Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

Why does this book contain so many stories of suicides instead of more typical Soviets with typically Soviet life stories? When it comes down to it, people end their lives for love, from fear of old age, or just out of curiosity, from a desire to come face to face with the mystery of death. I sought out people who had been permanently bound to the Soviet idea, letting it penetrate them so deeply that there was no separating them: The state had become their entire cosmos, blocking out everything else, even their own lives. They couldn’t just walk away from History, leaving it all behind and learning to live without it—diving headfirst into the new way of life and dissolving into private existence, like so many others who now allowed what used to be minor details to become their big picture.