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The Ivan Aufulich Papers
13. Kostya Plenti
Officially, there are no entrepreneurs in Soviet society: all enterprise is instigated and owned by the state, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Unofficially, there are certain things which the state must accomplish, yet must not be seen accomplishing: the provision of Western luxuries for those still in power, and the elimination of those no longer in power. It is almost as dangerous, yet as necessary, to know about how the one is done as about the other.
Kremlin-watchers have been a-buzz recently over the absence, and presumed demise, of Grisha Skidz (who himself is thought to have sent so many to "serve on a collective" -- as fertilizer). Now rumors are flying about Kostya Plenti ("Kostya" is a diminutive for "Konstantin"), purveyor of perks to two generations of those in the loftiest reaches of the Soviet nomenklatura. It seems that one of his clients was V. R. Nahtamyuzd, with whom he had too close an association, and who is now distinctly out of favor as a result of the Pyotr Dar Podnar affair occasioned by the All-Union Literature Prize. Kostya Plenti is said frantically to be pulling strings and calling in favors, of which he has countless extant, in a desperate effort to escape the purge which all those in the know see as inevitable. But it seems certain that he will be dragged down too, along with certain others who can be denounced for pro-Western leanings (such as the afore-mentioned Pyotr Dar Podnar, already in trouble over the electric screwdriver deal). And now who will supply blue jeans to the children of the apparatchiks?
©1997 Grant Schampel