Second-hand Time

by Svetlana Alexievich

‘A communist is someone who’s read Marx, an anti-communist is someone who’s understood him.’

Anatoly Rybakov’s forbidden Children of the Arbat

Hero of the eponymous novel written by Ivan Goncharov published in 1859, Oblomov is an idle aristocrat whose extreme laziness and apathy gave rise to the expression ‘oblomovism’. Stoltz, his friend, is an active and energetic young man.

G. K. Chesterton, ‘A man without some kind of dream of perfection is quite as much of a monstrosity as a noseless man...’

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.

Everyone thinks of capitalism the same way that they – until very recently – had thought of communism.