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aggienaut I have now edited together an annotated version of ENL5F-034, which was my story about the Soviet interrogation, starring everyone's favorite Ivan, Yuri, and nine grams of lead.
This annotated version includes the story with the teacher's edits (indicated by square brackets [] or strikethroughs), my commentary on her recommendations (my comments being primarily sarcastic and derisive in nature of course), and my general commentary on the theme of the story, the story behind the story, reasons I chose the names I did, and such.
The Story Behind the Story
The names: “Predstav” means “imagine,” which is of course my teacher’s chosen last name. Alexandrov I selected because it’s the last name of Boris Alexandrov, composer of numerous famous Soviet patriotic songs, such as “The Sacred War” and most noteably the Soviet Anthem. His name was chosen as Ivan because it’s the archetypical Russian name.
Alkhaliki is, as mentioned in my response to the teacher’s edits, a city in the former SSR of Georgia, and site of a major Russian military base and Red Army before that. I wanted to make a really obscure joke by naming it after the corrupt Russian media mogul who donated a large some to the Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev “to build a concrete factory.” As far as I know there is no evidence of any attempt to build a concrete factory. I couldn’t remember the mogul’s name at the time however and didn’t feel like looking it up. Lets see I’ll do some research Right Now: Berezovsky is the man. Anyway, I like the way “Alkhaliki” sounds.
Some notes on the general situation: Soviet engineers, economists, factory managers, whomever, had incredible pressure to set irrationally high expected outputs, or else they’d be accused of sabatoging production. Obviously failure to come near these outputs was also “sabatoge.” The result: a lot of really shoddy production, and a lot of “sabateurs.” So in that much, the situation is completely real. During the “investigation” phase of a case, the subject was detained and interrogated by NKVD (later KGB) “investigators,” who, coincidentally, were distinguished by their blue shoulderboards and visor-cap rim (leading to the nickname “blue-caps”). During “investigation” / interrogation the “suspect” was coerced into a completely bogus confession, and into giving the names of others to be interrogated.
The significant plot of this particular story: Ivan and Yuri know eachother from life outside the case. This is established in that Yuri knows Ivan’s first name and patronymic (middle) despite having not been told these during the interrogation, and they both use familiar for of address (first name and patronymic) to eachother once during the course of interrogation. Furthermore, from Ivan’s reaction, that he most clearly does NOT want Elena to be processed by the criminal “justice” system, and Yuri clearly knows this, obviously this means that Elena is a close associate of Ivan’s, and Yuri knows this. The sudden execution of Yuri in the end (which is not a normal thing to do at all during such an interrogation) is therefore obviously to prevent him from giving Elena’s name to anyone. In summary, if you didn’t connect these dots, you are inordinately dense. The End. (=
My favorite part is where she changes a sentence that reads basically "A and B were C and D" to "A and B, were C, and D."
This annotated version includes the story with the teacher's edits (indicated by square brackets [] or strikethroughs), my commentary on her recommendations (my comments being primarily sarcastic and derisive in nature of course), and my general commentary on the theme of the story, the story behind the story, reasons I chose the names I did, and such.
The names: “Predstav” means “imagine,” which is of course my teacher’s chosen last name. Alexandrov I selected because it’s the last name of Boris Alexandrov, composer of numerous famous Soviet patriotic songs, such as “The Sacred War” and most noteably the Soviet Anthem. His name was chosen as Ivan because it’s the archetypical Russian name.
Alkhaliki is, as mentioned in my response to the teacher’s edits, a city in the former SSR of Georgia, and site of a major Russian military base and Red Army before that. I wanted to make a really obscure joke by naming it after the corrupt Russian media mogul who donated a large some to the Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev “to build a concrete factory.” As far as I know there is no evidence of any attempt to build a concrete factory. I couldn’t remember the mogul’s name at the time however and didn’t feel like looking it up. Lets see I’ll do some research Right Now: Berezovsky is the man. Anyway, I like the way “Alkhaliki” sounds.
Some notes on the general situation: Soviet engineers, economists, factory managers, whomever, had incredible pressure to set irrationally high expected outputs, or else they’d be accused of sabatoging production. Obviously failure to come near these outputs was also “sabatoge.” The result: a lot of really shoddy production, and a lot of “sabateurs.” So in that much, the situation is completely real. During the “investigation” phase of a case, the subject was detained and interrogated by NKVD (later KGB) “investigators,” who, coincidentally, were distinguished by their blue shoulderboards and visor-cap rim (leading to the nickname “blue-caps”). During “investigation” / interrogation the “suspect” was coerced into a completely bogus confession, and into giving the names of others to be interrogated.
The significant plot of this particular story: Ivan and Yuri know eachother from life outside the case. This is established in that Yuri knows Ivan’s first name and patronymic (middle) despite having not been told these during the interrogation, and they both use familiar for of address (first name and patronymic) to eachother once during the course of interrogation. Furthermore, from Ivan’s reaction, that he most clearly does NOT want Elena to be processed by the criminal “justice” system, and Yuri clearly knows this, obviously this means that Elena is a close associate of Ivan’s, and Yuri knows this. The sudden execution of Yuri in the end (which is not a normal thing to do at all during such an interrogation) is therefore obviously to prevent him from giving Elena’s name to anyone. In summary, if you didn’t connect these dots, you are inordinately dense. The End. (=
My favorite part is where she changes a sentence that reads basically "A and B were C and D" to "A and B, were C, and D."
