Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

Half of the country is waiting for a new Stalin to come and put things in order.

—It’s like Russia has capitalism but no capitalists.

The Russian oligarchs aren’t capitalists, they’re just thieves.

What we have is a socialist people living under capitalism…

—And what’s going to happen when oil prices fall or oil becomes obsolete?

Someone put it very accurately: In five years, everything can change in Russia, but in two hundred—nothing.

Moscow is Russian…a capitalist city…but Russia itself was and remains Soviet.