The Beijing weather surely could be better, and we are on our break to have a smoke. Here in Tambóv, we’re writing you a letter, to you, risk-takers, danger-seeking folks! Since your decision not to sign the treaty have hurt all nations, either big or small. Distorting facts, you’ve shown that you’re committed to your support of General de Gaulle. We cherish every day and every hour, but if the days of old one will recall, your folk were the inventors of gunpowder, your nation built the great defensive wall! We understand: you have your strength in numbers, three hundred million souls among the lost. But we are pretty sure that Comrade Mao himself the one who wants to live the most! For we were showing internationalism when you had only water with your rice. You didn’t talk about our opportunism, when you were given Russian bread to slice! You’re worried of the Bonn-born complications, of Washington’s attempts to overtake, but Khrushchev said at the United Nations, that we will show them for the mother’s sake! There’s no need for bombs in your possession, for you don’t want to fan the flames of war. But we still have our stash of fusion weapons, if there is need, we’ll equalize the score! And if you are still itching, get creative, you still have many other things to do: destroy your sparrows, squash the flies invasive, reduce your birth rate, make it close to two! And don’t you try to pry into our matters, we know ourselves of what’s there not to see. That’s why our Party wrote an open letter, and we of course approve it to a T!
© Kirill Tolmachev. Translation, 2023