A Toast by Alexandr Kuprin. Short summary

5 seconds

Earthlings are preparing to face the year 2906. Mankind lives in universal technical and social prosperity. The chairman of the North Station meeting makes a New Year’s toast.

1 minute

Fifteen minutes before the year 201 of the New Era (2906 in the old chronology), the Electromagnetic Association stations listen to the Chairman’s solemn speech. The stations are located at the North and South Poles.

In essence, they are electric receivers of gigantic power, capable of concentrating the Earth’s energy and transmitting it to all corners of the planet. Tens of thousands of scientists and technicians — engineers, mathematicians, astronomers, architects — worked on this grand idea.

In a New Year’s toast, the chief engineer of the Northern Station extols the glory of human genius. The only god is Man, who was able to build a highly developed society, free from subordination to any power, from violence, deceit, envy.

Eternal glory to the fiery revolutionaries who, back in the twentieth century, carried people away with the struggle for freedom. Through bloody rivers and mountains of corpses they led mankind into a bright future.

At the end of the rapturous toast-hymn there is an invitation to raise the glass in memory of the ideological fighters of the past.