In a Nutshell

 

from “Monumental Propaganda” by Vladimir Voinovich

 

They say that an individual’s mental capabilities are determined by the weight of his brain.  But a big brain can only be contained in a beg head.  Turgenev had a big head.  And his brain, accordingly, weighed as much as two loaves of bread.  Lenin had an even bigger head, and naturally no one in the world had a bigger brain than him, and in Soviet times it was dangerous even to doubt it.  You could lose your own head, whatever size it was.

 

[…] then went back to the Admiral and said in Shubkin’s defense: “You tell me that he’s a fool, but he’s got such a huge head, it must be full of something.”

 

“Yes, it’s full of foolishness,” the Admiral said ruthlessly.  Let me tell you something.  You’ve probably been out in the country.  You may have noticed that every village has one idiot and one wise man.  Some simple peasant.  With a head the size of your fist and a brain that’s probably not very big.  But he thinks simply, clearly and soundly on the basis of his own knowledge of life and personal experience.  So what I’d advise you to learn is this.  The human brain is distinguished not only by its dimensions, but by its ability to assimilate input.  The brain, crudely speaking, can be a warehouse, a mill or a chemical laboratory.  A warehouse can be really vast and stocked with various kinds of items, but the more items there are, the harder it is to make sense of them.  A mill can only grind up whatever is poured into it.  It may be small and primitive, but it will still grind good grain into pretty good flour.  But even if you take a big, modern mill, the very finest, with good grindstones and ideal sieves and load it up with bad grain, it won’t turn out anything, that’s any good.  The creative brain is the highest type, a chemical laboratory – load anything you like into it and it produces something fundamentally new, a synthesis.  Everything in it works: knowledge, memory, the capacity for independent thought.  That kind of brain is very rare, even among people with big heads.”

 

“I suppose Lenin must have had that kind of brain?” I suggested.

 

“Lenin?” the Admiral repeated in amazement.  Oh, come one!  Lenin had an ideological brain.  Yet another type that’s not very common.  Not a warehouse, not a mill, not a laboratory, but a kind of stomach in the head.  Put in all sorts of high-quality foodstuffs and they’re all digested and transformed into shit.”

 

“Well, then,” I exclaimed, delighted to have discovered this definition, “that means Shubkin has a stomach-brain too.”

 

“No, no,” the Admiral protested.  “What Shubkin has is a mill-brain.  If you poured good grain into it, you might get good flour.  But he’s loaded up his mill with Lenin’s shit, so what comes out is shit too.”

 

[…] “So you believe a man can be very learned, know a great deal, possess a phenomenal memory and an exceptional talent for languages, and still be no more than a fool?”

 

“Why yes,” said the Admiral with a nod.  “Your Shubkin’s an example/”

 

“And Lenin?”

 

“Lenin’s a fool too,” the Admiral said calmly.

 

I couldn’t restrain myself at that.

 

“Look here,” I said, “of course, you’re an original character and a paradoxical thinker, and I regard Lenin critically myself, but calling him fool is going too far.  He turned the whole world upside down.”

 

“For what purpose?”

 

“The purpose is a different matter.”

 

“No,” said the Admiral, finally growing heated.  “It’s not a different matter.  I’ve already explained that to your Shubkin.  An intelligent man is a man who sets himself a goal and achieves it.  But a man who sets himself an unachievable goal and doesn’t understand that it’s unachievable cannot be regarded as intelligent.”

 

“Well, let’s assume that in terms of everyday life you’re right.  But Lenin didn’t just set himself a simple goal; he set himself a grandiose one.”

 

“Because he’s not just a simple fool,” said the Admiral.  “He’s a grandiose fool.  Put that down in your notebook too: Lenin is a grandiose fool.”

 

The Admiral paused for a moment; then he must have decided that he ought to offer some arguments for his idea after all.

 

“I…” he began, “unlike you, I have had the time… I’ve read him from cover to cover.  And he, begging your pardon, made a total asshole of himself.  In every sense.  He made a revolution and seized power and turned Russia upside down, but what for?  Where are the things that he predicted?  Where is communism?  Why is capitalism still alive today if it had reached its final stage in his lifetime?  Shubkin tried to prove Lenin’s intelligence by saying that after the revolution he realized they gone too far and decided to make a partial return to capitalism and declared the New Economic Policy.  But isn’t it stupid to destroy something that existed in complete form in order to go back to it in partial form?  In general, I repeat, your Lenin was a grandiose fool, or a brilliant fool, I can’t even be bothered to argue about it.”

 

It was already late, but I took the risk of missing the last bus and asked the Admiral what he thought about Stalin.  Was he a fool too?

 

“No,” said the Admiral, bundling himself up in the blanket.  “Stalin was by no means a fool.  He set goals that were clear to him and achieved them very precisely.”

 

“But in doing so that he said – “”

 

“What difference does it make what he said?” the Admiral asked with a tired yawn.  “What matters is what he did.  And he always did exactly what he wanted.”

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Posted on September 25th, 2009 under Literature, Цитаты и Мысли (Умные и неумные) • Tags: "Monumental Propaganda", brain, creative, intelligence, Lenin, Quotes, Stalin, Vladimir Voinovich. • • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback