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10. Breakfast Ends
10. Breakfast Ends
Clock reads fifteen past eight and Olga, who makes it a rule not to overeat, feels full. Meela serves tea from samovar and passes cups along to each person and Olga notes the cups are famous Czech chinaware inset with gold in ormolu style and having a Celtic blue wavy line design on outside. Everyone relaxes reflectively with contented fellow feeling.
Boris stands as though proposing toast. "Now I want to toast our esteemed leader, Josef Vissarionovitch." He is using the familiar patronymic for the leader, Stalin, which every Russian in 1939 knows but because he is proposing a private rather than a public toast, he is speaking more familiarly than a Russian normally might in proposing such a toast at such a time like then 1939 at the worst point of Stalin's purge. Grigory, a Ukrainian, reacts as though someone had pinched him hard in his ars, sitting up straight with serious expression, Ludmilla smiles, and Olga thinks What now?
Boris shifts to face Olga who sits beside him gazing up in admiration at her beau. "My friends. This is a totally private toast so I want to say some things I might not say in public. Especially addressed to you my soon-to-be wife because you have been brought up outside of the Soviet Union and at your most vulnerable time exposed to mistruths.
You may have heard or read a number of bad things about our leader: that he is brutal, that he is antisemitic (Meela frowns), that he is corrupt, that he is not a man of the people, that he is not even a Russian. "
"About him being brutal: our leader grew up from Georgian peasant origin in a very brutal time and we needed and still need his brutality to overcome the brutality of the tsarist forces and the capitalist world. But he was a man of the people, not corrupted by money or other forms of elitism. And he valued his origins. Even after he moved into the Kremlin as our maximum leader, he lived a simple family life, not like the German Hitler being visited by prostitutes and living in luxury.
About his being anti Jewish, that is a canard: His best friend, Lazar Kaganovich is Jewish and his 2nd wife came from a part-Jewish family. He also valued our Russian church having been a seminarian in his youth and with the great war he unified the church as a patriotic force. Finally, he has established our communist state, may it endure for ever.
(Meela nods her head in approval and Grigory too after receiving her stern glance)
"I shall say no more. We Russians needed and still need our great leader. When he is gone I predict we shall miss him badly. I only hope our communism will survive after he is gone. His warnings about that should be well taken."
Boris knew that Olga must be very tired after this first day and she still needed to visit his family at home so he left her to rest several hours.
Boris shifts to face Olga who sits beside him gazing up in admiration at her beau. "My friends. This is a totally private toast so I want to say some things I might not say in public. Especially addressed to you my soon-to-be wife because you have been brought up outside of the Soviet Union and at your most vulnerable time exposed to mistruths.
You may have heard or read a number of bad things about our leader: that he is brutal, that he is antisemitic (Meela frowns), that he is corrupt, that he is not a man of the people, that he is not even a Russian. "
"About him being brutal: our leader grew up from Georgian peasant origin in a very brutal time and we needed and still need his brutality to overcome the brutality of the tsarist forces and the capitalist world. But he was a man of the people, not corrupted by money or other forms of elitism. And he valued his origins. Even after he moved into the Kremlin as our maximum leader, he lived a simple family life, not like the German Hitler being visited by prostitutes and living in luxury.
About his being anti Jewish, that is a canard: His best friend, Lazar Kaganovich is Jewish and his 2nd wife came from a part-Jewish family. He also valued our Russian church having been a seminarian in his youth and with the great war he unified the church as a patriotic force. Finally, he has established our communist state, may it endure for ever.
(Meela nods her head in approval and Grigory too after receiving her stern glance)
"I shall say no more. We Russians needed and still need our great leader. When he is gone I predict we shall miss him badly. I only hope our communism will survive after he is gone. His warnings about that should be well taken."
Boris knew that Olga must be very tired after this first day and she still needed to visit his family at home so he left her to rest several hours.
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