Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

dared to waver in battle. A regular Taras Bulba! “I begat you, and I shall be the one to kill you!” Papa belonged to the Idea, he wasn’t really a human. You must love the Motherland with your entire being. Unconditionally! That was all I ever heard, my entire childhood. The only reason we were alive was so that we could defend the Motherland…But despite all this, I simply could not be programmed for war, instilled with a puppy-like readiness to stick myself in a hole or a dike or throw myself on a landmine. I just never liked death…I’d crush ladybugs—on Sakhalin, in the summer, there are more ladybugs than sand—and I’d crush them like everyone else did. Then, one day, I had this terrifying realization: Why have I made all these little red corpses? Another time, Muska had had kittens, but they were premature…I brought them water, tended to them. My mother saw what I was up to and asked: “Are they dead?” And after she said that, they died. But no tears allowed! “Men don’t cry.” Papa gave us army caps as presents. On weekends, he would put on his records with army songs, and my brother and I were forced to sit there and listen as a “modest manly tear” made its way