Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

People are constantly forced to choose between having freedom and having success and stability; freedom with suffering or happiness without freedom. The majority choose the latter.

I’m sick of hearing about how bad life was under socialism. I’m proud of the Soviet era! It wasn’t “the good life,” but it was regular life. We had love and friendship…dresses and shoes…

On the radio, they’d said that after the war was over, we would all be happy, and Khrushchev, I remember, promised…He said that communism would soon be upon us. Gorbachev swore it, too, and he spoke so beautifully…it had sounded so good. Now Yeltsin’s making the same promises. He even threatened to lie down on the train tracks…I waited and waited for the good life to come. When I was little, I waited for it…and then when I got a little older…Now I’m old. To make a long story short, everyone lied and things only ever got worse. Wait and see, wait and suffer. Wait and see…

My husband and I go to work, the girls go to school, and then we spend the whole day bugging each other: “How’s it going over there? What time do you think you’ll be heading home? How are you getting there?” Only when all of us are together again in the evening do I begin to feel some relief, only then can I take a break from worrying.