What, brothers, is the most fashionable word today?
The most fashionable word today is, of course, “electrification.”
Lighting up Soviet Russia with electricity is a matter of great importance. No one can argue with that. But it does have its problems. I’m not saying, comrades, that it costs too much. It costs money—that’s all. No, I’m saying something else.
What I’m saying is this:
I was living, comrades, in a large building. Everyone in this building used paraffin. Some of us had lamps. Some had oil cans with a wick. The poorest had to use church candles. Life wasn’t easy.
And then they started to install electric light.
First it was the house manager. He lit up his room—and that was that. A quiet fellow. He didn’t say what he was thinking. But he walked around in a strange way and kept blowing his nose without noticing he was doing it.
He didn’t say what he was thinking.
Then my dear wife came home, Yelizaveta Ignatyevna Prokhorova. She said we should put electric light in our apartment.
“Everyone,” she said, “is getting light. The director himself has installed light,” she said.
So—of course—we did the same.
Light was installed, the apartment was lit up—and heavens above! What filth!
Before, you went to work in the morning, you came back in the evening, you drank your tea, and you went to bed. You never saw anything with just paraffin. But now, with electric light—you see wallpaper hanging off the wall, and somebody’s old slipper lying on the floor. You see a bedbug running along, trying to get away from the light. An old rag here, spit on the floor there, a cigarette end, a flea jumping around.
Heavens above! It was enough to make you call the night watchman. It was a sad sight to see.
In our room, for example, we had a sofa. I had always thought it was a good sofa—quite a nice sofa! In the evenings I used to sit on it. But now with this electricity—heavens above! What a sofa! Bits sticking up, bits hanging down, bits falling out. How could I sit on such a sofa? My soul protested.
No, I thought, I don’t live well. Everything is ugly to look at. And everything I do goes wrong.
Then I looked at my dear Yelizaveta Ignatyevna. She looked sad. She was muttering to herself as she cleaned up the kitchen.
“What,” I asked, “are you so sad about, dear wife?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I had no idea, my dear man,” she said, “what a poor life I’ve been living.”
I looked at our things. Not so good, I thought. Filth and rags. Rags of one kind and rags of another kind. All lit up by the light and staring you in the face.
So I started to feel a bit sad, you might say, when I came home in the evenings.
I came in. I switched on the light. I looked at the lamp for a moment, then buried my face in the pillow.
Then I thought again. I got my pay. I bought some whitewash. I mixed it up—and I started to work. I tore off wallpaper. I killed bedbugs. I swept away cobwebs. I fixed the sofa. I painted. I decorated. My soul sang with joy.
I did well. But not well enough. It was pointless, dear brothers, that I spent all that money. My wife cut the wires.
“Light,” she said, “makes life look terribly poor. Why,” she said, “shine light on our poverty? The bedbugs will die of laughter.”
I begged her. I argued with her. It was no use.
“You can move,” she said, “to another apartment. I don’t want,” she said, “to live with light. I have no money,” she said, “to fix everything up.”
But how could I move, comrades, after spending a fortune on whitewash? I gave in.
Light is all very well, brothers, but it’s not easy to live with.