smoke. 42 Many of these boys and girls were the unself-conscious children of Jewish immigrants living the life of the Russian intelligentsia— being the Russian intelligentsia. They were not concerned about where their parents had come from because they knew themselves to be the descendants of the Russian intelligentsia, the true heirs of the sacred fraternity that their parents had joined, helped destroy, and then—unwittingly—labored to reconstitute. At IFLI, the uncontested prophet of “the generation” was Pavel Kogan, the author of one of the most popular and durable Soviet songs ever written: “The Brigantine.” I am sick of arguing and sitting, And of loving faces wan and pale . . . Somewhere in a distant pirate city A brigantine’s about to set sail . . . The old captain, windswept like a sea rock Lifted anchor, leaving us behind. Let us say farewell, and wish him true luck Raising glasses filled with golden wine. Let us drink to the pirates and strangers Who despise the cheap comforts of home, Let us drink to the proud Jolly Roger, Flapping fearlessly over the foam. The revolution was over; the captain had sailed away; and the poet’s peers had matured along with their country. But of course the revolution was not over, and the poet’s peers had not matured any more than had their country—where, according to Kogan, “even in the winter, it was forever spring.” Stalin’s Russia was a land of perpetual bloom, youth, and warmth (such was the reality of “socialist realism”), the land of “roads through eternity” and “bridges over time.” For the eternally young, there were always wars to wage— In the name of our fierce adolescence, In the name of the planet we’ve wrested From the plague,