Word: virgin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Three Went to the Virgin Land...
...Virgin Land" is Soviet propaganda's term for an unsettled stretch of central Siberian steppe, about the size of the two Dakotas, that Party Secretary Khrushchev grandiosely planned to put under wheat in just two seasons. Ploughs and tractors were brought hastily from the Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Komsomols (Young Communists), most of them without farm experience, were dumped on the steppe and told it was their sacred duty to produce...
Khrushchev's propaganda push for the Virgin Land has made it a favorite front-page subject in Pravda, a heroic subject for Soviet moviemakers, and the inspiration for at least two Moscow plays. But since Russian playwrights have also been instructed to get more credible realism into their turgid propaganda drama, the exhortations have been marked by some surprising candor...
...Life. Thus old-line Propagandist Nikolai Pogodin in a Moscow play, We Three Went to the Virgin Land, has his hero Marochka soliloquizing: "Now, tell yourself, why did you give such a lightning-like consent to go to the Virgin Land? Was it because of the fear of a [party] trial? I swear it is not only the fear of a trial . . . Over there in the wilderness I'll start a new life. The past will be buried. Everyone will be drinking; I'll not. I'll behave. I'll be almost a saint...
...Pogodin's heroine Nelly, already in the Virgin Land, is less optimistic: "I just can't understand why all of us are not dead yet. Virgin Land, see that! It's a nightmare, I swear! No plumbing whatsoever anywhere . . . And I, fool, came to these lands! The little girl got caught. Ha! Ha! . . . And who asked me to come? No one. Not only nobody asked me, I was even warned against it ... And there is no toilet, just snow up to the neck . . . Between ourselves, one could have a nice zoo over here, because every night...