‘Radiant future' under repair

Press, 14 November 1981, Page 17

‘Radiant future' under repair

The Radiant Future. By Alexander Zinoviev. Translated from the Russian by Gordon Clough. Bodley Head, 1981. 287 pp. $22.75. (Reviewed by John Goodliffe) Alexander Zinoviev, formerly professor of logic at the University of Moscow, was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1978. His anti-Soviet satirical blockbuster "The Yawning Heights," written before he left Moscow, was published in English in 1979. "The Radiant Future", written 1975-76, he has himself described as “a continuation and development of the ideas expressed in ‘The Yawning Heights’," but "with regard to its mood and literary form ... a separate and completely different work" (from a note published in "Survey", Vol. 23, No. 3, 1978).

"The Yawning Heights" is a sprawling monster of a book, describing fictitious people and events in the imaginary city of Ibansk, a transparently disguised Soviet society. “The Radiant Future” is more compact, is set in real Moscow, refers to real people by name, and is held together more cohesively than the earlier work by its story-teller. This narrator is head of the Department of Theoretical Problems of the Methodology of Scientific Communism — an imaginary institution. Throughout the book his main concern is to be elected as a member of the Soviet Academy. The other principal character is Anton Zimin; friend of the narrator, a more shadowy figure. He is writing a book, from which long excerpts are quoted. His thesis is that communism is not a science, has no method, and that to attempt therefore to describe its "theoretical problems” is utterly futile. By the end of the story it is clear that Anton is the narrator’s alter ego and that the two of them represent two sides of Zinoviev himself. It is no coincidence that his initials are the same as Anton Zimin's. The lives and thoughts of the two characters reflect the split personality that Zinoviev had to develop as a Soviet academic. He obviously believes that such schizophrenia is an inevitable product of the Soviet system.

The D.T.P.M.S.C. is an establishment dedicated to the non-stop production of meaningless jargon-ridden verbiage. The people working there are careerists, hypocrites, backbiters. The words they churn out bear no relation to what they purport to describe. This is the book's basic theme: that there is an unbridgeable gap between the practical realities of life in the Soviet Union and the official language which claims to be describing the realities.

This -idea is brilliantly embodied in the symbol of the title. A “great permanent slogan” is erected in Cosmonaut Square: “Long Live Communism — The Radiant Future of All Mankind!” The slogan, constantly vandalised and defaced, is under continual repair. It is fenced off with barbed wire, but becomes the haunt of drunks and layabouts. This is the sordid reality behind (literally) its impressive boast.

As in "The Yawning Heights", Zinoviev aims his satire at many features of Soviet society: corruption, nepotism, pseudoliberalism, social inequality, shortage of consumer goods (“Quick! They've got some toilet paper at the shop! I’ve got a place in the queue."), the K.G.8.. the hierarchy of privilege, alcoholism, even mothers-in-law. Obviously not all of these are peculiar to the U.S.S.R. and readers elsewhere can easily recognise features ot their own society. There were times when I was reminded of "Glide Time" or “Yes. Minister." although Zinoviev's bitter malice tends to preclude laughter. His is the enraged satire of a Juvenal or a Swift. His view of the human race seems depressingly pessimistic. “The Radiant Future" makes fewer demands on the reader's stamina than “The Yawning Heights" and anyone unfamiliar with Zinoviev might be well advised to tackle this shorter book first. Not that it makes for easy reading; the disjointed and discursive kaleidoscopic style, intended to mirror the confusion and illogicality of what is being described, requires all one's concentration. There are times when it becomes repetitious. Somehow, too. there is a strange lack of a sense of life. The ideas are stimulating, albeit often grimly cynical, but the characters expressing them tend to

remain sketchy pawns in the author's mad satirical chess game. This is indeed ironic when one of Zinoviev's principal concerns is the disparity between language and the reality of life.