Conversations at Tea

by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov
(1934)

"Who wrote Dead Souls? You don't know this either? Gogol wrote it. Gogol."

"An absolutely decrepit and reactionary mystic...." the boy gladly began to drone on.

"Two-minus!", Papa said vindictively. You must read Gogol, you must study Gogol, and then--in ten years--you'll work things out at the Communist Academy. But tell me, Sitnikov, Nikolai, about New York.."

"There, more than anywhere else," Kolya began to sing, "you'll see the sharply developed capitalist contradict-...."

"I know this myself. But tell me, on which ocean's shore is New York situated?"

The son kept silent.

"What's the population there?"

"I don't know."

"Where is the Orinoco River?"

"I don't know.

"Who was Catherine II?"

"A product."

"What kind of product?"

"I'll remember in a second. We worked it out.... Oh! A product of the era of the growing influence of market capitalist--...."

"Tell me, who was she? What office or post did she occupy?"

"We didn't work that out."
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