The Rubber Expert
I quietly approached Foreman Ivan.
"Foreman."
"Yes, Supervisor."
"That man standing next to the First Secretary — I believe he's a rubber expert."
"Ah... understood."
Foreman Ivan immediately summoned a skilled worker and had the vulcanization accelerator — the core secret of the process — removed.
I'd only hinted that we needed to be careful not to let the technology leak, and he understood at once. Ivan really isn't an ordinary man either.
Thanks to the foreman's swift response, Yershov eventually tilted his head and spoke.
"There's nothing special about this factory, Comrade First Secretary."
"...What?"
Zinoviev's eyebrows shot up.
"Comrade Yershov! Then are you saying it's impossible that this tiny factory produced a hundred and sixty thousand pairs of galoshi?"
Yershov removed his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. He held the lenses up to the light, then settled them back on his face without a word.
"What I mean is that there's nothing to find fault with. An innovative vulcanization method, no variance in the compounding, and the thoroughness of storing defective products in a disposal bin rather than shipping them as they are. There are still some lingering questions regarding production volume, however..."
Yershov looked at the vulcanization kiln, then turned his gaze on me, on Golitsyn, and on Comrade Ivan.
...Have we been found out?
Golitsyn and Ivan looked at me at the same time. My eyes met Yershov's as well. I nodded.
"Just as I thought..."
"Hmm? Just as you thought what, exactly?"
Ignoring Zinoviev entirely, Yershov smiled as though he had known all along.
"Supervisor Svanidze. Would it be all right if I reported this factory's innovative technology to Moscow?"
"Pardon?"
"What?!"
"Ah, forgive me — I haven't introduced myself. I am Dmitry Stepanovich Yershov, a committee member of the Treugolnik Trust. At present I serve as branch director overseeing the Red Triangle... but seeing this factory's innovative process, I find myself a little greedy."
He pushed his glasses up with a neat flick and went on.
"If Comrade Svanidze has no objection, I intend to report this to Moscow and actively push for the adoption of this process."
"You mean...?"
"The rubber trust isn't only here. Kiev, Smolensk, Moscow, Rostov, Tsaritsyn... ah, it's Stalingrad now. In any case, there are some fifty trusts across the Union."
Yershov tapped the notes he had jotted in his notebook as he answered.
"Just as I said a moment ago, I intend to draw up a plan to introduce the process Supervisor Svanidze created to trusts nationwide."
"Is that true?!"
"According to my preliminary investigation, this Innovative Technology Demonstration Factory was personally authorized by First Advisor Favorsky of the Technical Science Department and by Chairman Dzerzhinsky, was it not? It has been confirmed that the process developed at the demonstration factory is superior to the existing one. Therefore, we shall actively introduce this process to other factories. The justification is quite convenient, isn't it?"
Yershov closed his notebook and smiled. He offered his congratulations in advance, saying that a rosy future — a red one, naturally — awaited me and the demonstration factory.
Wasn't he the man Zinoviev brought along to pick the factory apart?
The suspicion crossed my mind, but his congratulations seemed genuine, so I let it go.
At Yershov's single remark, everyone was warmly embracing one another in celebration — everyone except one man, who was in no mood for it at all and shouted in fury.
"No!!!"
There was not a trace of a smile on Zinoviev's face. His curly hair was soaked with sweat, looking as wretched as a Chihuahua caught in the rain, and the sweat dripped and streamed across his entire face. The shoulders of his wool overcoat sagged under their own weight, and his neck jutted forward as if the garment were crushing him. He kept both arms pressed tight against the sides of his coat, clenching and unclenching his fists as he spoke.
"Comrade Yershov! Nationwide implementation?! I cannot permit that!"
"Hmm...? Comrade First Secretary, there seems to be some misunderstanding..."
"This factory is firmly within Leningrad's jurisdiction! Spreading our process to other regions without the consent of the Lensovet — the Leningrad City Soviet? Do you have any idea what kind of problems that will cause?"
"Problems? Is there something that would constitute one? At least, I don't see it."
"Of course there are problems!"
Zinoviev stamped the ground and pressed on.
"This is a factory producing goods that haven't even been properly verified yet! And there's the matter of worker morale! What happens if this spreads to Leningrad's other rubber factories? They will certainly not take kindly to being compared with the demonstration factory! And that..."
He widened his eyes and stared straight at me.
A bead of sweat hung from the tip of Zinoviev's chin, then dropped.
"......"
"Hmm..."
"C-Comrade First Secretary..."
Yershov's expression hardened. Golitsyn turned his head away. Ivan dropped his gaze to the floor.
"......? What's the matter with all of you?"
He had not the faintest idea how his words were setting around him like concrete. I swallowed a laugh.
What? Violates the spirit of communism?
Other factories won't like being compared, so we shouldn't spread an advanced process anywhere else.
That was a statement which, at least in the Soviet Union after Lenin's death, should never, ever have been uttered. This was an era of Lenin's deification — the man had been raised to sainthood, and the maxims of his lifetime were treated as scripture. And among those maxims was this: that socialism, in a broader sense than capitalism, would organize socialist competition — sotsialisticheskoye sorevnovaniye. Western writers typically rendered the Russian as "competition"; the official Soviet translation preferred "emulation."
Comrade Zinoviev. That remark you just made is like putting a noose around your own neck.
His statement was tantamount to denying the very mechanism of socialist competition. How had Zinoviev completely forgotten The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, a text even a twenty-first-century graduate student would know?
One of the bourgeoisie's wilder claims about socialism is that socialists deny the importance of competition.
In truth, it was not that he had forgotten. He had probably never known. During Lenin's armed uprising he had opposed the idea alongside Kamenev and had even leaked the uprising plans outside the Party. Lenin's words, to him, would have been nothing more than the residual warmth of a dead man. So he would probably never understand, for as long as he lived, that the words he had just spoken were, paradoxically, themselves a violation of the spirit of communism.
When Yershov refused to yield even to Zinoviev's half-threatening words, Zinoviev left the factory in a rage. Yershov clicked his tongue as he watched him go. In his eyes, the man named Zinoviev no longer existed.
"Well then, I'll send people again shortly. When I do, I'd like you to show the process as it is, without hiding anything. The vulcanization accelerator, for instance."
"...You knew everything."
"In truth, I couldn't not know. That vulcanizing rubber at low temperatures reduces commercial quality is the most elementary common knowledge. It's an idea you couldn't even conceive of without an accelerator."
So from an expert's perspective, it had been nothing more than a child's game of peekaboo. Foreman Ivan gave an awkward smile.
Yershov extended his hand to me.
"Today was quite an enjoyable day. You truly live up to being the disciple Professor Favorsky praised so highly."
"...Disciple? Not at all. I received nothing from him beyond consultation. As long as I haven't diminished the Professor's reputation, that's enough for me."
"Heh... Comrade Svanidze, you're quite the character yourself, just like him. Though I imagine everyone in Moscow thinks of you as Professor Favorsky's disciple."
...Just what has that old man been going around saying in Moscow? If everyone in Moscow knows... does that mean Stalin knows too?
Yershov left as he was, to catch a train bound for Moscow. We returned to our daily routine and began running once more toward this quarter's goal of maximizing productivity.
And so time flowed on, until the twelfth of August, 1925 — about two weeks after Zinoviev's inspection.
"S-Supervisor Svanidze! This is a disaster!"
"What's the matter, Foreman Ivan?"
Something that could be called a disaster... Zinoviev's retaliation, I supposed. He had fled with a murderous look on his face, and based on everything I had experienced so far, a crisis always followed after he ran off like that.
"The... the price of galoshi has skyrocketed in Leningrad!"
"Hmm? Why is that a disaster...?"
"W-well... please look at this."
Foreman Ivan handed me a newspaper. It was today's Pravda, still warm from the press.
What on earth was all this? I looked at Foreman Ivan. He drew a deep breath, then answered me clearly.
"Every factory in the Red Triangle except ours has declared an emergency! Over the past two weeks, the defect rate has reached ninety-seven percent!"
Why had the defect rate climbed so high? Ninety-seven percent was practically a total write-off.
One thing, however, was beyond doubt. This was a genuine emergency.