Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

The Soviet civilization…I’m rushing to make impressions of its traces, its familiar faces. I don’t ask people about socialism, I want to know about love, jealousy, childhood, old age. Music, dances, hairdos. The myriad sundry details of a vanished way of life. It’s the only way to chase the catastrophe into the contours of the ordinary and try to tell a story. Make some small discovery. It never ceases to amaze me how interesting everyday life really is. There is an endless number of human truths. History is concerned solely with the facts; emotions are outside of its realm of interest. In fact, it’s considered improper to admit feelings into history. But I look at the world as a writer and not a historian. I am fascinated by people.

When my friends and I start remembering this stuff, we die laughing…Savages! We were completely impoverished people. We had to relearn how to live from scratch. In Soviet times, you were allowed to have a lot of books but not an expensive car or house. We had to learn how to dress, cook good food, drink juice and eat yogurt in the morning…Before, I had hated money, I didn’t know what it was. My family never talked about it—it was considered shameful. We grew up in a country where money essentially did not exist. Like everyone else, I would get my 120 rubles a month and that had been enough. Money appeared with perestroika. With Gaidar. Real money. Instead of “Our Future is Communism,” the signs began exclaiming, “Buy now!” If you want to, you can travel. See Paris…Spain…fiesta…bullfighting….When I read about it in Hemingway, I’d been sure that I’d never see any of it with my own eyes. Back then, books replaced life…This was the end of our nightly kitchen vigils and the beginning of making money then making more money on the side. Money became synonymous with freedom. Everyone was completely preoccupied with it. The strongest and most aggressive started doing business. We forgot all about Lenin and Stalin. And that’s what saved us from another civil war with Reds on the one side and Whites on the other. Friends and foes. Instead of blood, there was all this new stuff…Life! We chose the beautiful life. No one wanted to die beautifully anymore, everyone wanted to live beautif...

Why didn’t we put Stalin on trial? I’ll tell you why…In order to condemn Stalin, you’d have to condemn your friends and relatives along with him. The people closest to you. I’ll tell you about my own family. My father was arrested in 1937 and, thank God, came back after doing ten years in the camps. He returned eager to live. He himself was amazed that he still wanted to after everything that he’d seen. This wasn’t the case with everyone, not by a long shot…My generation grew up with fathers who’d either returned from the camps or the war. The only thing they could tell us about was violence. Death. They rarely laughed and were mostly silent. They drank…and drank…until they finally drank themselves to death. The other option…the people who were never arrested spent their whole lives fearing arrest. This wouldn’t be for a month or two, it would go on for years—years! And if they didn’t get time, they’d wonder, “Why did they arrest everybody but me? What am I doing wrong?” They could put you in prison or they could put you to work for the NKVD*19…The party requests, the party commands. It’s not a pleasant choice to have to make, but many were forced to make it. As for the executioners…the everyday ones, not the monsters…our neighbor Yuri turned out to have been the one who informed on my father. For nothing, as my mother would say. I was seven. Yuri would take me and his kids fishing and horseback riding. He’d mend our fence. You end up with a completely different picture of...

My father only saw six months of combat before being taken prisoner. How did they capture him? They were advancing over a frozen lake while the enemy’s artillery shot at the ice. Few made it across, and those who did had just spent their last strength swimming through freezing water; all of them lost their weapons along the way. They came to the shore half-naked. The Finns would stretch out their arms to rescue them and some people would take their hands, while others…many of them wouldn’t accept any help from the enemy. That was how they had been trained. My father grabbed one of their hands, and he was dragged out of the water. I remember his amazement: “They gave me schnapps to warm me up. Put me in dry clothes. They laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, ‘You made it, Ivan!’ ” My father had never been face to face with the enemy before. He didn’t understand why they were so cheerful… The Finnish campaign ended in 1940…Soviet war prisoners were exchanged for Finns. They were marched toward each other in columns. On their side, the Finns were greeted with hugs and handshakes…Our men, on the other hand, were immediately treated like enemies. “Brothers! Friends!” they threw themselves on their comrades. “Halt! Another step and we’ll shoot!” The column was surrounded by soldiers with German Shepherds. They were led to specially prepared barracks surrounded by barbed wire. The interrogations began…“How were you taken prisoner?” the interrogator asked my father. “The Finns p...

There’s no strength left over for any more blood, any more madness. The people have suffered enough. Now they go shopping, picking out drapes and lace curtains, wallpaper, choosing between different kinds of frying pans. They like everything colorful because it all used to be so gray and ugly. We’re as giddy as kids at the sight of a washing machine with seventeen settings. My parents are gone: My mother for seven years now, and my father for eight, but I still haven’t used up all of the matches my mother stockpiled. We still have their grain. And their salt. Mama would buy everything she could (back then, we would say “procure” rather than “buy”) and stash it away for a rainy day…Now we go to the markets and stores like they’re museums—there’s loads of everything. You want to spoil yourself, indulge. It’s therapeutic. We’re all so sick…[She falls into thought.] How much did a person have to suffer to have hoarded that many matches?

Everything was simpler in our old life: one pair of boots for all seasons, one coat, one pair of pants. We were raised like young warriors in ancient Sparta: If the Motherland called, we’d sit on a hedgehog for Her. …It was some military holiday…They walked our preschool class to the monument to the heroic Young Pioneer Marat Kazei. “Look, children,” our teacher said. “This young hero blew himself up with a hand grenade and took a whole lot of fascists down with him. When you grow up, you have to be just like him.” You mean we have to blow ourselves up with grenades? I don’t actually remember this, but my mother told me the story…That night, I wept bitterly: I would have to die and lie somewhere all alone, without my mom and dad. The fact that I was crying already meant that I was no hero…I ended up getting sick.

Old age means, first and foremost, loneliness. The last old man I knew—he lived in the adjacent courtyard—died five years ago, or maybe it’s been even longer…seven years ago…I’m surrounded by strangers. People come from the museum, the archive, the encyclopedia…I’m like a reference book, a living library! But I have no one to talk to…Who would I like to talk to? Lazar Kaganovich*2 would be good…There aren’t many of us who are still around, and even fewer who aren’t completely senile. He’s even older than me, he’s already ninety. I read in the papers…[He laughs.] In the newspaper, it said that the old men in his courtyard refuse to play dominos with him. Or cards. They drive him away: “Fiend!” And he weeps from the hurt. Ages ago, he was a steel-hearted People’s Commissar. He’d sign the execution lists, he sent tens of thousands of people to their deaths. Spent thirty years by Stalin’s side. But in his old age, he doesn’t even have anyone to play dominoes with…[After this, he speaks very quietly. I can’t tell what he’s saying, I only catch a few words.] It’s scary…Living too long is scary.

One night, three of us were left behind as the rear guard. We cut open the belly of a dead horse, tossed everything out of it, and climbed in. We spent two days like that, listening to the Germans go back and forth. Shooting at them from time to time. Finally, the forest was completely silent. We climbed out covered in blood, guts, and shit…half-insane. It was night…We saw the moon… You should know that the birds helped us, too…When a magpie hears a stranger coming, it will always squawk. Give out a warning signal. They’d gotten used to us; the Germans smelled different: They wore cologne, washed with scented soap, smoked cigarettes; their overcoats were made of excellent military baize, their boots well polished. While we only had hand-rolled tobacco, our feet were wrapped in rags, our shoes made of woven cowhide and strapped to our feet with belts.

He didn’t like being questioned…He had this bravado…always trying to make light of everything…this prisoner’s habit of hiding everything serious behind jokes. The bar is higher for them. For instance, he never said the word “freedom”—it was always “the outside.” “Here I am on the outside.” At rare moments, he’d tell stories…But he’d tell them so vividly, so avidly…I could just feel the happiness he’d taken out of there: like when he’d gotten his hands on some tire scraps and tied them to his felt boots. When they were transferred, he was so happy to have them! Another time, they’d gotten half a sack of potatoes…And somewhere “on the outside,” while they were working…somebody had given him a big hunk of meat. That night, in the boiler room, they made soup: “And it was just so good! So wonderful!” When they released him, they gave him a reparation payment for his father. They told him, “We owe you for the house, the furniture…” It ended up being a lot of money. He bought a new suit, a new shirt, new shoes, a camera, and went out to the best restaurant in Moscow, the National, where he ordered the most expensive things on the menu, and cognac and coffee with their signature dessert. At the end, when he’d eaten his fill, he asked someone to take a picture of him at the happiest moment of his life. “Then, when I got back to my apartment,” he recalled, “I caught myself thinking that I didn’t feel any happiness. In that suit, with that camera…Why wasn’t there any happiness? At th...

I remember walking with Vladya. We were carrying a down shawl…a beautiful object intended for some other world. She’d made it for a customer. Vladya knew how to knit, and that was the money we lived on. The woman paid us, and then she said, “Let me cut you a bouquet.” A bouquet—for us? We’re standing there, two beggar girls in some kind of respectable setting…Cold and hungry…And here she is giving us flowers! The only thing we ever thought about was bread, but this person saw that we were capable of thinking about other things as well. You’re locked up, walled in by your circumstances, and suddenly, someone cracks the window…Lets in some fresh air. It turns out that besides bread, besides food, people were capable of giving us flowers! It meant that we really were no different than anyone else. We…were like everyone else…This broke the rules: “Let me cut you a bouquet.” She wasn’t going to pick them or gather them, she was going to cut them for us from her garden. From that moment on…maybe that was the key for me, it opened the door…My world turned upside down. I remember that bouquet…It was a big bouquet of cosmos…I always plant them at my dacha now. [We’re actually at her dacha. There’s nothing but trees and flowers all around.] I recently went to Siberia, to Zmeinogorsk. I went back…I looked for our street…our house, our basement…but the house was gone, it had been demolished. I asked everyone: “Do you remember us?” One old man remembered that yes, there was a beautiful...

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?

In the course of a day, you can run around until your feet turn black and blue. We didn’t have any shoes. You go to bed, and your aunt wraps your feet in the hem of her nightgown to warm them. She’d swaddle me. You can lie there somewhere near her stomach…It’s like being in the womb…And that’s why I don’t remember anything evil. I’ve forgotten it all…It’s hidden away in some distant place. In the morning, I would be woken up by my aunt’s voice: “I made potato pancakes. Have some.” “Auntie, I want to sleep more.” “Eat some and then you can go back to sleep.” She understood that food, bliny, were like medicine to me. Pancakes and love. My uncle Vitalik was a shepherd, he carried a whip over his shoulder and had a long birch-bark pipe. He went around in his military jacket and breeches. He’d bring us “feed” from the pasture—there’d be some cheese and a piece of salo—whatever the women gave him while the animals grazed. Holy poverty! It didn’t mean anything to them, they weren’t upset or insulted by it. All of this is so important to me…so precious. One of my friends complains, “I can’t afford a new car…” another, “I dreamt of it my whole life, but I never did manage to buy myself a mink coat…” When people say those kinds of things to me, it’s like they’re speaking from behind glass…The only thing I regret is not being able to wear short skirts anymore…[We laugh.]

Who gave me all of this? All of it…Was it God or people? If God gave it to me, then He chose well. Suffering brought me up…It’s my art…my prayer. So many times, I’ve wanted to tell someone all of it. To speak my fill. But no one has ever wanted to know: “And then what…and then what?” I’ve always waited for someone, whether it be a good or bad person, to come and listen to my story—I don’t know who exactly I had in mind, but I was always waiting for someone. My whole life, I’ve been waiting for someone to find me and I would tell them everything…and they would keep asking, “And then what? And then what?” Now, people have started blaming socialism, Stalin, as though Stalin had God-like powers. Everyone has their own God—why didn’t they speak up? My aunt…Our village…I also remember Maria Petrovna Aristova, a respected teacher who’d visit our Vladya in the hospital in Moscow. We weren’t related to her or anything…She’s the one who brought Vladya back to our village, who carried her home…Vladya couldn’t walk anymore. Maria Petrovna would send me pencils and candy and write me letters. And in the temporary foster center, when they were washing and disinfecting me…I was sitting on a high bench…all covered in foam. I could have slipped and broken my bones on the cement floor. I started slipping…sliding down…and a woman I didn’t know…a nanny…caught me in her arms and embraced me: “My little chickadee.” I saw God.

I used to think that if I told someone about this, afterward I would have to run away from that person and never see them again.

An old man sat down next to me on the bus and noticed that I wasn’t from around there. “Who are you looking for?” “Well,” I began, “there used to be a camp here.” “Oh, the barracks? They dismantled the last of those buildings two years ago. People built themselves sheds and saunas out of the bricks. Took the soil back to their dachas for planting. Put camp wire around their gardens. My son’s place is out there. It’s so, you know, unpleasant…In the spring, the snows and rains leave bones sticking out of their potato patches. No one is squeamish about that sort of thing around here because they’re so used to it. There are as many bones as stones in this soil. People just toss them out to the edge of their property, stamp them down with their boots. Cover them up. It happens all the time. Just stick your hand in the dirt, run your fingers through it…” It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. Like I had passed out. Meanwhile, the old man turned to the window and pointed: “Over there, behind that store, they covered over the old cemetery. Behind that bathhouse, too.” I sat there, unable to breathe. What had I expected? That they had erected pyramids? Mounds of Glory?*4 The first line is now the street named after someone or other…Then the second line…I looked out the window, but I couldn’t see anything, I was blinded by tears. Kazakh women were selling their cucumbers and tomatoes at every bus stop…pails of blackcurrants. “Fresh from the berry patch. From my own garden...

He told me his father never ate fish because fish, he said, were willing to eat human flesh. If you throw a naked man into the sea, a few months later, there will be nothing but bones left of him. All white. How exactly did he know this? When he was sober, he never said a word, but when he was drunk, he swore up and down that all he ever did was push paper. His hands were clean…His son wanted to believe him, but then why didn’t he eat fish?