Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

I was fifteen. Red Army troops had come to our village. On horseback. Drunk. A subdivision. They slept until evening, and then they rounded up all the Komsomol members. The Commander addressed us, “The Red Army is starving. Lenin is starving. While the kulaks are hiding their grain. Burning it.” I knew that my mother’s brother, Uncle Semyon, had taken sacks of grain into the woods and buried them. I was a Komsomol youth, I’d taken the oath. That night, I went to the troops and led them to where he’d buried the grain. They got a whole cartload. The Commander shook my hand: “Hurry up and grow up, brother.” In the morning, I woke up to my mother screaming, “Semyon’s house is on fire!” They found Uncle Semyon in the woods, the soldiers had cut him to pieces with their sabers…I was fifteen. The Red Army was starving…and Lenin…I was afraid to go outside, I sat in the house, weeping. My mother figured out what had happened. That night, she handed me a feedbag and told me, “Leave, son! Let God forgive your miserable soul.” [He covered his eyes with his hand. But I could still see he was crying.] I want to die a communist. That’s my final wish. — In the nineties, I published a part of this confession. My protagonist let someone read it, consulted with somebody else, and they convinced him that the publication of this story in its entirety would “show the Party in a negative light,” which was his greatest fear. After he died, they found his will. His large, three-bedroom apartment i...