Lenin Is Risen, Talks to Press

"What makes you so popular with the masses?" I asked the Founder of the Soviet State as we were getting seated. "Do you realize that if weren't for me this country would still have no electricity?" the Great Thinker said, pointing at the Budweiser® neon sign over the counter. "What are your plans for the nearest future?" "Use the Communist Party's assets to take over the railroad station, the telegraph, and the post office." "Why?" "Those are the key elements of a successful uprising," the Father of the Revolution explained patronizingly. "What about the email and the Internet?" "That too. The revolution must control everything. What is Internet?" "It's that thing invented by Al Gore, the same progressive inventor who built time machine and brought you to the year of 2005." "Give him my regards. Technological progress is important for building communism, as is raises labor productivity. That is why socialist labor productivity has always topped that of the West." "It didn't, unfortunately." "But weren't the Soviet workers more interested in the product of their work because it belonged to them, as opposed to the Western laborers who toiled for the hated capitalist employer?" "In fact, the Soviet workers were stealing everything as they thought it belonged to them anyway. They were also heard saying, The government pretends that it pays us, and we pretend that we do the work." "Traitors! I'd have ordered exemplary executions at every workplace! Every office!" "Stalin did just that. But after his death the discipline has dwindled." The Teacher of Toiling Masses went silent for a while, stirring a bag of NutraSweet® into the Styrofoam® cup of Starbucks® coffee with a Dispozo® straw. "Weren't the Soviet clocks the fastest, and the Soviet microchips the largest in the world?" he asked quietly. "Exactly." "What about Russia's natural resources? Couldn't they just rip everything out of the earth as fast as they could and outdo the West that way?" "I can't say they didn't try. They actually created a few environmental disasters that way." "And what, nothing?" "They did make a nuclear bomb but the labor productivity didn't get better." "Has there been any population growth?" "Sure." "I knew it! I told them to stop having babies! Children are the enemies of progress!" "Why is that, Comrade Lenin?" "Socialism is a zero-sum game, comrade. The more there are people, the thinner slice of the cake everyone gets. That's why I never had children!"

We have great future in store for you, little girl. You will grow up obeying the Party, hating capitalists, fearing freedom, denouncing neighbors for a ration card, and sacrificing personal happiness for the Greater Good. You will have no individuality. Would you like to become a mote of a vast collective? Atta girl! Lenin delivers a fiery speech at the Nudist Convention in the Palace of Congresses, Kremlin. His personal life, however, is limited to political prostitutes in the Politburo. And he misses Trotsky. Starving workers and peasants of America! The dark era of capitalist oppression is almost over! Send us the money! Your sacrifice will be rewarded, I promise!

"I know. My domestic partner and I aborted every fetus we have conceived. I knew it was for the Greater Good, but I could never phrase it as beautifully as you just have."

"Just to think that those ugly, helpless, needy babies killed communism! Ruined my brilliant plan to build heaven on earth! There's one condition to living in heaven: you can't have babies. You've got to be sterile and immortal."

"Like your mummy?"

"My mummy was a great role model for our youth! That's why it's got to be showcased on Red Square." A faint smile touched the Great Philosopher's lips and disappeared in his reddish mustache. "I had a perfect housing solution," he went on. "It was called peace to the shacks, war to the palaces. You know what a communal apartment is? It's a former palace that looks like a shack, filled with a dozen working families who all use one bathroom. We had a lot of palaces left over from the bourgeoisie, but the greedy capitalists had not built enough for everybody. My perfect solution worked only on condition of zero population growth."

"So Stalin was actually forced to decimate the population. That explains it."

"From what I hear, Stalin took it even further. He increased urban square footage by packing one half of the population in box cars and shipping them off to the tundra. Not a bad plan either. The resulting budget surplus was used to improve the living conditions for the rest, trough statuary projects and golden murals glorifying the Party's leaders. Beautiful proletarian art, really worth dying for. I'm known to be a connoisseur."

"Speaking of Stalin, when he died his body was also mummified and put in the Mausoleum. What were your feelings at the time?"

"What would your feelings be if they turned your private Mausoleum into a freaking communal apartment? For three years I had that stinking mummy lying right next to mine. I hope they found a good use for it now, like put it in charge of the Soviet entertainment industry or something."

"Nikita Khrushchev removed it and buried it in an individual grave," I said.

"Khrushchev was an idiot! He released Stalin's political prisoners when prisons were the only solution to the housing problem."

"He built a lot of housing projects too," I said, trying to be fair to the man who once scared Western leaders by promising to bury them. "Of course, the apartments were so tiny that when the babushka was cooking nobody else could fit into the kitchen."

"I've seen those fat-ass babushkas!" Lenin shuddered. "They are the reason behind food shortages! I would have them all recycled for the Greater Good."

"Khrushchev also promised Communism by the year1980."

"There's nothing wrong with promises as long as they serve the Greater Good. We can always blame it on capitalist saboteurs later. I myself had lied that communism would happen in my lifetime. It was worth it. We've had a few good years. But I still can't believe those stupid babies killed my plan of achieving the Greater Good! I thought the Bolsheviks were supposed to promote free abortions for every woman!"

"They did."

"And the stupid broads still had babies? Why would they do such a monstrous thing?"

"Out of perverse selfishness, Comrade Lenin. Take America , for example. While our progressive women are selflessly sacrificing their fetuses for the Greater Good, large segments of the population are still in need of thorough re-education."

"Re-educate my ass, comrade! The Party has the means to control population growth besides abortion! Exterminate excessive population! Purge useless class elements like the industrialists, the kulaks, and the bourgeois intellectuals!"

"About a hundred million of useless class elements had been purged."

"Numbers don't matter as long as it's for the Greater Good. They should have kept killing until there was enough of everything left for everybody. Then we would've been ahead of the West economically and culturally."

"That's what the progressives in the West were hoping for."

An uncomfortable silence set in as we avoided each other's eyes, staring at the granite Mausoleum across Red Square.

"Can you tell our readers about your personal life?" I changed the subject.

"I recently delivered a fiery speech at the Nudist Convention in the Palace of Congresses," the Great Strategist beamed. "But mostly my personal life is limited to political prostitutes inside the Politburo. God, I miss Trotsky!"

"Is there anything you would like to say to the readers of the People's Cube?"

Lenin stood up and extended his arm in a familiar gesture so dear to every working man's heart. "Starving workers and peasants of America! The end of the dark era of capitalist oppression is near! Send us the money! Your sacrifice will be rewarded, I promise!"

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