1. Thermidor in the Family
The October revolution honestly fulfilled its obligations in relation to woman. The young government not only gave her all political and legal rights in equality with man, but, what is more important, did all that it could, and in any case incomparably more than any other government ever did, actually to secure her access to all forms of economic and cultural work. However, the boldest revolution, like the “all-powerful” British parliament, cannot convert a woman into a man – or rather, cannot divide equally between them the burden of pregnancy3, birth, nursing and the rearing of children. The revolution made a heroic effort to destroy the so-called “family hearth4” – that archaic5, stuffy6 and stagnant7 institution in which the woman of the toiling8 classes performs galley9 labor10 from childhood to death. The place of the family as a shut-in petty enterprise was to be occupied, according to the plans, by a finished system of social care and accommodation: maternity11 houses, creches, kindergartens, schools, social dining rooms, social laundries, first-aid stations, hospitals, sanatoria, athletic12 organizations, moving-picture theaters, etc. The complete absorption of the housekeeping functions of the family by institutions of the socialist13 society, uniting all generations in solidarity14 and mutual15 aid, was to bring to woman, and thereby16 to the loving couple, a real liberation from the thousand-year-old fetters17. Up to now this problem of problems has not been solved. The forty million Soviet18 families remain in their overwhelming majority nests of medievalism, female slavery and hysteria, daily humiliation19 of children, feminine and childish superstition20. We must permit ourselves no illusions on this account. For that very reason, the consecutive21 changes in the approach to the problem of the family in the Soviet union best of all characterize the actual nature of Soviet society and the evolution of its ruling stratum22.
It proved impossible to take the old family by storm – not because the will was lacking, and not because the family was so firmly rooted in men’s hearts. On the contrary, after a short period of distrust of the government and its creches, kindergartens and like institutions, the working women, and after them the more advanced peasants, appreciated the immeasurable advantages of the collective care of children as well as the socialization of the whole family economy. Unfortunately society proved too poor and little cultured. The real resources of the state did not correspond to the plans and intentions of the Communist Party. You cannot “abolish” the family; you have to replace it. The actual liberation of women is unrealizable on a basis of “generalized want.” Experience soon proved this austere23 truth which Marx had formulated24 eighty years before.
During the lean years, the workers wherever possible, and in part their families, ate in the factory and other social dining rooms, and this fact was officially regarded as a transition to a socialist form of life. There is no need of pausing again upon the peculiarities25 of the different periods: military communism, the NEP and the first five-year plan. The fact is that from the moment of the abolition26 of the food-card system in 1935, all the better placed workers began to return to the home dining table. It would be incorrect to regard this retreat as a condemnation27 of the socialist system, which in general was never tried out. But so much the more withering28 was the judgment29 of the workers and their wives upon the “social feeding” organized by the bureaucracy. The same conclusion must be extended to the social laundries, where they tear and steal linen30 more than they wash it. Back to the family hearth! But home cooking and the home washtub, which are now half shamefacedly celebrated31 by orators32 and journalists, mean the return of the workers’ wives to their pots and pans that is, to the old slavery. It is doubtful if the resolution of the Communist International on the “complete and irrevocable triumph of socialism in the Soviet union” sounds very convincing to the women of the factory districts!
The rural family, bound up not only with home industry but with agriculture, is infinitely33 more stable and conservative than that of the town. Only a few, and as a general rule, anaemic agricultural communes introduced social dining rooms and creches in the first period. Collectivization, according to the first announcements, was to initiate34 a decisive change in the sphere of the family. Not for nothing did they expropriate the peasant’s chickens as well as his cows. There was no lack, at any rate, of announcements about the triumphal march of social dining rooms throughout the country. But when the retreat began, reality suddenly emerged from the shadow of this bragging35. The peasant gets from the collective farm, as a general rule, only bread for himself and fodder36 for his stock. Meat, dairy products and vegetables, he gets almost entirely37 from the adjoining private lots. And once the most important necessities of life are acquired by the isolated38 efforts of the family, there can no longer be any talk of social dining rooms. Thus the midget farms, creating a new basis for the domestic hearthstone, lay a double burden upon woman.
The total number of steady accommodations in the creches amounted, in 1932, to 600,000, and of seasonal39 accommodations solely40 during work in the fields to only about 4,000,000. In 1935 the cots numbered 5,600,000, but the steady ones were still only an insignificant41 part of the total. Moreover, the existing creches, even in Moscow, Leningrad and other centers, are not satisfactory as a general rule to the least fastidious demands. “A creche in which the child feels worse than he does at home is not a creche but a bad orphan42 asylum,” complains a leading Soviet newspaper. It is no wonder if the better-placed workers’ families avoid creches. But for the fundamental mass of the toilers, the number even of these “bad orphan asylums” is insignificant. Just recently the Central Executive Committee introduced a resolution that foundlings and orphans43 should be placed in private hands for bringing up. Through its highest organ, the bureaucratic44 government thus acknowledged its bankruptcy45 in relation to the most important socialist function. The number of children in kindergartens rose during the five years 1930-1935 from 370,000 to 1,181,000. The lowness of the figure for 1930 is striking, but the figure for 1935 also seems only a drop in the ocean of Soviet families. A further investigation46 would undoubtedly47 show that the principal, and in any case the better part of these kindergartens, appertain to the families of the administration, the technical personnel, the Stakhanovists, etc.
The same Central Executive Committee was not long ago compelled to testify openly that the “resolution on the liquidation48 of homeless and uncared-for children is being weakly carried out.” What is concealed49 behind this dispassionate confession51? Only by accident, from newspaper remarks printed in small type, do we know that in Moscow more than a thousand children are living in “extraordinarily52 difficult family conditions”; that in the so-called children’s homes of the capital there are about 1,500 children who have nowhere to go and are turned out into the streets; that during the two autumn months of 1935 in Moscow and Leningrad “7,500 parents were brought to court for leaving their children without supervision53.” What good did it do to bring them to court? How many thousand parents have avoided going to court? How many children in “extraordinarily difficult conditions” remained unrecorded? In what do extraordinarily difficult conditions differ from simply difficult ones? Those are the questions which remain unanswered. A vast amount of the homelessness of children, obvious and open as well as disguised, is a direct result of the great social crisis in the course of which the old family continues to dissolve far faster than the new institutions are capable of replacing it.
From these same accidental newspaper remarks and from episodes in the criminal records, the reader may find out about the existence in the Soviet union of prostitution – that is, the extreme degradation54 of woman in the interests of men who can pay for it. In the autumn of the past year Izvestia suddenly informed its readers, for example, of the arrest in Moscow of “as many as a thousand women who were secretly selling themselves on the streets of the proletarian capital.” Among those arrested were 177 working women, 92 clerks, 5 university students, etc. What drove them to the sidewalks? Inadequate55 wages, want, the necessity to “get a little something for a dress, for shoes.” We should vainly seek the approximate dimensions of this social evil. The modest bureaucracy orders the statistician to remain silent. But that enforced silence itself testifies unmistakably to the numerousness of the “class” of Soviet prostitutes. Here there can be essentially56 no question of “relics of the past”; prostitutes are recruited from the younger generation. No reasonable person, of course, would think of placing special blame for this sore, as old as civilization, upon the Soviet regime. But it is unforgivable in the presence of prostitution to talk about the triumph of socialism. The newspapers assert, to be sure insofar as they are permitted to touch upon this ticklish57 theme – that “prostitution is decreasing.” It is possible that this is really true by comparison with the years of hunger and decline (1931-1933). But the restoration of money relations which has taken place since then, abolishing all direct rationing58, will inevitably59 lead to a new growth of prostitution as well as of homeless children. Wherever there are privileged there are pariahs60!
The mass homelessness of children is undoubtedly the most unmistakable and most tragic61 symptom of the difficult situation of the mother. On this subject even the optimistic Pravda is sometimes compelled to make a bitter confession: “The birth of a child is for many women a serious menace to their position.” It is just for this reason that the revolutionary power gave women the right to abortion62, which in conditions of want and family distress63, whatever may be said upon this subject by the eunuchs and old maids of both sexes, is one of her most important civil, political and cultural rights. However, this right of women too, gloomy enough in itself, is under the existing social inequality being converted into a privilege. Bits of information trickling64 into the press about the practice of abortion are literally65 shocking. Thus through only one village hospital in one district of the Urals, there passed in 1935 “195 women mutilated by midwives” – among them 33 working women, 28 clerical workers, 65 collective farm women, 58 housewives, etc. This Ural district differs from the majority of other districts only in that information about it happened to get into the press. How many women are mutilated every day throughout the extent of the Soviet union?
Having revealed its inability to serve women who are compelled to resort to abortion with the necessary medical aid and sanitation66, the state makes a sharp change of course, and takes the road of prohibition67. And just as in other situations, the bureaucracy makes a virtue68 of necessity. One of the members of the highest Soviet court, Soltz, a specialist on matrimonial questions, bases the forthcoming prohibition of abortion on the fact that in a socialist society where there are no unemployed69, etc., etc., a woman has no right to decline “the joys of motherhood.” The philosophy of a priest endowed also with the powers of a gendarme70. We just heard from the central organ of the ruling party that the birth of a child is for many women, and it would be truer to say for the overwhelming majority, “a menace to their position.” We just heard from the highest Soviet institution that “the liquidation of homeless and uncared-for children is being weakly carried out,” which undoubtedly means a new increase of homelessness. But here the highest Soviet judge informs us that in a country where “life is happy” abortion should be punished with imprisonment71 – just exactly as in capitalist countries where life is grievous. It is clear in advance that in the Soviet union as in the West those who will fall into the claws of the jailer will be chiefly working women, servants, peasant wives, who find it hard to conceal50 their troubles. As far as concerns “our women”, who furnish the demand for fine perfumes and other pleasant things, they will, as formerly72, do what they find necessary under the very nose of an indulgent justiciary. “We have need of people,” concludes Soltz, closing his eyes to the homeless. “Then have the kindness to bear them yourselves,” might be the answer to the high judge of millions of toiling women, if the bureaucracy had not sealed their lips with the seal of silence. These gentlemen have, it seems, completely forgotten that socialism was to remove the cause which impels73 woman to abortion, and not force her into the “joys of motherhood” with the help of a foul74 police interference in what is to every woman the most intimate sphere of life.
The draft of the law forbidding abortion was submitted to so-called universal popular discussion, and even through the fine sieve75 of the Soviet press many bitter complaints and stifled76 protests broke out. The discussion was cut off as suddenly as it had been announced, and on June 27th the Central Executive Committee converted the shameful77 draft into a thrice shameful law. Even some of the official apologists of the bureaucracy were embarrassed. Louis Fischer declared this piece of legislation something in the nature of a deplorable misunderstanding. In reality the new law against women – with an exception in favor of ladies – is the natural and logical fruit of a Thermidorian reaction.
The triumphal rehabilitation78 of the family, taking place simultaneously79 – what a providential coincidence! – with the rehabilitation of the ruble, is caused by the material and cultural bankruptcy of the state. Instead of openly saying, “We have proven still too poor and ignorant for the creation of socialist relations among men, our children and grandchildren will realize this aim”, the leaders are forcing people to glue together again the shell of the broken family, and not only that, but to consider it, under threat of extreme penalties, the sacred nucleus80 of triumphant81 socialism. It is hard to measure with the eye the scope of this retreat.
Everybody and everything is dragged into the new course: lawgiver and litterateur, court and militia82, newspaper and schoolroom. When a naive83 and honest communist youth makes bold to write in his paper: “You would do better to occupy yourself with solving the problem how woman can get out of the clutches of the family,” he receives in answer a couple of good smacks84 and – is silent. The ABCs of communism are declared a “leftist excess.” The stupid and stale prejudices of uncultured philistines86 are resurrected in the name of a new morale87. And what is happening in daily life in all the nooks and corners of this measureless country? The press reflects only in a faint degree the depth of the Thermidorian reaction in the sphere of the family.
Since the noble passion of evangelism grows with the growth of sin, the seventh commandment is acquiring great popularity in the ruling stratum. The Soviet moralists have only to change the phraseology slightly. A campaign is opened against too frequent and easy divorces. The creative thought of the lawgivers had already invented such a “socialistic” measure as the taking of money payment upon registration89 of divorces, and increasing it when divorces were repeated. Not for nothing we remarked above that the resurrection of the family goes hand in hand with the increase of the educative role of the ruble. A tax indubitably makes registration difficult for those for whom it is difficult to pay. For the upper circles, the payment, we may hope, will not offer any difficulty. Moreover, people possessing nice apartments, automobiles91 and other good things arrange their personal affairs without unnecessary publicity92 and consequently without registration. It is only on the bottom of society that prostitution has a heavy and humiliating character. On the heights of the Soviet society, where power is combined with comfort, prostitution takes the elegant form of small mutual services, and even assumes the aspect of the “socialist family.” We have already heard from Sosnovsky about the importance of the “automobile90-harem factor” in the degeneration of the ruling stratum.
The lyric94, academical and other “friends of the Soviet union” have eyes in order to see nothing. The marriage and family laws established by the October revolution, once the object of its legitimate95 pride, are being made over and mutilated by vast borrowings from the law treasuries96 of the bourgeois97 countries. And as though on purpose to stamp treachery with ridicule98, the same arguments which were earlier advanced in favor of unconditional99 freedom of divorce and abortion – “the liberation of women,” “defense100 of the rights of personality,” “protection of motherhood” – are repeated now in favor of their limitation and complete prohibition.
The retreat not only assumes forms of disgusting hypocrisy101, but also is going infinitely farther than the iron economic necessity demands. To the objective causes producing this return to such bourgeois forms as the payment of alimony, there is added the social interest of the ruling stratum in the deepening of bourgeois law. The most compelling motive102 of the present cult1 of the family is undoubtedly the need of the bureaucracy for a stable hierarchy103 of relations, and for the disciplining of youth by means of 40,000,000 points of support for authority and power.
While the hope still lived of concentrating the education of the new generations in the hands of the state, the government was not only unconcerned about supporting the authority of the “elders”, and, in particular of the mother and father, but on the contrary tried its best to separate the children from the family, in order thus to protect them from the traditions of a stagnant mode of life. Only a little while ago, in the course of the first five-year plan, the schools and the Communist Youth were using children for the exposure, shaming and in general “re-educating” of their drunken fathers or religious mothers with what success is another question. At any rate, this method meant a shaking of parental104 authority to its very foundations. In this not unimportant sphere too, a sharp turn has now been made. Along with the seventh, the fifth commandment is also fully105 restored to its rights as yet, to be sure, without any references to God. But the French schools also get along without this supplement, and that does not prevent them from successfully inculcating conservatism and routine.
Concern for the authority of the older generation, by the way, has already led to a change of policy in the matter of religion. The denial of God, his assistance and his miracles, was the sharpest wedge of all those which the revolutionary power drove between children and parents. Outstripping106 the development of culture, serious propaganda and scientific education, the struggle with the churches, under the leadership of people of the type of Yaroslavsky, often degenerated107 into buffoonery and mischief108. The storming of heaven, like the storming of the family, is now brought to a stop. The bureaucracy, concerned about their reputation for respectability, have ordered the young “godless” to surrender their fighting armor and sit down to their books. In relation to religion, there is gradually being established a regime of ironical109 neutrality. But that is only the first stage. It would not be difficult to predict the second and third, if the course of events depended only upon those in authority.
The hypocrisy of prevailing110 opinion develops everywhere and always as the square, or cube, of the social contradictions. Such approximately is the historic law of ideology111 translated into the language of mathematics. Socialism, if it is worthy112 of the name, means human relations without greed, friendship without envy and intrigue113, love without base calculation. The official doctrine114 declares these ideal norms already realized – and with more insistence115 the louder the reality protests against such declarations. “On a basis of real equality between men and women,” says, for example, the new program of the Communist Youth, adopted in April 1986, “a new family is coming into being, the flourishing of which will be a concern of the Soviet state.” An official commentary supplements the program: “Our youth in the choice of a life-friend – wife or husband – know only one motive, one impulse: love. The bourgeois marriage of pecuniary116 convenience does not exist for our growing generation.” (Pravda, April 4, 1936.) So far as concerns the rank-and-file workingman and woman, this is more or less true. But “marriage for money” is comparatively little known also to the workers of capitalist countries. Things are quite different in the middle and upper strata117. New social groupings automatically place their stamp upon personal relations. The vices93 which power and money create in sex relations are flourishing as luxuriously118 in the ranks of the Soviet bureaucracy as though it had set itself the goal of outdoing in this respect the Western bourgeoisie.
In complete contradiction to the just quoted assertion of Pravda, “marriage for convenience,” as the Soviet press itself in moments of accidental or unavoidable frankness confesses, is now fully resurrected. Qualifications, wages, employment, number of chevrons119 on the military uniform, are acquiring more and more significance, for with them are bound up questions of shoes, and fur coats, and apartments, and bathrooms, and – the ultimate dream – automobiles. The mere120 struggle for a room unites and divorces no small number of couples every year in Moscow. The question of relatives has acquired exceptional significance. It is useful to have as a father-in-law a military commander or an influential121 communist, as a mother-in-law the sister of a high dignitary. Can we wonder at this? Could it be otherwise?
One of the very dramatic chapters in the great book of the Soviets122 will be the tale of the disintegration123 and breaking up of those Soviet families where the husband as a party member, trade unionist, military commander or administrator124, grew and developed and acquired new tastes in life, and the wife, crushed by the family, remained on the old level. The road of the two generations of the Soviet bureaucracy is sown thick with the tragedies of wives rejected and left behind. The same phenomenon is now to be observed in the new generation. The greatest of all crudities and cruelties are to be met perhaps in the very heights of the bureaucracy, where a very large percentage are parvenus125 of little culture, who consider that everything i8 permitted to them. Archives and memoirs126 will some day expose downright crimes in relation to wives, and to women in genera], on the part of those evangelists of family morals and the compulsory127 “joys of motherhood,” who are, owing to their position, immune from prosecution128.
No, the Soviet woman is not yet free. Complete equality before the law has so far given infinitely more to the women of the upper strata, representatives of bureaucratic, technical, pedagogical and, in general, intellectual work, than to the working women and yet more the peasant women. So long as society is incapable129 of taking upon itself the material concern for the family, the mother can successfully fulfill2 a social function only on condition that she has in her service a white slave: nurse, servant, cook, etc. Out of the 40,000,000 families which constitute the population of the Soviet union, 5 per cent, or maybe 10, build their “hearthstone” directly or indirectly130 upon the labor of domestic slaves. An accurate census131 of Soviet servants would have as much significance for the socialistic appraisal132 of the position of women in the Soviet union as the whole Soviet law code, no matter how progressive it might be. But for this very reason the Soviet statistics hide servants under the name of “working woman” or “and others”! The situation of the mother of the family who is an esteemed133 communist, has a cook, a telephone for giving orders to the stores, an automobile for errands, etc., has little in common with the situation of the working woman who is compelled to run to the shops, prepare dinner herself, and carry her children on foot from the kindergarten – if, indeed, a kindergarten is available. No socialist labels can conceal this social contrast, which is no less striking than the contrast between the bourgeois lady and the proletarian woman in any country of the West.
The genuinely socialist family, from which society will remove the daily vexation of unbearable134 and humiliating cares, will have no need of any regimentation135, and the very idea of laws about abortion and divorce will sound no better within its walls than the recollection of houses of prostitution or human sacrifices. The October legislation took a bold step in the direction of such a family. Economic and cultural backwardness has produced a cruel reaction. The Thermidorian legislation is beating a retreat to the bourgeois models, covering its retreat with false speeches about the sacredness of the “new” family. On this question, too, socialist bankruptcy covers itself with hypocritical respectability.
There are sincere observers who are, especially upon the question of children, shaken by the contrast here between high principles and ugly reality. The mere fact of the furious criminal measures that have been adopted against homeless children is enough to suggest that the socialist legislation in defense of women and children is nothing but crass136 hypocrisy. There are observers of an opposite kind who are deceived by the broadness and magnanimity of those ideas that have been dressed up in the form of laws and administrative137 institutions. When they see destitute138 mothers, prostitutes and homeless children, these optimists139 tell themselves that a further growth of material wealth will gradually fill the socialist laws with flesh and blood. It is not easy to decide which of these two modes of approach is more mistaken and more harmful. Only people stricken with historical blindness can fail to see the broadness and boldness of the social plan, the significance of the first stages of its development, and the immense possibilities opened by it. But on the other hand, it is impossible not to be indignant at the passive and essentially indifferent optimism of those who shut their eyes to the growth of social contradictions, and comfort themselves with gazing into a future, the key to which they respectfully propose to leave in the hands of the bureaucracy. As though the equality of rights of women and men were not already converted into an equality of deprivation140 of rights by that same bureaucracy! And as though in some book of wisdom it were firmly promised that the Soviet bureaucracy will not introduce a new oppression in place of liberty.
How man enslaved woman, how the exploiter subjected them both, how the toilers have attempted at the price of blood to free themselves from slavery and have only exchanged one chain for another – history tells us much about all this. In essence, it tells us nothing else. But how in reality to free the child, the woman and the human being? For that we have as yet no reliable models. All past historical experience, wholly negative, demands of the toilers at least and first of all an implacable distrust of all privileged and uncontrolled guardians141.
2.The Struggle Against the Youth
Every revolutionary party finds its chief support in the younger generation of the rising class. Political decay expresses itself in a loss of ability to attract the youth under one’s banner. The parties of bourgeois democracy, in withdrawing one after another from the scene, are compelled to turn over the young either to revolution or fascism. Bolshevism when underground was always a party of young workers. The Mensheviks relied upon the more respectable skilled upper stratum of the working class, always prided themselves on it, and looked down upon the Bolsheviks. Subsequent events harshly showed them their mistake. At the decisive moment the youth carried with them the more mature stratum and even the old folks.
The revolution gave a mighty142 historical impulse to the new Soviet generation. It cut them free at one blow from conservative forms of life, and exposed to them the great secret – the first secret of the dialectic – that there is nothing unchanging on this earth, and that society is made out of plastic materials. How stupid is the theory of unchanging racial types in the light of the events of our epoch143! The Soviet union is an immense melting pot in which the characters of dozens of nationalities are being mixed. The mysticism of the “Slavic soul” is coming off like scum.
But the impulse given to the younger generation has not yet found expression in a corresponding historic enterprise. To be sure, the youth are very active in the sphere of economics. In the Soviet union there are 7,000,000 workers under twenty-three – 3,140,000 in industry, 700,000 in the railroads, 700,000 in the building trades. In the new giant factories, about half the workers are young. There are now 1,200,000 Communist Youth in the collective farms. Hundreds of thousands of members of the Communist Youth have been mobilized during recent years for construction work, timber work, coal mining, gold production, for work in the Arctic, Sakhalin, or in Amur where the new town of Komsomolsk is in process of construction. The new generation is putting out shock brigades, champion workers, Stakhanovists, foremen, under-administrators. The youth are studying, and a considerable part of them are studying assiduously. They are as active, if not more so, in the sphere of athletics144 in its most daring or warlike forms, such as parachute jumping and marksmanship. The enterprising and audacious are going on all kinds of dangerous expeditions.
“The better part of our youth,” said recently the well-known polar explorer, Schmidt, “are eager to work where difficulties await them.” This is undoubtedly true. But in all spheres the post-revolutionary generation is still under guardianship145. They are told from above what to do, and how to do it. Politics, as the highest form of command, remains146 wholly in the hands of the so-called “Old Guard”, and in all the ardent147 and frequently flattering speeches they address to the youth the old boys are vigilantly148 defending their own monopoly.
Not conceiving of the development of a socialist society without the dying away of the state that is, without the replacement149 of all kinds of police oppression by the self-administration of educated producers and consumers – Engels laid tile accomplishment150 of this task upon the younger generation, “who will grow up in new, free social conditions, and will be in a position to cast away all this rubbish of state-ism.” Lenin adds on his part: “ . . . every kind of state-ism, the democratic-republican included.” The prospect151 of the construction of a socialist society stood, then, in the mind of Engels and Lenin approximately thus: The generation which conquered the power, the “Old Guard”, will begin the work of liquidating152 the state; the next generation will complete it.
How do things stand in reality? Forty-three per cent of the population of the Soviet union were born after the October revolution. If you take the age of twenty-three as the boundary between the two generations, then over 50 per cent of Soviet humanity has not yet reached this boundary. A big half of the population of the country, consequently, knows nothing by personal recollection of any regime except that of the Soviets. But it is just this new generation which is forming itself, not in “free social conditions,” as Engels conceived it, but under intolerable and constantly increasing oppression from the ruling stratum composed of those same ones who – according to the official fiction – achieved the great revolution. In the factory, the collective farm, the barracks, the university, the schoolroom, even in the kindergarten, if not in the creche, the chief glory of man is declared to be: personal loyalty153 to the leader and unconditional obedience154. Many pedagogical aphorisms155 and maxims156 of recent times might seem to have been copied from Goebbels, if he himself had not copied them in good part from the collaborators of Stalin.
The school and the social life of the student are saturated157 with formalism and hypocrisy. The children have learned to sit through innumerable deadly dull meetings, with their inevitable158 honorary presidium, their chants in honor of the dear leaders, their predigested righteous debates in which, quite in the manner of their elders, they say one thing and think another. The most innocent groups of school children who try to create oases159 in this desert of officiousness are met with fierce measures of repression160. Through its agentry the GPU introduces the sickening corruption161 of treachery and tale-bearing into the so-called “socialist schools.” The more thoughtful teachers and children’s writers, in spite of the enforced optimism, cannot always conceal their horror in the presence of this spirit of repression, falsity and boredom162 which is killing163 school life. Having no experience of class struggle and revolution, the new generations could have ripened164 for independent participation165 in the social life of the country only in conditions of soviet democracy, only by consciously working over the experience of the past and the lessons of the present. Independent character like independent thought cannot develop without criticism. The Soviet youth, however, are simply denied the elementary opportunity to exchange thoughts, make mistakes and try out and correct mistakes, their own as well as others’. All questions, including their very own, are decided166 for them. Theirs only to carry out the decision and sing the glory of those who made it. To every word of criticism, the bureaucracy answers with a twist of the neck. All who are outstanding and unsubmissive in the ranks of the young are systematically167 destroyed, suppressed or physically168 exterminated169. This explains the fact that out of the millions upon millions of Communist youth there has not emerged a single big figure.
In throwing themselves into engineering, science, literature, sport or chess playing, the youth are, so to speak, winning their spurs for future great action. In all these spheres they compete with the badly prepared older generation, and often equal and best them. But at every contact with politics they burn their fingers. They have, thus, but three possibilities open to them: participate in the bureaucracy and make a career; submit silently to oppression, retire into economic work, science or their own petty personal affairs; or, finally, go underground and Iearn to struggle and temper their character for the future. The road of the bureaucratic career is accessible only to a small minority. At the other pole a small minority enter the ranks of the Opposition170. The middle group, the overwhelming mass, is in turn very heterogeneous171. But in it, under the iron press, extremely significant although hidden processes arc at work which will to a great extent determine the future of the Soviet union.
The ascetic172 tendencies of the epoch of the civil war gave way in the period of the NEP to a more epicurean, not to say avid173, mood. The first five-year plan again became a time of involuntary asceticism174 – but now only for the masses and the youth. The ruling stratum had firmly dug themselves in in positions of personal prosperity. The second five-year plan is undoubtedly accompanied by a sharp reaction against asceticism. A concern for personal advancement175 has seized upon broad circles of the population, especially the young. The fact is, however, that in the new Soviet generation well-being176 and prosperity arc accessible only to that thin layer who manage to rise above the mass and one way or another accommodate themselves to the ruling stratum. The bureaucracy on its side is consciously developing and sorting out machine politicians and careerists.
Said the chief speaker at a Congress of the Communist Youth (April 1936): “Greed for profits, philistine85 pettiness and base egotism are not the attributes of Soviet youth.” These words sound sharply discordant177 with the reigning179 slogans of a “prosperous and handsome life,” with the methods of piecework, premiums180 and decorations. Socialism is not ascetic; on the contrary, it is deeply hostile to the asceticism of Christianity. It is deeply hostile, in its adherence181 to this world, and this only, to all religion. But socialism has its gradations of earthly values. Human personality begins for socialism not with the concern for a prosperous life, but on the contrary with the cessation of this concern. However, no generation can jump over its own head. The whole Stakhanov movement is for the present built upon “base egotism.” The very measures of success – the number of trousers and neckties earned – testifies to nothing but “philistine pettiness.” Suppose that this historic stage is unavoidable. All right. It is still necessary to see it as it is. The restoration of market relations opens an indubitable opportunity for a considerable rise of personal prosperity. The broad trend of the Soviet youth toward the engineering profession is explained, not so much by the allurements182 of socialist construction, as by the fact that engineers earn incomparably more than physicians or teachers. When such tendencies arise in circumstances of intellectual oppression and ideological183 reaction, and with a conscious unleashing184 from above of careerist instincts, then the propagation of what is called “socialist culture” often turns out to be education in the spirit of the most extreme antisocial egotism.
Still it would be a crude slander185 against the youth to portray186 them as controlled exclusively, or even predominantly, by personal interests. No, in the general mass they are magnanimous, responsive, enterprising. Careerism colors them only from above. In their depths arc various unformulated tendencies grounded in heroism188 and still only awaiting application. It is upon these moods in particular that the newest kind of Soviet patriotism189 is nourishing itself. It is undoubtedly very deep, sincere and dynamic. But in this patriotism, too, there is a rift190 which separates the young from the old.
Healthy young lungs find it intolerable to breathe in the atmosphere of hypocrisy inseparable from a Thermidor – from a reaction, that is, which is still compelled to dress in the garments of revolution. The crying discord178 between the socialist posters and the reality of life undermines faith in the official canons. A considerable stratum of the youth takes pride in its contempt for politics, in rudeness and debauch191. In many cases, and probably a majority, this indifferentism and cynicism is but the initial form of discontent and of a hidden desire to stand up on one’s own feet. The expulsion from the Communist Youth and the party, the arrest and exile, of hundreds of thousands of young “white guards” and “opportunists”, on the one hand, and “Bolshevik-Leninists” on the other, proves that the wellsprings of conscious political opposition, both right and left, are not exhausted192. On the contrary, during the last couple of years they have been bubbling with renewed strength. Finally, the more impatient, hot-blooded, unbalanced, injured in their interests and feelings, are turning their thoughts in the direction of terrorist revenge. Such, approximately, is the spectrum193 of the political moods of the Soviet youth.
The history of individual terror in the Soviet union clearly marks the stages in the general evolution of the country. At the dawn of the Soviet power, in the atmosphere of the still unfinished civil war, terrorist deeds were perpetrated by white guards or Social Revolutionaries. When the former ruling classes lost hope of a restoration, terrorism also disappeared. The kulak terror, echoes of which have been observed up to very recent times, had always a local character and supplemented the guerrilla warfare194 against the Soviet regime. As for the latest outburst of terrorism, it does not rest either upon the old ruling classes or upon the kulak. The terrorists of the latest draft are recruited exclusively from among the young, from the ranks of the Communist Youth and the party – not infrequently from the offspring of the ruling stratum. Although completely impotent to solve the problems which it sets itself, this individual terror has nevertheless an extremely important symptomatic significance. It characterizes the sharp contradiction between the bureaucracy and the broad masses of the people, especially the young.
All taken together – economic hazards, parachute jumping, polar expeditions, demonstrative indifferentism, “romantic hooligans”, terroristic mood, and individual acts of terror – are preparing an explosion of the younger generation against the intolerable tutelage of the old. A war would undoubtedly serve as a vent88 for the accumulating vapors195 of discontent – but not for long. In a war the youth would soon acquire the necessary fighting temper and the authority which it now so sadly lacks. At the same time the reputation of the majority of “old men” would suffer irremediable damage. At best, a war would give the bureaucracy only a certain moratorium196. The ensuing political conflict would be so much the more sharp.
It would be one-sided, of course, to reduce the basic political problem of the Soviet union to the problem of the two generations. There are many open and hidden foes197 of the bureaucracy among the old, just as there are hundreds of thousands of perfected yes-men among the young. Nevertheless, from whatever side the attack came against the position of the ruling stratum, from left or right, the attackers would recruit their chief forces among the oppressed and discontented youth deprived of political rights. The bureaucracy admirably understands this. It is in general exquisitely198 sensitive to everything which threatens its dominant187 position. Naturally, in trying to consolidate199 its position in advance, it erects200 the chief trenches201 and concrete fortifications against the younger generation.
In April 1936, as we have said, there assembled in the Kremlin the tenth congress of the Communist Youth. Nobody bothered to exclaim, of course, why in violation202 of its constitution, the congress had not been called for an entire five years. Moreover, it soon became clear that this carefully sifted203 and selected congress was called at this time exclusively for the purpose of a political expropriation of the youth. According to the new constitution the Communist Youth League is now even juridically deprived of the right to participate in the social life of the country. Its sole sphere henceforth is to be education and cultural training. The General Secretary of the Communist Youth, under orders from above, declared in his speech: “We must . . . end the chatter204 about industrial and financial planning, about the lowering, of production costs, economic accounting205, crop sowing, and other important state problems as though we were going to decide them.” The whole country might well repeat those last words: “as though we were going, to decide them!” That insolent206 rebuke207: “End the chatter!” welcomed with anything but enthusiasm even by this supersubmissive congress – is the more striking when you remember that the Soviet law defines the age of political maturity208 as 18 years, giving all electoral rights to young men and women of that age, whereas the age limit for Communist Youth members, according to the old Constitution, was 23 years, and a good third of the members of the organization were in reality older than that. This last congress adopted two simultaneous reforms: It legalized membership in the Communist Youth for people of greater age, thus increasing the number of Communist Youth electors, and at the same time deprived the organization as a whole of the right to intrude209 into the sphere, not only of general politics – of that there can never be any question! – but of the current problems of economy. The abolition of the former age limit was dictated210 by the fact that transfer from the Communist Youth into the party, formerly an almost automatic process, has now been made extremely difficult. This annulment211 of the last remnant of political rights, and even of the appearance of them, was caused by a desire fully and finally to enslave the Communist Youth to the well-purged party. Both measures, obviously contradicting each other, derive212 nevertheless from the same source: the bureaucracy’s fear of the younger generation.
The speakers at the congress, who according to their own statements were carrying out the express instructions of Stalin – they gave these warnings in order to forestall213 in advance the very possibility of a debate explained the aim of the reform with astonishing frankness: “We have no need of any second party.” This argument reveals the fact that in the opinion of the ruling circles the Communist Youth League, if it is not decisively strangled, threatens to become a second party. As though on purpose to define these possible tendencies, another speaker warningly declared: “In his time, no other than Trotsky himself attempted to make a demagogic play for the youth, to inspire it with the anti-Leninist, anti-Bolshevik idea of creating a second party, etc.” The speaker’s historic allusion214 contains an anachronism. In reality, Trotsky “in his time” only gave warning that a further bureaucratization of the regime would inevitably lead to a break with the youth, and produce the danger of a second party. But never mind: the course of events, in confirming that warning, has converted it ipso facto into a program. The degenerating215 party has kept its attractive power only for careerists. Honest and thinking young men and girls cannot but be nauseated216 by the Byzantine slavishness, the false rhetoric217, concealing218 privilege and caprice, the braggadocio219 of mediocre220 bureaucrats221 singing praises to each other – at all these marshals who because they can’t catch the stars in heaven have to stick them on their own bodies in various places. 1 Thus it is no longer a question of the “danger” as it was twelve or thirteen years ago of a second party, but of its historic necessity as the sole power capable of further advancing the cause of the October revolution. The change in the constitution of the Communist Youth League, although reinforced with fresh police threats, will not, of course, halt the political maturing of the youth, and will not prevent their hostile clash with the bureaucracy.
1. Translator’s Note: The phrase “he does not catch the stars in heaven” is a proverbial way of saying that a man is mediocre.
Which way will the youth turn in case of a great political disturbance222? Under what banner will they assemble their ranks? Nobody can give a sure answer to that question now, least of all the youth themselves. Contradictory223 tendencies are furrowing224 their minds. In the last analysis, the alignment225 of the principal mass will be determined226 by historic events of world significance, by a war, by new successes of fascism, or, on the contrary, by the victory of the proletarian revolution in the West. In any case the bureaucracy will find out that these youth deprived of rights represent a historic charge with mighty explosive power.
In 1894 the Russian autocracy227, through the lips of the young tzar Nicholas II, answered the Zemstvos, which were timidly dreaming of participating in political life, with the famous words: “Meaningless fancies!” In 1936 the Soviet bureaucracy answered the as yet vague claims of the younger generation with the still ruder cry: “Stop your chatter!” Those words, too, will become historic. The regime of Stalin may pay no less dear for them than the regime headed by Nicholas II.
3. Nationality and Culture
The policy of Bolshevism on the national question, having ensured the victory of the October revolution, also helped the Soviet union to hold out afterward228 notwithstanding inner centrifugal forces and a hostile environment. The bureaucratic degeneration of the state has rested like a millstone upon the national policy. It was upon the national question that Lenin intended to give his first battle to the bureaucracy, and especially to Stalin, at the 12th Congress of the party in the spring of 1923. But before the congress met Lenin had gone from the ranks. The documents which he then prepared remain even now suppressed by the censor229.
The cultural demands of the nations aroused by the revolution require the widest possible autonomy. At the same time, industry can successfully develop only by subjecting all parts of the union to a general centralized plan. But economy and culture are not separated by impermeable230 partitions. The tendencies of cultural autonomy and economic centralism come naturally from time to time into conflict. The contradiction between them is, however, far from irreconcilable231. Although there can be no once-and-for-all prepared formula to resolve the problem, still there is the resilient will of the interested masses themselves. Only their actual participation in the administration of their own destinies can at each new stage draw the necessary lines between the legitimate demands of economic centralism and the living gravitations of national culture. The trouble is, however, that the will of the population of the Soviet union in all its national divisions is now wholly replaced by the will of a bureaucracy which approaches both economy and culture from the point of view of convenience of administration and the specific interests of the ruling stratum.
It is true that in the sphere of national policy, as in the sphere of economy, the Soviet bureaucracy still continues to carry out a certain part of the progressive work, although with immoderate overhead expenses. This is especially true of the backward nationalities of the union, which must of necessity pass through a more or less prolonged period of borrowing, imitation and assimilation of what exists. The bureaucracy is laying down a bridge for them to the elementary benefits of bourgeois, and in part even pre-bourgeois, culture. In relation to many spheres and peoples, the Soviet power is to a considerable extent carrying out the historic work fulfilled by Peter I and his colleagues in relation to the old Muscovy, only on a larger scale and at a swifter tempo232.
In the schools of the union, lessons are taught at present in no less than eighty languages. For a majority of them, it was necessary to compose new alphabets, or to replace the extremely aristocratic Asiatic alphabets with the more democratic Latin. Newspapers are published in the same number of languages – papers which for the first time acquaint the peasants and nomad233 shepherds with the elementary ideas of human culture. Within the far-flung boundaries of the tzar’s empire, a native industry is arising. The old semi-clan culture is being destroyed by the tractor. Together with literacy, scientific agriculture and medicine are coming into existence. It would be difficult to overestimate234 the significance of this work of raising up new human strata. Marx was right when he said that revolution is the locomotive of history.
But the most powerful locomotive cannot perform miracles. It cannot change the laws of space, and can only accelerate movement. The very necessity of acquainting tens of millions of grown-up people with the alphabet and the newspaper, or with the simple laws of hygiene235, shows what a long road must be traveled before you can really pose the question of a new socialist culture. The press informs us, for example, that in western Siberia the Oirots who formerly did not know what a bath means, have now “in many villages baths to which they sometimes travel 30 kilometers to wash themselves.” This extreme example, although taken at the lowest level of culture, nevertheless truthfully suggests the height of many other achievements, and that not only in the backward regions. When the head of a government, in order to illustrate236 the growth of culture, refers to the fact that in the collective farms a demand has arisen for “iron bedsteads, wall clocks, knit underwear, sweaters, bicycles, etc.,” this only means that the well-off upper circles of the Soviet villages are beginning to use those articles of manufacture which were long ago in common use among the peasant masses of the West. From day to day, in speeches and in the press, lessons are pronounced on the theme of “cultured socialist trade.” In the essence, it is a question of giving a clean attractive look to the government stores, supplying them with the necessary technical implements237 and a sufficient assortment238 of goods, not letting the apples rot, throwing in darning cotton with stockings, and teaching the selling clerk to be polite and attentive239 to the customer – in other words, acquiring the commonplace methods of capitalist trade. We are still far from solving this extremely important problem – in which, however, there is not a drop of socialism.
If we leave laws and institutions aside for a moment, and take the daily life of the basic mass of the population, and if we do not deliberately240 delude241 our minds or others’, we are compelled to acknowledge that in life customs and culture the heritage of tzarist and bourgeois Russia in the Soviet country vastly prevails over the embryonic242 growth of socialism. Most convincing on this subject is the population itself, which at the least rise of the standard of living throws itself avidly243 upon the ready models of the West. The young Soviet clerks, and often the workers too, try both in dress and manner to imitate American engineers and technicians with whom they happen to come in contact in the factories. The industrial and clerical working girls devour244 with their eyes the foreign lady tourist in order to capture her modes and manners. The lucky girl who succeeds in this becomes an object of wholesale245 imitation. Instead of the old bangs, the better-paid working girl acquires a “permanent wave.” The youth are eagerly joining “Western dancing circles.” In a certain sense all this means progress, but what chiefly expresses itself here is not the superiority of socialism over capitalism246, but the prevailing of petty bourgeois culture over patriarchal life, the city over the village, the center over the backwoods, the West over the East.
The privileged Soviet stratum does its borrowing meanwhile in the higher capitalistic spheres. And in this field the pacemakers are the diplomats247, directors of trusts, engineers, who have to make frequent trips to Europe and America. Soviet satire248 is silent on this question, for it is simply forbidden to touch the upper “ten thousand.” However, we cannot but remark with sorrow that the loftiest emissaries of the Soviet union have been unable to reveal in the face of capitalist civilization either a style of their own, or any independent traits whatever. They have not found sufficient inner stability to enable them to scorn external shine and observe the necessary aloofness249. Their chief ambition ordinarily is to differ as little as possible from the most finished snobs250 of the bourgeoisie. In a word, they feel and conduct themselves in a majority of cases not as the representatives of a new world, but as ordinary parvenus!
To say that the Soviet union is now performing that cultural work which the advanced countries long ago performed on the basis of capitalism, would be, however, only half the truth. The new social forms are by no means irrelevant251. They not only give to a backward country the possibility of gaining the level of the most advanced, but they permit it to achieve this task in a much shorter space of time than was needed formerly in the West. The explanation of this acceleration252 of tempo is simple. The bourgeois pioneers had to invent their technique and learn to apply it in the spheres both of economy and culture. The Soviet union takes it ready made in its latest forms and, thanks to the socialized means of production, applies the borrowings not partially253 and by degrees but at once and on a gigantic scale.
Military authorities have more than once celebrated the role of the army as a carrier of culture, especially in relation to the peasantry. Without deceiving ourselves as to the specific kind of “culture’, which bourgeois militarism inculcates, we cannot deny that many progressive customs have been instilled254 in the popular masses through the army. Not for nothing have former soldiers and under-officers in revolutionary and especially peasant movements usually stood at the head of the insurrectionists. The Soviet regime has an opportunity to influence the daily life of the people not only through the army, but also through the whole state apparatus255, and interwoven with it the apparatus of have not found sufficient inner stability to enable them to scorn external shine and observe the necessary aloofness. Their chief ambition ordinarily is to differ as little as possible from the most finished snobs of the bourgeoisie. In a word, they feel and conduct themselves in a majority of cases not as the representatives of a new world, but as ordinary parvenus!
To say that the Soviet union is now performing that cultural work which the advanced countries long ago performed on the basis of capitalism, would be, however, only half the truth. The new social forms are by no means irrelevant. They not only give to a backward country the possibility of gaining the level of the most advanced, but they permit it to achieve this task in a much shorter space of time than was needed formerly in the West. The explanation of this acceleration of tempo is simple. The bourgeois pioneers had to invent their technique and learn to apply it in the spheres both of economy and culture. The Soviet union takes it ready made in its latest forms and, thanks to the socialized means of production, applies the borrowings not partially and by degrees but at once and on a gigantic scale.
Military authorities have more than once celebrated the role of the army as a carrier of culture, especially in relation to the peasantry. Without deceiving ourselves as to the specific kind of “culture’, which bourgeois militarism inculcates, we cannot deny that many progressive customs have been instilled in the popular masses through the army. Not for nothing have former soldiers and under-officers in revolutionary and especially peasant movements usually stood at the head of the insurrectionists. The Soviet regime has an opportunity to influence the daily life of the people not only through the army, but also through the whole state apparatus, and interwoven with it the apparatus of the Party, the Communist Youth and the trade unions. An appropriation256 of ready-made models of technique, hygiene, art, sport, in an infinitely shorter time than was demanded for their development in their homeland, is guaranteed by the state forms of property, the political dictatorship and the planned methods of administration.
If the October revolution had given nothing but this accelerated forward movement, it would be historically justified257, for the declining bourgeois regime has proved incapable during the last quarter century of seriously moving forward any one of the backward countries in any part of the earth. However, the Russian proletariat achieved the revolution in the name of much more far-reaching tasks. No matter how suppressed it is politically at present, in its better parts it has not renounced258 the communist program nor the mighty hope bound up with it. The bureaucracy is compelled to accommodate itself to the proletariat, partly in the very direction of its policy, but chiefly in the interpretation259 of it. Hence, every step forward in the sphere either of economy or culture, regardless of its actual historic content or its real significance in the life of the masses, is proclaimed as a hitherto unseen and unheard-of conquest of “socialist culture.” There is not a doubt that to make toilet soap and a toothbrush the possession of millions who up to yesterday never heard of the simplest requirements of neatness is a very great cultural work. But neither soap nor a brush, nor even the perfumes which “our women” are demanding, quite constitute a socialist culture, especially in conditions where these pitiable attributes of civilization are accessible only to some 15 per cent of the population.
The “making over of men” of which they talk so much in the Soviet press is truly in full swing. But to what degree is this a socialist making over? The Russian people never knew in the past either a great religious reformation like the Germans, or a great bourgeois revolution like the French. Out of these two furnaces, if we leave aside the reformation-revolution of the British Islanders in the seventeenth century, came bourgeois individuality, a very important step in the development of human personality in general. The Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 necessarily meant the first awakening260 of individuality in the masses, its crystallization out of the primitive261 medium. That is to say, they fulfilled, in abridged262 form and accelerated tempo, the educational work of the bourgeois reformations and revolutions of the West. Long before this work was finished, however, even in the rough, the Russian revolution, which had broken out in the twilight263 of capitalism, was compelled by the course of the class struggle to leap over to the road of socialism. The contradictions in the sphere of Soviet culture only reflect and refract the economic and social contradictions which grew out of this leap. The awakening of personality under these circumstances necessarily assumes a more or less petty bourgeois character, not only in economics, but also in family life and lyric poetry. The bureaucracy itself has become the carrier of the most extreme, and sometimes unbridled, bourgeois individualism. Permitting and encouraging the development of economic individualism (piecework, private land allotments, premiums, decorations), it at the same time ruthlessly suppresses the progressive side of individualism in the realm of spiritual culture (critical views, the development of one’s own opinion, the cultivation264 of personal dignity).
The more considerable the level of development of a given national group, or the higher the sphere of its cultural creation, or, again, the more closely it grapples with the problems of society and personality, the more heavy and intolerable becomes the pressure of the bureaucracy. There can be in reality no talk of uniqueness of national culture when one and the same conductor’s baton265, or rather one and the same police club, undertakes to regulate all the intellectual activities of all the peoples of the Soviet union. The Ukrainian, White Russian, Georgian, or Turk newspapers and books are only translations of the bureaucratic imperative266 into the language of the corresponding nationality. Under the name of models of popular creativeness, the Moscow press daily publishes in Russian translation odes by the prize poets of the different nationalities in honor of the leaders, miserable267 verses in reality which differ only in the degree of their servility and want of talent.
The Great Russian culture, which has suffered from the regime of the guardhouse no less than the others, lives chiefly at the expense of the older generation formed before the revolution. The youth are suppressed as though with an iron plank268. It is a question, therefore, not of the oppression of one nationality over another in the proper sense of the word, but of oppression by the centralized police apparatus over the cultural development of all the nations, starting with the Great Russian. We cannot, however, ignore the fact that 90 per cent of the publications of the Soviet union are printed in the Russian language. If this percentage is, to be sure, in flagrant contradiction with the relative number of the Great Russian population, still it perhaps the better corresponds to the general influence of Russian culture, both in its independent weight and its role as mediator269 between the backward peoples of the country and the West. But with all that, does not the excessively high percentage of Great Russians in the publishing houses (and not only there, of course) mean an actual autocratic privilege of the Great Russians at the expense of the other nationalities of the union? It is quite possible. To this vastly important question it is impossible to answer as categorically as one would wish, for in life it is decided not so much by collaboration270, rivalry271 and mutual fertilizations of culture, as by the ultimate arbitrament of the bureaucracy. And since the Kremlin is the residence of the authorities, and the outlying territories are compelled to keep step with the center, bureaucratism inevitably takes the color of an autocratic Russification, leaving to the other nationalities the sole indubitable cultural right of celebrating the arbiter272 in their own language.
The official doctrine of culture changes in dependence273 upon economic zigzags274 and administrative expediencies. But with all its changes, it retains one trait – that of being absolutely categorical. Simultaneously with the theory of “socialism in one country,” the previously276 frowned-on theory of “proletarian culture” received official recognition. The opponents of this theory pointed277 out that the regime of proletarian dictatorship has a strictly278 transitional character, that in distinction from the bourgeoisie the proletariat does not intend to dominate throughout a series of historical epochs, that the task of the present generation of the new ruling class reduces itself primarily to an assimilation of all that is valuable in bourgeois culture, that the longer the proletariat remains a proletariat – that is, bears the traces of its former oppression – the less is it capable of rising above the historic heritage of the past, and that the possibilities of new creation will really open themselves only to the extent that the proletariat dissolves itself in a socialist society. All this means, in other words, that the bourgeois culture should be replaced by a socialist, not a proletarian, culture.
In a polemic279 against the theory of a “proletarian art” produced by laboratory methods, the author of these lines wrote: “Culture feeds upon the juices of industry, and a material excess is necessary in order that culture should grow, refine and complicate280 itself.” Even the most successful solution of elementary economic problems “would far from signify as yet a complete victory of the new historic principle of socialism. Only a forward movement of scientific thought on an all-national basis and the development of a new art would mean that the historic kernel281 had produced a blossom as well as a stalk. In this sense the development of art is the highest test of the viability282 and significance of every epoch.” This point of view, which had prevailed up to that moment, was in an official declaration suddenly proclaimed to be “capitulatory”, and dictated by a “disbelief” in the creative powers of the proletariat. There opened the period of Stalin and Bukharin, the latter of whom had long before appeared as an evangel of “proletarian culture”, and the former never given a thought to these questions. They both considered, in any case, that the movement toward socialism would develop with a “tortoise stride”, and that the proletariat would have at its disposal decades for the creation of its own culture. As to the character of this culture, the ideas of these theoreticians were as vague as they were uninspiring.
The stormy years of the first five-year plan upset the tortoise perspective. In 1931, on the eve of a dreadful famine, the country had already “entered into socialism.” Thus, before the officially patronized writers, artists and painters had managed to create a proletarian culture, or even the first significant models of it, the government announced that the proletariat had dissolved in the classless society. It remained for the artists to reconcile themselves with the fact that the proletariat did not possess the most necessary condition for the creation of a proletarian culture: time. Yesterday’s conceptions were immediately abandoned to oblivion. “Socialist culture” was placed instantly upon the order of the day. We have already in part become acquainted with its content.
Spiritual creativeness demands freedom. The very purpose of communism is to subject nature to technique and technique to plan, and compel the raw material to give unstintingly everything to man that he needs. Far more than that, its highest goal is to free finally and once for all the creative forces of mankind from all pressure, limitation and humiliating dependence. Personal relations, science and art will not know any externally imposed “plan”, nor even any shadow of compulsion. To what degree spiritual creativencss shall be individual or collective will depend entirely upon its creators.
A transitional regime is a different thing. The dictatorship reflects the past barbarism and not the future culture. It necessarily lays down severe limitations upon all forms of activity, including spiritual creation. The program of the revolution from the very beginning regarded these limitations as a temporary evil, and assumed the obligation, in proportion as the new regime was consolidated284, to remove one after the other all restrictions285 upon freedom. In any case, and in the hottest years of the civil war, it was clear to the leaders of the r evolution that the government could, guided by political considerations, place limitations upon creative freedom, but in no case pretend to the role of commander in the sphere of science, literature and art. Although he had rather “conservative” personal tastes in art, Lenin remained politically extremely cautious in artistic286 questions, eagerly confessing his incompetence287. The patronizing of all kinds of modernism by Lunacharsky, the People’s Commissar of Art and Education, was often embarrassing to Lenin. But he confined himself to ironical remarks in private conversations, and remained remote from the idea of converting his literary tastes into law. In 1924, on the threshold of the new period, the author of this book thus formulated the relation of the state to the various artistic groups and tendencies: “while holding over them all the categorical criterion, for the revolution or against the revolution, to give them complete freedom in the sphere of artistic self-determination.”
While the dictatorship had a seething288 mass-basis and a prospect of world revolution, it had no fear of experiments, searchings, the struggle of schools, for it understood that only in this way could a new cultural epoch be prepared. The popular masses were still quivering in every fiber289, and were thinking aloud for the first time in a thousand years. All the best youthful forces of art were touched to the quick. During those first years, rich in hope and daring, there were created not only the most complete models of socialist legislation, but also the best productions of revolutionary literature. To the same times belong, it is worth remarking, the creation of those excellent Soviet films which, in spite of a poverty of technical means, caught the imagination of the whole world with the freshness and vigor290 of their approach to reality.
In the process of struggle against the party Opposition, the literary schools were strangled one after the other. It was not only a question of literature, either. The process of extermination291 took place in all ideological spheres, and it took place more decisively since it was more than half unconscious. The present ruling stratum considers itself called not only to control spiritual creation politically, but also to prescribe its roads of development. The method of command-without-appeal extends in like measure to the concentration camps, to scientific agriculture and to music. The central organ of the party prints anonymous292 directive editorials, having the character of military orders, in architecture, literature, dramatic art, the ballet, to say nothing of philosophy, natural science and history.
The bureaucracy superstitiously293 fears whatever does not serve it directly, as well as whatever it does not understand. When it demands some connection between natural science and production, this is on a large scale right; but when it commands that scientific investigators294 set themselves goals only of immediate283 practical importance, this threatens to seal up the most precious sources of invention, including practical discoveries, for these most often arise on unforeseen roads. Taught by bitter experience, the natural scientists, mathematicians295, philologists296, military theoreticians, avoid all broad generalizations297 out of fear lest some “red professor”, usually an ignorant careerist, threateningly pull up on them with some quotation298 dragged in by the hair from Lenin, or even from Stalin. To defend one’s own thought in such circumstances, or one’s scientific dignity, means in all probability to bring down repressions299 upon one’s head.
But it is infinitely worse in the sphere of the social sciences. Economists300, historians, even statisticians, to say nothing of journalists, are concerned above all things not to fall, even obliquely301, into contradiction with the momentary302 zigzag275 of the official course. About Soviet economy, or domestic or foreign policy, one cannot write at all except after covering his rear and flanks with banalities from the speeches of the “leader”, and having assumed in advance the task of demonstrating that everything is going exactly as it should go and even better. Although this 100 per cent conformism frees one from everyday unpleasantnesses, it entails303 the heaviest of punishments: sterility304.
In spite of the fact that Marxism is formally a state doctrine in the Soviet union, there has not appeared during the last twelve years one Marxian investigation – in economics, sociology, history or philosophy – which deserves attention and translation into foreign languages. The Marxian works do not transcend305 the limit of scholastic306 compilations307 which say over the same old ideas, endorsed308 in advance, and shuffle309 over the same old quotations310 according to the demands of the current administrative conjuncture. Millions of copies are distributed through the state channels of books and brochures that are of no use to anybody, put together with the help of mucilage, flattery and other sticky substances. Marxists who might say something valuable and independent are sitting in prison, or forced into silence, and this in spite of the fact that the evolution of social forms is raising gigantic scientific problems at every step! Befouled and trampled311 underfoot is the one thing without which theoretical work is impossible: scrupulousness312. Even the explanatory notes to the complete works of Lenin are radically313 worked over in every new edition from the point of view of the personal interests of the ruling staff: the names of “leaders” magnified, those of opponents vilified314; tracks covered up. The same is true of the textbooks on the history of the party and the revolution. Facts are distorted, documents concealed or fabricated, reputations created or destroyed. A simple comparison of the successive variants315 of one and the same book during the last twelve years permits us to trace infallibly the process of degeneration of the thought and conscience of the ruling stratum.
No less ruinous is the effect of the “totalitarian” regime upon artistic literature. The struggle of tendencies and schools has been replaced by interpretation of the will of the leaders. There has been created for all groups a general compulsory organization, a kind of concentration camp of artistic literature. Mediocre but “right-thinking” storytellers like Serafimovich or Gladkov are inaugurated as classics. Gifted writers who cannot do sufficient violence to themselves are pursued by a pack of instructors316 armed with shamelessness and dozens of quotations. The most eminent317 artists either commit suicide, or find their material in the remote past, or become silent. Honest and talented books appear as though accidentally, bursting out from somewhere under the counter, and have the character of artistic contraband318.
The life of Soviet art is a kind of martyrology. After the editorial orders in Pravda against “formalism”, there began an epidemic319 of humiliating recantations by writers, artists, stage directors and even opera singers. One after another, they renounced their own past sins, refraining, however – in case of further emergencies – from any clear-cut definition of the nature of this “formalism.” In the long run, the authorities were compelled by a new order to put an end to a too copious320 flow of recantations. Literary estimates are transformed within a few weeks, textbooks made over, streets renamed, statues brought forward, as a result of a few eulogistic321 remarks of Stalin about the poet Maiakovsky. The impressions made by the new opera upon high-up auditors322 are immediately converted into a musical directive for composers. The Secretary of the Communist Youth said at a conference of writers: “The suggestions of Comrade Stalin are a law for everybody,” and the whole audience applauded, although some doubtless burned with shame. As though to complete the mockery of literature, Stalin, who does not know how to compose a Russian phrase correctly, is declared a classic in the matter of style. There is something deeply tragic in this Byzantinism and police rule, notwithstanding the involuntary comedy of certain of its manifestations323.
The official formula reads: Culture should be socialist in content, national in form. As to the content of a socialist culture, however, only certain more or less happy guesses are possible. Nobody can grow that culture upon an inadequate economic foundation. Art is far less capable than science of anticipating the future. In any case, such prescriptions324 as, “portray the construction of the future,” “indicate the road to socialism,” “make over mankind,” give little more to the creative imagination than does the price list of a hardware store, or a railroad timetable.
The national form of an art is identical with its universal accessibility. “What is not wanted by the people,” Pravda dictates325 to the artists, “cannot have aesthetic326 significance.” That old Narodnik formula, rejecting the task of artistically327 educating the masses, takes on a still more reactionary328 character when the right to decide what art the people want and what they don’t want remains in the hands of the bureaucracy. It prints books according to its own choice. It sells them also by compulsion, offering no choice to the reader. In the last analysis the whole affair comes down in its eyes to taking care that art assimilates its interests, and finds such forms for them as will make the bureaucracy attractive to the popular masses.
In vain! No literature can fulfill that task. The leaders themselves are compelled to acknowledge that “neither the first nor the second five-year plan has yet given us a new literary wave which can rise above the first wave born in October.” That is very mildly said. In reality, in spite of individual exceptions, the epoch of the Thermidor will go into the history of artistic creation pre-eminently as an epoch of mediocrities, laureates and toadies329.
点击收听单词发音
1 cult | |
n.异教,邪教;时尚,狂热的崇拜 | |
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2 fulfill | |
vt.履行,实现,完成;满足,使满意 | |
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3 pregnancy | |
n.怀孕,怀孕期 | |
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4 hearth | |
n.壁炉炉床,壁炉地面 | |
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5 archaic | |
adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的,已不通用的 | |
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6 stuffy | |
adj.不透气的,闷热的 | |
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7 stagnant | |
adj.不流动的,停滞的,不景气的 | |
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8 toiling | |
长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 ); 艰难缓慢地移动,跋涉 | |
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9 galley | |
n.(飞机或船上的)厨房单层甲板大帆船;军舰舰长用的大划艇; | |
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10 labor | |
n.劳动,努力,工作,劳工;分娩;vi.劳动,努力,苦干;vt.详细分析;麻烦 | |
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11 maternity | |
n.母性,母道,妇产科病房;adj.孕妇的,母性的 | |
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12 athletic | |
adj.擅长运动的,强健的;活跃的,体格健壮的 | |
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13 socialist | |
n.社会主义者;adj.社会主义的 | |
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14 solidarity | |
n.团结;休戚相关 | |
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15 mutual | |
adj.相互的,彼此的;共同的,共有的 | |
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16 thereby | |
adv.因此,从而 | |
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17 fetters | |
n.脚镣( fetter的名词复数 );束缚v.给…上脚镣,束缚( fetter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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18 Soviet | |
adj.苏联的,苏维埃的;n.苏维埃 | |
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19 humiliation | |
n.羞辱 | |
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20 superstition | |
n.迷信,迷信行为 | |
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21 consecutive | |
adj.连续的,联贯的,始终一贯的 | |
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22 stratum | |
n.地层,社会阶层 | |
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23 austere | |
adj.艰苦的;朴素的,朴实无华的;严峻的 | |
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24 formulated | |
v.构想出( formulate的过去式和过去分词 );规划;确切地阐述;用公式表示 | |
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25 peculiarities | |
n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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26 abolition | |
n.废除,取消 | |
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27 condemnation | |
n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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28 withering | |
使人畏缩的,使人害羞的,使人难堪的 | |
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29 judgment | |
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见 | |
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30 linen | |
n.亚麻布,亚麻线,亚麻制品;adj.亚麻布制的,亚麻的 | |
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31 celebrated | |
adj.有名的,声誉卓著的 | |
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32 orators | |
n.演说者,演讲家( orator的名词复数 ) | |
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33 infinitely | |
adv.无限地,无穷地 | |
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34 initiate | |
vt.开始,创始,发动;启蒙,使入门;引入 | |
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35 bragging | |
v.自夸,吹嘘( brag的现在分词 );大话 | |
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36 fodder | |
n.草料;炮灰 | |
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37 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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38 isolated | |
adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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39 seasonal | |
adj.季节的,季节性的 | |
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40 solely | |
adv.仅仅,唯一地 | |
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41 insignificant | |
adj.无关紧要的,可忽略的,无意义的 | |
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42 orphan | |
n.孤儿;adj.无父母的 | |
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43 orphans | |
孤儿( orphan的名词复数 ) | |
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44 bureaucratic | |
adj.官僚的,繁文缛节的 | |
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45 bankruptcy | |
n.破产;无偿付能力 | |
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46 investigation | |
n.调查,调查研究 | |
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47 undoubtedly | |
adv.确实地,无疑地 | |
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48 liquidation | |
n.清算,停止营业 | |
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49 concealed | |
a.隐藏的,隐蔽的 | |
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50 conceal | |
v.隐藏,隐瞒,隐蔽 | |
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51 confession | |
n.自白,供认,承认 | |
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52 extraordinarily | |
adv.格外地;极端地 | |
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53 supervision | |
n.监督,管理 | |
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54 degradation | |
n.降级;低落;退化;陵削;降解;衰变 | |
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55 inadequate | |
adj.(for,to)不充足的,不适当的 | |
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56 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
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57 ticklish | |
adj.怕痒的;问题棘手的;adv.怕痒地;n.怕痒,小心处理 | |
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58 rationing | |
n.定量供应 | |
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59 inevitably | |
adv.不可避免地;必然发生地 | |
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60 pariahs | |
n.被社会遗弃者( pariah的名词复数 );贱民 | |
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61 tragic | |
adj.悲剧的,悲剧性的,悲惨的 | |
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62 abortion | |
n.流产,堕胎 | |
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63 distress | |
n.苦恼,痛苦,不舒适;不幸;vt.使悲痛 | |
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64 trickling | |
n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 );淌;使)慢慢走;缓慢移动 | |
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65 literally | |
adv.照字面意义,逐字地;确实 | |
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66 sanitation | |
n.公共卫生,环境卫生,卫生设备 | |
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67 prohibition | |
n.禁止;禁令,禁律 | |
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68 virtue | |
n.德行,美德;贞操;优点;功效,效力 | |
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69 unemployed | |
adj.失业的,没有工作的;未动用的,闲置的 | |
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70 gendarme | |
n.宪兵 | |
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71 imprisonment | |
n.关押,监禁,坐牢 | |
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72 formerly | |
adv.从前,以前 | |
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73 impels | |
v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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74 foul | |
adj.污秽的;邪恶的;v.弄脏;妨害;犯规;n.犯规 | |
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75 sieve | |
n.筛,滤器,漏勺 | |
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76 stifled | |
(使)窒息, (使)窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 ); 镇压,遏制; 堵 | |
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77 shameful | |
adj.可耻的,不道德的 | |
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78 rehabilitation | |
n.康复,悔过自新,修复,复兴,复职,复位 | |
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79 simultaneously | |
adv.同时发生地,同时进行地 | |
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80 nucleus | |
n.核,核心,原子核 | |
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81 triumphant | |
adj.胜利的,成功的;狂欢的,喜悦的 | |
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82 militia | |
n.民兵,民兵组织 | |
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83 naive | |
adj.幼稚的,轻信的;天真的 | |
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84 smacks | |
掌掴(声)( smack的名词复数 ); 海洛因; (打的)一拳; 打巴掌 | |
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85 philistine | |
n.庸俗的人;adj.市侩的,庸俗的 | |
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86 philistines | |
n.市侩,庸人( philistine的名词复数 );庸夫俗子 | |
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87 morale | |
n.道德准则,士气,斗志 | |
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88 vent | |
n.通风口,排放口;开衩;vt.表达,发泄 | |
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89 registration | |
n.登记,注册,挂号 | |
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90 automobile | |
n.汽车,机动车 | |
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91 automobiles | |
n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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92 publicity | |
n.众所周知,闻名;宣传,广告 | |
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93 vices | |
缺陷( vice的名词复数 ); 恶习; 不道德行为; 台钳 | |
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94 lyric | |
n.抒情诗,歌词;adj.抒情的 | |
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95 legitimate | |
adj.合法的,合理的,合乎逻辑的;v.使合法 | |
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96 treasuries | |
n.(政府的)财政部( treasury的名词复数 );国库,金库 | |
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97 bourgeois | |
adj./n.追求物质享受的(人);中产阶级分子 | |
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98 ridicule | |
v.讥讽,挖苦;n.嘲弄 | |
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99 unconditional | |
adj.无条件的,无限制的,绝对的 | |
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100 defense | |
n.防御,保卫;[pl.]防务工事;辩护,答辩 | |
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101 hypocrisy | |
n.伪善,虚伪 | |
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102 motive | |
n.动机,目的;adv.发动的,运动的 | |
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103 hierarchy | |
n.等级制度;统治集团,领导层 | |
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104 parental | |
adj.父母的;父的;母的 | |
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105 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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106 outstripping | |
v.做得比…更好,(在赛跑等中)超过( outstrip的现在分词 ) | |
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107 degenerated | |
衰退,堕落,退化( degenerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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108 mischief | |
n.损害,伤害,危害;恶作剧,捣蛋,胡闹 | |
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109 ironical | |
adj.讽刺的,冷嘲的 | |
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110 prevailing | |
adj.盛行的;占优势的;主要的 | |
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111 ideology | |
n.意识形态,(政治或社会的)思想意识 | |
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112 worthy | |
adj.(of)值得的,配得上的;有价值的 | |
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113 intrigue | |
vt.激起兴趣,迷住;vi.耍阴谋;n.阴谋,密谋 | |
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114 doctrine | |
n.教义;主义;学说 | |
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115 insistence | |
n.坚持;强调;坚决主张 | |
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116 pecuniary | |
adj.金钱的;金钱上的 | |
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117 strata | |
n.地层(复数);社会阶层 | |
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118 luxuriously | |
adv.奢侈地,豪华地 | |
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119 chevrons | |
n.(警察或士兵所佩带以示衔级的)∧形或∨形标志( chevron的名词复数 ) | |
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120 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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121 influential | |
adj.有影响的,有权势的 | |
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122 soviets | |
苏维埃(Soviet的复数形式) | |
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123 disintegration | |
n.分散,解体 | |
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124 administrator | |
n.经营管理者,行政官员 | |
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125 parvenus | |
n.暴富者( parvenu的名词复数 );暴发户;新贵;傲慢自负的人 | |
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126 memoirs | |
n.回忆录;回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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127 compulsory | |
n.强制的,必修的;规定的,义务的 | |
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128 prosecution | |
n.起诉,告发,检举,执行,经营 | |
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129 incapable | |
adj.无能力的,不能做某事的 | |
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130 indirectly | |
adv.间接地,不直接了当地 | |
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131 census | |
n.(官方的)人口调查,人口普查 | |
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132 appraisal | |
n.对…作出的评价;评价,鉴定,评估 | |
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133 esteemed | |
adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 );敬重;认为;以为 | |
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134 unbearable | |
adj.不能容忍的;忍受不住的 | |
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135 regimentation | |
n.编组团队;系统化,组织化 | |
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136 crass | |
adj.愚钝的,粗糙的;彻底的 | |
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137 administrative | |
adj.行政的,管理的 | |
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138 destitute | |
adj.缺乏的;穷困的 | |
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139 optimists | |
n.乐观主义者( optimist的名词复数 ) | |
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140 deprivation | |
n.匮乏;丧失;夺去,贫困 | |
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141 guardians | |
监护人( guardian的名词复数 ); 保护者,维护者 | |
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142 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
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143 epoch | |
n.(新)时代;历元 | |
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144 athletics | |
n.运动,体育,田径运动 | |
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145 guardianship | |
n. 监护, 保护, 守护 | |
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146 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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147 ardent | |
adj.热情的,热烈的,强烈的,烈性的 | |
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148 vigilantly | |
adv.警觉地,警惕地 | |
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149 replacement | |
n.取代,替换,交换;替代品,代用品 | |
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150 accomplishment | |
n.完成,成就,(pl.)造诣,技能 | |
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151 prospect | |
n.前景,前途;景色,视野 | |
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152 liquidating | |
v.清算( liquidate的现在分词 );清除(某人);清偿;变卖 | |
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153 loyalty | |
n.忠诚,忠心 | |
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154 obedience | |
n.服从,顺从 | |
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155 aphorisms | |
格言,警句( aphorism的名词复数 ) | |
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156 maxims | |
n.格言,座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
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157 saturated | |
a.饱和的,充满的 | |
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158 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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159 oases | |
n.(沙漠中的)绿洲( oasis的名词复数 );(困苦中)令人快慰的地方(或时刻);乐土;乐事 | |
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160 repression | |
n.镇压,抑制,抑压 | |
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161 corruption | |
n.腐败,堕落,贪污 | |
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162 boredom | |
n.厌烦,厌倦,乏味,无聊 | |
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163 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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164 ripened | |
v.成熟,使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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165 participation | |
n.参与,参加,分享 | |
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166 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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167 systematically | |
adv.有系统地 | |
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168 physically | |
adj.物质上,体格上,身体上,按自然规律 | |
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169 exterminated | |
v.消灭,根绝( exterminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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170 opposition | |
n.反对,敌对 | |
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171 heterogeneous | |
adj.庞杂的;异类的 | |
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172 ascetic | |
adj.禁欲的;严肃的 | |
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173 avid | |
adj.热心的;贪婪的;渴望的;劲头十足的 | |
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174 asceticism | |
n.禁欲主义 | |
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175 advancement | |
n.前进,促进,提升 | |
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176 well-being | |
n.安康,安乐,幸福 | |
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177 discordant | |
adj.不调和的 | |
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178 discord | |
n.不和,意见不合,争论,(音乐)不和谐 | |
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179 reigning | |
adj.统治的,起支配作用的 | |
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180 premiums | |
n.费用( premium的名词复数 );保险费;额外费用;(商品定价、贷款利息等以外的)加价 | |
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181 adherence | |
n.信奉,依附,坚持,固着 | |
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182 allurements | |
n.诱惑( allurement的名词复数 );吸引;诱惑物;有诱惑力的事物 | |
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183 ideological | |
a.意识形态的 | |
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184 unleashing | |
v.把(感情、力量等)释放出来,发泄( unleash的现在分词 ) | |
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185 slander | |
n./v.诽谤,污蔑 | |
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186 portray | |
v.描写,描述;画(人物、景象等) | |
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187 dominant | |
adj.支配的,统治的;占优势的;显性的;n.主因,要素,主要的人(或物);显性基因 | |
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188 heroism | |
n.大无畏精神,英勇 | |
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189 patriotism | |
n.爱国精神,爱国心,爱国主义 | |
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190 rift | |
n.裂口,隙缝,切口;v.裂开,割开,渗入 | |
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191 debauch | |
v.使堕落,放纵 | |
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192 exhausted | |
adj.极其疲惫的,精疲力尽的 | |
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193 spectrum | |
n.谱,光谱,频谱;范围,幅度,系列 | |
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194 warfare | |
n.战争(状态);斗争;冲突 | |
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195 vapors | |
n.水汽,水蒸气,无实质之物( vapor的名词复数 );自夸者;幻想 [药]吸入剂 [古]忧郁(症)v.自夸,(使)蒸发( vapor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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196 moratorium | |
n.(行动、活动的)暂停(期),延期偿付 | |
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197 foes | |
敌人,仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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198 exquisitely | |
adv.精致地;强烈地;剧烈地;异常地 | |
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199 consolidate | |
v.使加固,使加强;(把...)联为一体,合并 | |
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200 erects | |
v.使直立,竖起( erect的第三人称单数 );建立 | |
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201 trenches | |
深沟,地沟( trench的名词复数 ); 战壕 | |
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202 violation | |
n.违反(行为),违背(行为),侵犯 | |
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203 sifted | |
v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 );筛滤;细查;详审 | |
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204 chatter | |
vi./n.喋喋不休;短促尖叫;(牙齿)打战 | |
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205 accounting | |
n.会计,会计学,借贷对照表 | |
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206 insolent | |
adj.傲慢的,无理的 | |
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207 rebuke | |
v.指责,非难,斥责 [反]praise | |
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208 maturity | |
n.成熟;完成;(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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209 intrude | |
vi.闯入;侵入;打扰,侵扰 | |
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210 dictated | |
v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 );口授;支配;摆布 | |
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211 annulment | |
n.废除,取消,(法院对婚姻等)判决无效 | |
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212 derive | |
v.取得;导出;引申;来自;源自;出自 | |
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213 forestall | |
vt.抢在…之前采取行动;预先阻止 | |
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214 allusion | |
n.暗示,间接提示 | |
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215 degenerating | |
衰退,堕落,退化( degenerate的现在分词 ) | |
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216 nauseated | |
adj.作呕的,厌恶的v.使恶心,作呕( nauseate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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217 rhetoric | |
n.修辞学,浮夸之言语 | |
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218 concealing | |
v.隐藏,隐瞒,遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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219 braggadocio | |
n.吹牛大王 | |
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220 mediocre | |
adj.平常的,普通的 | |
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221 bureaucrats | |
n.官僚( bureaucrat的名词复数 );官僚主义;官僚主义者;官僚语言 | |
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222 disturbance | |
n.动乱,骚动;打扰,干扰;(身心)失调 | |
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223 contradictory | |
adj.反驳的,反对的,抗辩的;n.正反对,矛盾对立 | |
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224 furrowing | |
v.犁田,开沟( furrow的现在分词 ) | |
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225 alignment | |
n.队列;结盟,联合 | |
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226 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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227 autocracy | |
n.独裁政治,独裁政府 | |
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228 afterward | |
adv.后来;以后 | |
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229 censor | |
n./vt.审查,审查员;删改 | |
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230 impermeable | |
adj.不能透过的,不渗透的 | |
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231 irreconcilable | |
adj.(指人)难和解的,势不两立的 | |
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232 tempo | |
n.(音乐的)速度;节奏,行进速度 | |
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233 nomad | |
n.游牧部落的人,流浪者,游牧民 | |
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234 overestimate | |
v.估计过高,过高评价 | |
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235 hygiene | |
n.健康法,卫生学 (a.hygienic) | |
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236 illustrate | |
v.举例说明,阐明;图解,加插图 | |
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237 implements | |
n.工具( implement的名词复数 );家具;手段;[法律]履行(契约等)v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 );执行;贯彻;使生效 | |
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238 assortment | |
n.分类,各色俱备之物,聚集 | |
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239 attentive | |
adj.注意的,专心的;关心(别人)的,殷勤的 | |
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240 deliberately | |
adv.审慎地;蓄意地;故意地 | |
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241 delude | |
vt.欺骗;哄骗 | |
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242 embryonic | |
adj.胚胎的 | |
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243 avidly | |
adv.渴望地,热心地 | |
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244 devour | |
v.吞没;贪婪地注视或谛听,贪读;使着迷 | |
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245 wholesale | |
n.批发;adv.以批发方式;vt.批发,成批出售 | |
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246 capitalism | |
n.资本主义 | |
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247 diplomats | |
n.外交官( diplomat的名词复数 );有手腕的人,善于交际的人 | |
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248 satire | |
n.讽刺,讽刺文学,讽刺作品 | |
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249 aloofness | |
超然态度 | |
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250 snobs | |
(谄上傲下的)势利小人( snob的名词复数 ); 自高自大者,自命不凡者 | |
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251 irrelevant | |
adj.不恰当的,无关系的,不相干的 | |
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252 acceleration | |
n.加速,加速度 | |
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253 partially | |
adv.部分地,从某些方面讲 | |
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254 instilled | |
v.逐渐使某人获得(某种可取的品质),逐步灌输( instill的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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255 apparatus | |
n.装置,器械;器具,设备 | |
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256 appropriation | |
n.拨款,批准支出 | |
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257 justified | |
a.正当的,有理的 | |
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258 renounced | |
v.声明放弃( renounce的过去式和过去分词 );宣布放弃;宣布与…决裂;宣布摒弃 | |
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259 interpretation | |
n.解释,说明,描述;艺术处理 | |
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260 awakening | |
n.觉醒,醒悟 adj.觉醒中的;唤醒的 | |
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261 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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262 abridged | |
削减的,删节的 | |
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263 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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264 cultivation | |
n.耕作,培养,栽培(法),养成 | |
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265 baton | |
n.乐队用指挥杖 | |
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266 imperative | |
n.命令,需要;规则;祈使语气;adj.强制的;紧急的 | |
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267 miserable | |
adj.悲惨的,痛苦的;可怜的,糟糕的 | |
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268 plank | |
n.板条,木板,政策要点,政纲条目 | |
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269 mediator | |
n.调解人,中介人 | |
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270 collaboration | |
n.合作,协作;勾结 | |
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271 rivalry | |
n.竞争,竞赛,对抗 | |
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272 arbiter | |
n.仲裁人,公断人 | |
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273 dependence | |
n.依靠,依赖;信任,信赖;隶属 | |
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274 zigzags | |
n.锯齿形的线条、小径等( zigzag的名词复数 )v.弯弯曲曲地走路,曲折地前进( zigzag的第三人称单数 ) | |
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275 zigzag | |
n.曲折,之字形;adj.曲折的,锯齿形的;adv.曲折地,成锯齿形地;vt.使曲折;vi.曲折前行 | |
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276 previously | |
adv.以前,先前(地) | |
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277 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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278 strictly | |
adv.严厉地,严格地;严密地 | |
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279 polemic | |
n.争论,论战 | |
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280 complicate | |
vt.使复杂化,使混乱,使难懂 | |
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281 kernel | |
n.(果实的)核,仁;(问题)的中心,核心 | |
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282 viability | |
n.存活(能力) | |
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283 immediate | |
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的 | |
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284 consolidated | |
a.联合的 | |
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285 restrictions | |
约束( restriction的名词复数 ); 管制; 制约因素; 带限制性的条件(或规则) | |
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286 artistic | |
adj.艺术(家)的,美术(家)的;善于艺术创作的 | |
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287 incompetence | |
n.不胜任,不称职 | |
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288 seething | |
沸腾的,火热的 | |
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289 fiber | |
n.纤维,纤维质 | |
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290 vigor | |
n.活力,精力,元气 | |
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291 extermination | |
n.消灭,根绝 | |
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292 anonymous | |
adj.无名的;匿名的;无特色的 | |
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293 superstitiously | |
被邪教所支配 | |
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294 investigators | |
n.调查者,审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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295 mathematicians | |
数学家( mathematician的名词复数 ) | |
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296 philologists | |
n.语文学( philology的名词复数 ) | |
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297 generalizations | |
一般化( generalization的名词复数 ); 普通化; 归纳; 概论 | |
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298 quotation | |
n.引文,引语,语录;报价,牌价,行情 | |
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299 repressions | |
n.压抑( repression的名词复数 );约束;抑制;镇压 | |
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300 economists | |
n.经济学家,经济专家( economist的名词复数 ) | |
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301 obliquely | |
adv.斜; 倾斜; 间接; 不光明正大 | |
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302 momentary | |
adj.片刻的,瞬息的;短暂的 | |
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303 entails | |
使…成为必要( entail的第三人称单数 ); 需要; 限定继承; 使必需 | |
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304 sterility | |
n.不生育,不结果,贫瘠,消毒,无菌 | |
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305 transcend | |
vt.超出,超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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306 scholastic | |
adj.学校的,学院的,学术上的 | |
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307 compilations | |
n.编辑,编写( compilation的名词复数 );编辑物 | |
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308 endorsed | |
vt.& vi.endorse的过去式或过去分词形式v.赞同( endorse的过去式和过去分词 );在(尤指支票的)背面签字;在(文件的)背面写评论;在广告上说本人使用并赞同某产品 | |
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309 shuffle | |
n.拖著脚走,洗纸牌;v.拖曳,慢吞吞地走 | |
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310 quotations | |
n.引用( quotation的名词复数 );[商业]行情(报告);(货物或股票的)市价;时价 | |
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311 trampled | |
踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 ); 践踏; 无视; 侵犯 | |
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312 scrupulousness | |
n.一丝不苟;小心翼翼 | |
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313 radically | |
ad.根本地,本质地 | |
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314 vilified | |
v.中伤,诽谤( vilify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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315 variants | |
n.变体( variant的名词复数 );变种;变型;(词等的)变体 | |
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316 instructors | |
指导者,教师( instructor的名词复数 ) | |
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317 eminent | |
adj.显赫的,杰出的,有名的,优良的 | |
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318 contraband | |
n.违禁品,走私品 | |
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319 epidemic | |
n.流行病;盛行;adj.流行性的,流传极广的 | |
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320 copious | |
adj.丰富的,大量的 | |
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321 eulogistic | |
adj.颂扬的,颂词的 | |
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322 auditors | |
n.审计员,稽核员( auditor的名词复数 );(大学课程的)旁听生 | |
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323 manifestations | |
n.表示,显示(manifestation的复数形式) | |
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324 prescriptions | |
药( prescription的名词复数 ); 处方; 开处方; 计划 | |
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325 dictates | |
n.命令,规定,要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 );口授;支配;摆布 | |
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326 aesthetic | |
adj.美学的,审美的,有美感 | |
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327 artistically | |
adv.艺术性地 | |
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328 reactionary | |
n.反动者,反动主义者;adj.反动的,反动主义的,反对改革的 | |
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329 toadies | |
n.谄媚者,马屁精( toady的名词复数 )v.拍马,谄媚( toady的第三人称单数 ) | |
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