More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 22 - December 19, 2019
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.
More Stalins than Lenins.
There’s only one person who can save us, and that’s Comrade Stalin. If only he’d come back for just two days…he’d have them all shot, and then he can once again be laid to rest. —And glory be, Dear Lord! I’ll bow down before all of the saints… —You Stalinist bitches! The blood on your hands hasn’t even had a chance to dry yet. What did you murder the Tsar’s family for? You didn’t even spare the kids. —You can’t build a Great Russia without a Great Stalin.
You’ve filled the people’s brains with shit… —I’m a simple man. Stalin didn’t touch regular people like me. No one in my family was affected, and all of them were workers. It was the bosses’ heads that flew, regular people lived regular lives.
For me, it’s more of a concrete question: Where do I want to live, in a great country or a normal one? —I loved the empire…Life after the fall of the empire has been boring. Tedious.
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.
But science has also caused immeasurable suffering—should we eliminate scientists? Curse the fathers of the atom bomb, or better yet, start with the ones who invented gunpowder? Yes, start with them…
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.
But I love the word “comrade,” and I’ll never stop loving it. It’s a good word. Sovok? Bite your tongue! The Soviet was a very good person, capable of traveling beyond the Urals, into the furthest deserts, all for the sake of ideals, not dollars. We weren’t after somebody else’s green bills. The Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, the Siege of Stalingrad, the first man in space—that was all us. The mighty sovok! I still take pleasure in writing “USSR.” That was my country; the country I live in today is not. I feel like I’m living on foreign soil.
if any of them are still around, they should be put in museums, kept under glass so that no one can touch them. They went through so much! After my father was rehabilitated,*2 they paid him two months’ wages for all of his suffering. For a long time, a large portrait of Stalin continued to hang in our home. A very long time…I remember it well…My father didn’t hold a grudge, he considered it all to be a product of his era. Those were cruel times. A powerful nation was being built. And they really did build it, plus they defeated Hitler! That’s what my father would say…
The way we swore was “Pioneer’s honor,” or we gave “Lenin’s word.” The most sacred oath was “Stalin’s word.” My parents knew that if I gave them Stalin’s word, I couldn’t possibly be lying.
My God! Chubais,*4 “the foreman of perestroika”…Now he goes around bragging, giving lectures around the world, saying that in other countries, it took centuries to build capitalism, while here we did it in three years. They carved it up with surgical precision…And if anyone was a thief, God bless them, maybe their grandchildren will turn out decent.
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…
Those boys would get everyone in line. 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.
There was a whole art to it. We’d teach one another the tricks, so that the KGB agents who tapped our phones wouldn’t be able to make anything out. You turn the dial to the end—old telephones had little holes for numbers that you could turn—and then you stick a pencil in it so that it locks…You can hold it down with your finger, too, but your finger gets tired…You probably know that one? Do you remember it? If you needed to say something “secret,” you had to get two or three meters away from the phone, from the receiver.
“The People and the Party Are One!” Those words weren’t make-believe, they were the truth. I’m not agitating for anything, I’m just trying to describe the way things really were.
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
My God! The leaders of the USSR lived like mid-level businessmen, they were nothing like today’s oligarchs. Not one bit!
The little man, the nobody, is a zero—you’ll find him at the very bottom of the barrel. He used to be able to write a letter to the editor, go and complain at the district Party headquarters about his boss or poor building maintenance…About an unfaithful husband…A lot of things about the system were stupid, I don’t deny it, but who will even listen to the man in the street today? Who needs him? Remember the Soviet place names—Metallurgists Avenue, Enthusiasts Avenue, Factory Street, Proletariat Street…The little man was the most important one around…
I think humanity is headed toward socialism. Toward justice. There is no other way. Look at Germany, France…There’s the Swedish model. What values does Russian capitalism espouse? Hating the underdogs, the people who haven’t made millions and don’t drive Mercedes.
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.
Where are you going to see a Metro station devoted to dairymaids, lathe operators, or engine drivers today? They’re nowhere to be seen—they’re not in the newspaper, they’re not on TV, and they’re nowhere near the Kremlin when they’re handing out medals and awards. They’re not anywhere anymore. Everywhere you look, you see our new heroes: bankers and businessmen, models and prostitutes…managers…
“Religion is the opiate of the masses,” “All worship of a divinity is necrophilia.”
Gorbachev was weak. He stalled. On one hand, he was for socialism. But then again, he also wanted capitalism…His biggest concern seemed to be being liked in Europe. And in America. Over there, they’d all applaud him, “Gorby! Gorby! Oh Gorby!” He babbled up perestroika…[Silence.]
With Gorbachev, it was love at first sight! Today, they disparage him: “He betrayed the USSR!” “He sold our country out for pizza!” But I remember how amazed we were. Shocked! We finally had a normal leader. One we didn’t have to be ashamed of! We would tell one another the stories of how he’d stopped his motorcade in Leningrad and went out into the street, or how he refused to accept an expensive gift at a factory.
kilometer-long line to buy a foreign-made bra anymore. We were used to getting everything through connections: from subscriptions to the World Classics Library to chocolates to tracksuits from the GDR. Being friendly with the butcher so he would save you a piece of meat. Soviet rule seemed eternal.
Today, it’s clear that Gorbachev himself didn’t see it coming. He wanted change, but he didn’t know how to change things.
The things we’d learned from Turgenev and other “authors of village life”? Valentin Rasputin…Vasily Belov*11…I didn’t even understand my own father. I’d yell at him, “Papa, if you don’t return your Party card, I won’t talk to you anymore!” My father would cry.
My friend married a Frenchman who worked at the Moscow consulate. She’d always be telling him to look at all the energy we Russians have. “All right, but can you tell me exactly what all this energy is for?” he’d ask her. And neither she nor I could answer him. I’d say, “The energy is pulsing, and that’s it.” I was seeing living people, living faces all around me. Everyone was so beautiful in those days! Where had all these people come from? Only yesterday you couldn’t find them anywhere. At
For me, it was the face of the scholar Dmitry Likhachev, not General Jaruzelski.*13 If I said “Gorbachev,” my husband would add, “Gorbachev…and Raisa Maximovna, too.” It was the first time we’d ever seen the wife of a general secretary we didn’t have to be embarrassed of.
Where are the people who cried “Yeltsin! Yeltsin!” now? They thought that they’d be living like people in the U.S. and Germany, but they ended up living like the people in Colombia. We lost…we lost our country…Back then, there were fifteen million of us communists! The Party could have…It was sold out…Out of fifteen million people, not a single leader emerged. Not one! While the other side had its leader—Yeltsin! We stupidly let it all slip through our fingers! Half of the country was waiting for us to win. We were no longer one nation, we had already split into two.
It had only been moments ago—just a moment ago—that she’d spent the night waiting in line to get her hands on a volume of Akhmatova. Now she was head over heels for a coffee grinder. Some piece of junk…People threw away their Party membership cards like they were just trash.
I had hundreds of declarations of resignation from the Party piled on my desk…Soon enough, they were all rounded up and taken out to the trash. To rot at the dump. [She looks for something in the folders on the table.] I saved a few…One day, a museum will ask me for them. They’ll come looking…[She begins reading from them.] “I was a devoted Komsomol member…I joined the Party with a sincere heart. Today, I wish to say that the Party no longer has any power over me…” “The times have led me into confusion…I used to believe in the Great October Revolution. After reading Solzhenitsyn, I realized
...more
All of the channels were playing Swan Lake.
We won…Gorbachev returned from Foros*19 to an entirely different country. People were walking around the city smiling at one another. We won! That feeling stayed with me for a long time…I walked around, going over everything in my mind, scenes flashing in front of my eyes…How someone had shouted, “Tanks! The tanks are coming!” and everyone took one another’s hands and made a human chain. It had been two or three in the morning. The man next to me took out a packet of cookies: “Anyone want a cookie?” and everyone took one. For some reason, we were all laughing. We wanted cookies—we wanted to
...more
Happy people don’t want to die…and those who are loved don’t want to die, either.
I have a medal just like that in my cabinet. I was a Stakhanovite*1 and a deputy. There wasn’t always enough to eat, but there were plenty of red certificates. They’d hand you one and take your picture.
Oh, Lord! You can do whatever you want before you’re forty, you can even sin. But after forty, you have to repent. Then God will forgive
There’s no sea without water and no war without blood. God gives men life, but during a war, anyone can take it away…[
That’s one of our old traditions…the groom is supposed to carry the bride like a baby so that the domovoi*3 doesn’t notice her. So he doesn’t get his eye on her. The domovoi doesn’t take to strangers, he always tries to get rid of them. He’s the true master of the house, you have to get on his good side. Oh…[She gestures dismissively.] Nobody believes in anything anymore. Not in the domovoi and not in communism. People live without any kind of faith! Maybe they still believe in love…“Bitter!
He had a Party membership card, a little red book with a picture of Lenin on it, and he treasured it. He was a deputy and a Stakhanovite, just like me.
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.
My favorite holiday was always November 7*1…A big and bright day…The most vivid impression from my childhood was the military parade on Red Square…
Bolshevik conspiracy…the Russian catastrophe…Saying Lenin was a German agent and the Revolution was brought about by deserters and drunken sailors.
We have Red Square, the Spasskaya Tower clock, that the whole world sets its time to.
My grandmother would bake her famous pirozhki stuffed with cabbage and mushrooms, and my mother would work her magic on Olivier salad and prepare her essential meat in aspic. As for me, I got to be with my father!
On the way home, we’d stop into the store and I would get my favorite lemon soda, Buratino.
I loved Moscow at night…the lights…When I was eighteen…Eighteen! I fell in love. The moment I realized that I was in love—guess where I went. That’s right, I went to Red Square. The first thing I wanted to do was spend those moments in Red Square.
Our children grew up out here, their favorite foods are draniki and mochanka. “They fry the taters, they boil the taters…” Their second favorite dish is Armenian khash…
I couldn’t wait for those first moments when our train would pull into Belorussky Station and the march would play over the loudspeaker; my heart would jump at the words: “Comrade passengers, our train has arrived in the capital of our Motherland, the Hero-City Moscow!” “Roiling, mighty, undefeatable / My Moscow, my country, I love you most of all…” That’s the music you disembark to.
