201 CHRONICLESnSome Epigramsnby Fred ChappellnMalgre LuinJerry earns his bread writing polemicsnAgainst the footnote race of academics.nPompous, he calls them, ineffectualnOfficious pedants, and so forth. WhynDoes he so complain and vilify?n— Don’t breathe this secret to a living soul:nJerry’s a latent intellectual.nAgriculturenYou’ve planted seven wealthy husbandsnWhile the bodies were still warm.nYou own, Chloe, what I’d callnA profit-making farm.nTelevangelistnHe claims that he’ll reign equallynWith Jesus in eternity.nBut it’s not like him to be willingnTo give a partner equal billing.nThe EpigramatistnMankind perishes. The worid goes dark.nHe racks his brains for a tart remark.nSoviet youth need now, he suggested, is . . . parachutentowers. Before World War II there was at least one suchntower in every town; now they are few and far between. Henwent on to tell of a young man whose “decadent” life-stylenchanged drastically after he signed up with an amateurnparachute-jumping group.nThe essays in the current Pravda range from one about ansuccessful Soviet emigre artist now living in New York, whonhas suddenly (or maybe not so suddenly?) become anfrenzied Soviet patriot, to one on Hungary with a verynmeaningful passage which called the patriotic Hungariannpremier Imre Nagy — hanged by the Soviets in 1956—anright-wing extremist. The essay’s message is transparentlynclear: don’t make a grave mistake, comrades, Gorbachev’snperestroika in Moscow is very different from the onenattempted in Budapest in 1956.nMeager as it is, Pravda doesn’t allocate much space tonnews from abroad. Called “international information,” suchnnnnews is usually strewn across pages four and five and dividedninto two sections — news from the brotherly (communist)ncountries, and reports from the enemy (capitalist) camp,nwith an occasional piece on the Third World, such as anlaudatory article on the life of Indira Gandhi. In the waynnews from abroad is presented — what is omitted, emphasized,nor distorted — I detected absolutely no change fromnDecember 1987 to the present. The nature of the reportsnon the enemy camp is encapsulated in a Soviet joke aboutntwo old women standing in a kerosene line. “I can’t bear itnany longer, waiting for three hours to buy a gallon ofnkerosene!” one says. “Yes, but still, we’re lucky,” the othernresponds, “at least our government supplies us with thenkerosene. Who does it for the people in the capitalistncountries?”nThe objective of the articles on, say, joblessness in Rome,nor drug wars in Munich, or terrorist rampages in Paris, is tonconvince the Soviet people that no matter how hard theirnlife might be, life in the West is incomparably worse. Thesenlonger pieces are intertwined with shorter ones bashing thenusual rotten pack—South Korea, South Africa, Paraguay,nChile, and Israel — or vehemently defending the greatnPanamanian patriot Noriega against American warmongers.nThe articles on the brotherly camp are less emotionallyncharged. Among the reports on a new cow-milking technologyndeveloped in East Germany, a Soviet-Bulgarian collaborationnon porcelain making, a new subway extension innBudapest, and a Soviet opera production in Havana, there isna piece on the exhibition in Beijing of Soviet holograms,ndepicting, in three dimensions, Lenin’s personal belongings.nThis last report has better positioning than the others,nsignaling Gorbachev’s present priority of renewing brotherlynrelations with Beijing.n”Brotherly relations” and new Moscow “peace initiatives”nare stock phrases in Pravda. Nowhere in its pages cannone find reports on the Soviets’ latest drastic increase ofnmilitary pressure on Northern Europeans, particularly Swedennand Norway; or on their recent unprecedented build-upnon the Red Sea islands of Perim, Dhalak Kabir, and Socotranoff Southern Yemen, with more than 40,000 Soviet troopsndeployed there; or on a transformation of Da Nang airfieldnand Cam Ranh Bay naval base in Vietnam into probably thentwo largest Soviet military facilities abroad; or on the currentnastonishing number of mishaps with different kinds ofnAmerican missiles, as well as the Challenger (mishaps whichnSDI Head Lt. General Daniel Graham characterized asnhaving one chance in a million of being coincidences); or onna chain of mysterious deaths — in plane and car crashes andnassassinations — of numerous European scientists associatednwith SDI research. If General Graham’s observation isncorrect, we might presume that under glasnost the KGBnfirst chief directorate responsible for external operations isnanything but pulling back.nA friend of mine, a scientist from Moscow now living innthe West, put it quite succinctly. “You know,” he said, “itnmight sound paradoxical, but living in the Soviet Union, Indidn’t fully comprehend the beast it is. In a way, it was likenliving inside a tiger’s belly — it stank awfully, you couldn’tnmove, but you didn’t see the teeth. Now I am outside, and Incan see them all; I can see the whole beast.” Reading PravdanI can, too.n