After leaving the tavern, he walked back to the tent city outside of town. It was cold. Some snow lay on the ground. He’d known plenty worse, though. The Red Army didn’t worry about the weather. Whatever it happened to be, you did what your commanders told you.
Now, instead of loading in a T-34, he commanded a T-54. He wished the Red Army’d had these during the last war. They would have made the Hitlerites roll over onto their backs and show their bellies in jig time. Thick armor, that elegant turtle-shell dome of a turret, a 100mm gun that would have smashed up every Tiger or Panther ever made…
Someone waved to him. He came to attention-it was Captain Oleg Gurevich, the company commander. “What do you need, Comrade Captain?” he asked.
“Is your tank ready for action, Sergeant?” Gurevich demanded.
“I serve the Soviet Union, sir!” Morozov said, which was never the wrong answer. “The tank is ready to roll as soon as we climb aboard.” That wasn’t quite true, but it came close enough. They wouldn’t move forward right this minute. Konstantin didn’t think they would, anyhow. “But what’s gone wrong now?”
“It’s the stinking Americans,” Gurevich said. He was even younger than Konstantin. He’d come into the Red Army after the war ended. He didn’t remember, or care to remember, that the Americans had been allies against Hitler. Konstantin did, though he didn’t say so-admitting such things wasn’t just dangerous, it was suicidal. The officer went on, “It’s looking more and more as though they think they’ll have to use atomic weapons to stop the advance of the victorious Chinese People’s Liberation Army. In his wisdom, Comrade Stalin has decided that the Soviet Union will not sit idly by while the imperialists assail a fraternal socialist state.”
One of the signs Gurevich was still wet behind the ears was that he could bring out propaganda slogans as if they were part of his ordinary language. He hadn’t seen enough of the real world to know that slogans were like the old newspaper you wrapped around makhorkato roll yourself a cigarette. They held things together, but they weren’t why you smoked. The tobacco was.