The Cult in my Grandmother's House - стр. 18

Since there’s no such thing as a person without problems, there will always be something for psychosomatic ideology and dogma to latch on to.

Once they’d got so much as a hair on your head, you were lost.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Our clinic was situated in the centre of Dushanbe. Between ourselves we called it the White House. Alcoholics and schizophrenics were treated there. It was a typical single-storey central Asian building of whitewashed adobe, with offices and corridors inside. The offices had tables, chairs and benches, where the patients were examined, and then layered.

The street around the White House was dusty and had wooden benches, under which I sometimes found stray sweet wrappers which I loved to smell and keep in my pocket.

I don’t remember anything else about the White House – I was too young then.

EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGISTS

The people in the white coats were respectfully known as educational psychologists, always by their first name and patronymic. Yulia Viktorovna, Natalya Yevgenyevna, Nadezhda Yurevna, Vladimir Vladimirovich and others (including Stolbun himself): none of them had a psychological or medical, let alone educational background. The only more or less constant member of the group who had a medical education was Stolbun’s wife, Valentina Pavlovna Streltsova. She preferred to live in comfort, so I personally saw her only rarely.

I don’t want to exaggerate the quality and level of Soviet education in the fields of education, psychology and psychiatry, because those fields were generally charlatans and were far removed from science. An absence of formal education in these fields could even have been an advantage. It could have been… but in this case it wasn’t.

SPEECHES AND FAINTING

These speeches were held all the time and at any time, even in the middle of the night. This was real brainwashing. The familiar cry could come at any time: “Come on everyone” and you’d have to get up and follow everyone, like zombies, to a speech. The Chief would talk for many hours at a time, gesticulating in the centre of the circle that formed around him, and scratching his shaggy head. His shoulders were always white with dandruff. You weren’t allowed to lie down or even sit. You couldn’t interrupt him or ask questions. We had to maintain absolute silence, and listen reverently.

While talking, the Chief would look everyone in the eyes in turn, as if evaluating the impact of his words, whether people were changing under their action. Periodically he would call someone or other into the circle to be discussed.