A biography of Polish-born Jan Waclaw Machajski and account of his radical critique of the role of the intelligentsia in Soviet Russia’s political life which was known as Makhaevism.
It took Mama and Galya two weeks to walk to Kiev [in 1919]. They deliberately dressed to look like beggars; in actual fact, this is what they were. Galya went without glasses, and walked holding on to Mama’s shoulder, like a blind woman. No one would have believed them to be poor if Galya had worn her glasses. Everyone treated people in glasses suspiciously in those violent times. They thought them cunning enemies, and hated them bitterly. It is amazing that this distrust of people wearing glasses has persisted up to the present time.
– Konstantin Paustovsky,
The Story of a Life