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Today, people just want to live their lives, they don’t need some great Idea. This is entirely new for Russia; it’s unprecedented in Russian literature. At heart, we’re built for war. We were always either fighting or preparing to fight. We’ve never known anything else—hence our wartime psychology. Even in civilian life, everything was always militarized. The drums were beating, the banners flying, our hearts leaping out of our chests. People didn’t recognize their own slavery—they even liked being slaves.
I would divide the Soviets into four generations: the Stalin, the Khrushchev, the Brezhnev, and the Gorbachev.
We thought that freedom was a very simple thing. A little time went by, and soon, we too bowed under its yoke. No one had taught us how to be free. We had only ever been taught how to die for freedom.
People are constantly forced to choose between having freedom and having success and stability; freedom with suffering or happiness without freedom. The majority choose the latter.
Today, they accuse us of fighting for capitalism…That’s not true! I was defending socialism, but some other kind, not the Soviet kind—that’s what I was standing up for! Or at least that’s what I thought. It’s what we all thought…Three days later, when the tanks were rolling out of Moscow, they were different, kinder tanks. Victory! And we kissed and kissed…
—They buried Sovietdom to the music of Tchaikovsky.
—The revolution was nothing but a spectacle. A play they put on for the people. I remember the total indifference of anyone you talked to. Everyone was just waiting it out.
—I went to the White House with my parents. My father said, “Let’s go, or else we’ll never have salami or good books.” We ripped out the cobblestones and built barricades out of them.
What would it be like to live in a country with revolution in the blood of the people? Of course, there would be hundreds of years (at least generations) of reasons. It wouldn't be like the USA but with people willing to fight with kitchen knives for their freedom and to tear up cobblestones to build barricades.
—I graduated from military academy and served in Moscow. If they had given us the orders to arrest someone, we wouldn’t have even thought twice, we’d have done it. Many of us would have even relished following those orders. We were sick of all the turmoil. Everything used to be cut and dried, things were done by the book. There was order. That’s how army people like to live. In fact, that’s how everyone likes to live.
—I’m afraid of freedom, it feels like some drunk guy could show up and burn down my dacha at any moment.
—They would have saved a great country from ruin.
So many who mourn the demise of Sovietism. It's far from merely Putin's wet dream.
—No one would have ever dared to say that the Americans defeated Hitler.
Our country was suddenly covered in banks and billboards. A new breed of goods appeared. Instead of crummy boots and frumpy dresses, we finally got the stuff we’d always dreamed of: blue jeans, winter coats, lingerie, decent dishware…Everything bright and beautiful. Our old Soviet stuff was gray, ascetic, and looked as if it had been manufactured in wartime. The libraries and theaters stood empty. Markets and stores had taken their place. Everyone decided that they wanted to be happy and they wanted it now.
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.
No one wanted to die beautifully anymore, everyone wanted to live beautifully instead. The only problem was that there wasn’t really enough to go around…
There’s a famous Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Few of us remained unchanged. Decent people seem to have disappeared. Now it’s teeth and elbows everywhere…
For over seventy years, they’d told us that money wasn’t happiness, that the best things in life were free. Like love, for example. But the minute someone from the podium said “Sell and prosper!” all of that went out the window. Everyone forgot the Soviet books.
After Stalin, we have a different relationship to murder. We remember how our people had killed their own…the mass murder of people who didn’t understand why they were being killed…It’s stayed with us, it’s part of our lives. We grew up among victims and executioners. For us, living together is normal. There’s no line between peacetime and wartime, we’re always at war.
When it comes down to it, there is no such thing as chemically pure evil. It’s not just Stalin and Beria,*20 it’s also our neighbor Yuri and beautiful Aunt Olga…”
It’s surprising how fast being poor became shameful…
—Things got scary, so the people turned to the Church. Back when I still believed in communism, I didn’t need church. My wife goes to services with me because in church, the priest will call her “little dove.”
—We’re always talking about suffering…That’s our path to wisdom. People in the West seem naïve to us because they don’t suffer like we do, they have a remedy for every little pimple. We’re the ones who went to the camps, who piled up the corpses during the war, who dug through the nuclear waste in Chernobyl with our bare hands. We sit atop the ruins of socialism like it’s the aftermath of war. We’re run down and defeated. Our language is the language of suffering.
They feel that they’ve been lied to, that no one had told them that there was going to be capitalism; they thought that socialism was just going to get fixed.
He quoted G. K. Chesterton, “A man without some kind of dream of perfection is quite as much of a monstrosity as a noseless man…” And for that they beat him…kicked him with their heavy boots.
Ugh! And these are the democrats…[Silence.] They put on American suits and did what their Uncle Sam told them to do. But American suits don’t fit them right. They sit crooked. That’s what you get! It wasn’t freedom they were after, it was blue jeans, supermarkets…They were fooled by the shiny wrappers…Now our stores are filled with all sorts of stuff. An abundance. But heaps of salami have nothing to do with happiness. Or glory. We used to be a great nation! Now we’re nothing but peddlers and looters…grain merchants and managers…
I don’t mean to repeat clichés, but Genghis Khan ruined our gene pool…and serfdom played its part as well…We’re used to the idea that everyone needs a good whipping, that you won’t get anything done without flogging people.
Everyone was afraid, even the people that everyone was afraid of. I was afraid, too.
The only thing that could hold a society like this together was fear. Extreme conditions—execute and imprison as many people as possible. But the socialism of Solovki and the White Sea Canal*6 project was over. We needed a new kind of socialism.
Today, we’re ashamed of our former naïveté. People worship Solzhenitsyn. The great Elder of Vermont! It wasn’t just Solzhenitsyn, there were many other people who understood that we couldn’t go on the way we were. Caught in a web of lies.
I get indignant whenever people start talking about Marxism with disdain and a knowing smirk. Hurry up and toss it on the trash heap! It’s a great teaching, and it will outlive all persecution. And our Soviet misfortune, too. Because…there are a lot of reasons…Socialism isn’t just labor camps, informants, and the Iron Curtain, it’s also a bright, just world: Everything is shared, the weak are pitied, and compassion rules. Instead of grabbing everything you can, you feel for others. They say to me that you couldn’t buy a car—so then no one had a car. No one wore Versace suits or bought houses
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The little man was the most important one around…You say it was all just talk and a cover-up—today, no one even attempts to disguise their disdain for him. You’re broke? Go to hell! Back to your cage! They’re renaming the streets: Merchant, Middle Class, Nobleman Street…I’ve even seen “Prince’s salami” and “General’s wine.” A cult of money and success. The strong, with their iron biceps, are the ones who survive. But not everyone is capable of stopping at nothing to tear a piece of the pie out of somebody else’s mouth. For some, it’s simply not in their nature. Others even find it disgusting.
Do you really think that this country fell apart because people learned the truth about the gulag? That’s what people who write books think. People…Regular people don’t care about history, they’re concerned with simpler things: falling in love, getting married, having kids. Building a house. Our country fell apart from the deficit of women’s boots and toilet paper, because of the fact that there were no oranges. It was those goddamn blue jeans! Today, the shops resemble museums. Theaters. And people want me to believe that rags from Versace and Armani are all that a person needs. That they’re
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Did I believe in communism? I’ll be honest with you, I’m not going to lie: I believed in the possibility of life being governed fairly. And today…as I’ve already told you…I still believe in that. I’m sick of hearing about how bad life was under socialism. I’m proud of the Soviet era! It wasn’t “the good life,” but it was regular life. We had love and friendship…dresses and shoes…People hungrily listened to writers and actors, which they don’t do anymore. The stadium poets have been replaced by psychics and magicians. People believe in sorcerers, just like in Africa. Our Soviet life…you could
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On one hand, the system was butchering people, but on the other hand, the people didn’t show one another much mercy, either. The people were ready…
Our Sashka…He waited and waited and then he couldn’t take it any longer. He got tired. The body lies in the earth, but the soul has to answer for everything. [She wipes her tears.] That’s how it is! We cry down here…and when we die, we cry then, too… People have started believing in God again because there is no other hope.
There’s no sea without water and no war without blood. God gives men life, but during a war, anyone can take it away…[She weeps.]
You’ll learn a lot from living through a war…There is no beast worse than man. It’s men who kill other men, not bullets. People kill people…Ah, my dear girl!
When you sleep alone, not even the blanket can warm you. Even heaven will make you sick if you’re alone.
One time he said to me, “Will you come with me?” And I said, “Yes,” without even asking him where we were going. That’s how we got recruited to go to Siberia. To build communism! [She is silent.] And today…ah…well…Turns out it was all in vain…All of our suffering was in vain…It’s terrible to admit it and even worse to live with it. All of our grueling labor! We built so much. Everything with our own hands. The times we lived through were so hard!
Our lives went by just like that, they simply flew by. Without leaving a trace, you won’t find any traces of us anywhere…
Where are my just deserts? The fruits of my labor? That’s what we believed! We believed that one day, we’d live to see the good life. Just wait and see, wait and suffer…Yes, wait and see…We spent our whole lives shuttling between bunkers, dormitories, and barracks.
We lived together so well, we were like family. If you don’t have something, I’ll give it to you, if I run out of something, you’ll bring it to me. We liked celebrating holidays together. We were building socialism, and now on the radio they say that socialism is over. But we’re…we’re still here…
We believed that tomorrow would be better than today and the day after tomorrow better than yesterday. We had a future. And a past. We had it all!
It might have been a prison, but I was warmer in that prison. That’s what we were used to…Even today, when we stand in line, we huddle close to one another and try to be together. Have you noticed that? [Again, she starts to quietly sing.] Stalin is our warrior glory, Stalin is the joy of youth, Singing, battling, victorious Our nation follows Stalin’s path… And yes! Yes! Yes! My greatest dream was to die! To sacrifice myself. Give myself away.
I can do without a lot of things, the only thing I can’t do without is the past. [She is silent for a long time. Such a long time that I have to call her back.]
They opened a new kiosk next to our building. All they sold were flowers and funeral wreaths…”
But overall, the people supported the putschists. From what I gathered, not all of them were communists, but everyone wanted to live in a great country. They were afraid of change because every time there had ever been change, the people had always gotten screwed.
Look through any textbook…Not a single coup in history went off without terror, everything always ends in blood. With tongues torn out and eyes gouged out. Like the Middle Ages. You don’t have to be a historian to know that…
We’re living in the most shameful era of our entire history. Ours is the generation of cowards and traitors. That’s how our children will remember us. “Our parents sold out a great country for jeans, Marlboros, and chewing gum,” they’ll say. We failed to defend the USSR, our Motherland. An unspeakable crime. We betrayed everything! I will never get used to the Russian tricolor flag, I will always see the red banner in front of my eyes. The banner of a great nation! Of the great Victory! What had to have happened to us…the Soviet people…to make us close our eyes and run to this motherfucking
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—I’m a communist…I supported the putschists, or rather, the USSR. I was a fervent supporter because I liked living in an empire.
