Rakovsky's Rubles

And now another tale well calculated to keep you in... ...Spencils. Tonight, Rakovsky's Rubles by William N. Robeson. This is a story of old Russia. Of Russia before Sputnik and Khrushchev and the Soviet. Of the Russia of resplendent Siles and the hopeless characters of Dostoyevsky.

Our hero is such a character, intelligent, but without hope. We shall call him Yvonne Vanabish. He is a student. His sweetheart we call Anna Petrovna. We find them in the Venice of the North before it was Lettingrad, before it was Petrograd, but it was still gloriously named St. Petersburg.

We find them in a basement room furnished only with a bed and a chair and a stove. But there is no money for firewood, so they are cool. They are also hungry. They are hopeless.

Hopeless. Huddly hopeless. What is hopeless, Ivan Ivanovich? Life on your patrovenor. The noblemen of the half-naked women danced an either way and they warmed palaces while we set outside in Shiva. What have we got to live for?

Each other. It is not? It is not enough? No. No, Anushka. I would die for you. You know that. living is more difficult. This is not living. This is existing like an animal. But it will not always be like this. You will graduate from the university soon.

And then what? Position in the government office if my marks are good enough? If not the army? No, and you're shaker. There is no place for me in this society without money, without a title.

You talk like a revolution. Not me. Where did it get them, those anarchists who tried to kill the little father of all the as he worshipped at Easter Mars last year. They were all dead.