VISIONS OF A RADIANT CITY
                                         an excerpt from
                                 Let's Put the Future Behind Us
                                        by Jack Womack
I am no starets, no holy man, no doomsaying Cassandra; apocalyptic visions do not bombard my waking
life, and premonitions of coming days never force me into making millenarian prophecies for which I can
be held accountable. But later that night, when at last I fell asleep, leaving my troubles behind in the sunlit
world, I dreamed. In my dream I possessed the power of ubiquity, I dreamed of Moscow and the
radiant future it had been denied in waking life, and this is what I saw.

Many-storied buildings rose throughout the city, their designs a thousand years ahead of our time: oval
towers bridged by skywalks, glass pyramids glowing like braziers, bundles of steel tubes held aright by
guy wires, gold-domed cylinders of granite and green tile. Through the black iron latticework of the Tatlin
Tower ascended a cyclopean glass ball into which was etched a map of the world, each country made of
sparkling red rubies. Rising above all was the Palace of Soviets, three hundred stories in the style of the
tower of Babel; at its apex was an aluminum statue of Lenin, one hundred meters high. Two red
searchlights beamed constantly from his eyes, directing all into the path of his mesmerize stare. Squadrons
of ten-engined airplanes with half-kilometer wingspans soared in formation through the night sky, their
fuselages emblazoned with Socialist Realist figures illuminated by tail-mounted searchlights, their
loudspeakers endlessly blaring agitprop into the atmosphere. Autogiros buzzed like bees over the city;
carmine zeppelins cruised in elegant progression high above black clouds curling up from ten thousand
smokestacks. Boulevards twenty lanes wide ran from the Kremlin in every direction. The river, enlarged
by voluntary prison labor into a deep ocean harbor, provided Moscow with a seacoast almost Bohemian
in its grandeur. Ships docked to load up our national products, goods transported from Stalingrad,
Stalinsk, Stalino, Stalinbad, Stalinir, Stalinkan, and Stalinovo, goods to be sent forth to a waiting world:
caviar and sables, vodka and papirosi, heroin and hashish, plutonium and red mercury, balalaikas,
matryoshkas, lapel pins, rayon banners, platinum busts of our leaders, and coypu. Posters of milkmaids,
gymnasts, weight lifters, folk dancers, tractor drivers, miners, soldiers, and all for whom labor is a matter
of honor papered every building's facade. Red neon signs mounted to the Kremlin walls proclaimed:

                                CANNIBALIZATION IS FORBIDDEN

                         LET'S CATCH UP WITH AND SURPASS AFRICA

                                   WE'LL OPEN A WOMEN'S SHOP

                               THROUGH WHIPPING TO SOCIALISM

                                      WHO IS KILLING WHOM?

As I watched, Moscow's surviving citizens emerged from their buildings. In silent procession they
marched into Red Square. From every streetlight hung friends of relatives of enemies of the people.
Trams ran on bone lines. In bookstores, works sold were bound in the skins of their authors. Skulls
sprouted from the earth like mushrooms in the city's great parks. Impaled upon the spires of Stalin's
seven skyscrapers were the swollen heads of old Bolsheviks: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek,
Bukharin, Rykov, and Drupskaya.

The assembled populace applauded wildly as they watched the moon, gleaming like chains, white as a
silver fist, rise high over Sovietland. No one in the crowd wanted to be the first to stop clapping. The
ever-intensifying ovation continued; palms stung, fingers swelled, blisters burst. People clapped the skin
from their flesh. Tendon sprang loose of muscle, muscle slipped from bone, and still the applause grew
louder. Bloody spray resettle as opaque fog, enshrouding the crowd. As the people vanished within the
red cloud, they continued to cheer the moon for having delivered the darkness they craved. In the moon's
face was the silent, mustachioed face of the Father of Night: the man after our won hears, the man who
knew you better than you would ever know yourself.

Why did no one realize that if we built hell on earth there would be nothing to look forward to?


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