Victor Pelevin's Omon Ra

You have to see things very clearly, very precisely, in order not to make too many mistakes. Nothing in history is like it is in the textbooks. Dialectics led to Marx’s teaching, which was intended for an advanced country but won its victory in the most backward one. We Communists had no time to prove the correctness of our ideas—the war cost us too much of our strength, we had to spend too long struggling against the remnants of the past and our enemies within the country. We just didn’t have the time to defeat the West technologically. But in the battle of ideas, you can’t stop for a second. The paradox—another piece of dialectics—is that we support the truth with falsehood, because Marxism carries within itself an all-conquering truth, and the goal for which you will give your life is, in a formal sense, a deception. But the more consciously …” I felt my heart sink, and I tried spontaneously to pull my wrist free, but Colonel Urchagin’s fingers seemed to have turned into a narrow hoop of steel. “… the more consciously you perform your feat of heroism, the greater will be the degree of its truth, the greater will be the meaning of your brief and beautiful life!” “Give my life? What heroism?” I asked in a faint voice. “Why, the very same heroism,” he said equally quietly, sounding as though he was frightened, “that has already been demonstrated by more than a hundred young lads just like you and your friend.” He said nothing for a moment, and then continued in his former tone of voice: “You’ve heard it said that our space programme is based on automated technology?” “Yes.” “Let’s you and me go to room 329, and they’ll tell you about our space automation techniques.”

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