Challenge 121

It might be a good idea to read first:

Viacheslav Iatsko, The Uniqueness of Russia and State Power

Gillian Marshall, Rain Man

Byron Bailey, Hoosier Steaks

Julian Lawler, Battle Seer, A Secret Untold

Rearranging Orders

1. Viacheslav Iatsko’s article is written for Russians; other audiences would need to be brought up to date on at least three things:

   1. the reforms introduced by Khrushchev and Gorbachev;
   2. why Professor Iatsko considers them “silly”;
   3. the kind of Soviet Union that would have remained without those reforms.

   Clearly, Khrushchev did not consider the legacy of Josef Stalin worth keeping. And Gorbachev found the Soviet Union of Brezhnev and his successors unworkable. For the alternate history fans among us, the Challenge is:

   1. What else could have been done? If nothing, as Prof. Iatsko suggests, would the Soviet Union have remained intact anyway?
   2. What is Russia’s natural political order? Stalinism? Leninism? Tsarism? If so, how could Khrushchev’s and Gorbachev’s reforms have been conceived in the first place?
   3. Does any country have a “natural” political order? Or just a set of historically inherited habits and customs?


2. The unknown hero of Gillian Marshall’s “Rain Man” seems to be a magical human fire extinguisher, like a walking sprinkler system. If you were writing a variation on the story and wanted to remove the “rain man’s” cloak of anonymity, what kind of character would you make him out to be? How might that affect the center of the story, namely the young mother’s terror? What would be gained and lost?


3. How would Byron Bailey’s steak farmer, Thomas Sutton, fit into Viacheslav Iatsko’s Soviet Union?


4. The third chapter of Julian Lawler’s Battle Seer, “A Secret Untold,” consists of two main scenes: a suspenseful interlude followed by Palance and his friends witnessing an attack by ghostly terrorists on the streets of Nomen. Could the chapter be condensed into one 3,000-word installment? If so, how would you do it? What would you sacrifice? Should the chapter be shortened at all?

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