And Abraham Went Out . . .

It All Starts with a Half-Kopeck

Here's an interesting excerpt from "The First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This selection is part of a conversation between two prisoners in a "sharashka." A "sharashka" was basically a secret prison which housed mostly intellectuals. During the Stalin era, as you may know, many intellectuals were imprisoned and sent off to work camps. The secret prison in this novel, the Mavrino Institute, was essentially a specialized scientific institute staffed by prisoners for the purpose of creating special technologies for this socialist state.

In 1945, Solzhenitsyn, then a twice-decorated captain in an artillery company, with a university degree in mathematics and physics, was arrested and sentence to eight years of forced labor for derogatory remarks about "the man with the mustache" made in a letter to a friend.

Here's the exchange I found interesting:

"If you want to know the truth, it all began with a half-kopek."

"How was that?"

"That's right, no war - can you imagine? That was before all the wars. Peacetime. Yes. During the NEP, people in state institutions worked six hours, not like now. And everything went all right. People got their jobs done. If they kept you for fifteen minutes extra, they had to put it down as overtime. So what do you think disappeared first? The half-kopeck! That's how it all began. Then copper coins disappeared. And in 1930 silver, too. There wasn't any more change. They wouldn't give you change for anything in the world. Ever since then nothing has gone right. There is no small change, and sometimes they do't even bother giving you your change in rubles. No beggar asks for a kopeck for alms; he says, 'Citizen, give me a ruble!' And when you get your pay in a state institution , don't bother to ask for the kopecks shown on the pay lists-they'll laugh at you, call you a small-changer! They are the ones who are fools! A half-kopeck means respect for a man, and they don't even give you back sixty-kopecks change from a ruble. In other words, they sh-- on your head. No one stood up for the half kopeck-so there you are: we lost half a life."