For the Good of the Cause by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Page A

into a large room with shelves all around the walls, all crammed with equipment. A teacher, a girl lab assistant in a blue smock, and a senior student—it was Chursanov, the boy with the patched collar—were setting up an experiment. The room faced south and was flooded with sunlight.
    “Well,” Khabalygin said brightly. “What’s wrong with this? It’s a beautiful room.”
    “But you must understand,” Fyodor said with some annoyance, “that in this one room there are three laboratories, one on top of the other: theory of radio and aerials, transmitters, and receivers.
    “Well, so what?” The Comrade from the Ministry turned his large, handsome head and said, also with some annoyance, “Do you think there’s more space between the desks in our Ministry after the latest reorganization? On the contrary, there’s less than ever.”
    “These subjects are very closely related, after all.” Khabalygin, very pleased with himself at this idea, patted the principal on the shoulder. “Don’t act the pauper, Comrade. You’re not so badly off as all that!”
    Fyodor threw him a puzzled look.
    From time to time Khabalygin moved his lips and his fleshy jowls, as though he had just had a good meal but hadn’t yet had time to remove bits of food stuck between his teeth.
    “What are these things for?” The Comrade from the Department was standing before some strange looking rubber boots with turned-down tops which looked big enough for a giant. He touched them with the sharply pointed toe of his shoe.
    “Safety boots,” the teacher said quietly.
    “What?”
    “Safety boots!” Chursanov shouted in the impudent tone of one who has nothing to lose.
    “Oh yes, of course,” the Comrade from the Department said and followed the others.
    The Supervisor from the District Committee, who was-the last to leave the room, asked Chursanov: “But what are they for?”
    “For when you repair a transmitter,” Chursanov replied.
    Fyodor had meant to show them all the rooms, but the visitors passed some of them by and went into the lecture hall. On the walls there were charts of English verbs and various visual aids. Geometric models were piled high on the cabinet shelves.
    The electronics expert counted the desks (there were thirteen) and, stroking his toothbrush mustache with two fingers, asked:
    “How many do you have to a class? About thirty?”
    “Yes, on the average …”
    “That means you have less than three to a desk.”
    And they continued their tour.
    In the small television workshop there were about ten sets of various makes, some brand-new and some partly dismantled, standing on the tables.
    “Do they work? All of them?” the Comrade from the Department asked, nodding at the sets.
    “Those that are supposed to work all right,” a young, smartly dressed lab assistant said. He was wearing a sand-colored suit with some kind of badge in his lapel, and a loud tie.
    Some instruction manuals were lying around on a table. The electronics expert glanced through them, reading out the titles to himself under his breath:
    Tuning a Television Set by the Test Table; The Use of the Television Set as an Amplifier; The Structure of Visual Signals.
    “You see, there are no shelves here, but you still manage,” Khabalygin commented.
    Fyodor grew more puzzled every minute and wondered what the commission was getting at.
    “That’s because everything is next door in the demonstration room. Show them, Volodya.”
    “So there’s a demonstration room as well? You certainly are well off!”
    The door leading into the demonstration room was unusually narrow, more like a closet door. The slim, dapper lab assistant went through it with ease. But when the Comrade from the Ministry tried to follow him, he realized at once that he couldn’t make it. The others just poked their heads in, one after the other.
    The demonstration room turned out to be a narrow corridor between two sets of shelves from floor to ceiling. With the