explosion. I saw curiosity,
bewilderment. I even saw looks filled with fear. Yes, fear. How
could a person suddenly decide to walk? What happened to them?
On Michigan Avenue, Dearborn's central thoroughfare, I could
have shouted like Diogenes: "I'm looking for a person! Any
person." But on Sunday, it was bare, as if five minutes remained
before the arrival of a radioactive wave, which they managed to
warn about a week ago. Stores, banks, restaurants were closed.
Bars were empty. At the cinema showing a film about
Michelangelo's "Agony and Ecstasy," there were only two guys, a
girl, and the cashier bored in her glass booth. And a handful of
passersby on miles of sidewalks.
But the gas stations were still active. Cars, cars on the
pavement—white and black, families, couples, solo riders, with
dogs poking their heads out of windows. Rustle, the whisper of
cars. The dense rustling and squeaking of brakes at traffic lights.
The green signal—and again shh... shh... This was after the
Sunday rendezvous with the television, the green melancholy, and
the enduring instinct of communication drove the Dearborn
residents towards people. But people in cars were not the same as
people in the crowd. You couldn't call out to them from the
sidewalk, couldn't strike up a conversation. Once they were in
their cars, they had to hurry, slaves to speed. They were close yet
distant, in their metallic microcosm on wheels, with countless
horsepower under the hood…
An American, especially one in small towns, cannot do without
a car, not just physically due to the lack or complete absence of
public transport, but also psychologically. He cannot conceive of
life without a car. He long ago understood that a car is not a
luxury but a means of transportation. But a car is also a symbol of
prestige, an emblem of one's standing in society: from a tattered,
15-year-old "Ford" for 50 dollars, where an Eastern Kentucky
miner searches for work, to the shiny black "Cadillac" with a
phone, TV, portable bar, and a chauffeur in a uniform cap,
replacing the coachman of the 3rd century on commas. Without a
car, an American is incomplete. They absorb it with their mother's
milk, or rather with "baby food," with industrial children's food in
jars and tin cans because American women have long stopped
breastfeeding, safeguarding their youthfulness and figure.
Nevertheless, I found a person on Michigan Avenue. Not just
any person, but the talkative one I was looking for, typically lively
American, albeit already slightly hunched, an old man in his
Sunday suit who, before my arrival, tried to talk to the
mannequins in the shop windows, along with, of course, a dog. He
had a dog on a leash, and this was not an insignificant detail
because, without the dog, there wouldn't have been an old man on
Michigan Avenue. Firstly, the dog, unaware of the existence of
Fords and devoid of its own chain of human inadequacy
evolution, whined about the fresh air and the walking. Secondly,
in the eyes of thousands of people rushing in cars, the dog
justified the atavistic instinct of the old man to just take a walk.
He didn't feel like an incomplete Fordian because he wasn't
walking but taking the dog for a walk.
 The old man turned out to be a Ford worker. He only
complained about his boss but was content with his fate and
Henry Ford II. The dark-haired Henry Ford, who greeted me an
hour ago from the pages of his brochure, was a benefactor father
figure for the old man, understanding his "responsibility," caring
for the employment of the population, and building new factories
in the county. And this philosophy of the old man had a decent
dollar equivalent: a highly skilled worker, earning just over $4 an
hour, $170 a week.
The old man's wife had passed away a long time ago. He had
raised his two daughters, now grown and married, all by himself.
Numbers spilled from him like goat droppings. He kept his
daughters in a private boarding house for two years.
"I'll tell you, though," he whispered, "every penny paid off."
But the daughters grew up, flew off. Then came a dog—a
beloved object, a remedy for loneliness. And once, sorrow struck
the old man—his dog went missing. Simple life—simple tragedy.
The old man printed sorrowful announcements in all the local
newspapers. And how could he be unhappy with fate? The dog
was found after two weeks. And the woman who sheltered it
refused to take the $10 reward promised in the ads. "But I said,
since I promised, take it."
The old man was not accustomed to getting things for free.
Now, the dog's collar had a phone number and an address.
And what's next? What's next? Everything is well and
prosperous. He paid off his mortgaged house long ago. A new
"Comet" car, a pity there's no garage. He's building another house
to rent out for extra income when he retires. And he rented
another house and sublets it. Plus some stocks.
So, what's the result? A laborer? An urban small-time property
owner? The devil knows! The figures convince that he's a happy
man. But since when can happiness be expressed in numbers?
The earnings for the working people are generally good.
Nevertheless, many take on side jobs. What drives them? Fear of
a dark day? The desire for self-respect, so easily measured in
dollars? Or some kind of fear of appearing as a pedestrian on a
street where everyone is in cars?
 II

Today is Memorial Day—a day to honor the fallen.

Newspapers and television screens pay tribute. In the morning, on
the screen, Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, across
the Potomac River—the most famous military cemetery in the
country. Star-spangled flags and bouquets by gravestones. A
wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. President Johnson
praised the "American boys" in Vietnam and American freedom.
Hearts and minds are filled with Vietnam. They remember the
fallen in the new war and those soldiers in the jungles, whom,
perhaps, they will have to remember in the coming year.
The Detroit Free Press prints on the front page "Soldier's Diary.
A Hero's Thoughts on War." Sparse, hurried lines of Sergeant
Alex Vaksi, born in Detroit on June 18, 1930, killed near Tieu-
Hoa in South Vietnam on February 6, 1966. A portrait of the
serious dark-haired sergeant and his smiling wife. For some
reason, he smiles in front of the camera, even in mourning.
Van Santer, a newspaper staff member, writes: "Today, we
honor Alex Vaksi and thousands like him, who died for our
country in its numerous wars. If you haven't lost a husband, son,
father, or friend in one of these battles, think today of Alex Vaksi.
Who was he?"
There are memories from his sister. In childhood, "he played
with toy soldiers for hours." He graduated high school in Detroit,
joined the army in 1946, concealing his age (he was only 16),
fought in Korea, and received the "Silver Star." "Alex never said
why," remembers his sister. After Korea, he served in the Detroit
police, "missed the army," returned as a volunteer and was sent as
a military advisor to South Vietnam. "He received another 'Silver
Star,' but again didn't tell his family why."
He could have stayed home, with his wife and three children,
but again chose the jungles.
The soldier's diary is professional, brief descriptions of combat
encounters, occasional thoughts. For example: "I think our troops
have done damn fine work here. World War II and Korea were no
more of a game than the one we're playing here."
 He was still playing, but now pondered how terrible this
"game" was. The last entry is emotional. The sergeant writes
about the battle for the village, about the "Skyraiders" planes that
"in the second raid in the last three-quarters of an hour dropped
heavy bombs now approximately a hundred yards away from us."
I returned to the small village house where, it seemed to me,
two people were hiding in the bomb shelter. It turned out that
there were four teenagers, two middle-aged women, and an old
woman. All of them were clustered in the space where even two
of us wouldn't fit, yet they spent the entire day there. I led them
out to an open place, as the house, trees, and so on are too good of
a target for planes and firearms. I hoped that our soldiers, upon
seeing them, at least wouldn't shoot. I feared that Company 'C'
would come here, throwing grenades into every crevice... I gave
them a can of biscuits and cheese—It seemed like they trusted
me... That's why I hate this war. The innocent suffer the most."
He fell in the same battle. The company commander wrote in a
letter to his widow: "Inspiring the soldiers, he did not hide from
machine-gun fire. We called him the best, and he was: the best
soldier and the best man."
The article's author concludes with a restrained masculine tear.
"Perhaps on this 'Memorial Day,' you'll leave your tasks for a
moment and think about Alex Vaksi. That's why he exists,
'Memorial Day.'"
But why? For what reason did Alex Vaksi die, writing just
before his death that he hated this war? In the ritual of 'Memorial
Day,' such questions are out of place.
On the front page alongside the soldier's diary, the newspaper
prints reports from Saigon: yesterday, another Buddhist nun, a
mother of two, set herself on fire in front of the pagoda; Buddhists
publicly stripe their chests with knives and write letters to
President Johnson in blood. On the second page, under the
headline "Confusion Rules Saigon," the Detroit Free Press
publishes a note from their Saigon correspondent. The
correspondent quotes an American sergeant unloading four
severely wounded Americans from a medical plane. "You get mad
when you see these bodies coming in every day while these
bastards are still fighting each other," the sergeant said in anger.
 "The bastards fighting each other" are the South Vietnamese
allies of the USA, the very ones whom the Americans came to
defend. Now, for their newspapers and sergeants, the protected
ones have become the bastards. Many easily swallow such
transformations…
After the newspapers and television, I slipped through the
"daughters of the revolution" in the tavern hall, onto Oakwood
Avenue. Again, there was a confrontation between a lone walker
and thousands in cars. But in the spacious fields of Greenfield
Village, where the Ford museums are located, people abandoned
their metal micro-worlds to form an ancient flowing crowd. They
emerged from Fords, Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Lincolns, Cadillacs,
Buicks, Ramblers, etc., etc., and entered the museums, not sparing
three dollars to gaze with nostalgic condescension at the ancestors
of their cars and the powerful broad-chested locomotive
"Southern Pacific," at ancient typewriters and telegraph keys, at
gas horns, Thomas Edison's laboratory, the Wright brothers'
workshop, and of course, the paternal home of Henry Ford the
first—back then, the progenitor did not have a serial number, he
was simply a farmer's son, a practical boy with a passion for
mechanics. By old age, Ford the first began collecting these
exhibits himself, because like many others, he first made millions,
and then, when the flywheel was spinning and other millions
clung to the difficult initial millions as if by themselves, he
pondered eternity, the gratitude of posterity, and the pedestal of a
prophet: with millions, one could broadcast across America.
In the area at the entrance to Greenfield Village, hundreds of
four trailers—streamlined aluminum houses on wheels—were
standing. Near each, a car, hitched to the trailer on the move,
grazed with a harnessed horse. Yesterday, I noticed how new
trailers were entering the area and lining up, how American flags
fluttered among them on flagpoles. Loudspeakers cheerfully
distributed instructions about parking, water, and electricity.
Today, I approached two organizers at the gate. They were in
civilian clothes but with stylish pilot caps, and the caps were
embroidered with mysterious words—"Wally Byam Caravan
Club."
 What's this all about? One organizer immediately proudly
announced that these aluminum houses had even visited Red
Square in Moscow last year. Another started to show and explain
everything to me.
And he indeed showed and explained everything to me, Henry
Wheeler, a retired engineer, an old man with a triangle of gray
mustache and puffy eyelids. I turned out to be a discovery for
Henry Wheeler. He was craving for someone to whom he could
show the brand-new trailer for 8 thousand dollars—8 thousand!!!
—what luck—meeting a Russian, a communist, in Dearborn and
surprising him with an American trailer! Henry and I strolled
among the rows of other trailers, and Ninette, Henry's
unsuspecting, pleasant, gray-haired wife, nervously shouted from
the aluminum doorstep:
— Henry, what are you doing?! I haven't laid out the carpets
yet!
That's how it goes, friends, the carpets weren't laid out. But
even without the carpets, this aluminum shack was a marvel, and
as a polite foreign guest, I admired it wholeheartedly. It had all
the conveniences and pleasures: a gas stove with three burners, a
gas griddle for steaks, a refrigerator running on gas and
electricity, a dishwashing sink, cabinets for groceries and utensils,
three spacious clothing closets. A toilet. A sink. A shower. Air
conditioning. One sofa—ordinary. Another sofa—pull-out,
double. A foldable table. Chairs. A roof fan. A mesh screen on the
door—against insects. A foldable footrest. Two propane cylinders
up front, securely attached: when one runs out, the second one
automatically takes over. And many other things fitted into an
area no larger than 15—18 square meters. Yet, it felt spacious
enough, with room to walk around, sit, and even entertain guests.
And once again, I congratulated Henry on his successful
purchase.
I was even more astonished to learn that this aluminum abode
was not a hobby but a lifestyle, that this house on wheels was
their only home, that they—without wheels—sold their non-
mobile home, and that all the owners of the four hundred trailers
on the lot were serious, permanent nomads, even though many of
their non-mobile homes were not sold but rented out. And that in
the 'Wally Byam Caravan Club'—with 16 thousand trailers, and
thus families—Wally Byam himself doesn't live in a mobile
home. He's their supreme patron, a person who deals trailers and
the idea that as an American ages, it's time not only to move
around—this has been his life's work—but also to live on wheels.
Yes, yes, Wally Byam is not just a manufacturer and dealer but,
in a certain sense, a spiritual leader, the founder of an entire
movement among motorized nomads. He rallied them around his
banner, and on that banner, it's written that if you're going to be a
nomad, then it must be in these streamlined, fashionable
'Airstream' trailers made by Wally Byam. And Wally Byam
tirelessly educates them in the spirit of loyalty to the 'Airstream'
ideals and doesn't even spare a hundred thousand dollars a year
for rallies, services, advertising, printed lists of club members, etc.
In return, he has devoted customers and at least 32 thousand
propagators traveling across the USA, Canada, Mexico.
There is no limit to progress. The aluminum wonder gets better
every year because Wally Byam has mighty, ever-vigilant
competitors. The Wheelers are now eyeing their neighbor
enviously, who added a television to their set of mobile amenities.
And who knows, maybe the refrigerator will become more
elegant, they'll automate the pull-out sofa, and who knows what
else they'll come up with.
The Wheelers will feel embarrassed showcasing their outdated
trailer at the next gathering. It will evoke scornful smirks: 'Ha-ha,
8 thousand dollars?!' And where did ours disappear? Mobilizing
their elderly savings, they'll exchange their current one for an
even more dazzling trailer, now for 10 thousand dollars.
Wally Byam needs nothing more.
From the neighboring trailer, the Wheelers invited a familiar
couple for French coffee, Mexican nuts, and a Russian journalist.
I had to admit that regarding trailers and elderly nomads, we lag
behind and don't seem to plan catching up.
"But is the idea of nomadism in the sunset of life reasonable
and beneficial?" I probed them. What force drags American
seniors from their comfortable spots and compels them to roll and
roll on the threshold of the grave, sparkling in the evening sun
with Wally Byam's aluminum products?
 They explained everything to me. What seems strange to us is
the logical conclusion of their life's path.
Americans habitually entrust the psychological and material
problems of old age to American technology, American roads,
American dealers.
The psychological factor: 'As you age, the world shrinks, you
feel loneliness and isolation. You don't want to burden your
children. It's easier to make acquaintances on the road. New
places, new people stimulate the waning interest in life.'
The material factor: it's cheaper. Cheaper without home and
land taxes. You pay only for gasoline and a bit for camping
parking—just for a piece of land under the wheels, for gas and
electricity hookup. There are many campgrounds. Along with
migratory birds, depending on the season, you can head south or
north. You can save on the cost of living because the American
dollar always has more weight overseas than at home. Both
couples pass through Dearborn. Yet, they prefer to live in Mexico,
at a campground near Guadalajara: 'reasonable prices, decent food
much cheaper.'
A side conversation emerged about Mexico and Mexicans,
unexpectedly but not randomly—cleanliness of toilets, hot water,
and, of course, dollars. My interlocutors felt ashamed for those
club members who, surveying a foreign country from their clean
aluminum nest and adoring its reasonable prices, deride Mexicans
as 'dirty thieves.' The neighbor woman recounted with some glee
a story of a fall from grace of one squeaky-clean American lady.
She allegedly became as dirty as a Mexican peasant when her
trailer's tank was left with only 10 gallons of water.
I returned them to the conversation about nomadism. What
about being in the deep throes of old age, when sight and hands
fail, lying on the bench? Oh, then you can permanently park at
some campground.
Imagine, then you can even refrain from mowing the lawn in
front of the trailer!
Henry Wheeler triumphantly exclaimed, and the nomads
cheered at the mention of this great blessing.
That's right, dear friends, you can forgo mowing the lawn.
 I've never, I must confess, mowed lawns; I strained my
imagination to appreciate the full extent of renouncing this ritual.
I realized that untrimmed lawns go hand in hand with unspread
carpets, that it's a daring revolt against all-powerful bourgeois
conformity. And envisioning this rebellion, I remembered the old
ladies from the 'Dearborn Tavern,' those effigies on soft chairs,
guardians of the great ideal. Of course, virtue resides in wealth or
at least in a 'decent life,' in bourgeois respectability.
And when you can't uphold the standards of a wheel-less
'decent life' anymore, when prosperous neighbors already eye
your aging home with disdain and the Hamlet-like question arises:
to mow or not to mow the lawns?—retreat gracefully.
Move onto wheels. There, the conformity standards aren't as
strict. Enrich Wally Byam's clientele. Original nomads are
allowed to not mow the lawns…
Conformity coexists with rebellion, criticism from compatriots
for narrow-mindedness and provincialism coexists with
patriotism, national pride, and clichéd propaganda.
I stand for freedom and competition," says Ninet.
She knows what competition is. Who knows it better than
Americans, for whom the school of life is synonymous with the
school of competition? And what is freedom? Freedom is
precisely the freedom of competition. For her, these concepts are
twins.
Henry is candid, especially when there are no neighbors
around. He sees many inconsistencies in the government's
politics, in the country's economic orientation. He doesn't hesitate
to voice his grievances about the people in Washington in front of
a foreigner, especially a "red" one:
"They spend 50–60 billion dollars a year on the military and
military equipment. That sum is unimaginable. How many years
does this go on for? Now we've come to the point where it's
increasingly difficult to let go of it. But look at what's happening
in the meantime? Razors—would you buy American ones? No.
You'd take the English ones—they're of better quality. Cameras,
televisions? The Japanese ones are better. European cars are more
durable, sturdier, and yet we make everything with a planned
obsolescence. And ships. We buy Japanese ships. In America, the
cost of labor is such that we can't compete with other countries.
For him, as Wally Byam's protege, there's fear of vulnerability
against big corporations, ones that are mythical, strong, and
immense.
"Have there not been dozens of automobile corporations, and
where are they now? Only the 'big three' remain. Try opening a
new automotive business. Even with a hundred million, you'll
fail."
He was born and grew up in the era of American isolationism,
not just in foreign policy but also within the country (weak
centralization, extensive state rights, preoccupation and traditional
obsession with local and personal matters and business). And
here, for some paltry decades, his country has taken on the burden
of being the "guardian of the world," the "world's policeman."
What a mess this has caused in the mind of the average American,
who traditionally couldn't care less about anything that happens
not only outside his country but also beyond his city and state?
He's used to seeing everything as a pragmatist, living for today,
denying any theory in principle. But the narrow pragmatist's
yardstick is unsuitable for history, and an American feels like a
participant in it, and while choosing between two candidates for
the US presidency, he might be choosing between war and peace
(whether mistakenly or correctly—that's another matter).
Henry Wheeler drives his aluminum trailer to Mexico and reads
a Mexican newspaper published in English there. Suddenly, he
realizes that in this newspaper, the world looks different from the
one he's been reading about all his life in northern Michigan. He
discovers that he's been brainwashed. He tries to break through to
the truth. He attempts to look at the world historically: "You
started later and yet achieved greater results." He senses a threat
in American insular and affluent well-being, in the American
arrogant attitude toward other nations based on the principle of
the rich toward the poor. He realizes that a hundred years without
war both helped and corrupted Americans—they don't know what
war is like and what Russians and Europeans suffered, and this is
dangerous.
 And he himself is entangled in the petty but powerful
categories of American philistinism, American notions of 'decent
life' formed by the same major corporations. Naively, there's a
childlike pride in his brand-new trailer, a flurry of apologies for
the unmade beds pour out of him…
The coffee was drunk, the nuts were eaten, and Wheeler's
neighbors departed. Evening was setting in, and a loud radio voice
echoing over the camp warned the nomads of an impending
danger: Greenfield Village refused to connect the trailers to its
power grid. My hosts became seriously worried, and I realized it
was time to say goodbye. But as a parting gesture, Henry decided
to introduce me to an outstanding nomad.
"This guy," he whispered to me with the secret enthusiasm of a
conspirator.
However, the guy had disappeared somewhere, and Henry
himself told me a brief story. A story about The Real Man from
'Wally Byam's Caravan Club.'
This story, one and the same, was rewritten every time a new
aluminum home on wheels, just like all the others but belonging
to a Black person, suddenly rolled into the trailer camp, wherever
it might have sprawled. And as soon as he took his place in line,
The Real Man would kindly knock on the Black aluminum door:
Are you bothered? Is everything alright here? And the grateful
family thanked the tireless defender of racial equality and an easy
adversary of discrimination. And the hero knocked again half an
hour later: All good? They thanked him again, but that was just
the beginning. The Real Man was vigilant, punctual, and tireless.
Half an hour later, his cheerful call could be heard: All okay? He
didn't spare himself day or night, banging on the aluminum door:
everything alright? After a maximum of three days in the
campground, finally, order was restored: the Black compatriot
departed, realizing that no Wally Byam's aluminum wonders
would protect him from the '100% American' individuals.
I was stunned by this story, told with ecstatic and vindictive
pleasure.
"But what did Black people do to upset you, Mr. Wheeler?"
 The setting sun played coldly on the streamlined sides of 20th-
century civilized trailers, and Henry Wheeler whispered in my
ear:
"You know, there's this concept—'middle class.' So, Americans
want to get into the middle class or at least get closer to it. They
work diligently, save money for a house, a car, to elevate their
children, save something for old age. They know the value of
every penny and owe every penny to their labor. But why don't
Black people enter the middle class?
His words were dry, bookish, but he whispered them warmly,
like words of love and hate. He whispered those words—this very
Henry Wheeler, who felt awkward about his fellow citizens
mistreating Mexicans as 'dirty thieves,' Henry Wheeler—the critic
of big corporations and the arms race, Henry Wheeler—the
amiable, knowledgeable old man, pleasant to chat with over
coffee and nuts.
"And that's why," he continued. "They have a different attitude
toward pennies. They couldn't care less—earned it, spent it.
They've been free for a hundred years and it's their fault they live
in poverty. And what happens? Their children have a destructive
instinct. Everything in this country is foreign to them…
And in haste, he bid goodbye and hurried away on his urgent
electrical errands.
But I appreciated the solemnity of the moment and the firmness
of this creed. There are different Black people with different
attitudes toward money, and, according to Wheeler, there are 32
Black millionaires in Detroit. But he takes the impoverished and
desperate Black mass, and it instills fear in him. They don't fit into
his 'American way of life,' and just because of that, they challenge
this way of life. They've received nothing from America and are
frightening because they have nothing to lose. Henry Wheelers—
and their millions—see in Black people destroyers, because by the
fact of their impoverishment and the impulse to struggle, Blacks
encroach upon the economic and social status quo, the difficult,
precarious, but in its way stable balance of power in American
society. And they knock supports out from under Henry Wheeler's
ideals, from under his applied life philosophy, materially
embodied in the 'Erst-Rim' trailer brand. He fears that they have
different value criteria.
So, is he a racist? Perhaps, yes. But judging by Henry
Wheeler's explanation, his racism is only derivative. He is deeper
than a racist, even more than a racist. He is an owner. And from
the owner's point of view, Blacks are the generalized antithesis for
him. Henry Wheeler is a particle of that terrible, mass, petit
bourgeois element that, as Lenin remarked, daily and hourly
generates capitalism on a massive scale. And it nourishes its
circulation and preserves it. An owner... Isn't this where it all
begins, no matter how far the ends have gone—in this case, in
racism.

III
In the morning, again on foot, like a devout pilgrim, to the
headquarters of the Ford Motor Company in Southfield, on the
outskirts of Dearborn. First along Michigan Avenue, then on the
highway, crowded with cars, across a large, untrodden meadow
intersected by highways. The twelve-story Ford headquarters is
not large compared to the skyscrapers of leading corporations in
New York, but it is beautiful, clean, stands spaciously, gleaming
blue with glass. By the way, Ford provided the UN skyscraper on
East River in New York with their own manufactured blue glass.
The tour at the Rouge Plant, old but the most famous at Ford
and the largest in the USA. A regular free tour for anyone
interested. They won't show what they shouldn't, but there's no
feeling of annoying closed doors either. Clean, comfortable,
radio-equipped buses depart from the main office to the plant
every hour. Among us gathered ordinary people: schoolchildren, a
girl disabled by paralysis with her mother and a specially folding
wheelchair on wheels, an elderly man with an old woman,
perhaps former Russians or Ukrainians, a powerful Black man
with three Black women, two Japanese, naturally, with film
cameras.
We ride through some woodlands at first. The guide, a
handsome and trendy guy, explains that these are all Ford's
possessions, Ford's land, Ford's forests. The possessions are vast.
Ford, although not a farmer, even gets some money from the
government for unused land: in America, with its overproduction
of agricultural products, farmers receive federal subsidies for
intentionally unprocessed land.
For a non-specialist like me, it's hard to describe the Rouge
Plant, especially after a brief tour. The plant is enormous. The
entire production cycle. An automobile begins with iron ore
arriving at Ford's own port on the Rouge River and ends on the
assembly line. By the dock at the port stood, among other things,
the cargo ship 'Robert McNamara.' The former Ford president and
then Pentagon chief were 'embodied' in a ship while still alive.
The tour is as organized and operational as assembling cars.
After riding around the factory grounds on the bus, we found
ourselves on the assembly line. The guide stopped us in the right
places, arranged us in a semi-circle, took out the microphone from
a box on the wall, and delivered his memorized speech. To the
observer, the pace on the assembly line doesn't seem excessive.
There's even a kind of labor grace—almost like a dance. You can't
strike up a conversation with the workers—it's the assembly line.
Every 54 seconds, fashionable, semi-sporty 'Mustangs' jump off
the line, adding to the 90 million cars on three and a half million
miles of American roads and bridges.
I was provided with figures and facts at the main office. Fifty
years ago, when Henry Ford I, already a prosperous automobile
manufacturer, decided to build a huge closed-cycle plant, even his
friends were 'skeptical.' This is stated in the official corporate
description of the Rouge Plant. 'Enemies said he was out of his
mind. Congressmen opposed when he approached the government
to deepen and widen the channel on the Rouge River to
accommodate seagoing vessels. Shareholders were against it,
wanting the company's profits to go to dividends, not to expand
production. Landowners inflated land prices along the river to a
fantastic height.'
Ford overcame all and everything. In November 1917, for the
residents of Dearborn, the main event was, of course, not the
revolution in Russia, but the laying of the Ford plant.
Today, this is just one of many Ford plants, albeit the largest.
Every day, 5,000 trucks, 20,000 cars, and more than 60,000
pedestrians pass through its gates. The 135 acres of car parks
provide space for 20,000 cars; some workers live seventy miles
away from the plant. In 1963, Ford paid $476 million to its 53,000
workers and staff in the Dearborn area (there are currently
330,000 people working across all Ford facilities). The factory
consumes and generates as much electricity as a city with a
million inhabitants. In 1963, the plant received 179,000 visitors
from all 50 states in the USA and 107 countries. 'American
presidents, high-ranking foreign guests, Argentine gauchos, and
barefoot natives from Fiji' have visited it.
The Ford Motor Company is an industrial corporation that, in
terms of car production, lags far behind General Motors, the
largest industrial corporation in the capitalist world. But Ford,
Henry Ford I, the Ford dynasty, is something more. It is history
and a notable institution in modern American life. It is a provider
not only of cars but also of ideas. Besides museums, there is an
'Educational Affairs Department' at Ford Motor Company.
One of the publications from this department is an apologetic
booklet titled 'The Evolution of Mass Production (The History of
Ford's Contribution to Modern Mass Production and How It
Changed the Habits and Thinking of an Entire Nation).' The
booklet does not overattribute to Ford. He was not an inventor but
a skilled, persistent dealer and organizer who thoroughly
developed the principle of mass production based on four
discoveries of his distant and close predecessors. These
discoveries—interchangeability of parts, conveyor belt, division
of labor, elimination of unnecessary movements for the worker.
The booklet attributes the first discovery to American Eli
Whitney. In 1798, with an impending war between the US and
France, the government urgently needed 10,000 muskets.
Gunsmiths and craftsmen physically couldn't complete this task in
two years. Eli Whitney solved the problem by creating a machine
for producing gun parts, thus practically implementing the
assembly principle.
Ford formulated the second principle as follows: 'The worker
should stand still, and the work should move.' This is the idea of
the conveyor belt. It was first implemented by Oliver Evans, the
inventor of the automatic mill. His conveyor was simple: one
worker poured grain from bags, and another at the end of the line
received the ground grain in bags. In a more developed form, the
conveyor appeared in the 1860s at Chicago's slaughterhouses. A
moving belt, on which skinned slaughtered pigs were hung,
allowed twenty workers to slaughter and process 1440 pigs in 8
hours. Previously, their limit was 620 pigs.
The third principle ('break the work into smaller tasks and
increase output') was extensively developed by American Elihu
Root, who assisted Samuel Colt in establishing mass production
of Colt's six-shot pistols. Elihu Root broke down the work process
into many separate operations, 'easy, less prone to error, and
faster.'
While the realization of the first three principles became
possible thanks to the invention of new machines and mechanical
devices, the fourth principle, borrowed by Ford, introduced the
'human factor.' It was about saving time, hence the multiplying
speed of production through well-thought-out elimination of
unnecessary movements for the worker, ultimately transforming
the worker into a machine quickly assembling into a whole
product its parts produced by other machines. The fourth principle
was devised and developed by the well-known Frederick Winslow
Taylor.
The Ford brochure writes about Taylor as follows: 'It was
Taylor who took on the task of, firstly, establishing the speed at
which a worker could most effectively perform tasks, and
secondly, directing the worker's efforts in such a way that they
worked with a minimum of unnecessary movements. The goal
was, of course, time-saving, as time is the essence of profit, and
every lost moment is considered a direct financial loss... Taylor
also found that workers are less effective, and damage is done to
production when work is excessively sped up. "The right speed,"
Taylor wrote, "is the speed at which people can work hour by
hour, day by day, and year by year and maintain good health."'
Taylor was, of course, interested in that good health which
allows the worker to maintain the prescribed regimen. The
brochure indicates that 'to these principles taken from the past,
Henry Ford added his own practical ideas, creating a new method
of automobile production later adopted by the entire automobile
industry.'
Ford himself expressed his philosophy of mass production
bluntly, very candidly, and cynically practical. He wrote: 'The
pure result of applying these principles is to reduce the need for
thought by the worker and also to minimize his movements.
Ideally, he should only perform one operation and only with one
movement.'
As it's known, Charlie Chaplin brilliantly illustrated this
Fordian ideal, creating in 'Modern Times' a tragicomic, funny, and
horrifying image of a worker on the assembly line. He did only
one operation and only one movement, namely tightening a bolt.
One bolt, another bolt, dozens, hundreds of bolts relentlessly
approached him on the conveyor belt. The whole world
catastrophically narrowed down to a person and a bolt, a person in
the service of the bolt, a person born only to tighten bolts.
Chaplin's portrayal is extremely concise and profoundly
emotional.
Ford was a businessman, not a humanist, and especially at the
beginning, he subordinated the 'human factor' to the dollar.
Chaplin helped us to delve into Ford's philosophy not from the
standpoint of profit and production but from the standpoint of
human personality. The essence of progress Ford-style is
frightening: work created the human being, and work must turn
the human being into a machine.
Ford started on June 16, 1903, 'abundantly believing but with
only $28,000 in cash,' as his biographers epically narrate. These
were Ford's first earnings and those of his eleven shareholder
companions. And in 1965, the Ford Motor Company produced 4.5
million cars and tractors, along with a huge amount of military
and 'space' products. Its sales volume in 1965 was $11.5 billion
(second among American corporations, after General Motors),
and its assets amounted to $7.6 billion.
Ford was not the first car manufacturer. Cars were made before
him, but manually and only for racing, for the thrill—it was
fashionable then. However, Ford better understood the century's
need for speed—not on racing tracks but on ordinary roads—and
was the first to tackle the production of cheap mass-produced
cars. After a series of failures, a grand success came in 1908—the
legendary Model T. From October 1908 to the end of 1915, a
million Model Ts were produced. In the following eleven years,
14 million Model Ts were produced. In 1923, Ford's assembly
lines produced 2 million—within one year!—Model T cars.
The car indeed became mass-produced, accessible, deeply
ingrained in daily life.
The consequences, supported by other fronts of industrial
development and mass production, were colossal. The car pulled
roads after it, causing a road-building boom. The car connected
the city to the countryside, making the countryside aspire to the
city in terms of living standards. A qualitatively new, albeit
expensive, need and the accompanying vast, renewable market
were created.
Ford's apologists also attribute to him a 'social revolution' that
was expressed in dollars: he was the first to pay his workers $5 a
day. Ford understood that the growth of people's purchasing
power and profit growth are interconnected.
Ford stood at the origins of that capitalist America, which
required not only a man-machine on the assembly line but also a
person whose ownership of their own machine freed them from
class consciousness. Such a person, an insatiable consumer and
slave to possessions, is skillfully cultivated and perfected by large
corporations, the powerful advertising system—there's no
escaping it—and the entire structure of ideology and life that
persuades that a person's measure is the measure of the things they
possess.
This is a complex and extremely important question, a question
of the interaction between the scientific-technical revolution and
the social system, a question of what—under certain social
conditions—technical progress and mass production serve: the
spiritual entrapment of humans through things or their spiritual
liberation, the narrowing of a person to a consumer or the creation
of a fully developed, harmonious personality.
Here's what the renowned American sociologist Eric Fromm
writes: 'The miracle of production leads to the miracle of
consumption. There are no longer traditional barriers preventing
anyone from acquiring what they desire. They only need money.
But an increasing number of people have money, maybe not for
real pearls, but for synthetics, for 'Fords' that look like 'Cadillacs,'
for cheap dresses that look expensive, for cigarettes identical for
millionaires and workers. Everything within reach can be bought,
can be consumed... Produce, consume, enjoy together, in step with
others, without asking questions. This is the rhythm of their lives.
In that case, what kind of person does our society need? What
'social character' suits 20th-century capitalism? It needs a person
who smoothly cooperates in large groups, who thirsts to consume
more and more, whose standardized, easily influenced traits can
be predicted.'
...The car, refrigerator, television exist not only for actual use
but also for ostentatious display. They signal the owner's status in
society. How do we use the things we acquire? Let's start with
food and drinks. We eat tasteless and nutritionally lacking bread
because it fulfills our fantasy of wealth and fame—it's so white
and 'fresh.' In fact, we 'eat' the fantasy and have lost the
connection with the real thing we're consuming. Our taste, our
bodies are disconnected from this act of consumption, even
though it primarily concerns them. We drink labels. With a bottle
of Coca-Cola, we drink the image of a handsome guy or a girl
drinking it in the advertisement; we drink the advertising slogan
'the pause that refreshes'; we drink the great American habit, least
of all feeling the taste of Coca-Cola on our palate... The act of
consumption should be a significant, human, useful experiment.
There's little left of it in our culture. Consumption largely satisfies
artificially stimulated fantasies, fulfilling a fantasy alienated from
the genuine, real 'self.''
After acknowledging that consumption has become, Fromm
writes: 'The modern man, if he dared to express his concept of
paradise, envisions the world's largest department store,
displaying new things and new gadgets...'
All this, unfortunately, is a truthful description of the
contemporary American, a type akin to Henry Wheeler, though,
of course, many are cruelly left behind the doors of consumer
debauchery, and many rebel against it. Thus, Ford manufactured
not only cars and dollars. Not by chance, in the well-known
Western satirical novel 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley,
Ford appears as a kind of new Christ figure (the author plays with
words—Lord, i.e., master, and Ford). In Huxley's utopia, the years
are counted not from Lord's birth but from Ford's birth, and
people are mass-produced in test tubes with a predetermined
social 'destiny.'
...In the evening, I saw the edge of such a Dearborn, which is
not covered by paid or free tours of Ford—a glimpse into the
underbelly of Ford's America.
Two comrades came to my hotel. I saw them for the first time.
But they are comrades—in views, in a grand idea.
Communist N., working at the Ford factory—a sturdy, ironic,
undaunted person. A Pole, swept up, twisted, and landed in the
whirlwind of wartime in Dearborn. What's it like for a communist
in Dearborn? It's tough. Almost lonely. But N. doesn't conceal
either his views or his affiliation with the party.
Communist? Among other things, isn't it impractical,
unreasonable—to willingly complicate life, to cut off one's path to
goods. But the local union boss, a renegade, a former communist,
once in a moment of honesty admitted to comrade N.: 'You
probably consider me a traitor, don't you? But to me, you're still
closer than those bastards.'
Comrade N. is not naive; whispered apologies in the corner, in
his ear, won't seduce him. However, he knows that dollars won't
replace ideals and won't fill the void where there was something
called conscience.
For the workers who know N. well, he is a communist, yes, but
above all, he's their guy, someone who won't let them down, will
stand up for common interests, whose advice is needed and
valued. N. believes in the union bond, that when needed, they can
protect him from the administration.
Comrade K—editor of a progressive Detroit newspaper in
Polish, an American of Polish descent. He was born in the USA.
In N.'s car, we drive through the evening city in another part of
Dearborn. Industrial outskirts. The stench of exhaust. Old factory
buildings. Old, dilapidated, dirty houses where low-paid workers,
bachelors, widows, and down-and-outs live. N. wants to show the
like-minded person from Moscow, the union boss renegade, with
some secret satisfaction. But in the building of Local 600 of the
automobile builders' union, it's already empty. Today, there's only
one event—a meeting of the local group of 'Alcoholics
Anonymous.' Men and women, old and young, discuss their
problems over a cup of coffee. It's strange, in our view, but, as
they claim, a beneficial organization. Alcoholics heal together.
The fight against the 'green serpent' begins with a public
confession: 'I am an alcoholic!'
We entered a bar, grimy, stinking, smoky. A disabled person
with crutches. An old painted whore. Tense peace, apparently
after a fight. Before our eyes, a policeman leaves after breaking
up the argument. And immediately, a new terrible drunken
commotion. One drunk grabs another by the throat. Others
drunkenly try to separate them. Curses. Someone hides behind the
bar counter. The horror of uncontrolled reactions, heavy,
meaningless looks.
'Like "The Lower Depths" by Gorky,' says K.
We vanish through the back door, leaving behind unfinished
beer. A gloomy, empty courtyard, a fitting scene for murders, for
obscure, futile ends. We cross the road.
'Faster! Faster!' suddenly N. shouts in a voice not his own,
grabbing my hand. Staring into the blazing headlights, a car
rushes madly toward us. Barely managing to pull each other away
from under the wheels, we shout back in unison:
'You son of a b****!'
But the b****'s son vanishes without a trace.
Other working-class neighborhoods are cleaner, neat houses,
lawns, garages. The minimum wage at Ford is two dollars and
change per hour, the maximum—five dollars. But here's N.'s
testimony. Workers increasingly say, 'We need to slow down the
pace of work.' To the visitor's eye, the pace on the assembly line
isn't that high. But everything is calculated and squeezed out by
Taylor's disciples, sociologists, and psychologists. All at the limit
of human capabilities. The dullness of work—eight hours, plus
half an hour for lunch and about 12 minutes for the restroom—
before and after lunch. The slightest disruption on the assembly
line—and panic ensues. Specially trained emergency technicians
on bicycles and motorcycles rush to the disruption site:
'What's the matter? Because of you, we're losing money!'
 After the assembly line, workers 'unwind' themselves at the
bars.
N. recounted an incident that happened recently. A black man
working on the assembly line made a mistake. The foreman
reported it to the management. The black man was docked a
month's pay. He pleaded in vain for forgiveness. Leaving the
manager's office, the black man slashed the foreman with a knife.
Many blacks work at Ford, but most of them don't have high
qualifications and therefore are employed on the assembly line:
'just one operation and just one movement.'
The conversation touched on Vietnam. According to N., young
people are truly afraid of the army. College graduates, even
students who haven't finished their courses, go to Ford's factories
as apprentices—just to avoid being drafted. N. knows a young
biologist who works as an apprentice. Children from affluent
families flee to Canada to avoid the draft—fortunately, Canada is
nearby and the border is open.
Workers talk about the war, but the war remains secondary to
discussions about wages, loans, installment plans, and sports.
Traditionally, they turn to sports; in newspapers, they primarily
read news about baseball games and car races, only then about
military actions. But comparatively, anti-war sentiments among
workers are growing.
N. believes that the American worker differs from the
European, particularly in this important aspect: the American
worker lacks traditions of prolonged political struggle for a
specific broad program, lacks traditions of rallying around any
political party, although during elections, unions usually support
Democrats. The American worker knows how to stand up for their
material interest and believes that a wealthy country can give
them more. Class struggle is predominantly economic in nature,
its manifestations—a collective agreement of the union with the
entrepreneur, strikes demanding wage increases, improvements in
working conditions, and now increasingly against the threat of so-
called technological unemployment caused by automation. But
during national crises, the American worker actively intervenes in
political life, and this intervention takes turbulent forms. Who
could have thought before the crisis of 1929, in an era of
prosperity, that workers would go on 'hunger marches' to
Washington?

Н. and K. emphasize how difficult it is to make predictions

about the anti-war movement within the American working class.
Americans react decisively to war only when it hits close to home,
when the expansion of war narrows their choices: instead of
wartime prosperity, it's rifles in hand and death in the jungles.
K. speaks about the 'dehumanization' of society. Violence and
death are no more than everyday news in newspapers and on TV.
People have become accustomed to them. 'Americans are being
killed in Vietnam? Switch the channel to baseball and car races,'
K. said, sharing a grim anecdote. An American family called a
technician to fix their broken TV. A four-year-old boy was giving
tips to the technician. 'Maybe it's clogged at the bottom. That's
where so many dead Indians fall...'
At the age of four, the boy had already witnessed thousands of
televised deaths.
 With the Indians of Arizona

Navajo is the largest Native American tribe in the USA. It counts 110,000
people. The Navajo reservation is located in the northeast of the state of
Arizona. Its area covers 16 million acres.
From the handbook

In the Chamber of Commerce of Flagstaff, I saw a unique

advertisement — a humorous sketch by Art Buchwald. A self-assured
New Yorker had flown into this small northern Arizona town to share
the fruits of his erudition with the provincials. He began grumbling right
at the airport: 'What kind of air do you have here? How do you even
breathe it?' He was gaping like a fish, ruthlessly deprived of its natural
habitat. He threatened to fly back immediately and only calmed down
when the driver of a giant truck, taking pity, handed him five dollars to
lean against the exhaust pipe, as if it were a mother's breast.
So, Flagstaff is famous for having the freshest, best air in America,
the purest sky, the abundance of Arizona sun, the proximity to the Grand
Canyon, which they familiarly call 'the biggest hole on earth' here, and
also to the planet Pluto. This mentioned planet was discovered precisely
in Flagstaff in 1930 by a telescope from the famous Lowell Observatory.
There are five observatories here, and now they're strengthening ties
with the Moon, mapping it for American astronauts. To the north of
Flagstaff lies the 'national monument' — Sunset Crater, which last
erupted nine centuries ago. Lava plowed the land and froze into porous
ashy slag, where even the devil might break a leg. Astronauts train here,
preparing for lunar walks.
Doing business in the clear sky and space, Flagstaff avoids factory
pipes. It prefers observatories and Northern Arizona University. But
showing interest in space to a Soviet correspondent in America is
dangerous — they might mistake you for a spy. I kept away from the
astronomical hill. I went to the Grand Canyon — a breathtaking
spectacle of nature's mausoleums, and then at the university, I inquired
about the Navajo Indians. As close as the Moon is to Flagstaff, the
Navajo are even closer. Tuba City, the western border of the reservation,
is only 75 miles to the north. It turned out that miles don't solve
anything. Professor Justi, who was looking after me, was slightly
embarrassed when someone on the other end of the line explained to
him that these concerns were unclear and that it was absurd for a Red to
meet with Red-skinned students. My interviewees either knew little or
met inquiries about Indians with mocking smiles — quite an original.
Pluto and the Moon remained two confirmed attractions of Flagstaff.
However, even there, you couldn't bypass the Indians. They stood at
the doors of bars on Santa Fe Avenue, in jeans, cowboy shirts, and
firmly set hats on their heads. They had broad faces, not red but
yellowish-earthly. Straight, short hair, black with a bluish tint. Stocky
figures.
They stood in plain sight, right on the sidewalk, while nearby, across
the highway, endless freight trains of the 'Santa Fe' railway tore through
the air with a whistle and rapid, daring clatter.
And no one noticed them. Like a void, they were easily pierced by
that famous look of the white man, which was described by a Black man
who titled his book 'Invisible Man'. It's the look when they look but
don't see. They look at lackeys that way. At Blacks—until they force
them to look at themselves differently. At the sidewalk bollard—it's not
seen, but mechanically avoided.
On Santa Fe Avenue, the Indians were the invisible ones.
They were outposts of nearby reservations, victims of assimilation
and 'firewater'.
They pay a particularly generous tribute to civilization on weekends.
Then, they load the drunk Indians into police vans, take them to court,
fine them, and escort them (briefly) to jail."
Their sluggishness is habitually despised for their unskilled handling
of 'firewater'. Among all, it's the policemen who despise them the most,
disdainfully rummaging through Indian wallets and pockets, transferring
green bills into their own pockets and wallets. There was another recent
scandal in the police department, but it never solved the Indian puzzle:
how to prove to a white judge that not only swift bartender Joe in his
starched apron but also the sturdy Bob, the law enforcer, cleaned you
out?
'Goodness, who needs Indians? Except for Professor Fox and other
oddballs who have business with everything in the world.
 These words were uttered with irony that veiled tenderness and
adoration. Old Fox stooped under the weight of the compliment. A
Quaker, a pacifist, a local Jesus Christ, and by profession, a professor of
international relations. When he called on students and faculty to march
in protest against the Vietnam War, he was crucified with threatening
phone calls. The procession to Golgotha—from the dormitory to the post
office—had to be postponed.
Who needs Indians?...
Fox's friend sagely remarked that for any endeavor to succeed in
America, it needs publicity, advertising, and relentless promoters.
Indians lack publicity. The Animal Protection Association, caring for the
miserable fate of dogs in the bustle of big cities, and defending their
right to loiter on sidewalks, has more publicity and promoters than the
Indians.
Thus, preparing to visit the Navajo, I felt in Flagstaff one of the
fundamental problems of half a million American Indians: the cruel
indifference of the 'great land' to reservation islands.
Flagstaff strengthens ties with the Moon, not with Tuba City, and
even buses don't run to the reservation. Jim, also known as Yasha,
Elegant, a cheerful student torn between two foreign languages—French
comes easier to him, but they pay more to Russian instructors. We sang
'Moscow Nights', leaving behind the late April snow of Flagstaff, and as
we progressed northward, there were fewer cedars and pines under the
Arizona sky, and finally, the road merged into bare desert rocks, an
ancient desert where tourists even have a 'Dinosaur Trail' with three-toed
clumsy imprints on rocks.
Near this trail lies Tuba City—not really a town but just a kilometer-
long street with sidewalks under elms, school buildings, a hospital,
official residences, teachers' and doctors' houses, and the headquarters of
the Tuba City agency. The reservation is territorially divided into five
agencies, and Tuba City is the administrative center of the westernmost
agency. It was founded in 1878 by Mormons, illegally seizing part of the
treaty Indian land. At the beginning of our century, the federal
government asked them to leave, probably without regret, from this
desert where life hangs by a thread of oases. It's more suited for the
Navajo nomads than the Mormons.
From the Mormons, a solid stone masonry of the 'Tuba City' motel
remained, which instantly reminded me of a rest house in the town of El
Obeid, buried in the sands of the far southwest of Sudan. It's not about
the dim windows, old furniture, or tattered sheets.
Do you know the smell of colonialism? It smelled of it here.
And behind the rickety door with a red arrow pointing towards the
doorbell, the motel manager emerged, also the gas station, cafe, and
factory, an extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of some major
corporation that doesn't disdain Indian pennies in Tuba City. 'The
Ambassador' was aging. Homey, without a tie. Accredited for seventeen
years already.
He was intrigued by the first Russian in Tuba City. And immediately
began speaking about the need for understanding between our countries,
casting an experienced look at me and jotting down the number seven on
the registration form; the lousy room didn't cost more than four. (In
advance, let me tell you, he still charged me four.)
'It's as if it's another state here. Like Mexico, not a U.S. territory,' he
said, reinforcing my analogy with El Obeid. He simply hadn't been in
southwest Sudan.
Having settled into the motel, I went for a meeting with Mr. Howell. I
arranged a small ambush, and Mr. Howell finally agreed to meet me,
realizing that a strange guest, who made it to Tuba City from New York
City, wouldn't back down. He looked at me suspiciously, and I
immediately understood why.
'Have you noticed we have no checkpoints or fences here?' he said,
peering warily across his polished desk. 'Have you noticed where the
reservation territory began? You didn't notice? Well, they're free people
and can leave the reservation and come into it at any time.'
He emphasized the word 'freedom'.
The miserable hogans of the Indians hid beyond the limits of Tuba
City. I entered the reservation through the ceremonial entrance.
Mr. Howell had the most impressive office in this part of the Indian
desert, a secretary, and the position of head of the Tuba City agency.
Three-eighths of Iroquois blood flowed in his veins, and later, after
softening his suspicion, he sketched out his family tree on a notepad,
carelessly drawing squares for ancestors.
Mr. Howell is an official from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA),
which serves as the supreme guardian of Native Americans and is based
in Washington. Three-eighths Iroquois himself, he harshly outlined the
only path, in his view, that the Indians should follow—a path that many
have already trodden—assimilation into the American mainstream, the
death of their own culture, traditions, and way of life.
He picked up the phone.
'Miss Jorgenson? Howell speaking. I have a reporter here from
Russia. Yes, yes, from Russia. Show him your school. What? Show him
everything he wants. After all, we have no secrets, do we?'
It was a large boarding school for 1,100 Navajo children, with bright
classrooms and corridors, two-story rows of beds in the dormitory, and a
clean mechanized cafeteria serving three meals a day. An eight-year free
education where all expenses—from textbooks to lamb stew—are
covered by the BIA. A thorough school that takes children from
impoverished hogans, clay and stone huts, teaching them English and
other subjects, imparting hygiene skills, making them Boy Scouts and
Girl Scouts, taking them to train stations, airports, and cities, revealing a
world beyond the desert covered in sagebrush.
There were no secrets, except one, but even that was not hidden from
the candid Miss Jorgenson. It's a 'san-propusknik', a rapid assimilation
point...
Entering it, the Navajo unwittingly sign an act of renouncing their
people, for which many later bitterly pay. It begins with the renunciation
of their language—education is only conducted in English. Out of 42
teachers, only three are Navajo.
The largest Native American tribe in the US lacks its own script, and
no one cares to create one. There are no historians, writers, poets,
nothing but oral folklore preserved by shamans.
In the school, the little Indian loses their roots. Later, they will
understand what it means.
After school, they find they have no job, no place, no peace in the
poverty of the reservation, and they rush into the wider world. But there,
one must fight for their place under the sun, compete with those who
have learned from generation to generation the art of survival. There,
they encounter indifference, the scornful nickname 'chief', and the
bewilderment instilled by television movies: an Indian, but without
feathers...
We walked through classrooms and from one school building to
another, and Miss Jorgenson warmly greeted the caretakers in the
dormitory and the cooks in the cafeteria. But they exhibited aloofness
and distrust, as if the war with the 'Anglos'—as the Navajo call white
Americans—was still ongoing.
We drove a couple of miles southwest to another outpost of the
'dominant culture' on the reservation—to Kerley's trading post. It
combines the functions of a general store, factory, and pawnshop. At the
entrance to the yellow single-story house sat an ancient Indian in a black
hat, with a wrinkled old face. He glanced at the two 'Anglos' stealthily,
not humiliating his dignity with curiosity. A graceful Indian woman
managed the cashier. Several more Navajo women in gypsy-style skirts
and shawls scrutinized the colorful, flashy labels on cans and cardboard
boxes, seeming from another world. Behind the back entrance, wool was
piled up, and in a two-meter sack hanging overhead, a slender Indian
danced, trimming the sheared sheep's tribute. Here, from the back
entrance, Navajo deliver wool and meat.
A healthy, well-groomed blue-eyed man in tight cowboy pants with a
wide cowboy belt and the usual 'western' hat on his handsome shaved
head ruled over everything. The owner of the trading post. Needless to
say, he was a pure-blood 'Anglo'.
He led us behind a folding metal grille and steel-clad door to the
pawnshop. The walls were adorned with three rows of necklaces,
bracelets, beads, and precious belts. Rings and earrings lay in the
cupboard. In the corner, guns and a standard factory guitar were piled
up.
I saw Navajo poetry for the first time, their love for modest yet true
beauty, for the noble, restrained play of stamped silver with turquoise in
ancient brown veins.
Beauty was exchanged, like wool and meat, for bread, salt, cereal, and
canned goods.
Beauty flowed in an endless stream; about 20 to 30 Navajo a day,
from nearby and far-off places, or even just passersby, visited the
pawnbroker.
The healthy man rolled a necklace with large turquoise stones laid
horseshoe-style on silver in his palms—for luck.
'And this here is an antique piece. Can fetch about five hundred
dollars...'
I looked at the tag attached to the necklace. It was pawned for 18
dollars. The healthy man wasn't fazed.
'Well, if it's not redeemed, you can sell it for five hundred.'
 'Yes.'
He explained that he gives his clients six months and can postpone
redemption for another two to three months, if something happens—a
wedding, death, or birth. With the coolness of a vulture knowing where
to seize prey, he answered why they bring him all this, their family
relics.
They don't care about tomorrow. If they have a dollar today, they'll
spend it, and tomorrow, they'll rely on whatever fate sends their way.
I've heard these words multiple times afterward, confident and
trusting words from superhuman traders doing business based on the
recklessness of the 'redskins.'
"So, you've got a profitable business?"
"We have to work a lot. On our feet from morning till night. And you
live right here."
"But is the business still profitable?"
"We have to work a lot..."
He escorted us to the exit through the stooped line of buyers.
On the way back, Miss Jorgenson spoke of him with respectful
admiration: the wealthiest man in the county, sells unredeemed
valuables to teachers at a fair price.
The school took pride in peacefully coexisting with the pawnbroker.
In the evening, after dining at the café near the gas station, where the
jukebox played 'Arrivederci Roma,' and three guys exchanged glances
with three girls, I returned to my colonial motel. It was dark and quiet,
with only the school inspector restlessly stirring behind the wall,
promising to take me to Window Rock—the administrative center of the
entire reservation—tomorrow.
I leafed through seventh-grade students' essays that the history teacher
had given me. The essays were about the Soviet Union. 'Russia has a big
country called the Soviet Union,' wrote Kathy Spencer. 'No one knows
exactly how many people live there. Freedom in Russia is not always as
free as in the United States...' Seckly Clee picked up on this theme:
'They aren't allowed to read newspapers, listen to the radio, watch TV,
or do other things that we do in the United States. In the United States,
we can study as much as we want and work in different jobs...'
It was laughter through tears, but one had to hold back both not to
wake the school inspector behind the wall.
 II
In New York, as I examined the map of Arizona, pinpointing the
borders of the Navajo reservation, within which a distinct rectangle of
the Hopi reservation was outlined, I envisioned how fascinating this
journey from Tuba City to Window Rock, almost across the entirety of
Navajo land, could be. However, the school inspector, graciously
offering me a ride in his car, was in a hurry and unwilling to divulge
anything about himself or the reservation to a "non-Indian". We covered
153 miles of well-paved, silent asphalt on Route 264, and at the end of it
was Window Rock, where, by the grace of the State Department, I
became somewhat like a tethered goat, allowed to graze on the
information within a mere 25-mile radius.
Navajo land, then Hopi, followed once more by Navajo territory
streamed past the car's window at 70 miles per hour. The famously
painted desert blushed smokily, a lure for tourists and a subject of Barry
Goldwater's photographic ambition, capturing the Arizona landscapes
and the crisscrossed wrinkles on the faces of elderly Indians. Tiny
settlements flickered by—Hotavilla, Oraibi, Pollaka, Jedidito—
appearing and vanishing, teasingly elusive.
A desert plateau, devoid of welcoming grandeur, seemed layered like
sandstone pies. Nature's cuisine here was sparse and dry. Exposed beds
resembled the tracks of prehistoric lizards. Water was scarce, natural
reservoirs few. Artesian wells cost $10,000 each.
We made only two stops. Once, heeding my persuasion, the inspector
turned off the asphalt onto the dusty gravel of the desert toward a Hopi
village—unlike the Navajo, the Hopi Indians lived a settled life. There
were no streets in the village. Adobe houses huddled together, frozen in
time, establishing their kinship through peephole windows. The village
seemed closer to the Middle East than America, with its colorful
advertising hues. Impoverished women regarded us as occupiers. Men
were nowhere to be seen. Turning back, we left unharmed.
The second stop lasted longer. In a modern building by the road,
belonging to a Hopi artists' collective, the inspector ordered jewelry for
his wife. Somewhere in his bloodline, he too was Native American,
though not Hopi or Navajo.
Once again, I witnessed this beauty without fanfare or trend, timeless
rather than a 1967 model, unfamiliar yet immediately embraced. Again,
it was the dignity, the innate sense of balance and color in woven plates
and baskets, in handcrafted rugs, juxtaposed with silver and turquoise.
But there was no Navajo alongside Route 264, those nomadic
sheepherders who fashioned temporary hogans from clay, branches, and
stones, exorcising illness-inducing evil spirits in elaborate ceremonies
conducted by shamans, professing a unique philosophy of harmony with
nature. They didn't even realize someone called them Navajo, as they
referred to themselves as "Diné"—"The People". The people were
consumed by the desert. On the road, their fellow tribesmen, now on
high seats of Ford and Chevrolet trucks, were the only ones encountered.
Towards the end of the third hour's journey, the desert sprang to life
with sturdy, low pines and moderately abundant, albeit trivial from a
sheep's viewpoint, sagebrush. After passing the round Civic Center,
serving as a cultural hub, and an attractive glassy-dark blue combination
of courthouse and jail, we entered the Navajo capital, Window Rock. At
its outskirts loomed a massive rock formation with a gaping hole at its
summit. Window Rock, translated from English, meant a window in the
rock.
The inspector, braking the car at the Window Rock Lodge motel,
headed to the cafe for a hamburger as if his only purpose throughout the
journey was a timely encounter with a fresh patty tucked inside a round
bun and doused in ketchup.
I checked into a room at the motel, getting a bed, a table, a chair, a
broken lamp, the howl of the wind, and neat dunes of cream-colored
sand under the door. 165 million years ago, in the Mesozoic era, these
winds, sand, and water had drilled a window in the rock, unaware that in
our times, it would become a symbolic window to America for the
Navajo. In 1936, the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the
administrative center of the Navajo reservation here. After World War
II, the tribal government was also situated in Window Rock.
It was Friday, the end of the workday and the eve of the weekend.
Window Rock was fading away at automobile speed. Native civil
servants scattered to their homes, settling beside sandstone desks in
vehicles bearing signs that read "Official. Navajo Nation". At the motel
cafe, a well-groomed Navajo policeman conversed with a beautiful
Navajo waitress. She had a hairstyle à la Sophia Loren and a gaze
borrowed from a magazine cover. Those Navajo who called themselves
"Diné" were absent here too.
 The corridors of the main administrative building were clean and
empty. The left wing belonged to the tribal government, the central part
to BIA employees. In the largest office, beneath the portrait of the tribal
council chairman Raymond Nakai, sat an elderly, dignified man—Mr.
Graham Holmes. "Anglo".
"I suspect that this reservation falls under my jurisdiction," Mr.
Holmes, the reservation director and Washington's main figure here,
assertively and wryly defined his position.
In his state, there are 4,500 people. He himself is a lawyer from
Oklahoma with 18 years of service at the BIA. But Mr. Holmes' chair
has a more ancient history.
In 1863, pacifying the warlike Navajo tribe, General Carlton issued an
order: kill men indiscriminately, capture women, children, sheep, horses,
destroy crops (the order was expansively interpreted by traffickers).
Nine companies of Colonel Kit Carson's volunteers, alongside
neighboring Ute, Zuni, and Hopi tribes, carried out the task. Then came
the merciless "Long Walk" of 300 miles to the southeast corner of New
Mexico, to the "Navajo corral" — Fort Sumner. Under escort, 7,000
were driven there, "losing" many along the way. Then followed three
hungry years, meager rations plundered by BIA officers and officials,
supplemented by rats and wild roots, cold winters without fuel or
blankets, longing for their homeland. In 1868, in desperation,
Washington returned the Navajo to their native land among the four
sacred mountains.
They returned with deep scars in their memory and a document in an
unknown English language, with eighteen crosses — the marks of their
leaders. Both memory and the document still hold sway, defining the
moral and legal relations between the Navajo and the "Anglos." The
paper was a treaty establishing the reservation. Tribal communal land
and the tribe itself came under Washington's guardianship.
Graham Holmes — a distant successor of the fierce Colonel Kit
Carson. An intelligent successor. In his voice, there's not lead but a
benevolent tutor's gentle indulgence. Under his leadership, it's not
soldiers but teachers: 92 percent of the BIA's expenses go toward
education and professional training.
"We, of course, make mistakes," he admits and adds philosophically,
"Everyone makes mistakes."
 Among those mistakes, he counts the absence of a written language
for the Navajo.
"Indians fear assimilation. They want to preserve their identity, their
way of life," says Graham Holmes. "We also want to preserve their way
of life, but what about the economy? Their sheep won't sustain them.
What do we do? We develop the seeds of urban centers so that industry
gradually comes to the reservation. We leave them the choice. Want to
assimilate — go to Chicago. Want to stay — it's your call... Of course,
it's hard for them outside the reservation. We have many extremists.
Indians face discrimination. Their fear is understandable: will the white
man accept them into his environment? Different problems, including
the problem of kindness. An Indian can't refuse help to a fellow
tribesman, even if that help brings financial harm to him..."
In life, problems are certainly harsher than in Graham Holmes' office.
One of them — the "kindness problem" — was humanized by an
American, Nelson, manager of the Window Rock Lodge motel. He
spoke to me frankly, "like white to white."
"Is there something wrong with their brains? If a Navajo gets a pickup
— on credit, of course — he wakes up an hour earlier and drives five or
six miles to pick up his friends to take them to work. For free. Free,
that's the thing! It's a joke. And I tell him: why not charge them? It costs
you something after all. Not a chance! He refuses. Nothing, he says,
they're my friends, they don't have pickups. By God, they'll kill me.
They have no concept of value..."
I heard other stories about the strange, incomprehensible "Anglo"
kindness of Indians. About an Indian family that bought, again on credit,
a large refrigerator and supplies for two to three months, and relatives
and clan members, hearing about the purchase, came to gaze, and after
four days, there were only the enameled walls left in the refrigerator.
About the Navajo who, aspiring to become a businessman, took a loan
from the bank, leased a gas station from a corporation, and quickly went
bankrupt because he couldn't bring himself to charge his relatives and
acquaintances, of which there were hundreds due to extensive tribal ties.
Not only Nelson told such stories, and they all evoked a kind of chuckle.
And this chuckle of Mr. Nelson's lingers in my ears.
A tired face. The lacing of the "western" tie passed through an Indian
brooch — silver with turquoise. An old bachelor. He owns a restaurant
in Farmington, in the north of New Mexico. He's been managing the
motel in Window Rock for two years, owned by the Navajo tribe.
Before him, six managers, all white, fled within two years. The motel is
unprofitable, but Mr. Nelson receives a salary, has reduced the deficit,
and keeps afloat in Window Rock. He's been dealing with Indians since
1955.
"They hate us, whites," he confesses. "I'll tell you, they have their
reasons. They remember that 'Long Walk' to Fort Sumner, and the elders
pass it on to the young: 'Remember!'"
Nelson is not a villain. Hardworking. Practical. He says that if he had
white waiters, cooks, and cleaners instead of Navajo, he'd manage with
8 to 10, not 18 workers. The loyalty of the Navajo to their own "Indian
ways" commands his respect.
But all of it is drowned out by the chuckle of superman.
A modern poet, mischievously and insightfully exclaimed: "Follow
your instinct to the shore! Looking for India? You'll find America!" I
was looking for the Navajo Indians, but in Window Rock, at this vivid
junction of two ways of life, I found America in the form of the typical
Mr. Nelson.
Тhat America, which accumulated enough for a restaurant in
Farmington and laughed at the Indian eccentric valuing companionship
over profit, was sure that all the "white people" would join in her
laughter. On one side, the Navajo communal traditions, collectivism,
and mutual aid. On the other, the American way of life, accentuating
individualism, cleanliness, and extolling the so-called competitiveness
known colloquially as the "rat race." It seems absurd to defend poverty
and pastoral sheep against industry and high labor productivity. But if it
were that simple, it would be a problem, a big and painful one, but not
tragic. The tragedy for the Indians lies in the fact that their tribal
structure is under the economic and psychological pressure of American
capitalism, the most advanced and ruthless.
The harder it is for Indians to fit into the "dominant culture," the
easier it is for private businesses to take advantage of them. The
"American way of life" works for pikes and sharks, operating on and
around the reservation. Of the 150 shops, trading posts, gas stations, and
other commercial establishments in the reservation, only 40 belong to
Indians. The sale of alcohol is prohibited on the reservation—a boon for
bootleggers. There are no food stores owned by the tribe—fertile ground
for white traders who charge double and triple the price.
 Gallup, a town of 17,000, 26 miles southeast of Window Rock, calls
itself the world capital of Indians, though it is mostly populated by
whites and lies outside the reservation. Advertising ironically hails it as
the best business city between Kansas City and Los Angeles. Though
both claims are exaggerated, Gallup skillfully pulls in Indian dollars all
year round and during the August intertribal Indian festival. Here
flourishes everything the reservation lacks or is nearly devoid of: bars,
shops, laundromats, doctors, creditors. Flagstaff to the southwest, Gallup
to the southeast, Farmington to the northeast—the reservation is
encircled by private business.
I remember a funny and sad Saturday expedition to Gallup with
Charlie Goodluck, a 68-year-old retired tribe accountant, a robust man
in an old Macintosh and barefoot sandals.
The first trap was two miles from Window Rock, right on the
reservation boundary—a liquor store. Further down the road, where the
tongue of the reservation crossed again, a trash bin stood by the roadside
—where beer cans are thrown away; empty cans would serve as
evidence if the police found them on reservation land.
Gallup greeted us with the dead eyes of abandoned houses where
miners used to live and the commercial activity of Coal Avenue, which
reoriented itself to the Navajo and Zuni after the mines closed. As a
trademark emblem of the city, shops had signs that read: "Pawn and
Loans."
And I saw. It was a raid of long-reconciled Navajo onto Gallup, not
those nomads— the desert still absorbed them, but railroad workers,
seasonal workers, officials from Window Rock. And the raid was
accompanied by the chinking of registers in stores and bars, where
diligent white ladies and gentlemen stood at the cash registers.
And the busier Coal Avenue and the intersection near the "Schlitz
Bar" became, the more vigorously this carousel of Indians in hats and
damn leather pants spun, the more frequently green police cars with alert
white law enforcement officers flashed by.
The order here was to surrender dollars to Gallup merchants as
quietly as possible and avoid drunken brawls.
The same thing was happening in Gallup as in Flagstaff, but on a
larger scale: after all, Gallup was the universal capital of Indians. And
one episode of our expedition with Goodluck was an open conversation
with a prominent official from the Navajo tribe, whose name I won't
mention because I met him later, already in his office, and he sat there
embarrassed, as if regretting that Saturday frankness. But back then, he
said that Indian money and livestock were going to Gallup, carpets,
jewelry, and that Indians were being robbed at numerous trading posts in
the city, earning no less than a hundred percent profit, and that there
wasn't a single trading post owned by Navajo.
"Why?"
"The white man has money and influence. Even if I had dollars to buy
a license to open a trading post— which I never will— I wouldn't get it
anyway. Courts and influence are with the white man."
In Gallup, robbery was happening in broad daylight, under the
protection of courts and police. And somewhere nearby was Mr.
Graham Holmes—director of the reservation, the enlightening guardian
of the Navajo. Whatever he was, he couldn't sidestep Gallup's Saturday
—there, the system was in place.
 ДАВЯТ ЛИ НЕБОСКРЕБЫ?

The Fourth Arrival in New York... The bustling summer hubbub at

Kennedy International Airport, the sticky humidity of the nearby
Atlantic, familiar road signs for New York, Long Island, and Brooklyn,
glimpses of ultramodern terminals and airline hangars. You get caught
up, like a splinter, in the relentless stream of cars, speeding past low-
lying Queens, the local worker's airport of LaGuardia, diving under
viaducts and through various tunnels until finally emerging onto the
massive, humped surface of the Triboro Bridge, revealing the New York
sky and the skyscrapers of Manhattan, not scraping against it but
puncturing it.
At the end of the toll bridge, a quarter as payment for entry into
Manhattan, and with a sharp turn onto the highway along the East River.
The familiar turn onto 96th Street, and there it begins—the familiar New
York traffic light game—rush through on green past First Avenue, past
the external stairs and stoops of Puerto Rican Harlem, people still
waiting on those stoops. And past the elegantly subdued, withdrawn
Fifth Avenue, through the evening emptiness of Central Park downhill
to Broadway, lit up, into the darkness of West End Avenue and the
freshness of Riverside Drive, where the Hudson reminds you of its
presence with a gust in the face. Dive into an underground garage. The
springy lift of the trunk lid. You've arrived...
Writing notes about New York is challenging due to the abundance of
facts. In the streets, in homes, in the hearts and minds of its inhabitants,
New York writes voluminous volumes about itself every day, but not a
single Nestor can put them on paper. But facts are facts, and I think a
drop of emotion is forgivable. Psychologically, it's very hard to resist
this city. Without asking or acknowledging objections, it imposes its
pace, its rhythm, its madness, and tension. Its best 'calls' are the TV
gentlemen advertising pills for headaches and nervous exhaustion. The
city does all the necessary work, and the savior, appearing on the screen,
only stretches nerves to their limit with measured, relentless, cold
words: stress... tension... stress... tension.
However, there are various ways to escape the New York pace
(although they are specific): from the desperate needle of a drug addict
to the most common one—driving a car. The American uses one wedge
to drive out another. Get in the car when you have a free minute and
push fifty miles where the speed limit is forty, sixty where it's fifty, and
seventy where it's sixty. This prescription isn't prescribed by the TV or
the police, though if caught, they'll fine you a fixed rate—a dollar for
each mile over the speed limit.
But the game is worth the candle. The highways are excellent, with
one-way traffic, three marked lanes in each direction. Get into the far-
left lane, be cautious passing trucks with trailers, and if there are no
cursed traffic jams and no cursing is required, along with the automation
of reactions, the whistle of the wind you've created, and the rustling of
neighboring cars' tires on the smooth and flowing road, the desired state
of 'relaxation,' i.e., relaxation and discharge, will come to you.
Around, families, sometimes with children in the back seat, perhaps
even lying down with their feet out the window; if it's a couple, they're
huddled together. Americans relax, have fun, and love at high speeds.
During summer weekends, it's like an element. Hundreds of
thousands of cars rush out of the city on Friday evenings and Saturday
mornings. Police on the ground and in the air, in helicopters, orchestrate
the element, broadcasting to motorists about traffic density, dispersing
traffic jams on roads, on bridges, and in long, 2-3 kilometer tunnels
under the East River and the Hudson.
New York holds tightly onto its children. But here they break out onto
the operational expanse somewhere on the outskirts of Queens, the
Bronx, Brooklyn, cross over the George Washington Bridge into the
neighboring state of New Jersey. And off they go—remember them by
name!
Movement here is everything, and the goal, if not nothing, is only
secondary. Perhaps the goal is in the movement itself. Thus, the road
becomes a symbol of America. Only on that symbolic road, there are
more rows, brakes aren't regulated, overtaking rules are more frequently
violated, and it takes a great deal of fuel to run and run throughout life,
alternating between 'tension' and 'relaxation'...
 But let's return to New York. There's this typical tourist question: do
the skyscrapers overwhelm or not? Tourists have little time, but this
psychological puzzle seems simple, and in general, they usually leave
with their miniature yet categorical discovery of New York: it's all lies,
the skyscrapers don't overwhelm, on the contrary, it's a delightful
spectacle... When you've lived in New York for about six years, both the
question and the answer seem naive. It all depends on the time of year
and day, on location, and mood
Skyscrapers weigh on me at noon in the July heat on Central Avenue
or in Lower Manhattan, when you get caught in the trap of cars, buses,
trucks, inhaling the gasoline fumes, envying the speed of a tortoise, and
with longing and powerlessness, you gaze at the walls of buildings
rising up, once again wondering how people live here and what this
devilish city does to them. (I'll note in parentheses that just inhaling the
polluted air from household boilers, businesses, and New York's
vehicles increases your chances of lung cancer as much as smoking two
packs of cigarettes a day. This is an official calculation of city
authorities and their official acknowledgment of their own helplessness.)
When you stand at eight in the evening on the large lawn of Central
Park around the sixtieth streets, suddenly, from the skyscrapers, there’s a
breeze of poetry.
The traffic noise of cars roars softly in the distance. And the sky
above the city is tranquil and vast. The day is fading away, clear, not
humid, cool. The air in the west turns greener, and in it grows a lemony
clarity, pure as strained light, which soon bursts into anxious sunset
colors. Houses in this air become noble, sharp, distinct. And the
skyscrapers to the south, beyond the park's boundaries, rise with uneven
terraces, emitting a poignant beauty and romance. Some fraternal bonds
unexpectedly tie them to the anxious sunset unfolding over the Hudson.
Twilight thickens, lights increase, skyscrapers become more
mysterious and beautiful. But now, there's a growing unease, not the
melancholic unease inspired by fleeting harmony of the evening sky and
buildings. It's a different unease. The park empties quickly, lovers and
the elderly hurry to its edges, where there's less greenery and seclusion
but more safety.
Central Park is a delight during the day: children in strollers, leaping
squirrels, pigeons, old folks on benches with newspapers, people playing
baseball on the lawns. But at night, it transforms into the legendary 'Big
 7

Apple' of crime. Yet, it's not the skyscrapers that oppress but the city's
manners. Only cars continue their ceaseless movement along roads
cutting through the park in all directions, while police patrols quietly
pace.
That's the park—diverse. That's New York.
New York, a city keen on doing business in every possible way,
including with itself, receives an average of 16 million visitors a year.
For some, it’s remembered as the largest entertainment complex—Radio
City, where they screen the latest, most luxurious, and silliest films, and
before the show, they release identically beautiful, synchronously
tapping dancers. Others are astonished by the stores and restaurants.
Some are drawn to the bubbling springs of creative thought. And others
remember the gloom of Wall Street.
And for many, in the quiet of an American but less restless dream, the
rumbling inferno of the giant city will linger, a place that must be seen if
only to affirm the charms of the province. This city toughens, but I'll
defend it by saying that New York can't be contained within the narrow
dilemma of liking or not. Depending on what?
I've been to the old and famous 'Madison Square Garden,' a huge
barn-like building, now dilapidated. Like it? Don't like it? I liked
'Madison Square Garden' when 18 thousand people gathered there to
protest the American war in Vietnam. And once, 18 thousand
Goldwaterites, Birchites, and semi-fascists came for an 'anti-communist
rally of Greater New York.' The rally program even included a 'prayer
for the world's salvation from communism.' 18 thousand densely stood,
bowing their heads, listening to anathema against communism. My
comrade and I stayed sitting, catching bewildered, spiteful, and angry
glances. That 'Madison Square Garden' didn’t sit well with me.
In New York, as in America in general, there's much to learn,
especially from the high standards of public service, a matter that is so
crucial in our agenda. I wouldn't go far for examples, just turn the corner
to Broadway and peek into the ordinary supermarkets 'Food City' and
'Fairway,' two of hundreds scattered across New York. They have only
one floor, but they're as astonishing as skyscrapers, and, most
importantly, they cater to a larger number of people.
Supermarkets are highly organized self-service grocery stores with
prices accessible to a wide audience; for gourmets and the wealthy, there
are more expensive stores. The large sales hall of the supermarket is
filled with shelves and open refrigerators offering a wide selection of
meats, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, bread, spices, beer. Except for
the fruits, everything is packaged, and each item is marked with a price.
There are no salespeople in the store, only cashiers at four or five cash
registers placed near the exit. You take a metal trolley and move it
through the aisles between the shelves, placing items inside. Then—
towards the cashier. You unload what’s in the trolley onto a small
conveyor belt in front of the cashier's machine. The cashier presses a
button or pedals the machine to move the items toward them, enters the
prices, and the machine automatically sums it up. The cashier packs
everything into a paper bag, and with the bag in hand, the shopper heads
towards the exit, where the door opens by itself—after all, nowadays it's
not difficult to 'teach' it that the customer's hands are occupied. A
homemaker, who knows by heart where everything is, spends 15 to 20
minutes for the entire operation. Millions, perhaps billions, of hours
saved in human time.
Of course, the supermarket has its own socio-historical background.
The American path to the supermarket was steep; it was the path of
capitalist competition. From ruined small farms to large farms like
Garrett's with their multimillion turnovers and the ability to count every
cent; from crushed small factories to giants-monopolists of the food
industry that taught Americans to 'refuel' hygienically and tastelessly
while controlling their own weight; from store counters with their
agonizing queues and low throughput capacity to shelves of packaged
products where they cut costs on salespeople because labor is expensive
and reduces competitiveness. However, the shopper, moving with a
trolley along the shelves, feels not the background but the ready result
that suits them. The supermarket is convenient, saving time and nerves
New York is also under construction. Several years ago, it efficiently
snatched the world record for the longest 'suspended' bridge from San
Francisco, American-style. You know about the famous San Francisco
'Golden Gate'? Now, an arc weighing a million and a quarter tons — but
how elegant! — hangs between two support towers as tall as an 80-story
building between Brooklyn and Staten Island. Its length is almost one
and a half kilometers. The largest ocean vessels that Europe sends to
America freely pass beneath the bridge. The bridge is a beauty, but you
can't even take a proper look at it. America is so car-centric that they
didn't bother to build a pedestrian walkway on the bridge. When they
complete the second level, cars will run in twelve rows. The capacity is
18 million cars per year. That’s one of New York's little details for you!
In a few years, two 110-story twin skyscrapers will rise in the lower
part of Manhattan next to the Hudson. They will be part of the complex
called the World Trade Center, an initiative of New York financiers.
Sixth Avenue is intensively filled with 40 to 50-story corporate
buildings and hotels. On Third Avenue, old and quite sturdy buildings
are being demolished, replaced by fashionable residential buildings of
25 to 35 stories. Land becomes more expensive with each passing year,
buildings get taller, squeezed in close.
You can see a lot from a distance, but the poet's words don't apply to
the new skyscrapers—they obstruct each other even from afar.
The urban tourist who transits through New York is thrilled. But
aesthetes and many architects are horrified by the imposing but
monotonous line-up of skyscrapers. A few years ago, New York
architects protested near Pennsylvania Station, trying to save its classical
columns from demolition. But the columns were cut into pieces and
taken to some wasteland in New Jersey. The dollar squeezes aesthetics.
Not many monuments of the not-so-ancient New York are being
demolished despite protests, giving way to the coldly shining and
profitable clear edges of modernity.
Renowned architect Wallace Harrison, who created the magnificent
complex of the UN and the Rockefeller Center buildings, protests
against the towering standard monotony. Skyscrapers oppress him, even
though he built them. Harrison sees a connection between the city's
architectural appearance and its social sores. 'We try to rid ourselves of
criminals and drug addicts, but they are the results of concrete jungles,'
he says. 'We constantly encroach upon our space and the view of the
sky. Now in New York, you can hardly see the moon.' I’ll add: the local
moon is more accessible to thieves and policemen—those nocturnal
inhabitants of Central Park.
However, the ordinary resident is oppressed not by the skyscrapers or
the absence of the moon. Old buildings are demolished, but
unfortunately, there are no city councils obligated to provide those
evicted with apartments in new buildings. These apartments are good,
there’s no denying it, enviable with their finishes, bathrooms, spacious
wall closets, and silent elevators. But the prices... I entered a new
building on Manhattan's West Side. A three-room apartment on the 20th
floor with a view of water tanks on a neighboring roof costs $370, the
same apartment with a view of Central Park and probably the moon—
$450. Not per year, but per month. I lived in a not new but decent
building. A three-room apartment with a view of the Hudson initially
cost $305 per month. After three years, with a new contract with the
landlords, it was already $315. Three years later—$375.
Finding an apartment is not a problem. Though, you need two
recommendations from reliable people, attesting that you have the
money. The landlords will also check your bank account to ensure the
money isn’t being transferred. Then, of course, there’s a deposit equal to
the rent for two months, which won't be returned if you move out before
the contract ends. On the first of each month, even on a festive January
1st, a neat little package slips under the door in the morning—it’s the
rent bill—pay in advance. Once I got delayed, didn’t pay until the 10th
—they sent a reminder, also in a pretty envelope.
The editorial office helped me (the apartment also houses the local
bureau). But they didn’t help my comrade, a correspondent for TASS.
He paid $170 for a single room with a kitchen and bathroom and a view
of a dirty yard. One evening, he was almost strangled by two guys in the
elevator, and on the day he moved out of the apartment, two cameras
disappeared. Perhaps the janitor benefited: he had the keys, but filing a
report to the police, of course, yielded nothing—such thefts fall into the
category of petty crimes, and in New York, hundreds of thousands of
such thefts occur each year
I’ll clarify that the 'average American' earns quite well, knows the ins
and outs of their land, pays less, and settles in better. Unfortunately,
even this American is fleeing New York, unable to bear its atmosphere
and housing prices. And they're fleeing in droves! Since 1950, 800
thousand residents belonging to the so-called middle class have left New
York, relocating to the suburbs. In the same years, 800 thousand African
Americans and Puerto Ricans moved into New York, in other words,
almost exclusively the poor. Without dreams of $400 apartments, they
settle in ghettos, and under the pressure of the 'colored' masses, the
invisible but very real walls of these ghettos are crumbling, while the
white population flees from the neighboring neighborhoods. And the
landlords-sharks partition apartments into cubicles because the 'colored'
have nowhere else to go, expanding the slum areas.
 These sorrows don't concern the residents of the 'cooperative'
buildings on Fifth Avenue. They are shielded by millions, allowing them
to rent entire floors, and in terms of security — with the firm grip of
Swiss guards in tailcoats, ties, and trained biceps. But with the erasure of
the middle class, the contrasts between wealth and poverty are
sharpening. Corporate skyscrapers and expensive residential buildings
grow, and nearby—slums, and this close tense proximity in the city
sparks the flames of Harlem's rebellions.

II

You can search endlessly for different definitions of New York, but
none of them will be exhaustive. This city holds so much within it, and
it's vibrant in its hundreds of dimensions. The largest city in the Western
Hemisphere. The most powerful financial center in the capitalist world.
The most diverse city in America: Jews, Irish, Italians, Germans,
French, Poles, Japanese, Russians, Chinese, Czechs, Arabs, and others
melted into Americans but collectively speaking, as reference books
claim, speaking in 7 languages. The most important maritime and air
gates of America. The world's largest center for bus lines. The first city
in the world in terms of mail volume. And so on. They say that New
York is not America. This is true because New York is unique, while
America is predominantly a single-story country, and two-thirds of
Americans live in their own homes. But still, New York is the most
concentrated America with its great achievements and agonizing
antagonisms of its civilization.
Here, there are more millionaires and paupers than in any other city in
the USA, more shareholders, and more drug addicts. The 'Empire State
Building' has 102 floors, but how many metaphorical floors in the
underground of New York's criminal world? Even the FBI agents can't
count them. Here is the capital of the giant criminal syndicate 'Cosa
Nostra'. In New York unfolded Vito Genovese, the 'boss of bosses' of
this syndicate, who is now in prison, and in New York, two modern
American heroes and martyrs grew up—Michael Schwerner and
Andrew Goodman, two white boys who were killed by Mississippi
racists because they defended the rights of African Americans. During
the 1964 election campaign, Goldwater knew he was doomed to defeat
in New York, and now you can't find a city in America where opposition
to the Vietnam War is as active and strong.
Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans are fleeing to New York,
exchanging one poverty for another—poor homeland for the so-called
Spanish Harlem in Manhattan. And here, escaping memories or political
wreckage, millionaires are also fleeing. Richard Nixon, former vice
president and former unsuccessful presidential candidate, fled to New
York from California. Here, this senior partner of a law firm again
became the leading Republican candidate for the 1968 presidential
election. The first congratulations on being elected President of the
United States Nixon received at the famous New York hotel 'Waldorf-
Astoria', although it must be said that the majority of New York voters
cast their votes for Democrat Humphrey. After the tragic death of his
brother, Bostonian Robert Kennedy was elected to the U.S. Senate from
the state of New York and made New York a springboard for a new
family push for the White House, which was cut short by bullets in Los
Angeles. Billionaire Nelson Rockefeller lives in a luxurious cooperative
building on Fifth Avenue, and writer John Steinbeck lived in a rich
cooperative building on Third Avenue. In Greenwich Village, where the
bohemia of the whole America resides, popular anti-war singers gather
in one cafe, while in another, homosexuals gather.
New York endures and grinds much through its dollar-driven
mechanisms. In the polished, mirror-like body of a Rolls-Royce
belonging to a billionaire, one might catch a glimpse of an unshaven,
inflamed, decaying face of a drunkard beggar from Bowery. Such feral,
crushed semi-humans, half-beasts tamed by New York, cannot be found,
perhaps, in any other city in the world.
New York can be called a city catering to all tastes. There's a saying
that tastes differ.
To New York, this truth seems incomplete. It complements it in its
own way: tastes may differ, but money is made on tastes.
Eight million of its intricately mixed yet retaining some national and
racial characteristics of its inhabitants, different habits and traditions,
varying income ceilings, feelings, and thoughts—all of this provides an
extraordinary scope for the ingenuity and imagination of the hustlers. A
character from Chekhov claimed that everything exists in Greece. He
must have had modest demands and certainly hadn't seen New York,
therefore didn't fathom how deeply mistaken he was.
 Among the standard, typically mundane American cities, New York
stands as a unique creation, one where history, nature, and society
worked intentionally. While history can't be reversed, nature favored
New York, placing it on rivers and convenient ocean bays, and then,
constricted by those same rivers and bays in terms of territorial growth,
forced it to stretch upward with skyscrapers. It is to society that New
York presents its judgment. But about the judgment later, first about the
city that caters to all tastes.
Tastes make money, and the country is so developed economically
that it can satisfy any material need and whim of a person who has
dollars - from fishing hooks to a car, his own yacht or aircraft. If there
were money, quality and choice would not be the issue. The range is
great - from a piece of meat moistened for "freshness" with a coloured
liquid to French bread "delivered daily by jet planes from Paris" (such a
delicacy is advertised by the food shop Zabara). From expensive fashion
fads to mass-produced consumer goods at a wide range of prices.
Tastes make money, and spiritual demand is also satisfied according
to this principle. You want Homer, Tolstoy, Hemingway? They're in
every major bookstore. You want a series of pornographic novels from
Travelling Companion? They're there too, but in a more prominent
position. Demand for pornography is higher, though not as durable.
You want Shakespeare's sonnets? You're welcome. You want special
poems for water-closet reading? There are some with a chain so you can
hang them on a nail above the toilet.
Cheap sadistic detective stories are sold in any pharmacy, and many
people need them as much as they need pills for insomnia and nervous
tension. There are cinemas that show world classics, such as our
masterpieces - "Battleship Potemkin" and "Chapaev". There are cinemas
where only sex films are playing all day and all year round. In one
museum, a car flattened under a press acts as a masterpiece of abstract
sculpture; in another there is an exhibition of Rodin's works.
The business of tastes is revealed by comparing New York
newspapers. "The New York Times is a bourgeois newspaper with a
huge amount of information, carefully read by politicians, businessmen,
intellectuals of both conservative and liberal, even progressive
persuasion. "Daily News" is a tabloid with horrors, murders, results of
races at the racetrack, with screaming anti-Sovietism, speaking in semi-
blatan jargon. The New York Times has a circulation of 800,000, the
Daily News over 2 million. In the morning, in crowded underground
cars, the Daily News is in my eyes. What's the point? The point is that
tastes are not formed in airless space, but by the atmosphere of society.
This is a fact that must be reckoned with if you want to understand the
American world. Maybe it was reading the Daily News and drugstore
books that student Alfred Gonzak committed thirty rapes in a year and a
half. And maybe it was not without the influence of the Daily News and
its many sisters in cities and towns across America that many Americans
supported the escalation in Vietnam, even as opposition and anxiety
about the future grew.
There is no arguing about tastes - tastes make money. It turns out that
it is possible to make more money on Travel Companion products than
on Leo Tolstoy, more money on the anti-Soviet action film "From
Russia with Love" than on the excellent, truly artistic anti-racist film
"Only a Man", more money on empty musical comedies than on serious
drama.
They trade, and everything is suitable for advertising bait.
The cult of youth and beauty is a derivative of commerce. The
beauties advertising Clairol shampoo comb their hair so lustfully and
shyly on TV that doubts evaporate: no man can resist Clairol. The TV
adverts reinforce the element of an ingratiating sexuality.
And in Harlem bars, they sell young black women the old-fashioned
way. Although prostitution is officially banned, Jimmy the bartender is
unfazed: "We're not afraid of a police raid. Our best customers are cops,
white cops."
At the fashionable Arthur's Dance Club, Mrs Sybil Barton was at one
time successfully peddling biography. She was the wife of the famous
English actor Richard Burton, but he, having left poor Sybil, married the
film star Elizabeth Taylor. The straw widow was not long offended. The
scandalous divorce advert was a good chance to make some money. But
where? In New York, of course, the city for all tastes. Having travelled
across the ocean, Sybil Barton opened the Arthur Club, knowing that the
sensationalist cream of society would flock to her. And the cream did
flow.
 City politicians are as nimble as eels, especially during elections
when they have to maneuver between Scylla and Charybdis, different
groups of voters. Today, the mayoral candidate meets with the city's
business elite, seeking funds for their campaign, and tomorrow, with a
radiant smile, appears among thousands of bathers at Rockaway Beach,
not averse to simple pleasures. Today, at a meeting of New York
Zionists, he promises to further sharpen Washington's anti-Arab policy,
and tomorrow, he shakes hands with Black people on Harlem streets and
broadcasts his plan to eliminate the ghetto over the radio.
At times, the mayor of New York faces greater challenges than the
President of the United States or the governor of any state. 'The mayor
comes into direct contact with a large number of people who disagree
with each other on a very wide range of issues and agree only on a very
narrow one,' sympathizes 'The New York Times' with the mayor.
These puzzles faced by the mayor only reflect the extremely complex
situation in the city, where there is a constant war of all against all. The
city simultaneously develops in two opposite directions, which are well
illustrated by two favorite phrases of New York citizens.
'Not your business' — that's the legal document of the established,
elevated to the absolute owner, and he promptly presents it when
someone encroaches on his interests.
'Who cares?' — he declares when the matter concerns the interests of
the city itself.
Cultivating, on the one hand, selfishness, the pursuit of the dollar
regardless of the cost to others, and on the other hand, public apathy and
indifference, New York is suffocating itself, generating problems that
are becoming increasingly difficult to handle. Several years ago, the
newspaper 'New York Herald Tribune' took up the task of exposing
vices by publishing a series of articles titled 'New York in Crisis.' This
was not without selfishness: the newspaper was in dire straits and
wanted to regain lost reader interest. For five months, the situation in
New York was thoroughly investigated under a very alarming headline:
'The Greatest City in the World... and Everything in It Is Going Wrong.'
This crusade not only failed to help New York but also affected 'New
York Herald Tribune' as it fell victim to the competitive struggle.
Nevertheless, the material collected by the newspaper is intriguing.
Here are some of the figures and facts reported by the newspaper to
highlight what's not right in this city:
 Almost one-fifth of the population lives in conditions of poverty, "in
cramped, poorly heated, unsanitary apartments teeming with rats."
Half a million people rely on city subsidies. Without this aid, however
minimal, they simply cannot survive. For every person who gets back on
their feet and is removed from the subsidy list, three or four new
individuals in need emerge.
70,000 young people, neither in school nor employed, loiter on the
streets, forming a reserve army for the criminal world.
Public schools, catering to a million children, are "overcrowded, with
teaching below the accepted standard, especially in slum areas." One
teacher remarked about schools in Manhattan and the Bronx, where 65
percent of the children come from African American and Puerto Rican
impoverished families: "You no longer think about educating these
children. You just keep them from killing each other and from killing
you."
125,000 civil lawsuits await resolution in courts, with many not
scheduled for hearing until five years later. The relentless increase in
crime is one of the city's most acute problems. In 1967, serious crimes
surged nearly a quarter compared to 1966—by 22.7 percent. There were
745 murders (an average of 2 per day), 1,905 rapes (approximately 6 per
day), 36,000 robberies, 150,000 burglaries (a burglary every 3.5
minutes), 124,000 thefts over $50 (one every 4 minutes), and 58,000
cases of car theft.
Automobile traffic, with 1.5 million registered vehicles in the city and
an additional 600,000 entering daily, has become a monstrous problem.
A radical solution proposed for the traffic jams: everyone gets out of
their cars, which are then filled with cement. This jest isn't without a
point—as during peak hours, a pedestrian easily outpaces cars. The
network of suburban trains, ferrying 200,000 people into New York
daily, is on the brink of financial collapse.
Many small and large business owners flee New York, finding it
unprofitable, while workers are thrown onto the streets: over five years,
employment in New York industry has reduced by 80,000 people.
This is an accusation—highly incomplete. What are the responses?
The newspaper provided an outlet, and it was inundated with an endless
list of woes, grievances, and thousands of letters and phone calls.
Reading these responses, one wonders—does New York have any
patriots left?
 Of course, patriots are not extinct, but the responses mostly confess to
dislike and even disgust toward their city, its authorities, along with a
feeling of helplessness and disbelief in the future.
"It's true that everything is going wrong in our city," agrees Ruth
Danmore. "I no longer dare to go out alone in the evening... The
subway? I'm afraid to travel on it... In other words, in the evenings, I'm
practically a prisoner in my own apartment."
Some seek simple solutions.
"Double the police force. Install elevator attendants in every multi-
story building," demands a certain Ruben Fried.
Others have completely despaired.
"New York is the most corrupt city in the world, and no one ever
takes action after various investigations, including you," wrote Mr. El
Barry to the newspaper.
If we return in this sense to the question of whether skyscrapers press
down or not, considering who sits in them, the answer will be quite
definite: they do press, and significantly so!
 Shirpotreb of Broadway

There are at least two Broadways. The ordinary Broadway starts its
winding path at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, next to Wall
Street, and stretches for tens of kilometers, fading somewhere into
obscurity on the northern outskirts of New York. It's the longest street in
New York City. And there's the short Broadway, a part of the ordinary
Broadway. That's "the" Broadway - a synonym, a symbol. The evening
Broadway. A dozen blocks in the center of Manhattan, between the
glittering skyscrapers of Sixth Avenue and the shabby depths of Eighth,
Ninth, and Tenth. It's bordered to the north by the evening emptiness of
Central Park. And to the south, it too ends in emptiness. Bursting with
the brilliance of 42nd Street, "the" Broadway meets a desolate darkness
of trading blocks around the thirtieth streets, where during the day cars
and people swarm, but at night only locked iron grates on doors and
shop windows, silent mannequins, invisible yet watchful guards, unseen
but guaranteed alarm systems.
This Broadway is famous for the neon dance of its advertisements. It's
an ironic dance, this advertising. Broadway winks with millions of its
light bulbs and tubes: what could be simpler, I'm all visible, all outside.
Electric seconds, minutes, and hours are marked by the advertisements
of the "Accutron" watch company. The "Bond" company informs the
ignorant with grand shining letters that nobody in the world produces
more ready-made men's suits than them. "Life" magazine wraps the
triangular tower of the "Alloy Chemical" building with running latest
news. The lights of Broadway and Seventh Avenue crash against this
tower like breakwaters.
 Marquees of theaters and cinemas twinkle. Immaculately washed and
splendidly illuminated windows of cafes, diners, and shops shine.
Behind these windows, people silently talk and laugh, open their mouths
over glasses and plates. All in sight, all in place. Only that tireless
electric smoker of Camel cigarettes, who blew smoke rings for thirty
years, has disappeared.
The evening Broadway has extravagantly displayed the tail of its
advertising. And what besides the tail does this bird have? Advertising is
just an introduction to Broadway. What do the Accutron clocks have to
do with it? And the suits of that, uh, "Bond" company? Even that
beloved smoker, now retired? They are all beggars, taking handouts
from Broadway, willing to pay dearly for the right to add yet another
feather to the peacock's tail. The old man has a heavy, responsible duty.
In the sophisticated 20th century, Broadway fulfills the second part of
an ancient but enduring and significant formula: "Bread and Circuses!"
Circuses! The human river flows in fiery shores. Sailors in white bell-
bottoms and uniforms sway after the ocean and acquaintances - to
fraternize - with Broadway bars. Neat American business travelers
wander around: where and how to shake things up? Travel-worn,
hundreds of paths converging in New York. Wide-eyed American
provinces are curious about how modern Babylon lives and entertains
itself. Young couples innocently dive into the Broadway stream. And
the regulars swim so deep and so long that only the lack of oxygen
makes them dizzy. Here's a regular, an outpost of the dark deep
Broadway, emerging for his business, lurking on the sidewalk. Looking
around, mutters to passersby, "Want a girl?
Here are the Broadway and 42nd Street intersection, the "Crossroads
of the World," as Americans arbitrarily christened it without any
international jury.
Here is an ocean of lights, a tense, fully heated cosmos of lights.
Here you think, what exactly did Prometheus strive for, and following
him, Edison, stealing fire from Mother Nature?
Was it for these, decorated with divisions of electric light bulbs,
movie theater marquees? There, on the screens, is the most vulgar of
entertainment. Or for these dazzling stalls? Shelves laden with hundreds
of tattered photo magazines displaying the most explicit naked girls and
boys, textbooks on lesbian love and guidance on homosexuality. Or for
these, already in reality, mercilessly illuminated homeless faces, on
which life has imprinted the seal of scoundrels? A clear imprint,
unmistakable. Just walking down 42nd Street, between Broadway and
Eighth Avenue, under the blinding marquee lights of movie theaters,
past pornographic shops, under the scrutiny of these faces, just walking -
that's already a test of endurance, of disgust. Glances probe the stranger
- isn't he one of us?
"The Crossroads of the World" holds records for the density of
electric light and human darkness per square foot. It is known to be the
most brightly illuminated sewer in the world.
But what about the Broadway academics with their nightsticks? There
are many of them here, but on Broadway, they play by their own rules...
The crowd is the ruler of Broadway. Disappear, and its lights will go
out. But the crowd doesn't vanish because it is Broadway's slave.
It rules over it, sharing its spectacles.
It captivates it in parts, inviting the abundance and poverty of the
American bourgeois century as allies. The signs of the Broadway
century are stuffed from top to bottom, from advertising necklaces to the
bottoms of its storefronts. The planet is narrowed and compressed by
commerce, the planet keen on the dollar: ebony gods from Kenya, Aztec
masks, Japanese woven goods, Hong Kong crockery, Polynesian,
Italian, French restaurants. Cameras and camcorders, tape recorders and
transistors, vinyl records and portable televisions - amazing wonders of
technology. Alas, how deceptive is their healing power. Broadway
knows how to turn them into talismans around a savage's neck: dispel
the evil power of boredom, emptiness, and the meaninglessness of
existence, dispel it with a twist of a transistor dial.
Technically, the century is abundant, but spiritually, man is poor -
that's Broadway's working wage.
Everything passes, and everything remains - that's its cardinal hope.
The Broadway concept of entertainment and spectacle is as old as the
world - ancient Roman, ancient Egyptian rubbish of cruelty and women.
It's a pity that gladiators can't be tortured alive in arenas. But they drag
them out for the amusement of millions in Hollywood super-action
films. The fires of the Inquisition, alas, cannot be lit. But one can still
profit from something here. Let's leave the stuffy sidewalk and take a
look at the so-called "Paris Wax Museum" right here on Broadway.
Here is coolness provided by "air conditioning" devices. Cleanliness
brought by vacuum cleaners. Carpets. Wax figures in glass
compartments. And behind other glasses, slightly touched by the patina
of noble rust, carefully preserved, natural, terrifying Inquisitorial iron.
Yes, they knew how to torture. "Heretic collar" with inward iron spikes:
"Used for victims who refused to go to the chamber." Similar to a
medical "duck," but iron: "Device for pouring boiling oil into the
victim's mouth." Special knives for cutting off fingers...
"Flaying tool"... "Spine breaker"... Iron for "crushing" wrists... Again
for the flesh. For gouging out eyes... For branding...
And here's the culmination of it all. The "Iron Maiden" graciously
opened its interior, adorned with a universal set of penetrating spikes.
The heretic was inserted inside, with a great effort, the halves of the
"Iron Maiden" were clapped shut. The sight of a mutilated corpse was
unbearable even for medieval executioners. "The most famous torture
and death instrument in the world.
This is Broadway's joke.
The instruments of torture are exhibited not for a history lesson but as
a spectacular bric-a-brac. From all the material history of the world,
Broadway has selected the tools of the inquisition.
And women? As many as you want. Movie stars are turned into
modern courtesans, sex idols, sex bombs. That's the fortunate fate of
major movie corporations. But there are poorer, smaller companies with
lower-quality goods, but more pornography. Here's the "unsurpassed,
bold, penetrating" film "Girls for Rent" — 45 minutes of pure sadism,
one minute of it — a moralizing "happy end."
Perhaps there's something material not on screen? Broadway has
thought of everything. Dark sculptures prop up Broadway's walls,
African American women, pushed here by the dense sea of Harlem
poverty and despair.
And if dance hall bric-a-brac is to your taste? Their crevices also feed
from the Broadway river. Toss a coin, pick a paid partner - there will be
no refusal. Dance. And toss the coin again. For every dance. The dance
hall is old-fashioned. It rejects the modern "monkey" dance, where
dancers imitate each other from a distance. The dance hall is for the
intimate closeness of tango.
Broadway is vast like an epic, like an element. Its amplitude spans
from prostitutes to preachers and war opponents.
An old lady with strong teeth and a shy smile prattles about
"salvation" on the corner of 45th Street. The old lady ardently defends
Jesus Christ, whom they crucify on Broadway screens again and again,
knowingly making money on biblical plots. In her hands are some
ridiculous tapestries: Satan in tights, as if a girl from a bar, childishly
made Adam and Eve, an angel with heavy wings. Like the dance hall,
the old lady is against modernity, modern skyscrapers, modern bishops.
She's for the Apostle Peter: "You were not redeemed with perishable
things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your
forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and
spotless, the blood of Christ." People listen to the old lady. Do they hear
her? Her friend hands out religious leaflets to passersby. People shy
away from the leaflets.
Freedom reigns on Broadway. You can be anyone within the confines
of Broadway.
Three homosexual guys walk along the sidewalk, swaying their hips.
The guys are curled and made up, their lips painted and eyes lined. Their
eyes look provocatively. They chose the freedom to change their gender
and make their bread on Broadway.
Broadway freedom is about turning oneself inside out and proudly
displaying one's own guts to the public. It's the conscious merchant need
to gut a person if they succumb. And they do succumb when their
worldview is reduced to spectacles.
Everyone easily and freely associates those who have a dollar as their
lockpick to the world and life. Once I stopped at a small record store
with two storefronts. One window was monopolistically dedicated to
photos of an old man in a purple robe with a piggy monk's face. This
was the owners' homage to the late Cardinal Spellman on the occasion
of his 50th anniversary of service to Catholic Jesus Christ. From the
other window, a naked, juicy beauty provocatively looked at the cardinal
from the album cover. The girl sings songs under the general name "Hot
Pepper." Due to the age and status of the New York cardinal, of course,
he wasn't into "Hot Pepper," but the merchants adapted him, associating
him with the girl and the songs. On the occasion of the cardinal's jubilee,
"Hot Pepper" was discounted, there was a sale...
And a motley human river flows down Broadway, sweaty and hot.
Houses warmed up by the day give their heat to the evening street. It's
the perfect time to down a bottle of cold beer. There are many bars.
They're on streets that lead onto Broadway. Just bars — that's a bottle of
beer for 50 cents. Bars with girls at the counter — that's beer for 75
cents. Bars with girls at the counter and dancing girls — that's beer for a
dollar and a half. There are onlookers by the bar on 49th Street, by the
aquarium glass that offers a view from the street of two girls and the
bartender. You see the stage only when you're already in the bar, cutting
off your retreat. The sharp-eyed bartender entices with a glance:
anything you want? Opens a bottle, places a glass.
It's crowded behind the counter, everyone stands sideways, all eyes on
the low stage. A girl in white boots seems to be polishing the floor,
twisting her legs and hips to the deafening music. Hell, this is actually a
whole show. On the stage, there are four jazz musicians and three girls
with tambourines. But who's that strange drummer? Oh, that's a
mechanical mannequin moving. Quite skillfully done. Not only does he
move his arms, but he also sways his torso, even opens his mouth in
mechanical ecstasy.
Clever? Not really. Perhaps cleverly done are the three saxophonists.
It's only later you realize that the three are also robots. All the noise, it
turns out, comes from a large box under the piano. The live sounds are
just lazy drums in the hands of the girls.
Well, what about the girls? They're genuinely alive, right? Hair... eyes
blinking. But the girl silently polishes the floor, grabs invisible rungs of
a rope ladder with her hands. Damn, she's making the same movements.
But then she leaves, she leaves on her own. Still, she's alive... She's
replaced by another, then a third, finally, the fourth — the longest-
legged one. She's in heels, not boots — that's the difference for length.
Each dances for seven minutes without a break. Everything is
mechanical, all deliberately mechanical, the more mechanical, the more
chic.
The girls are lucky. They would have been replaced by machines too,
but there aren't yet machines that emit the magnetic pull of a female
body. They'll invent them — the girls will reckon. Machines are
cheaper.
I look at the men at the counter. All their attention is on the stage.
Neatly trimmed napes. Fresh shirts. Pressed suits. Ties.
I turned away for a minute, didn't immediately realize that the
trimmed nape in front of me had changed.
The young bartender, a healthy guy with a hawkish nose, rolls a pink,
already chewed gum in his mouth, lazily, training his jaws. Spit it out,
maybe? Replace it with another?
 And the broad guy in the corner, by the aquarium glass, alone,
obliviously scuffs his feet to the din. A strange guy, not like the others.
In a cowboy hat. Drunk.
And another person in the corner. Also strange. Not looking at the
girls. Head heavily leans over the counter. Prods the ashtray with the
cigarette butt in time with the music. Finger taps the side of the glass. In
time with the music. Lost in thought...
And suddenly, one of the trimmed heads has a wise look, weariness,
anticipation.
It's time! Enough of Broadway's bric-a-brac for today.
Downstairs, in the subway, a melancholic policeman adjusts his wide,
thick belt. The jolting of the train. The racket of the cars. Human silence.
 IN THE DEPTHS OF LOS ANGELES

Even after New York, Los Angeles strikes with its pace. When
trying to sum up the impressions of this city, they all—Los Angeles'
appearance, encounters, conversations, and even statistics taken from
reference books—merge only in a complex, nervous, inspiring, and
frightening pace. This pace cannot be captured by a mathematical
formula, although in Los Angeles, perhaps more than anywhere else in
America, there are people eager to plot such a curve that would place
the present in its place and allow a glimpse into the future. It's a pace
of an element awakened by man and ridden by him.
The city owes its name to the Franciscan monk, Father Crespi. He
arrived in these once quiet places two centuries ago as part of the
Portola expedition and on August 2, 1769, noticing the river flowing
near their camp, christened it long and grandly: Rio de Nuestra Señora
la Reina de Los Angeles (River of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels).
If the long-haired Father Crespi were summoned from the heavens and
dropped into the current madness of Los Angeles, firstly, he would
hardly find his beloved river among the cluster of houses, cars, and
highways, and secondly, he would likely renounce his godson as if
haunted by the devil.
The pace of Los Angeles physically manifests itself in the speeds of
powerful cars liberated from traffic lights. And people have merged
with the cars. People, like new, extraordinary centaurs. And this
comparison came to my mind not after reading John Updike's novel
but on the Los Angeles freeways. There they speed past behind, in
front, and on either side of you, bent over their car's mane, leaning
over the steering wheel, merging with the body of the car, shielding
themselves with the windscreen. But if the mythical centaur was on
the verge between animal and human, seemingly evolving into a
human, separating from the animal, then the Los Angeles centaur is
already "evolving" beyond the human, projecting into the car.
The more difficult it is to rationally summarize Los Angeles, the
more you treasure simple yet strong sensations, and most importantly,
the persistent feeling of speed. As if you—beyond your will—were
microscopically inserted into an immeasurable, elemental,
mechanically swift movement of millions like you.
"At three in the morning, the roads here are as busy as at three in the
afternoon," my Los Angeles acquaintances repeated, and the
intonation revealed their anxious pride in being part of a special, ever-
awake tribe of humanity.
Yes, indeed, the city is all about speeds. And these are the speeds of
people who can't help but hurry, if only because there are 200
horsepower under the car's hood, and the road smoothly spreads under
the wheels. And within a day or two, the sense of permanent speed so
permeates you that it seems you wouldn't be surprised to see, after the
next smooth curve, a fantastic spaceport with a rocket aimed at the
zenith—and you're fully prepared for this wonder, you will fly into the
space ship without slowing down, and everything else will be just a
detail, not a new quality, just a quantitative increase to the second
cosmic speed. And you dissolve into the universe. Disperse.
Atomize...
Father Crespi's sky, hanging over the unknown river near the Indian
wigwams, was low, motionless blue vault. And his modern
compatriots, scattered by the giant accelerator of Los Angeles, seem to
be already trained for cosmic heights and distances. But I did not find
the spaceport. The spaceport, as is well known, is in Florida. I stayed
in Los Angeles for four days in May 1968. And on one beautiful
morning, as a final farewell, they whirled us on his freeways, delivered
to us the bitter-refreshing iodine scent of the Pacific wave, and cast us
into the valleys and mountains of Southern California, to the
redwoods, to the soft, powder-like beaches of charming little Carmel,
to the famous hills of San Francisco, this more refined but less
muscular rival of Los Angeles on the West Coast of the USA. And
there, in San Francisco, at midnight on June 4th, amidst the not-so-
deafening, brightly illuminated by television cameras, midnight of the
primary California elections, the unfathomable pace of Los Angeles
reached me again.
 Four quiet, hurried—pop-pop-pop—shots struck Robert Kennedy.
Boston's darling, a senator from New York, flew to California to stake
his claim for the White House in the primary elections, among five
million Californian Democrats. In that midnight at the Grand
Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel, he tasted the sweetness of
preliminary victory only to plunge into oblivion right there, in the
chaos of panic and women's screams in the kitchen amidst cabinets
and metallic plates, exclaiming, 'It can't be! Unbelievable!'. Behind
that 'unbelievable' was a desire to distance oneself from the sudden,
terrifying grin of reality. Like a distant backdrop that unexpectedly
loomed closer, it was November 22, 1963, a hot Texas midday in
Dallas, an open presidential 'Lincoln' on the highway near a six-story
warehouse of school textbooks, John Kennedy seated at the back
waving in welcome, Jacqueline smiling in her pink suit, the crowd's
cheers—and the sounds, initially innocent to ears tuned for a carnival
tune, sounds like exploding fireworks… Dallas, then Memphis in
Tennessee, where a racist's bullet struck Martin Luther King, placed
Los Angeles only third in the lengthening list from which no
American city can guarantee its exclusion. As these lines are written,
the trial of Sirhan Sirhan is continually delayed, and the motives and
hidden circumstances of the crime are not entirely clear yet. But I
speak of a personal feeling. Sensing the microclimate of Los Angeles,
I wasn't surprised that Robert Kennedy was taken out specifically
there. The New York senator aggressively imposed himself as a
presidential candidate, stirring up polarizing currents of sympathy and
antipathy. He was killed by a Palestinian Arab. An Americanized
Arab, because he spent eleven of his formative twenty-four years in
Los Angeles.
Are there still eccentrics who believe that Los Angeles is merely a
geographic appendage to Hollywood? Something provincially dimly
lit, illuminated only by the reflection of movie stars? Angelinos know
how strong the inertia of past perceptions is, and they expect the
unchanged question about Hollywood from their guests, ready to
answer it with an unchanged smirk. Hollywood has had its golden age,
while Los Angeles, the fastest-growing among major American cities,
considers itself on a first-name basis with the future. By population (3
million), Los Angeles stands third after New York and Chicago.
 In 1964, in terms of industrial production volume, Los Angeles
surpassed Chicago. Only New York remains ahead, and the capital of
Southern California is already pressing on the heels of the "imperial"
city. Against this backdrop, the once-popular signs of Hollywood
memorabilia completely fade into the background—such as the
preserved concrete imprints of movie stars' bare feet on the forecourt
of the Chinese Theater and the names of the greats on the plaques of
Hollywood Boulevard. Physically, Hollywood is as inconspicuous as
the river that gave Los Angeles its name. Economically, it has
survived only by adapting to its fiercest enemy—television,
establishing the production of TV shows.
During its heyday, a major film company claimed a large piece of
land for its studios—Twentieth Century Fox, that's the name of this
company. Thirty years ago, it believed that the 20th century belonged
to them. They lacked both intelligence and cunning. Time
unexpectedly races forward. The company, suffering from TV
competition and superhero movie flops, had to trade not only in films
but also its land.
The aluminum giant, "ALCOA," bought 260 acres of its land and,
glorifying its product, erected an architectural complex called
"Century City" on it—28 administrative and 22 residential buildings,
an 800-room hotel, and a massive shopping center. This micro-city,
worth half a billion dollars, is primarily constructed—an elegant
realization of the prototype of future cities that usually only entice in
blueprints. The penciled silhouettes of people have come alive there,
wandering among shops on the elegant inner square adorned with
fountains and abstract sculptures.
But even this complex is just a fleeting stroke viewed from a car
window in Los Angeles. Just like the Wilshire Boulevard center. Like
the new "Music Center." Like other architectural complexes growing
in this strange city. Because the main image of Los Angeles is its
freeways, and it's time to delve into them in more detail.
But what are freeways? Translated, they are "free ways." From a
construction standpoint, they are wide, concrete highways averaging
$3 million per mile. But that barely scratches the surface. Freeways
are realism on the edge of fantasy. To visualize them, Hollywood
might help with its panoramic films, even those shot from helicopters
that patrol Los Angeles's freeways.
 Take, for instance, our Garden Ring. Straighten it out. Lengthen it
first to 800 kilometers (and by 1980, to two and a half thousand
kilometers). Divide it into unequal segments and, linking them with
powerful soaring upward or diving underground links and junctions,
release them in all four directions. Remove the traffic lights from this
unrecognizable Garden Ring, so they don't hinder cars speeding at
120–130 kilometers per hour. Remove anything obstructing their swift
movement into space—anything at all—and create a wide buffer zone
along the shoulders. In the center, instead of a reserve zone, place
metal barrier links, and on the sides—similar links and metal mesh,
preventing any living beings not on wheels from crossing—freeways
are absolutely free from all living things not on wheels. Spread out all
this concrete might into eight lanes, four in one direction and four in
the other.
And finally, overlay this intricate network of arteries onto a part of
Southern California, over 10,000 kilometers of Los Angeles County,
this chaotic conglomerate of cities, towns, and hamlets where Los
Angeles proper reigns over a hundred younger satellite siblings.
Where one city ends and another begins, even longtime residents
can't discern. Everything is interwoven and torn apart by freeways.
And together, it forms Greater Los Angeles—7 million inhabitants and
4 million automobiles.
Imagine these blood vessels on the arteries of freeways, and you'll
grasp the constant threat of congestion, the constant need to expand,
lengthen, and control the highways because, until now, the number of
cars has at least doubled every ten years. Of every four working
people, three commute in their own cars. Only the main freeway
intersections let through over 300,000 vehicles per day. And in total,
on the freeways of Los Angeles County and neighboring Ventura and
Orange counties, cars cover 43 million kilometers a day, equal to fifty
round trips to the Moon and back. And besides the freeways, there are
thousands of miles of regular boulevards and streets with traffic lights,
adding to the cosmic figures of Los Angeles's motorization.
Freeways sing an anthem to Los Angeles as the super-American
city. Finally, America, the land of roads, cars, and cities, has found its
extreme, almost absolute embodiment in this vast urban synthesis, torn
by high speeds, in this unprecedented city by the road. Los Angeles is
jokingly called Roadsville—Road City. But this joke is bitter, and in
the anthem of the roaring freeways, there's an underlying worry: how
to live in a city by the road? Where will this overflowing tide of the
mechanical progress element take us?
Two victims are evident—the clean air and efficient urban
transportation. They were killed by the element of freeways and cars,
favoring the individual and ignoring the collective. Carless residents
of the Watts ghetto in Los Angeles are doomed to unemployment not
only due to the cursed circle of poverty and ignorance but also due to
the absence of urban transport that would provide them with mobility
for job searches.
Los Angeles, no less famous than London, has been marred by
poisonous white emissions primarily generated by exhaust fumes,
erasing the traditional Californian blessing—the subtropical sun. Ray
Bradbury, a Californian writer and futurist, mourns: "Seventeen years
ago, there were few cars, no smog, the subway worked, public
transportation was alive, and the skies were clear, blue, irresistible. It
truly was a promised land. Now, clear skies are so rare that when you
see them after rain, the heart aches from memories of long-gone days."
Is the car a good or an evil?
Certainly a blessing, but strangely, the answer to this question is
more categorical in a country where mass automobile usage is not yet
prevalent. The cohabitation of a person with a mass automobile sets in
motion a dialectic where a blessing can transform into evil. Consider
the purely American sorrow of architect and urban planner Victor
Gruen. It's the sorrow of a man stifled by his own creation—the
automobile. "Los Angeles is essentially devoted to the car," says
Victor Gruen. "The mix of roads and freeways and what's attached to
them—garages, parking lots, gas stations, repair shops, land occupied
by offered cars for sale, and so on." Charles Weltner, a congressman
from Georgia, sarcastically denies Los Angeles the right to be called a
city, seeing in it only a "roadside parking lot bordered by a few
buildings." According to the renowned English economist Barbara
Ward, large cities like Los Angeles are as deadly as a nuclear bomb,
with the only difference being that they kill people more slowly.
"People come to California from all over the US, leaving their loved
ones somewhere else and entering a new strange environment," writes
a local woman concerned about the high divorce rate in the city in the
Los Angeles Times. "The husband usually adjusts quite well because
he has a job where he commutes and makes friends. The wife has it
worse. She finds, especially if she came from another big city on the
East Coast or the Midwest, that Los Angeles isn't built for people but
just for cars..."
Americans are said to be married to their cars. For a Los Angeleno,
it's a Catholic marriage, without the right to divorce, for life. But
joking aside, the value of the quoted letter in the newspaper is so high
because it comes from a housewife, not a philosopher or a sociologist.
It means even at her level, she sees how the feverish whirlwind of the
super-American city intrudes upon the psychology of its inhabitants.
The increased "car-ization" of life tangibly tears the fabric of
traditional relationships.
...Once, after another meeting, we were speeding along the San
Diego freeway towards the city center, to our Los Angeles guardian's
office. It was six in the evening, the end of the workday, and the
freeways were bursting with traffic. Our guardian exited the freeway
and, slowing down, stopped at the intersection in front of the red light.
On the intersecting street, we saw the fresh wreckage of a car—
shattered windshield fragments powdered the pavement, the hood
crumpled and flattened, the radiator crushed, the engine internals
exposed. A police car stood on the side, and behind it was another,
also damaged.
Thank God there were no casualties," said my colleague. The stop
at the red light felt like a minute of mourning silence. The light turned
green, we moved forward, and I glanced fleetingly at the scene that
unfolded. There was a victim. Behind the last car on the sidewalk lay a
person, neatly, submissively. There was a victim, yet the cars on the
intersecting street didn't hesitate, passing through without stopping
when they had the green light.
Was he injured or killed? He received no more attention and mental
energy than a person killed "on-screen" on television. But could it be
any different? In a huge city, car-related deaths are not uncommon. A
passing glance, and then the eyes are back on the road. You forget
what you've seen. Your ears tuned into the radio. By the time you get
home, that body on the sidewalk has already vanished from your mind.
You won't bring it up in conversation with your wife at the dinner
table. The pace of Los Angeles...
 II

Los Angeles is criticized as much as San Francisco is praised. It

sprawls chaotically and vigorously, akin to dough handled carelessly
by a negligent housewife. They say one of its many detractors found a
road sign indicating "Los Angeles City Limits" near Butte, Montana,
beyond the Rocky Mountains, two thousand kilometers away from
Southern California.
The city's defenders are in silent defense. Yet they exist, and doesn't
the fact of Los Angeles' unprecedented growth prove that their
numbers are increasing? At times, they switch to the offensive. Don
Macmor is a prominent Angeleno, a vice president of a major credit
corporation, and also California's George Gallup, who, with a staff of
250 interviewers, is ready for confidential assignments and
corresponding remuneration to accurately gauge the popularity and
odds of victory for various political figures. He keeps his finger on the
pulse of Los Angeles. He's convinced that California is experiencing
the "winds of the future." "What's happening today in California," he
told us, "will happen tomorrow all over the world or, modestly
speaking, at least in the U.S." And in California, naturally, what's
happening is what's happening in Los Angeles. Parenthetically, Mr.
Macmor, ten days before the primary elections in California, promised
Robert Kennedy's victory over Eugene McCarthy, although - but how
can we blame him for that? - he didn't predict what would happen in
the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The winds of the
future... Your impulses are unfathomable even for professional
predictors.
Here's another defender of Los Angeles - Professor William
Whitten. We met him in San Francisco, where he heads a renowned
school of urban planning and design at the University of Berkeley.
Intelligent, ironic, knowledgeable. He's interested in economic results,
not the criticism of humanists and the emotions of Los Angeles
housewives. "Planners consider American cities chaotic and
dispersed," he says. "Architects find them ugly from an aesthetic point
of view. But insightful economists see that they're highly productive,
and Los Angeles is the most efficient of them all."
According to him, what makes Los Angeles efficient? The city's
economic base comprises factories producing airplanes and "space
products," as well as electronics and scientific research linked to the
needs of the military-industrial complex. This business fluctuates,
pulsates, and the city, along with it, is in a state of "rocking balance."
Its skilled workforce has stable employment, even though the place
and even the type of work may change. But people don't need to
change their homes, as their work, however distant it might be, is
connected through the renowned freeway network.
Professor Whitten's explanation is incomplete and undisputed, but
his words about the "rocking balance" relying on the military industry
are very precise. They encapsulate the essence of Los Angeles and
Southern Californian prosperity.
But first, a small digression. We lived in the "Annie" motel, modest
but prominently located - next to the town of Beverly Hills, where
movie stars, media personalities, and millionaires of a different profile
live in quiet, elegant mansions on hilly streets and alleys. It's an oasis
for 35,000 residents, surrounded by the noisy urban giant of Los
Angeles.
My colleague chose the "Annie" motel not for its distinguished
neighbors or for "top comfort at moderate prices." The State
Department, regulating our movements in America, kindly opened up
Los Angeles for us, but it's a cunning kindness. There are plenty of
areas in the city and county closed to Soviet citizens, so we had to
move cautiously with a map, and the freeways weren't free paths for
us. Beverly Hills is good because it's entirely open. Its residents have
their secrets, of course. Lovely hills are unusually populated by
psychiatrists (one per 166 residents) and lawyers (one per every 37
residents). This statistic proves the good earnings of lawyers and
psychiatrists and the fact that the fortunate ones in Beverly Hills
apparently need their services more than the elusive average
American. But still, the secrets of movie stars differ from those in
aviation plants and missile bases, which are so abundant in the county
of Los Angeles and Southern California. And on the open roads,
seeing factories and plants flickering on the sides, you experience a
complex feeling of confinement and worry - weapons are forged here.
Against your country.
In the reference almanac "California," concise information is
provided about the cities in Los Angeles County. The list is
impressively straightforward. Burbank—center of the aviation
industry. Culver City—aviation factories of Hughes Corporation.
Gardena—electronics and aircraft parts interspersed with casinos.
Inglewood—a series of aviation factories and the Los Angeles
International Airport, through which 15 million passengers pass
annually. Long Beach (the second-most populous city in the county)—
a naval base, shipyards, and an annual international beauty contest.
Lynwood—electronics and aircraft parts. Monrovia—electronics and
food processing plants. Palmdale—a major Edwards Air Force Base.
Pasadena—renowned Jet Propulsion Laboratory preparing moon
flights, electronics, precision manufacturing. Pomona—rockets and
aircraft parts. San Gabriel—electronics, aviation production. Santa
Monica—RAND Corporation, a scientific branch of the US Air Force,
aviation factories, electronic laboratories, and annual ceremonies
awarding Oscars to the best films, directors, and actors.
To the south lies San Diego County, saturated with military bases
and factories, perhaps denser than its northern neighbor. And don't let
the innocent word "electronics" confuse you—official data states that
this industrial sector is "defense-oriented" to no less than four-fifths.
In the economic development history of Los Angeles, several
magical words emerged. Railroads... Then oil, discovered in the
1890s, transforming this region from agrarian to industrial. Ancient
but operational oil "pump-jacks" can still be seen on the streets,
alongside restaurants, neighboring the mansions of movie stars. But
the local industry no longer relies solely on oil. In the 1920s, the word
"airplane" was more romantic than magical. Aircraft factories began to
be built in California because the warm climate allowed for
construction savings, and the ever-clear sky facilitated product testing.
Aircraft gained a magical significance during and especially after
World War II. By the late '50s, rockets and electronics were added.
The English language, fond of brevity, acquired the term "aerospace,"
obscure in a literal translation—"air—space." In the specific context of
Los Angeles, it signifies the modern defense industry, tightly
intertwined with aircraft manufacturing, rocket production, and the
creation of advanced electronic systems. Los Angeles eagerly took on
the burden of the arms race, a sweet burden that only strengthened its
shoulders. It's spoken of willingly, openly, and enthusiastically. No
one keeps the magic of aerospace a secret.
 There's no need to introduce Bank of America. It's the foremost
bank in California, the US, and the entire capitalist world by capital.
Its headquarters traditionally reside in San Francisco, but in Los
Angeles, it's the operational center constructing a 50-story skyscraper
and 270 branches (across the entire county). Who else has more
authority and capabilities to monitor the economic health of Los
Angeles County? A special, semi-confidential report on this topic
prepared by bank experts and kindly shared with us is of interest. In
the US, population growth and employment rates are crucial indicators
of economic conditions. In the post-war years, the county's population
grew twice as fast as the national average. From 1950 to 1965, it
increased by 2.7 million people. Sixty percent of this growth came
from migration to this area from other parts of the US. Like fish seek
depth, people seek better conditions. Why do dynamic Americans
continue to flock to Los Angeles, despite the Wild West being long
tamed? For work, for income.
"The most crucial lure attracting new people to the Los Angeles
area—Long Beach—was employment," reports a document
resembling a confession of a sinner, admiring and unrepentant. "With
the growth of defense-oriented industry in this region, Los Angeles
gained a reputation as a place where well-paying jobs were available.
Out of the total workforce growth in California from 1950 to 1965, 44
percent falls on this county.
"The economic miracle of Los Angeles is detailed in stages.
"The fastest employment growth"—1951-1953, during the Korean
War period.
"Another period of rapid growth"—mid-1950s, as "rocket and
electronic industries took the lead."
Slowing employment growth—after 1957, when "job numbers in
the aviation industry started declining."
Further slowdown—in 1962-1964, "primarily due to job losses in
defense-related industries following the completion or termination of
major missile programs."
"The peak employment level"—in 1965, when "civil aircraft
production increased, along with the number of government contracts
for defense and space-related products."
The latest data in the report is up to mid-1965. The air war against
North Vietnam had just begun, and there were not half a million but
only 50,000 American soldiers in South Vietnam. A new gold mine
was opening, but its depth had not yet been measured.
Such are the pivotal fluctuations of Los Angeles. In the dynamism
of its freeways, the dynamism of the main military forge of a huge
imperial power is only externally reflected. It has adeptly adapted and
secured itself from various angles. Along its assembly lines, it runs not
only the "Cold War" but also "small wars," calculations for nuclear
war, and even the space era linked to "defense." Poor pockets of
depression in the coal regions of Appalachia, your trouble is that you
only experienced boom periods during the years of two world wars!
Taxpayer money funding the arms race is collected nationwide but
disproportionately pumped into California. In the "Golden State,"
where one-tenth of the US population resides, its corporations receive
over 20 percent of "primary" Pentagon military contracts and over half
of all space-related contracts. In 1964, California's military industry
employed three times more people (547,000) than the state of New
York. In 1965, California received over a third of the entire federal
allocation for scientific—mostly military—research ($4 billion)—
three times more than the next state, New York. It's no wonder that
four years ago, California crossed its historical milestone, surpassing
New York in population and becoming the first among all fifty US
states. Regarding Southern California with its center in Los Angeles,
according to specialists' calculations, 60 percent of those employed in
the manufacturing industry in this region work in "defense."
Los Angeles prompts contemplation of the complex metamorphoses
of our century. The ancient image of death—a bony old woman with a
scythe—somehow doesn't match the sharp edges of the modern era. Of
course, American wealth doesn't solely come from the arms race, but
the primary, undisputed impetus behind the post-war economic
miracle of Los Angeles is the business of war, work for the old lady—
death. $3530 average annual income per person—how much of that
comes from death? 100,000 domestic swimming pools, 125,000
private yachts—how many were built from the yields of death on the
hills of Korea, in the jungles of Vietnam?
Mary McCarthy, a renowned writer and an even more famous
literary critic, in her book of essays on Vietnam, recounts an
interesting episode. "When I was flying to Hue on a big C-130 plane,"
writes Mary McCarthy, "I overheard the pilot and co-pilot discussing
their personal goals in this war, and they aimed to do real estate
business in Vietnam once the war ended. From the air, observing the
Vietcong, they assessed different options and concluded that Nha
Trang—'Beautiful sandy beaches'—suited them better than Cam Ranh
Bay—'Desert.' They disagreed on what could make more money: the
pilot wanted to build a first-class hotel and villas, while the co-pilot
believed the future lay in inexpensive housing. This conversation
seemed like a hallucination to me, but the next day in Hue, I met a
Marine colonel who had recently retired. He fought the Japanese and
then made money on land projects in Okinawa, investing profits in
importing frozen shrimp from Japan, supplying restaurants in San
Diego. War, this cheap form of mass tourism, opens up business
opportunities to them."
Indeed, it seems like hallucinations, but as Mary McCarthy rightly
notes, the source lies in the obsession with "private initiative," in the
psychology of owners, which they don't abandon even when wearing
military uniforms. By coincidence—though not entirely random—all
these interlocutors of the writer turned out to be dynamic Californians.
The scientist and writer Ralph Lapp titled his latest book
"Civilization of Arms." This is the American civilization, industrious,
accustomed to and sustained by the permanent crutches of the arms
race. This civilization includes the director of the largest aviation
corporation, "North American Aviation," a professor-anthropologist
from the "RAND Corporation," providing scientific recommendations
for "counterinsurgency warfare" based on the study of human
specimens in Southeast Asia, a worker at a factory producing "Titan"
or "Polaris" missiles, a Los Angeles merchant of women's ready-to-
wear dresses (and Los Angeles is renowned for its female fashion),
entirely uninterested in where the dollars come from for his charming
clientele, as long as these dollars exist.
Michael T. enchanted us with hospitality, serious kind eyes, gentle
manners, and intelligent conversation. He has a cozy home in Beverly
Hills ($125,000) with a view of green mountains, over which the
Californian sun wearily set at that evening hour, a Cadillac with a
telephone through which he even speaks to Australia, a lovely family,
"very substantial incomes," and a set of views of a New York liberal
who left the East Coast because it's easier to make money in the West.
He is ashamed of the Vietnam War and the plight of mining families
in Appalachia. In 1960, when the Democratic presidential candidacy
was contested by John Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson, he favored
Stevenson, the darling of many liberals, seeing Kennedy as an upstart
and opportunist. In 1968, he supported Senator Eugene McCarthy,
considered to some extent the spiritual successor of Stevenson.
But Stevenson, as the American ambassador to the UN, defended
the Vietnamese venture, albeit reluctantly—shortly before his sudden
death on a London street, he complained to a journalist friend that the
forced defense of dirty deeds cost him several years of his life. And
Michael? A vice president of a large construction corporation, he is
engaged in the peaceful business of selling 3,000 residential homes a
year. Houses are sold on credit, and before closing a deal, they
conduct inspections: what are the buyer's earnings—how stable are
they? I'm sure his company appreciates clients from defense plants.
The stability of their earnings is confirmed by a twenty-year history of
the arms race, almost guaranteed by government policy.
This is a small example of the "civilization of arms." The blame
cannot be equated; the fault lies with the ruling class, imperialistic
policies, the system. But this civilization lures with temptations,
entices. It takes on responsibility, issuing indulgences to millions, and
it's each individual's personal matter—whether to refuse them or not.
III

I'm still not sure if Watts, the extensive African American district of
Los Angeles where the memorable uprising erupted in August 1965,
seen almost as a disturbing omen preceding subsequent dramatic
explosions of anger and despair among the underprivileged in Newark,
Detroit, Washington, Chicago, and other cities, was open to Soviet
correspondents. But I remember how once, with our active guide from
a highly influential business weekly, we were returning to the "Anne"
motel, concluding our day of meetings. He intriguingly said, 'Want me
to show you Watts?' My colleague and I remained intriguingly silent:
perhaps he had aired this idea with the right people, and after all, what
military secrets would there be in Watts?
We exited the freeway and, like urbanites in woodland paths,
wandered uncertainly for a long time along some byways and access
roads until we found ourselves in the subdued realm of neglected
streets with one-story houses, with black matrons so dissimilar from
sunburned white compatriots, black impulsive, rhythmic children, and
black weary men. We didn't stop or get out of the car. It was like
reconnaissance in foreign territory, although a native Angeleno guided
us, and, in fact, these were his compatriots.
The difference lay precisely in these being black compatriots.
Our guide sought traces of the fires of three years prior, the places
where the editorial board had urged him to shake off his journalistic
rust, but he hadn't been here for three years, and the fire traces had
meanwhile disappeared, transformed into vacant lots and new gas
stations. And we, subdued, drove through Watts, where—for mile
after mile—not a single white face was seen. Our guide quietly,
tensely joked, 'The natives are behaving themselves now.'
The intonation carried the confiding tone of a white person speaking
to whites, and in the word 'natives,' there was not only ironic but also a
serious implication—he perceived blacks as carriers of another,
primitive, and potentially hostile civilization, not yet matured into the
dominant civilization, not fitting into it and therefore causing a fair
amount of trouble. Our prompt, familiar, unspared-of-time guide was a
pragmatic American with moderately conservative philosophies.
Traveling with him for several days, I had become accustomed to his
complaints. He disliked the fact that in the vast Los Angeles county, a
layer of blacks and Mexicans, poor, uneducated, floundering
helplessly in the tough industrial society, was growing, needing
various forms of social support and being looked upon as dependents.
Even these meager provisions were entirely unacceptable to many
Americans, and their views, although incomplete, were succinctly
summed up by an imposing roadside banner we once noticed depicting
Uncle Sam with a beard in a star-spangled cylinder, reading: 'This is
your uncle, not your father.'
In Los Angeles, there are over 400,000 African Americans and
around half a million Americans of Mexican descent. Yet, one can live
there for not just four days but four months and four years and,
circling the freeways, never set foot in Watts. Poverty in America,
according to the strange but accurate definition of the well-known
sociologist Michael Harrington, is 'invisible.' Invisible because it's off
the main roads. Invisible and inaudible—until the 'natives' behave
quietly. Then suddenly, it turns out it's as invisible as an
intercontinental missile hidden in impenetrable underground bunkers.
There's an explosion, as in 1965 in Watts—34 dead, hundreds
wounded, 4,000 arrested, $35 million in damages. Another unexpected
pulsation of Los Angeles, exposing hidden patterns and the dark,
subterranean currents of its life…
Our visit to Watts was brief and episodic. We mainly met with
businessmen and professors, particularly those professors whose close
relationship with business fits the formula: money - ideas - money.
Without repeating myself, I'll say that the image of a fat tycoon in a
frock coat, striped trousers, and a bag of gold is hopelessly outdated.
Perhaps, it's still needed by caricaturists, but it's deceptive as it shifts
the focus. Businessmen are not necessarily athletic, and they manage
without gold or even cash; they present credit cards sealed in plastic
for all occasions.
In Los Angeles, we met one such semi-deity of business. Slow but
firm power flowed from his gray eyes. He maintains his tall, slender
figure. He knows he's a wonder. He behaves accordingly, allowing
everyone to admire themselves, concealed envy, curiosity, at the very
least. Seven years ago, he, an experienced electronics engineer, had
$300,000, and it was now or never! He founded an electronic
corporation on that. Connections helped, especially in the Pentagon,
staffing, market knowledge, product quality. There were difficulties,
although now he narrates epically about his competitors: yes, they
came to my customers. They said - don't buy from this guy; he'll cheat
you. Nonsense of that kind. Business as usual...
Currently, as it's whispered (and it's unethical to ask directly about
such things), he has a personal capital of around thirty million, and the
corporation - try to buy it! - is worth one and a half billion. It's a
publicly traded company registered on the New York Stock Exchange,
one of the largest in its field. Mr. S. has 3 percent of the shares, but he
manages it, holding the position of president and possessing the
authority of an informed person and pioneer. 25 thousand workers in
two dozen factories. A thousand engineers. Young talents are
constantly sought nationwide, organizing expeditions to universities.
Without an influx of fresh blood, you'll disappear. The factories are
deliberately scattered and fragmented: to prevent workers from
unionizing. But in general, Mr. S. doesn't skimp, paying well for every
four shares bought by his employees, adding a fifth for free, and
offering other enticing financial lures for the top hundred in the
corporation. His calculation is not the calculation of an old miser. He's
a dealer of the new formation, valuing science, conducting business on
a large scale, understanding that meager wages won't attract competent
workers and will result in low profits.
He has a major business with the Pentagon.
"We're not dealing with routine here. Bombs, planes - that's not our
thing," he says, waving his hand dismissively at the "routine work."
For his part - cutting-edge electronic devices, a refined product. For
the same military aircraft. What else? Who knows. Secrets of Los
Angeles all around.
"Mr. S., I recently read in the Wall Street Journal that corporations
are having difficulty recruiting graduate students for work. That
students don't want to serve in the military business. Is that true?"
"No, it's incorrect. You can't trust what's written in newspapers."
We had lunch together and, leaving the cool, dimly lit restaurant of
the "Century City" hotel, we head to Mr. S.'s office. The enclosed
internal space of the micro-city absorbed the warm May sun. Well-
dressed, clean people. The millionaire strides leisurely next to us,
having performed yet another ritual act of communication with the
press, albeit this time, with the "red" press. He answered all our
questions. He was moderately candid, moderately secretive. We didn't
abuse our right to ask. But now he's slightly irritated. In the last
question, he feels a catch. He took us for businessmen, but this
question smells of inappropriate politics and propaganda. As if
someone accuses him of something.
"And what about 'Dow Chemical'?" I ask, not falling behind.
"Do you mean that noise about napalm?" he turns to me, tilting his
head. I confirm that yes, I mean "that noise," those protests in
universities against the corporation "Dow Chemical" supplying
napalm to the US Air Force in Vietnam.
And not to me but more toward the side, he tosses a short, resentful,
and sharp retort: "Bunch of educators!"
And those words lay like a boundary between us. We're close, but
we're in different worlds. How to translate "bunch of educators"?
Often, literal translation doesn't convey the essence. Literally - a
handful of educators, a bunch of professors. But in the angry, hostile
 intonation of a restrained man, it sounded like - a gang of moralists-
humanitarians.
"Bunch of educators..." It was like a lash, like a nervous snap at the
dying but still noisy and annoying autumn fly. Like another pulsation
of Los Angeles. Hatred flared like lightning from a businessman
toward intellectuals-humanitarians, toward all these opponents of the
Vietnam War who scream about conscience, besiege recruiters from
the corporation "Dow Chemical" in university buildings, disturb young
souls, and interfere with the smooth operation of the machinery, the
production process of the "civilization of weapons.
I remembered the instructions given to Dow Chemical recruiters.
Every time someone bothers them with the word "napalm," they're
supposed to shout back: "Sara rep! Napalm! Sara rep! Napalm! Sara
rep!" Sara rep is a novelty of the corporation, a pleasant surprise for
American kitchens. It's a miraculous fireproof plastic paper with which
you can wrap a chicken, toss it in the oven, and roast it in its own
juices. A distant person across the Pacific, convulsing, strips off the
burning non-adhesive napalm gel along with his skin. Meanwhile, the
chicken is appetizingly languishing in an American housewife's oven.
Any product is legitimate as long as it's purchased, and Sara rep in
Dow Chemical's commercial turnover takes up more space than
napalm. Napalm! Sara rep!
The manufacturer is separated from the product, the killer from the
victim, not only by distance but also by intermediate steps, the
fragmentation of labor. It's easier to ask individual Shylocks. But when
Shylock becomes collective, an empire, a system — who to ask then?
When they suck the blood of an entire nation and devastate an entire
country? Everyone can shield themselves with a stereotypical response:
I'm just doing my job. And only the restless bunch of educators
muddies the waters, claiming that it's not work but robbery.
Products can be ideas, classified scientific reports, no less deadly
than rockets and napalm. They are produced, for example, a half-hour's
drive from downtown Los Angeles. Address: 1700 Main Street, Santa
Monica, California. There, in a quarter near the Pacific Ocean, two
large modern buildings are occupied by the famous "RAND
Corporation." Palm trees brush the car park. Gloomy corridors,
modestly furnished offices, long tables, and coffee urns in the
conference rooms.
"Here's the milk. Do you want sugar?"
 The inhabitants wear loosely tied ties, the foreheads and gazes of
intellectuals, pipes instead of cigarettes, and other academic
impressions. The conversation is peppered with scientific-technical
jargon, academically calm and judicious. The tone is even, passions
banished, emotions archived - they're not objective. Here, facts are
valued, cold logic, and the unrestrained play of the mind untouched by
morality. We've been there. Nothing extraordinary. However, at the
entrance, guests are greeted, checked against a list, given a special pass
to wear on the jacket pocket, and then escorted through corridors,
offices, and even, pardon me, to the restroom. In the modest offices,
there are many classified papers, but they can be left on the tables.
They prefer an atmosphere of academic freedom. Yet, they keenly
watch over the guests.
In these two ordinary buildings (by the way, a large electronic
computing center is located in the basement with direct "outlets" to
clients), 1140 people work. Among them are 524 "professionals," 145
engineers, 82 economists, 75 mathematicians, 60 physicists, 51
programmers, 32 specialists in political science, 57 experts in
meteorology, history, psychology, linguistics, physical chemistry,
sociology, and so on. Their knowledge and talents are arranged on
industry shelves, yet they're interconnected and mixed, and "RAND"
itself is called a "thinking reservoir." At the intersection of specialties,
through the free play of the mind, bold ideas can be born. That's the
method of "RAND.
Who draws from the reservoir? This wasn't a secret even 22 years
ago. In 1946, the perceptive Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force,
General Arnold, understood that in the post-war world, his country and
its air force would have to play a significant game. The complexities of
the nuclear era were beginning, and to navigate them, strategic
bombers needed the assistance of scientists. Aviation magnate Donald
Douglas allocated the first $10 million to acquire scientific brains for
the Air Force. This gave rise to the "Research and Development"
project — the "RAND" project, which until 1948 was a direct
subsidiary of the "Douglas Aircraft Company." The first report to
emerge from RAND was titled: "Preliminary Design of an
Experimental Spacecraft Orbiting Earth." RAND members take pride
that this report came out 10 years before the first satellite.
Unfortunately, they were a bit late with the actual "experimental
spacecraft.
 Since then, a lot has changed. The idea of professors serving
generals turned out to be infectious. Today, there are dozens of
"thinking reservoirs" in the USA. RAND became an "independent
nonprofit corporation" and outlived the Douglas Aircraft Company. It
produced a constellation of so-called "strategic thinkers" like Herman
Kahn, its most celebrated protege. Embracing RAND's principle of
"thinking about the unthinkable," Kahn coldly developed a scale for
nuclear war casualties and scenarios for escalations. Yet, RAND
Corporation remains loyal to aviation generals. "As before, the Air
Force remains our principal client, accounting for nearly 70 percent of
the corporation's research efforts," reads the official 1966 RAND
report. It also mentioned a new five-year contract with the Air Force
worth $75 million. Twenty-three percent of their efforts were
allocated to the Pentagon and the government's space agency. Clients
provide tasks and money for their execution. In 1966, RAND
prepared 335 memoranda and 8 reports on strategic (nuclear weapons,
missiles, nuclear war), tactical, "counterinsurgency" (mainly
Vietnam), political (from the "cultural revolution" in China to
agrarian development in Peru), scientific-technological issues
(including the question of ocean waves caused by near-surface or
underwater nuclear explosions), communication systems, and so on.
Operations of guerrillas on a village scale, the impact of North
Vietnam bombings on the morale of the population and the army,
refugee sentiments, results of operations to destroy crops and forests,
the structure and actions of the NLF organization in the provinces of
Dinh Tuong and Khuang Ngai—all these are scrutinized by RAND
employees from 9 to 5, then they drive home, to their wives and kids,
to the blue reflection of their home pool, or to catch a rolling ocean
wave before evening cocktails with colleagues.
"Another whiskey? Ice to add? Thank you, doc..."
How many people were killed based on their paid
recommendations? Who knows? In the scientific-technological era,
the killer is separated from the victim.
Herman Kahn parted ways with RAND and created his corporation
of a similar nature—the Hudson Institute near New York. Once, we
met him. A very fat and lively man nicknamed Buddha. A brilliant
cold mind. It's easy for him because nothing is sacred. He recounted
an episode from his last trip to Vietnam. He was invited to witness
American planes dropping napalm canisters on live targets. He sat on
a hill, like in a theater box. "It was horrible to see those burning
human torches, though I'm racist in the sense that it's better for me
when it's not Americans burning but others," was his comment. And a
satisfied chuckle, hands trembling on his bulging belly. If you want to
talk to a RAND Corporation member, forget about morality—
otherwise, the conversation won't happen.
Science provides means of destruction and is tied to war. This truth
doesn't go away in our time. RAND is linked to an unjust war. Does
science remain science if it serves an adventure, if it attempts to
smooth over the atavism of imperialistic policies? RAND members
cast spells not over flasks but over the fate of a whole nation, devising
the most efficient and cost-effective means of its destruction.
Americans are waging a war "by science" for the first time, and
RAND is just a spoke in the wheel. McNamara, McGeorge Bundy,
Walt Rostow, and others—they're all science-like. Their defeats prove
that science falters. However, this doesn't erase the stain of disgrace
from its priests.
But let's return to our subject. RAND was not coincidentally born
in the Los Angeles County, near the main US military forge. In Los
Angeles County, 70,000 scientific workers are classified as "serving
business." These people serve the business of war and, as noted in the
Bank of America report, are "associated with the production of
rockets, airplanes, and electronic equipment." A very impressive
concentration of scientific-technological thought.
For comparison, in the movie industry, in the famous Hollywood, a
total of 32,000 people are employed.
...We eventually visited the Twentieth Century-Fox film company,
despite the ridicule from our Los Angeles business acquaintances.
The press agent, Mr. Campbell, seemed flustered, as if expecting new,
already familiar attacks on Hollywood. The company grounds were
deserted, reminiscent of long-extinct ghost towns once founded and
abandoned by gold prospectors. The walls, decorated in a style of a
bygone era, deepened the impression. But in the largest soundstage,
life bustled as the famous musical comedy "Hello, Dolly!" was being
filmed. Old, painted actresses sat in chairs by the entrance. And on the
set, director Gene Kelly repeatedly rehearsed the ballroom scene. It
was an antique ball with vintage dances and attire, and among the
actors, a tall, dark-haired beauty, pulsating with excitement, glided
like a graceful swan.
The girl with the swan-like neck was called Marian MacAndrew. A
personification of grace, she vibrantly moved under the strict gaze of
the film cameras, radiating youth, beauty, and charm. The veterans
scrutinized her, testing whether she was truly made of "star" material.
She was a promising commodity, and Mr. Campbell mentioned that
Marian was currently being paid $750 a week, but they hoped to make
millions from her. There was a tired hopefulness in his voice. I
understood him. Yes, the neckline is stunning, but youth is fleeting,
and in a city that bets on rocket bodies, airplane wings, and the minds
of scientists, the business of beauty seems frivolous.
 Hippie Smile

When we arrived, on Saint Mark's Street between Second and

Third Avenues, there were already around three thousand boys and
girls gathered. Jeans. Young mustaches and beards. Boys with
shoulder-length hair. The evening darkness muted the stage, but it
was visible that it was two-tiered. On the first tier by the microphones
stood boys with electric guitars, and on the second, narrow and shaky
one, there were girls ready to transmit the "vibration" to the crowd.
On the roof of a low building nearby, where the stage was set up, two
faces glowed in the darkness. Police caps were recognizable above
those faces. New York "cops" also had their own amusements, but
here was duty, responsibility.
A frail-looking Jim Forett appeared in front of the microphone - a
teenager with a weak chin, a halo of unkempt hair, and a blue sweater.
He called for the crowd to make way. Then guitars struck sharply, and
electronic resonating sounds of rock 'n' roll swept through the narrow
corridor of the street under the perpetually starless New York sky.
The crowd "vibrated."
And the girl in front of us, "vibrating," took a handful of cherries
from her bag and handed them out to those nearby. We also got one
each, delicately squeezing the tender skin between our fingers. I
remembered and said to my colleague:
— Why are you hesitating, Boris?
— Oh, right,— remembered Boris,— indeed.
He took a flower out of his pocket and gallantly handed it to the
girl. Of course, the ritual should have been completed, but neither
Boris nor I had the energy for it. We should have said: Love... Love...
We pushed through to Third Avenue, where the crowd was thinner.
Many were "vibrating." A young black guy was performing rock 'n'
roll enthusiastically, with an African sense of rhythm. Some kid,
resting his guitar on the pavement, casually - he was one of their own
in this crowd - sprayed it with paint from a sprayer, and the guitar
glowed orange and festive in the darkness.
At the end of Saint Mark's Street was a wooden police barrier, and
next to it, Jim Forett was handing out simple flat sticks used to stir
coffee in paper cups. Five minutes ago, these sticks, unnoticed, were
lying carelessly on the pavement, and now Jim was handing them out,
elevating them from the asphalt to the level of symbols. Passing by,
we each took a stick, and I - damn my lack of insight! - asked Jim:
— What are these for? — But Jim didn't take offense and replied
softly:
— Maybe they'll come in handy for something...
In New York, there are thousands of different New Yorkers, and
almost around every corner, the city changes the setting for human
tragedies and comedies.
Rock was still faintly echoing in the distance, but we were already
walking on a completely empty street, where there were no cherries,
no flowers, no invigorating flow of youth, no expectations. Kicking
our feet in ragged trousers, leaning against their own chest with a far
from youthful, far from fashionable beard, a painfully glaring lone
human-beast, a drunk, dying - once again! - from an insatiable
burning thirst, fixed his eyes on us. The asphalt served as his bed, and
the wall as his headboard, and what did he care about different sticks
if there was an empty glass flask lying nearby. Here stretched the
branches of the famous Bowery, streets of shelters and alcoholics, the
most unmasked, most candid street of New York...
I've thrown you some puzzles, reader. What can you do? It's getting
harder to explain America. So, psychedelia. It's not a science but
rather a practice of "expanding consciousness," and it's becoming
more and more widespread. They expand it primarily with marijuana,
as well as by "vibrating" to the sounds of rock 'n' roll. There are other
ways too. Long-haired young people are called HIPPIES, although
this fragile word was not born by them and not everyone likes it. They
are also called the "love generation," "precise guys." The exchange of
flowers, cherries, sticks, or even homemade cigarettes with marijuana
carries a symbolic load, it's like the sacraments of their religion. It's an
idea of sharing, not the kind where shareholders divide dividends, but
selfless, out of a sense of sympathy. It's an idea of brotherhood and
community. A hippie even hands a flower to a policeman: Love...
Love...
Jim Forett is a link between the anarchic "tribes" and "communal
families" of hippies. Don McNeil, a hippie-style reporter who
dropped out of high school in Alaska and came to New York for work
and life experience, introduced us. On the way to the "Figaro" cafe,
where the meeting was scheduled, Don took me to an underground
shop, a kind of small department store for hippies. It smelled of
Indian incense, and lively trading was going on for consciousness-
expanding paraphernalia. I tried on glasses with cut glass. The world
became multicolored. The world, refracted through facets, shone with
rainbows.
How much does it take to see the sky in diamonds? These were
psychedelic glasses.
At our first meeting, Jim Forett sensed irony in me. He snapped.
When I asked him about his parents, Jim replied bitterly: father - a
millionaire, and mother - a prostitute. You know how it usually goes
in millionaire families...
At our fourth meeting, we understood each other better. He comes
from a wealthy family; his stepfather is a successful businessman.
Since childhood, Jim was under the mentorship of the "Youth
Achievement" organization, which encourages teenagers to start their
own businesses and adopt the views of a successful businessman.
Then Jim attended the privileged Harvard University, where he
realized that it was turning him into a merchant and killing the human
within. There, he detested the universal yardstick of materialism:
"The fastest means the most economical, the cheapest means the most
practical." Who steered him away from orthodox bourgeois America?
Imagine, Konstantin Stanislavski. Jim became interested in the stage,
and the "Method" (i.e., Stanislavski's system) allowed him to "look
into himself" and see where "youth achievements" led. He dropped
out of university. Became an actor and a hippie.
Here's a creed I heard not only from Jim but also from Don, Paul,
and other hippies: in this society, they want us to perform the tasks of
machines. Let the machines do the machine's work. We want
something more meaningful, more creative.
This isn't empty talk; it's a cry of a young soul threatened with
extinction.
 The old-world landlords, as we well know from school, didn't live
but vegetated.
The new-world businessmen are very dynamic. But they also don't
live. They function like machines, programmed like electronic
decision-making devices.
Different social systems have different poles, reader. Our moral
and ethical problems also have different poles. That's why America is
so incomprehensible from the perspective of those who haven't lived
there. For instance, we're in favor of increasing the efficiency of our
people, our workers. Hooray for efficient people! But only if they
remain human.
That's the so-called "pressure interview," an enhanced method of
testing the quality of a businessman.
— Suppose either you or your child must die tomorrow, but it's up
to you — who? Whom will you choose?
— Perhaps, I'll choose myself.
— Why?
— It's hard to say. Probably because I've lived much longer than he
has, and he has more life ahead.
— Don't you think that's a rather foolish answer? How will you
reconcile it with your role as a husband, father, and provider?
— But my child is young, and...
What difference does that make? I don't understand you. What are
you trying to prove?
— I don't know... I suppose...
This dialogue is taken from the "Life" magazine, where an
advertorial was published about the working methods of a thriving
private agency that recruits top executives for leading corporations.
The candidate for big bosses is already wavering, almost ready to
"kill" his child. He's ashamed of his emotions. It's too late. They've
discovered remnants of a soul in him, and consequently, a lack of
"efficiency." "His chances of getting the job for $50,000 a year have
practically evaporated," the magazine concludes.
Oscar Wilde once remarked that Americans know the price of
everything but have absolutely no idea about values. In his time, there
was no Pentagon, no recruitment agency like Kurt Einstein's, rejecting
foolish businessmen whose atavism of paternal love outweighs
calculation. But since then, in the world of pure business, ignorance
about human values and erudition about prices have so evolved that
poet Allen Ginsberg gathers audiences in the thousands to discuss the
truly Hamletian question: are we alive? Or are we merely
functioning?
The article in "Life" isn't about hippies, but it helps understand
where they come from and why they quickly "multiply." There are
about 15,000 of them in New York. In San Francisco's Haight-
Ashbury district, this "world capital" of hippies, there were from
50,000 to 150,000 two years ago. Their colonies are emerging in all
states. Mostly they're offspring of the "middle class," affluent, or even
wealthy families.
Here's the vengeful grin of a hippie — the ideals of dealers
demolished by their children. They grew up among cars, TVs, stocks,
loans, meticulous household accounting, and when the time of
maturity came, they smirked at their parents: you know the price of
everything, but what about values?...
And they crossed the paternal threshold, understanding only one
thing: life's meaning isn't to repeat their parents' lives on a new coil of
the spiral...
Their ideal is negative — extravagant one hundred percent denial
of the one hundred percent American. Barefoot on city streets, from
worn sandals to beards, Zapata mustaches, long hair, makeshift beads,
and cowbells around youthful round necks. Their casualness in attire
makes merchants shiver: what will happen to profits if asceticism
replaces consumer revelry and infects all youth up to 25 years old,
i.e., half the country's population, half the consumers?
The one hundred percent is punctual: time is money. Hippies reject
this philosophy along with the products of the watch industry and
dream of living outside of time.
The one hundred percent is an individualist, a "lone wolf." The
most active sect of hippies—the "diggers"—takes as an example those
English farmers who selflessly distributed the fruits of their labor to
the needy.
The God of the one hundred percent, whether he be Christ or
Jehovah, works as a lowly clerk in Mammon's state, less than part-
time, once a week. Having lost all hope in domestic gods, the hippie
delves into the attributes of Hinduism, which, from a distance, seems
to safeguard the 'whole' human and doesn't reduce them to a mere
dealer.
In the trendy American debate on the subject 'Is God alive?' — the
hippie injects a desperately needed irony. 'God is alive, but He simply
has nowhere to park,' writes the hippie on round, multicolored, large
buttons popular in their circles. 'God is alive, but He's off to the velvet
season in Miami.'
'The flower children' don't particularly fancy politics, but they had
their own slogan for the 1968 presidential elections: 'Anyone but
Johnson.' Hippies don't believe in the Republican elephant, the
Democratic donkey, or the two-party idol of anti-communism. They
emerged largely as an unplanned consequence of Vietnam escalations,
mechanical cruelty, and the cynicism of a dirty war.
Once, I stumbled upon a mobile psychedelic shop set up in an old
bus. On the bus window, there was a picturesque political
advertisement for the 'artist, philosopher, and poet' Louis Abolafia. He
was nominating himself for president. Below the photograph of a
naked, sturdy man, covering his modesty with a top hat, was the
inscription: 'At least, I have nothing more to hide.'
Another time, I returned home with recordings of music popular
among hippies and played the same song over and over. The calm
initial beats of guitars, a brief concealed buildup — then suddenly, a
furious, hoarse voice and, like a door being kicked down, like a
battering ram, the words: 'Run! Hide! Break through to the other
side!!!'
In waves, an avalanche, a desperate attempt, the refrain breaks out:
'Break on through to the other side...'
What is this other side?
A friend and I witnessed one of the 'breakthrough' experiments — a
symbolic wedding of two hippies. In a barn-like dance hall called 'The
Poly Garden,' psychedelic smoke hung thickly. Nostrils tickled with
incense, spicy, bittersweet. In the semi-darkness, cigarettes with
'weed' — marijuana — glowed. Resounding, rupturing eardrums, the
'tribal' jazz called the 'Group Image' thundered. A sixteen-year-old
girl, a slender stem in a mini-skirt, fervently 'vibrated' on stage,
energizing the audience. A pink ray skillfully wandered across the
psychedelic wall hangings, illuminating them with fantastically vivid,
flashing colors — now a glowing halo like the moon in eclipse, now
the radiance of some fluffy, huge green molecule. Two 'underground'
film operators worked tirelessly with their cameras. The philosophical
barman surveyed this frenzy, supplying beer and whiskey to the
eager.
The crowd hummed... The jazz hummed...
Then, the doors leading straight onto the sidewalk opened, and
motorcycles adorned with flowers roared to life. And we saw Jim
Forrester in dazzling white Indian clothes, glowing with a blue fire.
He sat, clutching onto a black biker jacket. Behind him, on other
motorcycles, phosphoresced the groom and bride. Then, a serene Jim
stood on the platform in the middle of the hall, surrounded by fellow
hippies, holding the young couple's hands — a Buddhist angel-lover
from New England. Not only his clothes glowed but also his feet in
sandals, smeared with some psychedelic substance.
This was 'expanding consciousness' on 52nd Street in Manhattan,
between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, close to Broadway, where
enthusiasts of conventional spectacles strolled in the evening.
One New York newspaper, after describing the psychedelic
wedding, concluded with a standardly sardonic moral: the newlyweds
had only 25 cents, and the groom couldn't even treat the bride to a
Coca-Cola.
But the moral is more complex. Hippies know where to run but,
alas, they burst forth not in that direction, although their breakthrough
is eloquent.
Why the deafening jazz? It's necessary to steal away one's
language, voice. Words lack belief, words are false, language has
compromised itself. Music without deceit. The frantic rhythm of rock
awakens vibrations in frozen souls and bodies.
Why the feast of colors, such strange, rainbow-like, unfamiliar
ones? America is as bright as a log painted with the most powerful
chemistry in the world, but not for its children, whose emotions have
become deadened. They need to be jolted, shaken by unprecedented
explosions of colors.
Why marijuana? Why these voluntary hallucinations? An
introspection, a 'disconnect' from the external world where you're
forced to function from nine to five, individual 'trips' into the world of
hallucinations through drugs — all of this is a mass phenomenon in
America.
 'The inner journey is a new response to the electric age. For
centuries, man has undertaken external journeys, like Columbus. Now
he's directing himself inward,' these are the words of Marshall
McLuhan, a professional theorist of such journeys.
So are hippies the Columbuses of our time? No, this honor isn't
theirs. History doesn't voyage on narcotic caravels.
Saint Mark's Street, where I began these notes, is located in the
southern part of Manhattan, in the East Village area. The lively
invasion of hippies occurred in the summer of 1967. But in general, the
East Village is an old district of former Ukrainians, Russians, Poles. On
the neighboring avenues, the new, still compact Puerto Rican ghetto is
spreading out promisingly. Our brother visits the former Slavs for
fragrant bread, sausage products from the 'Stasiuk Brothers,' and for
apples that, unlike other American apples, are not sprayed with some
miraculous substance that protects them from decay but kills their
vitamin-rich, fragrant apple essence.
In the East Village, contrasts don't just coexist; they're layered on top
of each other. Former Slavs fled to America at different times and for
different reasons, seeking the promised land. And now, voluntarily
settling in the slums here, are young Americans who can trace their
lineage almost back to the Mayflower, the first ship carrying Anglo-
Saxon pilgrims. They're not running here to the Slavs, but away from
their affluent American moms and dads. What a diverse picture, truly
expanding consciousness!
Hippies plant the tree of love in a city where such sentiments are
scarcer per square mile than anywhere else on the globe. Puerto Ricans,
coming here in search of the illusion of happiness and landing in the
slums, accumulate hatred and, following the example of African
Americans, contemplate rebellion. Hippies preach 'guerrilla love,' while
African American radicals engage in a real guerrilla war in the ghettos
of American cities.
To be honest, I didn't expect one encounter in the realm of hippies.
But it happened in a shop on Macdougal Street, where all the walls
from floor to ceiling are covered with hundreds of posters. Among the
movie actors, hippie prophets, and various colorful psychedelia, I
suddenly saw Lenin. Lenin the tribune. The famous portrait, as you
might remember, was presented by Mayakovsky:
Comrade Lenin, the work is hellish
It will be done and is already being done...
 In the store, it was a portrait like any other - one among hundreds,
with a modest place on the wall, numbered 116, meant only for
curiosity. I thought about Mayakovsky. The yellow futurist sweater
teased the Russian bourgeois, much like how American hippies are
teased by their tambourines around their necks now. About
Mayakovsky, whom Lenin and the revolution - in the highest sense of
the word - organized. About Blok, who called for listening to the 'music
of revolution.' You can deny the American world through marijuana,
but you can't remake it that way.
 YOUTH, YEAR 1967

Some field, some sky in this suddenly looming television picture.

You see them and don't see them, horribly spellbound by a pile of dead
bodies. Two soldiers with stretchers. One... Two... And three! From the
stretcher, dead and splayed, another body flies into the middle of the
pile. This is the 'body count' - the count of guerrillas killed by counting
bodies. Two guys walk away. There they are again in the frame, tall,
athletic, skillfully professional. Again, stretchers in their hands. And
one... Two... And three! Then a helicopter. It hovers low over the
soldiers. They do something, then, having done it, they move away,
shielding their faces from the dust and the wind whipped up by the
blades. They move aside and, sheltered from the wind, wave at the
helicopter: a happy, safe journey. The helicopter ascends, and beneath
it on the cable - you almost hear the mournful and harsh creak of this
cable - swings heavily a large, sturdy net, sagging under the weight of
dozens of bodies. That's the catch of these young guys in army shirts,
laboriously released over their army pants. 'Search and Destroy' - that's
what the Pentagon calls the job they are doing in the jungle...
And almost at the same time, thousands of miles away from the
jungle, in the heart of bustling New York, shaking from the sweet
commercial frenzy of the pre-Christmas days, near the shiny cold
skyscraper of 'Time-Life,' next to 'Radio City' where patient queues
stand to join the subculture of yet another action film and to see a dozen
three synchronized girls raising their legs for makeup before each
session - in the midst of all this, challenging this world stands an
American guy holding the flag of those sought and killed in the jungles
by his peers.
He made a choice and does not hide it.
He raised this guerrilla flag, wishing victory for Vietnamese fighters
and defeat for the American army, with which he, an American, has
nothing in common. He wears a white motorcyclist's helmet - the guy
knows he could get beaten.
And the crowd, used to spectacles, indifferent crowd, hurrying
crowd, drops a dozen or so people from its mass, and they coil into a
circle, springily swaying, like bulls before a red color, showering the
guy with looks and remarks, and suddenly one, another, a third rushes
at the standard-bearer, and he dodges, and the flag drops, and heavy
blows on the helmet, and the policeman remembers his duties, allowing
the crowd to rough up both the guy and the flag...
Soldiers with stretchers in the jungles and a student with a guerrilla
flag in the Rockefeller Center area in New York City - these are two
opposing flanks. Everyone knows the story of four American sailors
who fled from the aircraft carrier 'Intrepid' to Japan and then moved
through Moscow to Stockholm to fight against the war they refused to
be a part of. But is everyone familiar with the story told to the
International Public Tribunal in Copenhagen by West German doctor
Erich Wolff? American soldiers, flirting with German women - nurses
from the hospital ship 'Helgoland' (FRG) - invited them on 'hunting
expeditions.'
They circled in helicopters over rice fields, scouting for prey. And
when they found a Vietnamese, any Vietnamese, the machine gunners
'played with him, like a cat with a mouse,' and having amused
themselves, shot him at point-blank range.
All of this is American youth, but, of course, not the entire youth. If
one were to mentally imagine the colossal panorama of American youth
in 1967, between the opposing flanks, between the extreme points,
there would be a multitude of types, shades, and phenomena. The
requiems for the 'silent generation' during McCarthyism have long been
served. The youth began to speak - everyone knows that. But even 1966
noticeably differs from 1967. The youth speaks louder, more resolutely,
more sensationally, if you will, because one has to create a sensation to
be heard in America. It was a tumultuous year, parallel to the Vietnam
War, and often, as its echo, significant events reverberated within the
United States. People of various ages participated in them, but, without
offense to the adults, it was specifically the youth that was the main
protagonist in the American dramas. Their actions paint a collective,
very diverse and colorful portrait of the hero of 1967.
 African American unrest in Newark, Detroit, dozens of other cities?
That's the youth. The furious Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown,
threatening guerrilla warfare in the ghetto? That's the youth. Hippies
with their extravagant but eloquent denial of bourgeois society? That's
the youth. Linda Fitzpatrick, an 18-year-old daughter of a millionaire,
who left the luxurious yet spiritually desolate parental home and was
found with a crushed skull in the basement of New York's East Village?
That's the youth. A 16 percent surge in crime in the first 9 months of
the year? Mostly the youth. Drug fascination escalating into a national
disaster? Mostly the youth. The unprecedented October 'March on the
Pentagon'? 80-90 percent youth. Portraits of Che Guevara? In student
dormitories and youth organization headquarters. Picketing that made
Dean Rusk sneak out of the 'Hilton' hotel in New York? The youth.
Sieges of draft boards? Moral ostracism faced by recruitment agents of
the 'Dow Chemical' napalm corporation at universities? Thousands of
draft notices publicly torn and burnt in protest against the war? All of
this - the youth.
Recently, an electronic machine at the Department of Commerce in
Washington, monitoring population growth, recorded the 200 millionth
American. Speaking at the ceremony, President Johnson stated that in
the 200 years of its history, the American people have answered three
decisive 'yes' to three decisive questions: will it be a free nation? -
during the war for independence; will it be a united nation? - during the
Civil War of the North and South; will it be a humane nation? - during
the 1929 economic crisis and the Roosevelt social reforms. Johnson's
abstract rhetoric is vulnerable from various sides. But today's reality
renders excursions into history unnecessary. Today's Americans prove
that the nation is not united because the inhumane and unjust system,
embarking on adventures like the Vietnam War, makes it so.
The nation is fractured now and sowing the seeds of future division
because the future carries within it the youth. The Vietnam conflict was
conceived as a fleeting encounter between a colossus and a pygmy with
a predetermined outcome, like an island isolated from the prosperity
and conscience of an American. What was seen as the highest nobility,
the most convincing evidence of America's power and wealth? That
America, indifferent to everything, can, with one hand, wage a dirty
war and, with the other, create a pure 'great society.'
 But the poet was right in saying that no man is an island and that
each man is part of the universe.
The pragmatists in Washington overestimated the factor of brute
force and underestimated the moment of dialectical interconnectedness.
Eventually, it was due to this miscalculation that one of the 'victims' of
the war was Robert McNamara himself, the initial creator of
escalations, although this victim is not counted in the field's body
count. Instead of the showmanship of the 'great society,' the world saw
the agonies of a 'sick society,' and Lyndon Johnson reneged on the
promise of simultaneous 'guns and butter.' The 'home front' against the
war emerged.
The dialectics of relationships exact revenge by permeating the entire
climate of the country with Vietnam. It is intuitively felt by the young
delinquent to whom 'hunting expeditions' of his peers in the jungles
provide an additional incentive on a dark street. It motivates the protest
of an inquisitive student, critically linking the savage practice of war
with 'humanitarian' theories of anti-communism and concluding that his
country exports not freedom and democracy but robbery, counter-
revolution, and imperialist rights of the strong. Then logic dictates
another question to him: what kind of country is this, and what kind of
system?
Of course, much has to be experienced before focusing one's protest
in the dynamics of the most popular anti-war slogan: 'Hell no! We
won't go!.' The Vietnam war and the protest against it of that
generation, over which the atomic mushroom of military psychosis has
been hung since the cradle, did not arise out of nowhere.
'This generation did not experience a severe economic crisis, but it
knew something worse,' said Martin Luther King. 'This is the first
generation in American history that had to endure four wars in twenty-
five years: World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, and the
Vietnam War. It is a generation of wars, and it bears its scars... And yet
we cannot call this generation a lost generation. It is we who are the
lost generation because it is us who failed to give them a peaceful
society.'
So, is it a conflict between generations? 'A bitter mockery of the
deceived son over the bumbling father,' if we recall Lermontov's
words? To some extent, yes, although there is no single generation of
children and a single generation of fathers, especially in a class-hostile
society, and the overly broad 'we,' emanating from King, can be
misleading.
Whose fathers and whose children? This determines the presence of
conflict and its nature. The 'big press' pays the closest attention to the
student body, for various reasons. Firstly, the nation's future elite is
being shaped there. Then, the majority there comes from bourgeois
backgrounds, which in America always attracts more attention. Finally,
the shifts in attitudes are most noticeable there. It's not just about the
student anti-war protests. There are other shifts that concern the ruling
class.
Big business is closely tied to universities, providing them with
funds and research orders and counting on an influx of young blood
into corporations, fresh minds of talented graduates. Just four or five
years ago, the problem of young minds was easily solved. Moreover,
the system claimed credit for the growing attraction of students to the
world of big business, to the headquarters of leading corporations. Now
the situation has changed. 'Seems like selling refrigerators to Eskimos
is only slightly more difficult than convincing today's students of the
virtues of corporate service,' writes the Wall Street Journal, referencing
universities and corporations. The latter are going all out to prove that
business 'not only makes a dollar but also wants to help humanity,' that
'corporate life can be rich and meaningful,' yet their arguments find a
'discouragingly small' response. The strongest aversion to the charms of
'corporate life' is exhibited by the spectrum of students, and that's where
the hunt primarily heads.
This new phenomenon has been noticed by all. Eminent English
historian Arnold Toynbee, after spending three months in American
universities in 1967 (his eighteenth visit to the US since 1925), found
that 'more changes have occurred in the last two years than in all the
other forty years.' 'I found that youth in America speak with disgust
about their parents' ideals,' emphasizes Toynbee, explaining that the
ideals boil down to making money. He considers this change
'important, even dramatic.'
Indeed, the peculiar avoidance of corporate service is no less
dramatic than the student anti-war movement, although it is, of course,
not as widespread and doesn’t make as much noise. Another indicator:
applications to join the 'Peace Corps' have decreased by 35 percent. The
number of volunteers has dwindled because young idealists, who
previously, without understanding the true purpose of the corps, joined
with the best intentions, now see the hypocrisy behind the Peace Corps'
propaganda in Asia, Africa, and Latin America while the American
expeditionary corps is engaged in 'propaganda' in Vietnam.
So, the wayward daughter of a wealthy bourgeois flees from the
suburban mansion and the Bermuda resort to the shabby, pot-smoked
communal apartments of the hippies. The young bearded radical, still
naive but extremely sincere, dreams of becoming a revolutionary and
contemplates ways to transform the democracy of the wealthy, which
he has understood the value of, into a representative democracy for all,
including the Harlem blacks and unemployed Appalachian miners.
Different people, different forms of protest, but one common
denominator — the crisis of traditional ideals, or rather, the absence of
these ideals, because there are no ideals in the humanistic sense of the
word. Indeed, if parents fail to grasp the situation, the children have
truly outgrown them.
Of course, bourgeois society has thousands of direct and cunning
ways to rein in the rebellious young generation. The hippie movement,
as expected, is already degenerating into drug addiction and commerce.
The attraction to radicalism, so characteristic of capable, politically
active youth, still doesn’t guarantee against anarchic disorganization
and the vagueness of political goals, and without them, sustained
protest and its weight in the political arena cannot be ensured. And, of
course, for the majority of young people, the numerous charms of the
'American way of life' still retain their strength.
In short, grounded in real assessments, it's crucial to emphasize that
this is not about shaking the foundations but rather about challenging
these foundations, about the outward symptoms of an illness.
These symptoms have not been so obvious and widespread for a long
time. They have not only a domestic but also an international
significance. American youth, its best part, testifies: that example, that
commodity — of 'free enterprise' from the Vietnam War — which
Washington wants to lucratively sell abroad, finds less and less demand
at home.
 MOVIE TOUR CONTINUED

The skyscraper filled the entire screen with its dark bulk. Its dark
windows gleamed empty in the early, still impenetrable morning. A
house without destiny, about to be left by builders and met by residents.
But on the top floor, in the 'penthouse,' someone's windows were
already lit, someone's life was already shining. Two dark figures gaze
at the 'penthouse' and enter the lobby. One of them carries a doctor's
style trunk. Inside the trunk are two bottles of whiskey, a salami
sausage, and spools of colorful ribbons used to wrap gifts in stores.
They will open the trunk later, just like they reveal themselves later.
Crazy alcoholics. Criminals. Upstairs, in the 'penthouse,' two more
figures. He, middle-aged, a real estate agent. She, a young saleswoman
from a store. Lovers. In the 'penthouse,' comfort and morning
conversations. A melodious ring, a voice behind the door: 'Gas man...'
A quarter of an hour later, he sits in a spinning chair, tightly bound
with jocular ribbons. She gulps whiskey from glasses, embracing
strangers. He feels terrible because she's having fun. Then an hour of
skillful sadism, striptease, pornography under disgustingly affectionate
smiles from the 'guests,' thinking they've thrown a party. Clothes come
off, not just from her but also from their souls and relationships. Very
little clothing remains. She betrays him, and he himself is a compliant
coward and a traitor. When, playing with oily lips from the salami and
an oily knife, the criminal sifts through the bunch of keys pulled from
his jacket, the real estate agent reveals not only the location of his
parked car but also the address of his home, where his wife and
children live.
The almost favorable end. The alcoholics disappear, having stored
away their trunk. The lovers leave the empty house, hating each other.
The moral? Young English director Peter Collinson astonishes rather
than moralizes. The film company 'Paramount,' leasing his talent, is
interested not in morality but in the revenue from a hefty dose of
sadism. If one insists on morals, it's clear that normal people are worse
than crazy criminals. At least the latter have their code of loyalty, and
the real estate agent encounters this code when trying to turn them
against each other...
'Penthouse' is an art film. Its concentrated naturalism baffled even
seasoned reviewers. It's recommended for viewers with strong nerves.
Well, there are many of those; in this regard, the nerves are toughened.
'Titus Andronicus' received high praise from professional critics. It's
also a film about crazy criminals, but thankfully they're behind bars,
behind the strong bars of a prison psychiatric hospital in Bridgewater,
Massachusetts. It's a documentary film from beginning to end, from the
strangely eerie hospital jazz with the sardonic name 'Titus Andronicus'
to the screwdriver screwing the screws into the lid of a free coffin,
forever housing a defiant inmate. Director Frederick Wiseman entirely
relies on the cruel effect of the camera, not softening it with any
narrative.
Grey images of the hospital-prison yard, solitary people withdrawn
into themselves. An incoherent, passionate monologue about Jesus
Christ; alongside the speaker's head, glimpses of the feet of someone
who loves standing on their head for hours. A debate about Vietnam—
they're here too, their 'patriots' and war opponents. The guards function
in the best traditions, sturdy and impassive. However, they have their
hobbies for the soul. Here, the guards relentlessly and coolly tease a
patient. He snaps, growling like an animal, pacing nervously in the
camera's view. He's completely naked in a completely empty cell.
That's how it goes; they're only dressed for walks.
In Massachusetts, the film was dissected in court and provided
politicians with material for internal strife. But that's not the point. Is
the connection between the fictitious 'Penthouse' and the documentary
'Titus Andronicus' accidental? Practically the same question: who's
crazier—psychotic criminals or their 'normal' guards? Where's the line?
Is it really so imperceptible? Yes, it's imperceptible, insist Collinson
and Wiseman.
Here's another film—'Reflections in a Golden Eye' (director John
Huston, produced by Warner Bros.). Viewers are drawn by the brilliant
actor Marlon Brando and the renowned movie star Elizabeth Taylor.
The high technical standard, characteristic of American
cinematography, a directorial snobbery in the game of golden tones.
The action takes place in a military garrison in the southern U.S. A
weak-willed major (Marlon Brando) teaches young officers the art of
winning but cannot manage his wife—a blatant femme fatale (Elizabeth
Taylor), who loves to gallop through the surrounding woods on a white
stallion in the company of a colonel—a soldier and an animal.
Everyone knows about their relationship. The tormented colonel's wife
finally decides to escape from this drearily animalistic life. The colonel
believes she's gone insane and commits her to a disguised luxury
sanatorium, where she dies. The unhappy major asserts himself by
shooting a soldier who has a mysterious attraction to his wife.
Strange films. The strangest thing is that they're typical. The list, as
they say, could go on. Here's the film 'Wait Until Dark,' where a gang
of sadists torment a blind girl (actress Audrey Hepburn) and threaten to
burn her alive while searching for heroin-stuffed doll in her apartment.
And 'The Incident,' a socially charged film: in a New York subway
train, two thugs terrorize fifteen decent and helpless citizens.
I don't need to stir up archival dust. These are all movie premieres
coming off the Hollywood conveyor belt. I did something like a movie
tour around New York. The criterion was simple: new films that
somehow captured the attention of critics, not outright rejected as
rubbish. The result? Painful quests for the line that separates normal
from abnormal remain popular. Yet, the line remains elusive. These
pursuits are as familiar as the criticisms of pathology, sadism, and
exploitation of vulgar public taste, all abundant in local film criticism.
But where does the fault of the artist end, and the fault of reality
begins, from which he cannot abstract himself? He reflects his world,
or at least his vision of this world. Take documentary evidence from
newspapers, the endless criminal chronicle—it doesn't contradict the
film evidence. Eventually, these mediocre directors only take
sensational details from that larger theme, a theme deeply explored by
major artists like Fellini, Antonioni, Kramer.
Everything is so fundamentally turned upside down in this world that
clowning and madness appear as the natural norm of life, and one risks
being considered mad in the eyes of others if they doubt this norm. Isn't
that the essence of Antonioni's brilliant film 'Blow-Up'?
The same reality of human decay in bourgeois society provides
material for insightful reflection for some and for others—material for a
heavily spiced blend of 'sex and shock' (if you take the two-edged
formula of New York film critic Bosley Crowther). The latter—form
the majority.
With sex replacing old-fashioned love, it seemed there was nowhere
else to go. However, they keep going further. Hollywood is currently
engaged in an unprecedented 'sexual revolution.' Politically, it's more
neutral than other revolutions, commercially more profitable.
Newsweek heralded the triumph of an era where 'anything goes,'
featuring the naked back and buttocks of actress Jane Fonda on its
cover. 'Sex and shock' have occupied the top screens, not just those
near Broadway, traditionally existing with the slogan 'closer to the
body.' Morals have decidedly loosened—towards the bed, and sex
'revolutionaries' freely roam the screen as they were born.
The film 'Ulysses' based on Joyce's novel is symbolic. Film critics
declared it a masterpiece. Distributors, explaining the term
'masterpiece' for the illiterate, warned in advertisements that 'absolutely
no one under the age of eighteen will be allowed to watch the film
'Ulysses.' Those who consider Joyce the founder of modern literature
highlight his famous 'stream of consciousness,' where characters exist
inseparably in three dimensions—reality of the present, memories of
the past, and fantasies of the future. In the film, the 'stream of
consciousness' of Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly indeed unfolds in
three dimensions, but alas, in a single direction—sex, sex, and again
sex, to the point of a twice-repeated, purely pornographic scene.
Avant-gardists of 'underground cinema' (underground to Hollywood,
not to the audience, as their films play in perfectly legal cinemas) are
trying to find their methods. Critics call one of them a special kind of
cine-journalism. It's not the traditional cine-documentalism that
presupposes intentional selection and organization of cine-documents.
It's a kind of fetishization of the movie camera, as if it's let loose,
banking on its uncompromising, cruel, and objective nature. It's an
attempt to rely on the life force and a conscious refusal to interpret it,
fully entrusted to the viewer. One critic defined this method with these
words: 'The person behind the camera doesn't apologize for being there
but admits at the same time that the world is too vast and too complex
for anyone to know it.
This method was used to film 'The Titicut Follies.' The same
technique was employed in the film by 'underground' filmmaker Shirley
Clarke, 'Portrait of Jason.' Two hours on the screen, the same person in
the same room smokes, drinks wine from a glass and straight from the
bottle, walks, sits in a chair and on the floor, lies on the couch, gets
drunk, and talks, talks, talks, revealing all the nooks, crannies, and
cesspools of his soul. You can guess what kind of cesspool it is by
Jason's occupation. He is a male prostitute.
In his marathon film interview, Jason says that sometimes he is
frightened to death of himself. He frightens both the audience (although
there are few of them) and the critics, although the latter unanimously
praise Shirley Clarke for skillfully demonstrating this rare specimen.
Film critic Joseph Morgenstern of Newsweek writes: 'In the end,
Jason...is no more insane than the American pilot in 'Skyraider' who,
after dropping napalm on a Vietnamese village, gasps in delight: 'Look,
it's burning! It's burning, damn it! Fantastic! We've really made them
run! Brilliant!''
The conclusion is unexpected, but you can't deny its logic. It neither
justifies nor elevates Jason but reminds us that he has spiritual brethren
in amorality, whom society elevates to the rank of patriots and heroes.
By the way, about Vietnam: Hollywood seems to have no war. Reports
about the war don't leave the TV screen, but on the movie screen,
there's no war. Anti-war protest found reflection in literature,
particularly in poetry, touched theater, painting, but apparently, it's
easier for Hollywood to rid itself of moral taboos than chauvinistic
ones. Only in new films about past wars do anti-war sentiments make
themselves known (for example, in the film 'The Thin Red Line' about
the war with the Japanese in the Pacific).
The anti-war theme now more often appears on the American screen
from across the ocean. At the New York festival, the film 'Far from
Vietnam' was shown—a collective creation of famous French
filmmakers, but it didn't make it to theaters, and critics collectively
dismissed it as anti-American propaganda. In the Greek comedy 'The
Day the Fish Came Out,' the second Palomares is depicted: an
American plane 'drops' hydrogen bombs on a Greek island.
Washington, having learned the 'lesson' of Palomares, keeps this
incident secret, and it all ends tragically. The theater 'York' shows the
pacifist film by English director Richard Lester 'How I Won the War.'
It's a sharp and poignant grotesque about a squad of soldiers during
World War II. It already talks about Vietnam as if it were the talk of the
day, and the brave colonel fervently calls at the end: 'To Moscow!'
 It's interesting who watches this movie. The audience is mostly
young people, the same youth that rushes and protests, trying to shake
the pyramid of the 'American way of life.' They have their extremes
that sometimes coincide. Some, like hippies, eccentrically and
unreliably 'switch off' from the world of bourgeois conformity, while
others storm recruiting stations and give no peace to the recruiters of
the 'Dow Chemical' corporation producing napalm. They have their
idols who mock the lies of politicians and ideologues.
They also have their favorite movies. Like the film 'Don't Look Back'
about Bob Dylan's concerts in England in 1965. Bob Dylan is a popular
singer and poet. The movie camera accompanies him everywhere: in
the hotel room among his companions, in the car, backstage—and with
a guitar on a strap, a harmonica near his lips on a metallic bracket, a
black shiny jacket—striding quickly into the darkness of the stage, to
the circle illuminated by the spotlight, towards the roar of applause.
Dylan turns out to be an anti-prophet, an anti-hero; his whole truth lies
in denying lies, and that truth is dear to his listeners.
In the documentary film 'Festival'—about the annual jazz festivals in
Newport—ordinary life spills into song. With its joys and sorrows, it's
far from the painful reflections of the Hollywood screen. There's so
much poetry, goodness, smiles, love, and not sex, compassion, and not
sadism. They warmly welcome the 'folk singers'—the folk singers. And
after one such enthusiastic meeting, Joan Baez, also a idol of the youth,
with a shy, beautiful smile, talks about life, not American cinema, but
it's as if she's talking about this cinema too: 'You know, the youth wants
something else. I feel sorry for them... After all, truth and love are
buried in this country...'

II

It was in Texas in the early 1930s—during a harsh crisis, mass

bankruptcies, and everywhere the fleeting pre-election portraits of
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Small towns where the winds of economic
upheaval whistled, tranquil expanses under the warm sun, sheriffs with
stars on their chests, camps of the unemployed wandering with their
wives and children, landless farmers, devoid of business and money,
thriving fat and cowardly grocers. And then there were Bonnie and
Clyde, in love with each other and dangerous adventures.
 Clyde burst into the bank with pistols in both hands ('Good morning,
ladies and gentlemen! Easy! Easy...'), and Bonnie followed him,
holding a gun in one hand and a bag in the other. The bewildered ladies
and gentlemen remained silent, enchantedly gazing at the guns and at
the so handsome, dark-haired—blood mixed with milk and rosy lips—
such a pure and attractive Clyde. And she, a spirited blonde with a
hairstyle that belonged in 1968, rummaged through the desks behind
the counter, among the frightened cashiers, scooping piles of green bills
into the bag. And when she and Clyde's brother, for Clyde had a
beloved brother, dashed out of the doors and limping Clyde followed
last, still arguing with Smith & Wessons, and climbed into the car
where their cool companion Sam sat behind the wheel, the signal bell
rang outside the door. But it was too late. The car moved, its barrels
aimed at the frightened crowd. One overly eager bank clerk chased
after, grabbed onto the side of the car, and Clyde shot him point-blank,
and the dying man screamed, his bloodied face filling the entire screen,
and then he crashed onto the pavement. Clyde didn't like killing, but
sometimes he had to.
They tore out onto the outskirts, exchanging fire with the belated
policemen, onto the empty road under the blue sky, into the salvation of
Texas expanses. They were fearless and elusive, enjoying reading
newspaper reports about themselves. Their fearsome reputation grew.
Dozens of policemen were already on their trail, yet they cut through
the hail of bullets, leaving bodies behind another stolen car,
disappearing into the expanses, only to descend upon yet another bank
like snowfall: 'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen...'
No matter how twisted the road... During one ambush, when the
police even brought an armored vehicle, Clyde's brother was fatally
wounded, his wife blinded by the bullets, and the composed Sam barely
managed to get Bonnie and Clyde out. Like wounded birds, they bled in
the back seat of the car. In Sam's father's house, they healed from their
wounds and leisurely experienced the idyll of love amid their wet
affairs. But Sam's father turned them in. On a country road, a hailstorm
of bullets erupted from the foliage, shattering the silence of the Texas
noon. Bonnie and Clyde trembled, jumped, danced like fish in a frying
pan under this barrage. They were already dead, and the vengeful hail
kept falling, jerking their lifeless bodies.
 And then? Dead Bonnie comes back to life, fixes her hair, and with
her lawyer goes to the Supreme Court of New York State. Producer
Otto Preminger filed a lawsuit against Bonnie, arguing that she had no
right to be Bonnie for the Warner Bros. film company until she
appeared in five films for his, Otto Preminger's, corporation, Sigma
Productions, according to the contract.
But Bonnie—now without Clyde and the Smith & Wesson—
convinces the judge that Otto Preminger intends to 'damage my career
and deprive me of the means of livelihood.'
The plaintiff's lawyer proves that Bonnie was by no means destitute
and that she could very well have received two and a half thousand
dollars a week from Sigma Productions.
But Bonnie's lawyer argues that Preminger's stakes are 'provocatively
lower than what she can get on today's market.'
And 'Life' magazine, speaking in the universal language of a
cosmopolitan, unexpectedly becomes a witness for the defense. The
magazine puts Bonnie on the cover, signaling that she indeed
commands a high price on today's market. The publication prints five
pages of Bonnie in various carefree poses and, most importantly,
outfits, proclaiming her the new darling of fashion houses from Rome
to New York. Bonnie, the magazine writes, 'synthesized' the softness of
the 1930s fashion with the 'nudity' of the 1960s.
And in these pictures, everywhere around Bonnie, menacing black
silhouettes of drawn gangsters with guns are growing. Try not to agree
with such a synthesis.
But director Arthur Penn, who made the film 'Bonnie and Clyde,' is
not to blame for this devilry. A new movie star was simply born—Faye
Dunaway. Her greatness and radiance were so inflated by publicity that
she not only started visiting lawyers more often but also psychiatrists—
for advice on how not to go crazy from sudden fame. These visits don't
prevent our Bonnie from quite skillfully trading herself with designers,
on the pages of 'Life,' in movie studios, and as you see, even in court.
Hollywood buyers and speculators also realized that this commodity
promises millions.
 Let's return, however, to the film 'Bonnie and Clyde.' Despite all the
gangster accessories, it's not just another cheap action movie. It is
considered one of the best American films of 1967. It's crafted like a
folk romantic ballad—broadly and boldly, cruelly and poetically. The
film is unmistakably American, national in spirit, not synthetically
cosmopolitan like many today. It carries an undercurrent of anxiety
because Clyde represents a purely American type.
It's a peculiar film indeed. A robber, a murderer, yet so charming!
This is where the devilry begins with Clyde. He doesn't like killing, but
what can he do—it's necessary. He emerges from bloody orgies dry as a
bone, and furthermore, with an undiluted love that easily steps over the
bodies. There's a diabolical logic in this character, stemming from the
logic of a life where everyone forges their happiness alone and cares
little about others. The artistic fabric of the film is so genuinely national
because it reflects the local practical philosophy: 'Anything can happen,
life is so diverse and unexpected, so don't judge (even a bandit), and
you won't be judged.' 'Look at Clyde!'—this film seems to suggest.
Well, I looked, I looked for a long time. I saw him where Clydes
allowed the world to look at themselves.
Isn't Clyde that soldier who traveled 10 thousand miles to burn
someone else's village, and then, looking so sympathetically tired on
the screen, gently feeds a surviving baby with a round American
lollipop on a stick? The baby doesn't bother him yet, and the
'neutralized' father of the baby lies nearby, tagged as a 'Viet Cong.'
In the first part of this essay, I offered the reader something like a
cinematic tour of New York, talking about fashionable 'combinations of
sex and shock,' about the current mid-quality productions. Now, I'd like
to continue this tour but with a different purpose. 1967 didn't bring
masterpieces; synthesis in art is harder than in fashion, but it's
considered 'rewarding.' Among the best, here are six American films:
'In the Heat of the Night' (United Artists, directed by Norman Jewison),
'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' (Columbia, directed by Stanley
Kramer), 'The Graduate' (Embassy, directed by Mike Nichols), 'The
President's Analyst' (Paramount, directed by Theodore Flicker), 'In
Cold Blood' (Columbia, directed by Richard Brooks), and 'Bonnie and
Clyde.'
The film 'In the Heat of the Night' received an Oscar as the best film
of the year. It captivates with its special rhythm from the first scenes,
when on a hot night, amid cicada chirps and lively transistor music, the
big-eared policeman Sam routinely patrols the streets of his native
Mississippi town and stumbles upon a corpse. The chief sends Sam to
check the night cafe and the train station. At the station, the only
passenger dozing in anticipation of the train is a black man, and since
he's a black man, an unknown black man, and moreover, a black man
with twenties in his wallet, as Sam discovers, bravely bursting into the
room with a gun and pressing the black man against the wall, he must
be the killer. The police chief (brilliantly played by the famous actor
Rod Steiger) also has simple brain convolutions like a true Southerner.
But when he demands an immediate confession from the black man, the
latter throws a metal badge on the table—a police identification. This
black guy, damn it, serves in the police in Philadelphia, where they
have different notions about desegregation, and he's also a leading
expert in murder investigations—a revelation shocking for the Southern
policeman.
More to come. The wife of a murdered Chicago businessman, who
intended to build a factory in this backwater, threatens to take away the
investments and leave the town's residents in the same slumber and
unemployment if the murderer isn't found. Concerned, the mayor
threatens to dismiss the police chief if he doesn't seek help from a black
criminologist. Thus, the hapless chief has to beg the black man not to
leave, protect him from lynchers, and, alas, constantly witness his
professional and intellectual superiority. The detective story is a subtle
and significant psychological duel between the two heroes (the role of
the black man is played by the superb actor Sidney Poitier). By the end
of the film, the black man finds the murderer, and the chief—sees a
man in this black man and is affected by him not only with a
sentimental respect, which he hides not only from others but perhaps
from himself as well.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" captures another aspect of the
thousandfold issue of race. The daughter of a publisher from Los
Angeles falls in love with a black man. For the girl, the question of
marriage is settled, no matter what her parents say. However, the black
man confidentially tells them that he's willing to leave if they don't give
their unconditional consent. The publisher and his wife, honest liberals
who have advocated racial equality all their lives, are thrown into a
state of shock by the news. The film accurately portrays the full
spectrum of their confusion.
After the shock subsides, pride in their brave daughter and her
chosen partner emerges. He's not just an ordinary black man but a
renowned scholar, a humanist, a candidate for the Nobel Prize. The
publisher's wife agrees to the marriage for the sake of their daughter's
happiness. However, it's precisely the question of happiness that
troubles the publisher—not because he doubts their love but because he
knows too well the lack of love and animosity that their 'one hundred
million' fellow countrymen will surround them with. The question is
extremely complex, but in the end, the old publisher makes a worthy
decision: their love is what matters, and let it triumph.
The film includes truly touching moments, showcasing honest,
intelligent, and deeply feeling Americans grappling with their
conscience and their country's challenging issues. The publisher is
played by the famous Spencer Tracy, who passed away before the
film's release. He created a character imbued with noble simplicity and
moral strength, reminiscent of his role as a judge in the film "Judgment
at Nuremberg."
Playing the role of a 37-year-old professor is Sidney Poitier, the most
popular black actor at that time (in 1967, he was among the top ten
actors generating the highest box office revenue, indicating he was in
high demand by producers). Poitier exudes charm, masculine grace, and
possesses a certain inner music. He wears an emotional armor—in his
roles, he always exists in an environment where he could be stung and
degraded as a 'n*gger.' Once he was stung not in a film but in a
newspaper. The African-American writer Clifford Mason stated that
Poitier became Hollywood's 'showcase Negro.' The actor knows that
within this reproach lies a bitter truth, a truth that extends beyond
Poitier's repertoire. Indeed, the African-American theme has finally
reached Hollywood, attracting serious artists, but—without offense to
two interesting films—the true depths of it have not yet been fully
explored.
What circles of hell, visible and invisible, economic and moral, has
the American black person gone through before erupting in revolt on
the streets of Detroit? The true answer doesn't necessarily have to be
direct, but it's only within reach of a great master. To answer, one needs
 not only talent but also civic passion, knowledge of the lower echelons,
and a connection to their pain.
Of course, it's important that black people themselves speak the hard-
earned and truthful word about themselves. Until Hollywood gives them
that opportunity. So, two good films about the racial issue. Two movies
about criminals - the romanticized story of 'Bonnie and Clyde' and the icy
realism of 'In Cold Blood,' based on Truman Capote's documentary novel
about the brutal and senseless murder of a farming family in Kansas. And
two comedies - 'The Graduate' and 'The President's Analyst.'
The comic arrows in 'The Graduate' are aimed at the bastion of
bourgeois America, the so-called 'middle class,' with its dreary-sweet
idiocy revolving around blue swimming pools in the backyard, gleaming
kitchens, and luxurious interiors. Critics unanimously praised 'The
Graduate' as an example of 'intellectual' satire. Perhaps they praised it too
much. The film holds a lot of promise in the beginning with its distinctive
style but fails to deliver on those promises in the end, transitioning from
satire to a gallop of sentimental grotesque, at times making you yawn.
In the comedy film 'The President's Analyst,' the main character is a
New York doctor who is suddenly invited to the White House to relieve
the president's nervous tension. Ecstatic, our naive psychiatrist (played by
actor James Coburn) finds himself in a realm of phantasmagorical
transformations, CIA and FBI agents, special signaling systems,
wiretapping devices, and more. When security services discover he talks
in his sleep, they promptly take away his beloved, burdening her with the
task of recording all telephone conversations with him.
The president remains unseen, behind closed doors, into which the
psychiatrist occasionally enters. After the first visit, the hero leaves the
presidential office, thrilled; after the second, with a puzzled look; and
further visits leave him disheveled, grabbing onto walls. He goes mad,
and no one can help him because, unlike ordinary psychiatrists, the
president's psychiatrist can't fix another psychiatrist's nerves - that
responsibility lies with the relevant service.
Any movie year in the U.S. would certainly be incomplete without
satire of this kind. The beginning of this cinematic apocalypse was laid a
few years ago by the killer comedy 'Dr. Strangelove.' Dr. Strangelove, the
scientific maniac of the nuclear era, has since become a household name
and entered the political lexicon of the world, where science often works
for madness. 'The President's Analyst' develops this vein in its own way,
far from being exhausted.
I'm concluding this incomplete and necessarily brief movie review. In
Hollywood's mass production, you learn which variety of bourgeois life is
most profitable today. Good films go beyond mere entertainment; they
somehow engage with serious societal issues. There are more of the
former than the latter, but living thought persists, and many artists yearn
for high art and, if you will, for a higher message. 'Art,' Sidney Poitier
says, 'has the responsibility to educate, enlighten, and stimulate thought,
but most producers aren't interested in teaching anyone anything.'
The idea isn't new, but it's revisited time and again, yet it's never killed
by the commercial cynicism of show business. Sidney Poitier echoes Rod
Steiger, who received the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1967. 'I try
not to deceive these people, those who come to me and say, "You know
something, you choose to participate in the kind of movies we go to see."
Yes, I try to make films smart enough to interest them, not to waste their
time. I'm concerned not about their money, but their time. You
understand?'
Though this question wasn't directed at me, I respond: how could I not
understand, Rod Steiger.

Conversation with Doctor Calm

 He takes out from his jacket pocket a piece of paper, unfolds it,
lovingly smoothing it out with his strong, elderly doctor's fingers.
"Here it is," he says, inviting me to lean in, and I see a printed drawing,
hand-corrected, thirty-five feet long. Ideal for the tropics. For the Virgin
Islands. Not elegant or fast, but comfortable.
"See," he points his finger along the drawing, "wider than usual. Tall.
Holds 170 gallons of water, enough for two weeks. Has a refrigerator."
Gently folds the paper, tucks it into his pocket, leans back in the
Cadillac seat, stretching out his long legs. The Cadillac solemnly hums
along the highway. Before me is a broad, corpulent back and the
chauffeur's black cap. Outside the window, a brisk, orderly flow of cars
between dashed lines on the concrete. And beyond — the fresh, emerald
greenery of April in the state of New Jersey. It sprang up in grass,
sprouted leaves on the trees, but the gasoline barrier on the highway
keeps its scent away, and the 60-mile speed makes this lively greenery
merely a symbol of nature, tantalizingly close yet inaccessible.
Dr. Spock sighed, smiled, and said, "This is what I aim for — to work
for peace one month and then sail on this yacht to the Virgin Islands the
next. Then my retiree's conscience will be at peace."
The name of Dr. Benjamin Spock is surrounded by epithets of factory
production. The famous pediatrician. A prominent advocate for peace.
You unfold these typical constructs of public perception and see a living
person. Now, as he was nearby, I was studying his face. A sturdy face —
that's the impression. No sign of elderly flabbiness, with a strong, bumpy
nose, a solid forehead, and a firm, slanted chin. His smile is frequent but
reserved, his own, not from an assembly line. Strong, small teeth. Firm
lips. His gait is spry, like a young man's. He watches his weight, like a
typical American. But he's 65 years old. Recently retired. Quit his
medical practice. Rich with fame and money. Sons settled. Time for
peaceful, wise old age. A yacht, comfortable and easy to handle, the calm
waters of the tropical sea, safe coastal sailing among exotic islands,
sunrises, sunsets. The famous Dr. Spock, who captivated American
mothers with the book "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child
Care" (20 million copies, over 170 editions), on a well-deserved vacation.
"Underneath him, the light-blue stream, above him, the golden ray of the
sun."
But, as in a classical situation, he rebels and seeks a storm because
there is no peace for him without one.
 Dr. Spock conspiratorially says, "My wife was angry when I got into
yachting, but now she's come to terms with it. Understood. She even says
that if it weren't for the yacht, I'd be 'under the weather'."
This interview was in mid-April 1968. Dr. Spock said then that the first
seventeen days of May were free for him — no meetings, rallies, or
gatherings. He isolated himself with his wife on the Virgin Islands. In
May, his name appeared in the newspapers again — the trial of the
"Boston Five" began. The popular pediatrician and four others, whom his
fight against the dirty war brought together, were put on trial.
They are accused of conspiracy, of inciting young Americans to evade
military service, to avoid participating in Vietnamese atrocities. When
President Johnson announced he wouldn't seek a second term, partially
halted bombings in Vietnam, and expressed readiness to negotiate with
Hanoi, Dr. Spock thought the trial might be quashed and stopped. He
contacted his lawyer. The attorney dispelled any illusions and legal
naivety of the client. He told Spock that the authorities couldn't release
the "Five" while prosecuting those who avoided the draft. The lawyer was
right.
Spock hopes the legal proceedings, including appeals, might take a
year and a half, by which time the war would end, and the vengeful rage
of the persecutors would subside. But he's prepared for the worst. The
"retiree's quiet conscience" doesn't exclude a prison cell instead of a cozy
apartment on Lexington Avenue and a yacht under the refreshing breeze
of the tropics.
But who "led astray" whom? The pediatrician enthusiastically followed
the youth's example. Like many Americans, appalled by what their
country was doing in Vietnam, he believes that "the only hope for a better
change in American society is the youth."
"My friends say I've gone mad. I have indeed become militant. I hope
the young people will say significantly: 'Let's stop this monstrous
nonsense! Let's restore order in this world!'"
...Why have they betrayed me in court? I decided that if young people
were going to prison to avoid going to the army, then we, the elders,
should lend support. I certainly don't want to picture myself as young. But
now I am encouraged by the approval of the youth. And now, when they
want to judge us, no matter which university I go to, the auditoriums are
three times larger, the enthusiasm is three times greater, they greet with
applause, bid farewell with applause, rise...
 I arranged this interview after meeting Dr. Spock at a rally the day after
Martin Luther King's assassination. Fate briefly placed these two people
together — at the forefront of the anti-war movement. A racist bullet took
King away a year after they were first seen together in the front ranks of
the famous New York march.
A hastily convened mourning rally was held in Central Park in
Manhattan. It was sunny and windy. A determined African-American
woman in a black leather jacket and a man's hat was in charge at the
microphone. The turbulent, shaken crowd was restless. Anger mixed with
helplessness: what to do? How to respond to this villainy?
The towering Dr. Spock stood above the other speakers. It was strange
to see him among these sweaters, open jackets, and shirts. His dark suit, a
handkerchief from his pocket, the doctor's correctness, his sturdy, almost
bald head amidst beards, mustaches, and abundant hair. His 65 years
among the twenty-year-olds. At the microphone, he stood as if facing a
conversationalist in his characteristic pose, leaning in, pressing his hand
to his chest, almost minimizing his towering height: children had been his
conversationalists for so long.
But Dr. Spock's main word cannot be found in the pediatrician's
lexicon. Militancy — that's his current password. He didn't speak much,
but he spoke meaningfully. Yes, King stood for nonviolence, but he was a
militant fighter for peace and justice.
Back then, that's when I arranged to meet him. But the famous Spock is
very busy. On the appointed day, he was offered to participate in a TV
program in Philadelphia. They sent for him in New York with a rented
black Cadillac. The doctor invited me along. It turned into a five-hour
interview on wheels spanning two hundred miles — from New York to
Philadelphia and back.
I saw how Dr. Spock electrified those around him, drawing them in and
pushing them away.
The chauffeur listened in on our conversation, then delicately
intervened:
"It's a great honor for me to drive you, Dr. Spock. I want to tell you
this, although many would feel otherwise. I stand for peace, Dr. Spock,
although my son got a deferment from the draft."
In the queue of ladies in front of the TV studio, a faint rustle of
confusion, dislike, timid approval swept through as a tall man, familiar
from newspapers and the television screen, swiftly passed by.
 A long-haired guy in a light brown leather jacket shook his hand:
"Dr. Spock, I have the utmost respect for you."
As we waited for Dr. Spock's call, we sat in the waiting room.
Television workers peeked out from the doors. Dr. Spock introduced me
to them. Their facial expressions transparently revealed a confirmed
discovery: "Everything is clear. He came here with 'red' views."
Dr. Spock seemed to be testing his new acquaintances, teasing them in
a way. He told about a priest who had a draft deferment but refused it to
stand against the war without that shield. The priest was called to the
induction center. A line of patriotic recruits passed by; the priest heard
their hisses: "Hey, idiot! I'd shoot you, dog, if I had a gun." As Spock told
this story, his eyes sparkling, he scanned the audience. The producer and
his assistant, both with the heavy eyes of cynics, remained silent.
It was Mike McDouglas's show, bought out root and branch by the
Westinghouse Corporation. A blend of a black singer, solemnly
explaining whether to smile when singing a sad blues, a teenage jazz
quartet with a twelve-year-old trumpet-playing girl venturing into the
slippery path of commercial success, a local model who apparently
wanted to prove that Philadelphia could set records in mini-skirts.
Then both Dr. Spock and the television fuss disappeared from the
waiting room and appeared on the control screen. Amidst all this hustle,
he, dignified and even somewhat haughty now, cut through with his
serious truth about Vietnam, about napalm, escalation, about how the
world could "blow up" if this Washington ploy wasn't stopped in time.
That day, the Westinghouse corporations used his name to run yet
another advertisement. And Dr. Spock came to the show to promote his
new book, "Dr. Spock on Vietnam." He felt awkward about this whole
television fuss in front of me, but he compromised because the second
most important word for Dr. Spock is action. Not in the sense of
Westinghouse commerce.
Public affairs, a matter of conscience that needs to be on the TV
screen, and if necessary, in prison.
And he patiently answered questions — naive, malicious, bourgeois:
"Doctor, is it true that President's daughter Lucy uses your book to
educate President Patrick?"
"And is it true, doctor, that American women are sending you your
book now, not wanting to raise children on the work of an anti-
American?"
 "Doctor, how do you feel about being called a traitor and a
communist?"
From the questions, one could see his immense, undisputed fame as a
doctor, how this fame was crossed out for some and enhanced for others
with the new glory of a militant fighter against war. And he told them
how in 1964, he campaigned for Johnson against Goldwater and how two
days after Johnson's victory, Johnson called him on the phone, thanked
him for his help, and expressed hope that Dr. Spock would be a
trustworthy man.
"I'm sure, Mr. President, that you are worthy of our trust," replied the
pediatrician.
...And three months later, continued Spock, he betrayed all of us, those
who trusted him, did precisely what he promised not to do.
On the way back, I asked him how to explain the colossal success of
his children's book. He replied: firstly, it's cheap; secondly, it's
comprehensive; thirdly, it's written very simply.
Perhaps the attraction to simplicity gives integrity to his character.
They instilled in him and still do that a children's doctor should not
meddle in the complex matters of war and politics.
However, for him, complexity didn't become those trees beyond which
the forest is no longer visible — the cruelty and injustice of war. He
doesn't consider himself a pacifist. With some hesitation, he joined the
peace advocates, entering the liberal anti-war organization "For a
Reasonable Nuclear Policy" (SEAN) six years ago.
The liberals disappointed him.
"I was disheartened by the lack of militancy in the peace movement,"
he says. "They are sincere, of course, but so hard to get them to do
anything. Over the past years, the membership of SEAN has grown from
20,000 to 23,000. If, as a result of such a terrible war, the organization
has only grown by 3,000, then what kind of anti-war organization is it?"
He moved away from liberals towards radicals. From protests within
the bounds of goodwill to anti-war resistance, to organizing mass
campaigns to encourage youth to refuse to participate in the war. He's
invigorated by the massiveness of the protest, but he sees also the
looseness, the diverseness, the illusions. At one time, there was an idea of
creating a third party — "Peace and Freedom" — on a national scale,
nominating Spock or King as its presidential candidate in the upcoming
elections. The idea was abandoned because, according to Dr. Spock, the
movement of "new political forces" in terms of organization is "terribly
weak."
"We would gather no more than a million votes. And then what? Total
disillusionment," he says.
Vietnam's revelations forced him to make a resolute conclusion about
the nature of American politics. Dr. Spock considers it imperialistic. But
he adds:
"Most Americans don't think we're imperialists. They have this
opinion: we're the good guys. For example, first, we dropped an atomic
bomb on Hiroshima, then we sent aid there through the Red Cross. Aren't
we good guys?"
I look at this man again and again. I torment him with questions, trying
to turn him into new facets. He's not a politician, of course. He's not a
Marxist but a spontaneous, perhaps temporary radical, who, with the
intuition of an honest person, digs into the true springs of American
politics. He's an honest son of his country. He candidly speaks to a
foreigner about its blunders and vices but doesn't want to offend it —
because there are those like him, like hundreds of thousands of his
colleagues, and together they undertake the tremendous task of wiping the
black marks off America's image.
And above all, Dr. Spock is a humanitarian doctor, more interested in
psychology than economics and politics. He dreams of new books
addressed to both the young and the adults and is already working on
them. "The Meaning of Life and Love" will be the title of the book for
teenagers. "Faith in Humanity" will be the book for adults. Dr. Spock
talks about the dual nature of humans, the struggle between good and
evil.
And returning to his favorite theme, the theme of youth, he says with
conviction:
"All my books aim to instill in young people faith in humanity, to give
them worthy authorities to lean on... Children from three to six years old
play parents. Girls imitate mothers, boys imitate fathers. From the age of
six, they start imitating their parents more seriously. And if their parents
don't have high aspirations, children spiritually sink. Unfortunately, we
often laugh at high ideals. But now we are turning away from that."
...The final turn near the granite cliff, somehow surviving on the high,
once wild Hudson shore amidst houses and highways. And this familiar,
always stirring moment. Like a curtain opening on a massive stage, and
from the last turn, the panorama of Manhattan lies before us — the spire
of the Empire State Building shining under the clear April sky, the
mighty battalion of skyscrapers in the southern part of the city, among
which Wall Street lurks, countless rows of homes, white and idyllic from
here, mists over the chimneys of the power plants. The car descends, into
the longest tiled tunnel under the Hudson, and we emerge with longing
under road signs and traffic lights, into the clutches of Manhattan's
streets. The city absorbs us and divides us. The end of the journey — the
end of the conversation.
We bid farewell at Columbus Circle, where stands the marble column
with the famous discoverer of America. This is the geographical center of
New York; from here, it measures its distances in all four directions of
the compass.
I shake hands with Dr. Spock and then watch as his Cadillac glides
away, quickly blending into the traffic of cars. I watch with a complex
feeling. Well, Dr. Spock, not only your books but also your current
activism instills faith in humanity in many. Ah, if only all of America
could be measured as precisely as the miles from the Columbus
Column…

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FROM THE AUTHOR 3

VIETNAM MIRROR 5
THE BEATS' CHROMOSOMES 14
DEATH OF KING 27
 THREE DAYS IN DEARBORN 74
AMONG THE INDIANS OF ARIZONA 103
DO SKYSCRAPERS OPPRESS? 119
BROADWAY'S CLUTTER 135
IN THE DEPTHS OF LOS ANGELES 143
HIPPIE SMILE 169
YOUTH, THE YEAR 1967 178
MOVIE TOUR WITH A SEQUEL . . . 185
CONVERSATION WITH DR. SPOCK 200

"Crossroads of America" by Stanislav Nikolaevich Kondrashov.

Journalist's Notes

Editor: O. V. Badeev
Art Editor: N. N. Simagin
Technical Editor: N. P. Mezheritskaya
Sent to print on December 9, 1968. Signed for publication on February 25, 1969.
Format 84 X 108/32. Typography paper No. 1. Conditional printed sheets: 10.92.
Accounting and publishing sheets: 9.99. Print run: 50,000 copies. A 03636 Order No.
1973. Price: 33 kopecks.

Published by Politizdat, Moscow, A-47. Miuskaya Square, 7.

Printed at the "Krasny Proletary" Printing House.
Moscow. Krasnoproletarskaya, 16.