Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

People read newspapers and magazines and sat in stunned silence. They were overcome with unspeakable horror. How were we supposed to live with this? Many greeted the truth as an enemy. And freedom as well.

We talked. We thought that we were coming up with new ideas. We dreamt of revolution, but we were scared we’d never live to see it.

Today, no one has time for feelings, they’re all out making money. The discovery of money hit us like an atom bomb…

—What do I need a great country for? I want to live in a small one like Denmark. No nuclear weapons, no oil, no gas. So no one would ever hit me over the head with their pistol. Maybe then even we would learn to shampoo our sidewalks…

They wanted freedom, and what did they get? Yeltsin’s gangster revolution…My

People…Regular people don’t care about history, they’re concerned with simpler things: falling in love, getting married, having kids. Building a house. Our country fell apart from the deficit of women’s boots and toilet paper,

The young can adapt, while the old die in silence behind closed doors.

The only remedy we know for every kind of pain is patience. Next thing you know, your whole life’s gone by.

I don’t feel sorry for myself, I feel bad for everything we used to love…

People read the first glossy magazines as though they were the classics, with the reverent faith that behind the cover, directly under that packaging, you’d find the beautiful life.

We had a great empire—stretching from sea to sea, from beyond the Arctic to the subtropics. Where is it now? It was defeated without a bomb. Without Hiroshima. It’s been conquered by Her Majesty Salami!

It’s dangerous living too long. My time was up before my life could end. You have to die along with your era.

It’s all very painful, but it’s mine. I’m not running from my past…I can’t say that I’ve accepted everything, that I’m grateful for the pain. There needs to be another word for how it makes me feel. I won’t be able to find it right now. I know that when I’m in this state, I’m far away from everyone. Alone. I have to get a handle on the suffering, own it completely, find my way out of it, and also come back from it with something new. It’s such a victory, it’s the only meaningful thing to do. That way, you’re not left empty-handed…Otherwise, why descend into hell?

There are nuclear missiles out there, airplanes and tanks, but people still get stabbed with knives.

Our entire tragedy lies in the fact that our victims and executioners are the same people.”

I lived under socialism for too long. Life is better now, but it’s also more revolting.

The Russian people’s happiness has never had anything to do with money. That’s the difference between the “Russian idea” and the American Dream.

—I only liked perestroika when it first started. If someone had told us back then that a KGB lieutenant-colonel would end up as president…

practically my whole life, I’ve railed against the communists. Now I have my doubts: so what if those old mummies ruled over us, pinning medal after medal onto one another, and we couldn’t go abroad, read forbidden books, or eat pizza, the food of the gods? That little girl…she would have still been alive, no one would have been shooting at her…like she was a bird…You wouldn’t have had to hide in the attic like a mouse…” He died soon afterward, just a little while later. Many people died in those days, a lot of good people. They couldn’t take it anymore.

The plot? A tale as old as time…I wanted to have his baby, I got pregnant…Maybe it scared him? Men are such cowards! Whether they’re bums or oligarchs—makes no difference. They’ll go to war, start a revolution, but when it comes to love, they’re traitors.

lived on the border between life and death; between faith in miracles and utter injustice.

There was a sea of unemployed people, all of them with college degrees. The kiosks appeared, then the supermarkets where they had everything, like in a fairy tale, only there was no money to buy any of it.

The revolution had succeeded! Communism had fallen! For some reason, everyone was positive that it would all end well simply because Russia was full of educated people. Plus, it’s an incredibly wealthy country. But Mexico is rich, too…The thing is, you can’t buy democracy with oil and gas; you can’t import it like bananas or Swiss chocolate. A presidential decree won’t institute it…You need free people, and we didn’t have them. And they still don’t have them there.

Everyone was waiting for a revolution which was expected to come at any moment. I don’t like these disappointed people in their kitchens. I’m not one of them. The uprising I witnessed terrified me for the rest of my life; I know what it looks like when freedom falls into inexperienced hands.

I always film stories, and every story has everything in it. The two most important ingredients are love and death.

There are thousands of people like him—officials, detectives, judges. Some do the beating, others spread lies in the press. Others arrest people, pass sentences. You need so little to start up the Stalinist machine.”