Let It All Drown in Shit

Let It All Drown in Shit

Alexandr Piatkov


The regional agricultural committee’s chairman—a man as stiff and upright as a

fence post—was questioning a short Chinese man with meticulous, almost German

jealousy. The bureaucrat desperately wanted to know just how many enterprises

were under the man's command, given that the latter held the grand title of

General Director.



The miserable Chinese man, wearing a warm padded vest under his suit jacket and

quilted cotton trousers, was suffering from stomach cramps caused by the

unfamiliar food. Barely grasping the conversation with the help of a young

interpreter, he tried to explain, rather confusedly, that he had simply inherited

his business from his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He had managed

to retain control of it even under the Communists, and the fancy business card

had merely been printed by a trendy agency that acted as an intermediary.



It was a clash of two entirely different worlds: the Soviet-bureaucratic

mentality and genuine, practical pragmatism. The agricultural bureaucrat, long

accustomed to arrogantly lecturing negligent subordinates within his massive,

loss-making department, was trying to force a globally trading industrialist into

his own rigid coordinate system. Confronted with a reality completely alien

to him, he simply did not know where to apply his administrative hubris.



The Chinese businessman knew his production technology inside out and was

constantly refining it. Equipment was manufactured at a neighboring factory

according to his own blueprints, and his products were bought all over the world.



The bureaucrat knew his business well too, but for him, the most important thing

was his position in the hierarchy of power—his status among fellow officials. To

him, actual responsibility for any specific production process was nothing but a

hindrance to career advancement, creating an unnecessary risk of failure.

Consequently, all practical execution was pushed down from the upper echelons to

the lower levels, until it reached the very bottom. There, a stableman in filthy

rubber boots would tentatively poke the start button of a conveyor belt with a

stick, attempting to clear liquid manure from the cowshed.



And if the machinery ever broke down, he would utter the sacred, timeless phrase:

“Let it all drown in shit!”




Original work © Copyright: Alexandr Piatkov, 2013

Certificate of publication No. 213123101518

Translated from Russian by AI Assistant, 2026