Word: lopatkin
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...Moscow, where the food and service is better but not much, the Soviet government is also grappling with the restaurant problem. Moskovskaya Pravda related the sad story of Comrade Lopatkin, director of Moscow's popular Dynamo restaurant, who first fell from grace when his pet cat, Vasya, lost its appetite. Disdaining offerings of liverwurst, white bread, porridge and grapes, the cat did agree to eat the best canned crabmeat from the restaurant's storeroom, and was soon wolfing a can a day. Next, Lopatkin's wife admired the restaurant chandelier, and Lopatkin sent it home. Before long...
Stuffed Pocket. Needing money, Lopatkin exchanged confidences with Comrade Traibman, director of the Severny restaurant. Together, they put the squeeze on the wages of their waiters, chefs, concessionaires. To make up their losses, the staff began shortchanging customers, went into private enterprise by marketing candy and pastry on the side. Then Comrade Akopov, the august manager of the Moscow Restaurant Trust, descended on Lopatkin, roared: "What an outrage! Maybe you think I don't know what you're up to!" With trembling hands, Lopatkin pulled out 1,000 rubles (Traibman kicked in with 1,500). Comrade Akopov stuffed...
...plates in restaurants and sanitation in the kitchen. This is right. But we must not forget that the most important thing is hygiene of the soul, the crystal cleanliness of those the state has chosen to serve our people." No forwarding addresses were given for Comrades Akopov, Traibman and Lopatkin...
...Forgotten Man. It is a plain tale with an ancient theme. A young schoolmaster, Dmitri Lopatkin. invents a machine for making drainpipes. He sends the drawing of his new centrifugal pipe-casting machine to the responsible bureau, receives friendly encouragement and has his project submitted to "expert" opinion. Promptly things start going wrong. Lopatkin, who has given up schoolteaching and is now wholly dedicated to the cause of drainpipery, falls victim to a mysterious bureaucratic runaround. Months and years pass in a silence punctuated only by official notifications: "It is not considered possible . . ." "Your complaint has been forwarded to . . ." Occasionally...
From the start of his novel Author Dudintsev describes, side by side with Lopatkin's progress, what is happening behind the scenes in ministries, bureaus and industrial institutes. All the timeservers and Organization Men in high places are aware of one thing-that a big shot in Moscow has a pet scheme of his own regarding drainpipes, and that no Soviet citizen should ever, if he values his security, "get in the way of influential people." As Bureaucrat Drozdov, the novel's villain, tells Lopatkin: "Your mistake consists in being an individual on his own. The lone wolf...