Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

You know, it happens to everyone. Melancholy, like the plague, descends on us all. You’re riding the train, looking out of the window, and there it is: sadness. Everything’s beautiful all around you, you can’t look away, but the tears are running down your face and you don’t know what to do with yourself. That Russian sorrow…Even someone who seems to have everything always wants more.

I ended up bursting into tears. Everyone thought it was because I was so hurt or angry. But actually, I was crying because they’re all so smart, so educated, they live in the capital, and yet they don’t understand a thing.

—Pitying the unfortunate is in our blood. Murderers and alcoholics. Some men can kill but still have the eyes of a baby. You feel sorry for them.

her. I want to believe that it’s true, that someone could love me, that the only difference between me and everyone else is the fact that they believe that they’re good. But people don’t actually know themselves, and if they found out what they were really like, they’d be terrified. Do you think I ever considered myself capable of…that a monster could leap out of me at any moment…Not in a million years! I thought I was a good person.