Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

The state had become their entire cosmos, blocking out everything else, even their own lives.

One of them said, “Only a Soviet can understand another Soviet.” We share a communist collective memory. We’re neighbors in memory.

“A communist is someone who’s read Marx, an anticommunist is someone who’s understood him.”

In reality, we were completely sheltered, we didn’t know a thing about what was actually going on in the world. We were like houseplants. We made everything up, and, as it later turned out, everything we thought we knew was nothing but figments of our imaginations: the West. Capitalism. The Russian people. We lived in a world of mirages. The Russia of our books and kitchens never existed. It was all in our heads.

Yes, we stood in line for discolored chicken and rotting potatoes, but it was our Motherland. I loved it. You lived in a third world country with missiles, but for me, it was a great nation.

It’s 1937. Two Old Bolsheviks*6 are sitting in a jail cell. One says to the other, “It looks like we’re not going to live to see communism, but surely our children will!” The other: “Yes, our poor children!”

…We blew up a church…I can still hear the cries of the old women, “Children, don’t do it!” they begged us. Grabbed onto our ankles. The church had stood there for two hundred years. A prayed-in place, as they say. They built the municipal public toilet over the ruins. And forced the priests to work there as cleaning men. Washing out the shit. Today…of course…Today, I understand…But back then, it was fun…

War and prison are the two most important words in the Russian language. Truly Russian words! Russian women have never had normal men.

—On the gates of the Solovki prison camp there was a Bolshevik motto: “With an Iron Fist, We Will Chase Humanity into Happiness.” That’s one recipe for saving humanity.

—Gorbachev opened the doors of the cage and we made a run for it. What did I leave behind? A shitty two-bedroom apartment in a Khrushchyovka. It’s better to be a well-paid cleaning woman than a doctor scraping by on a bum’s salary.

Our class leader in school tried to spook us: “If you listen to Radio Liberty, you’ll never get into the Komsomol. And what if our enemies learn of this?” The funniest part is that she lives in Israel now…