Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets in Reading with Style

Apr 11, 2019 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star-reads, overdrive, twenty-first-century, women, from-friends

I was able to borrow this from the library for my Kindle. I intentionally switched to this edition as the ISBN noted in the edition I read, because the page count is entirely off. All along, it said there were 473 pages. But page 473 is in the middle of an interview at about 75% and doesn't progress from there. I *think* the actual page count is something over 600, but not entirely certain about that. Now that I've gotten that off my chest ...

This is divided into two sections: 1991-2001 and 2002 I was able to borrow this from the library for my Kindle. I intentionally switched to this edition as the ISBN noted in the edition I read, because the page count is entirely off. All along, it said there were 473 pages. But page 473 is in the middle of an interview at about 75% and doesn't progress from there. I *think* the actual page count is something over 600, but not entirely certain about that. Now that I've gotten that off my chest ...

This is divided into two sections: 1991-2001 and 2002-2012. The first section is immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the second is under Putin. Another reviewer felt that a lot of this was the same thing over and over. I did not find it so. Just as each American has a unique experience, so do the Russians. In both sections, those interviewed share the memories of experiences under Soviet rule, sometimes the young having to recount the stories of parents or grandparents. A very few of those interviewed were Party members, others were Siberian exiles. Some were those left behind, either as war widows or as orphans. The interviewees were about as wide in circumstances as one could imagine.

Much of this is very difficult reading. There were often references to the victim and the executioner. There was torture under Stalin - and sometimes graphically told by both sides of that equation. Often the people remarked that the most important holiday in Russia is May 9, called Victory Day, in the west called Victory in Europe day. Under Stalin, the people felt like victors for having defeated Germany.

I learned so much about how the everyday Russian thinks. Some wanted another Tsar and others wanted Stalin to return. Each rejected capitalism. If I were just to be told this out of the blue, I would not understand it. What happened, of course, is that the people in Russia had always had a government tell them how to live, so when freedom came to them they were completely unprepared. And, as governments sometimes do, they were lied to about what to expect.

I'm so glad to have read this, that I came to know it because others here at GR took the time for it. For me, it was a full 5-stars.
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Dec 23, 2017 Kathleen (itpdx) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

How can I explain this book? How can I explain its emotional impact?
Alexievich calls them her guides, narrators, interlocutors. The common people who tell her their stories. The stories of the heroes of the Great War (WWII), the prisoners, those in forced labor camps, the mothers, the soldiers of the Afghan War, the Chechen War, the demonstrators, those who grew up since perestroika, those who grew up in the USSR and now live in Russia, or are undocumented emigrants to Russia or who live in the ...more

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