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636 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2013
‘Everyone is terribly lonely. Life has completely transformed. The world is now divided into new categories, no longer ‘white’ and ‘red’ or those who did time and the ones who threw them in jail, those who’ve read SolzhenitsynIn 2015 The Nobel Prize committee awarded the prize to Alexievich ‘for her Polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time’. Alexievich’s documentary approach airs a polyphonic, at times dissonant and jarring multitude of voices, collected during conversations throughout the country, amongst a cross section of the Russian population: veterans from the Afghanistan and Chechen wars, former apparatchiks, directors, a writer, a musician, entrepreneurs, technicians, teachers, family members of the CCCP elite, retired factory workers and students, emigrants. Alexievich alternates the poignant testimonials of victims, executioners, obdurate Stalinists, supporters and opponents of Perestroika and Gorbachev (“the great Gorby”, “traitor of the Motherland”, “the prophet”, “the perfect German”). She demonstrating the successive generations’ diverging perception of the present and the past and how differently all those former soviet citizens experience their country and its current state. The mutual incomprehension between the subsequent generations is harrowing:
and those who haven’t. Now it’s just the haves and the have-nots.
“(…)the young who will never understand their parents because they didn’t spend a single day of his life in the Soviet Union – my mother, my son – me…we all live in different countries, even though they’re all Russia.Her writing-style immerses the reader into the lives of her interlocutors, involving the reader irresistibly into the haunting conversations. Like in genuine ‘people’s history’ or ‘history from below’, Alexievich’s primary focus is not on the facts and figures, the leaders, the new class of rulers or the oligarchs. Almost like a contemporary historical anthropologist she elucidates the attitudes, hearts and mindsets of the post-Soviet citizens, many of her own generation – of which so many got adrift psychologically and professionally, when the system imploded. Left behind again by History like human flotsam and jetsam, they voice their despair, their anger, their cynicism and sorrow.
Does anyone care about any of this anymore? Our country doesn’t exist anymore, and it never will, but here we are…old and disgusting…with our terrifying memories and poisoned eyes.And instead of the ‘socialism with a human face’ and the mature democracy many hoped for, the former Soviet citizens got a new tsar and the most virulent and harsh predatory capitalism:
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…..
The thing is, you can’t buy democracy with oil and gas; you can’t import it like bananas or Swiss chocolate. A presidential decree won’t institute it….you need free people, and we didn’t have them.
What did we get? On the streets, it’s bloodthirsty capitalism. Shooting. Showdowns. The gangsters have risen to the top. Black marketeers and money changers have taken power. Jackals!
Could you imagine my mother sitting down and embroidering something or going out of her way to decorate our house with porcelain vases or little elephant figurines…. Never! That would be a pointless waste of time. Petit bourgeois nonsense! The most important thing is spiritual labor…Books…You can wear the same suit for twenty years, two coats are enough to last a lifetime, but you can’t live without Pushkin or the complete works of Gorky. You’re part of the grand scheme of things.The intangible Russian soul
I ran into my neighbor: “I’m embarrassed that I’m so excited because of a German coffee grinder…but I’m just so happy!” 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.
In reality for me, I am just a twit, freedom of speech would have been enough for because, as it soon turned out, at heart, I’m a Soviet girl. Everything Soviet went deeper in us than we’d ever imagined. All I really wanted was for them to let me read Dovlatov and Nekrasov and listen to Galich. That would have been enough for me. I didn’t even dream of going to Paris and strolling through Montmartre…Or seeing Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia…Just let us read and talk. Read! Our little Olga got sick, she was just four months old. In the hospital I kept pacing and pacing with her back and forth through the corridors. And if I managed to get her to sleep for even half an hour, what do you think I would do? Even though I was beyond exhausted…Guess! I always had The Gulag Archipelago under my arm, and I would immediately open it and start reading. In one arm, my baby is dying, and with my free hand, I’m holding Solzhenitsyn. Books replaced life for us. They were our whole world.
We’re dreamers, of course. Our souls strain and suffer, but not much gets done – there is no strength left over after all that ardor. Nothing ever gets done. The mysterious Russian soul….Everyone wants to understand it. They read Dostoevsky: ‘what is behind that soul of theirs? Well, behind our soul there’s just more soul. We like to have a chat in the kitchen, read a book. ‘Reader’ is our primary occupation. (…)Our country is full of Oblomovs lying around on their couches, awaiting miracles. There are no Stoltzes. The industrious, savvy Stoltzes are despised for chopping down the beloved birch grove, the cherry orchard.Demystifying the eternal obsession with the enigmatic Russian soul or not, reading Second-Hand Time is probably the closest I ever got to it.
"Communism had an insane plan: to remake the "old breed of man," ancient Adam. And it really worked … Perhaps it was communism’s only achievement. Seventy-plus years in the Marxist-Leninist laboratory gave rise to a new man: Homo sovieticus. Although we now live in separate countries and speak different languages, you couldn’t mistake us for anyone else. We’re easy to spot! People who’ve come out of socialism... We have a special relationship with death. How much can we value human life when we know that not long ago people had died by the millions? We’re full of hatred and superstitions. All of us come from the land of the gulag and harrowing war. Collectivization, dekulakization, mass deportations … This was socialism, but it was also just everyday life."
"It wasn’t that long ago, but it’s as though it happened in another era … a different country … That’s where we left our naïveté and romanticism. Our trust. No one wants to remember it now because it’s unpleasant; we’ve lived through a lot of disappointment since then. But who could say that nothing has changed? Back then, you couldn’t even bring a Bible over the border. Did you forget that? When I’d come visit them from Moscow, I’d bring my relatives in Kaluga flour and noodles as presents. And they would be grateful. Have you forgotten? No one stands in line for sugar and soap anymore. And you don’t need a ration card to buy a coat. Did you forget that?
“I asked everyone I met what “freedom” meant. Fathers and children had very different answers. Those who were born in the USSR and those born after its collapse do not share a common experience—it’s like they’re from different planets.”
“People read newspapers and magazines and sat in stunned silence. They were overcome with unspeakable horror. How were we supposed to live with this? Many greeted the truth as an enemy. And freedom as well.”
———
“So here it is, freedom! Is it everything we hoped it would be? We were prepared to die for our ideals. To prove ourselves in battle. Instead, we ushered in a Chekhovian life. Without any history. Without any values except for the value of human life—life in general. Now we have new dreams: building a house, buying a decent car, planting gooseberries…Freedom turned out to mean the rehabilitation of bourgeois existence, which has traditionally been suppressed in Russia. The freedom of Her Highness Consumption.”
“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.”
I reminisced alongside my protagonists. One of them said, “Only a Soviet can understand another Soviet.” We share a communist collective memory. We’re neighbors in memory.”
“Although we now live in separate countries and speak different languages, you couldn’t mistake us for anyone else. We’re easy to spot! People who’ve come out of socialism are both like and unlike the rest of humanity—we have our own lexicon, our own conceptions of good and evil, our heroes, our martyrs.”
“Most people were not anti-Soviet; they only wanted to live well. They really wanted blue jeans, VCRs, and most of all, cars. Nice clothes and good food.”
“My grandmother’s greatest fear was a new Stalin and another war. Her whole life, she’d been anticipating arrest and starvation. She grew onions in egg cartons on the windowsill, fermented huge pots of cabbage. Stockpiled sugar and butter. Our storage cabinets were glutted with grains. Pearl barley. She always told me, “Don’t say anything! Nothing!” Keep your mouth shut in school…in university…That’s how I was raised, those were the people I grew up with. We had no reason to love the Soviet regime.”
“The market became our university… Maybe it’s going too far to call it a university, but an elementary school for life, definitely. People would visit it like they were going to a museum. Or to the library. Boys and girls stumbled around with crazed expressions, like zombies among the stalls… […] Millions of new little boxes and jars. People would bring them home as though they were sacred texts and, after using their contents, they wouldn’t throw them out, they’d display them in a place of honor on their bookshelves or put them in their china cabinets behind glass. People read the first glossy magazines as though they were the classics, with the reverent faith that behind the cover, directly under that packaging, you’d find the beautiful life. There were kilometer-long queues outside of the first McDonald’s, stories about it on the news. Educated, intelligent adults saved boxes and napkins from there and would proudly show them off to guests.”
“Our faith was sincere…Naïve…We thought that any minute now…there were buses idling outside waiting to take us away to democracy. We’d finally leave behind these run-down Khrushchyovkas and move into beautiful houses, build autobahns to replace these broken-down roads, and we’d all turn into respectable people. No one searched for rational proof that any of this would really happen. There was none. What did we need it for? We believed in it with our hearts, not our reason. At the district polling stations, we voted with our hearts, as well. No one told us what exactly we were supposed to do: We were free now and that was that.”
“I’ve fallen behind…I’m one of the people who’s fallen behind…Everyone else transferred from the train that was hurtling toward socialism onto the train racing to capitalism. I’m late.”
Our era—my era—was a great era! It was a great time! We will never live in such a big and strong country again.
For us, mercy was a priest’s word. Kill the White vermin! Make way for the Revolution! A slogan from the first years of the Revolution: We’ll chase humanity into happiness with an iron fist . . .The future, it was supposed to be beautiful. It will be beautiful later. I believed that!
We [internal exiles] moved into the dirt. Into mud huts. I was born underground, and it’s where I grew up . . . I slept with two little goats on a warm spread of goat droppings. My first word was b-a-a-a. We shared a world, it seemed indivisible. I still don’t feel the difference between us, the distinction between man and animal. I always talk to them. They understand me, and the beetles and spiders do, too. They were all around me, such colorful beetles, it was as though they’d been painted. My toys. In spring, we’d go out into the sunshine together, crawling through the grass in search of food. Warming ourselves. In winter we’d of dormant like the trees, hibernating from hunger . . . It’s all very painful, but it’s mine.
War and prision are the two most important words in the Russian language.
No one had taught us how to be free. We had only ever been taught how to die for freedom.
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.
Why didn't we put Stalin on trial? I'll tell you why...in order to condemn Stalin, you'd have to condemn your friends and relatives along with him.
People always want to live, even during wartime. You'll learn a lot from living through a war...There is no beast worse than man.
We'd go into battle with one rifle for every four men. When they kill the first one, the second one grabs the rifle, after the second one, the next one. Meanwhile, the Germans all had brand-new machine guns.
What would I have been if not for perestroika? An engineer with a pathetic salary.
In the nineties…yes, we were ecstatic; there’s no way back to that naïveté. We thought that the choice had been made and that communism had been defeated forever. But it was only the beginning.
A bottle of vodka costs as much as a coat used to. And something to snack on? Half a kilo of salami is half a month's pension.
How much can we value human life when we know that not long ago people had died by the millions? We’re full of hatred and superstitions. All of us come from the land of the gulag and harrowing war.
I asked everyone I met what 'freedom' meant. Fathers and children had very different answers. Those who were born in the USSR and those born after its collapse do not share a common experience - it's like they're from different planets. For the fathers, freedom is the absence of fear... For the children: freedom is love; inner freedom is an absolute value. Freedom is when you're not afraid of your own desires.
From a conversation with a university professor: “At the end of the nineties, my students would laugh when I told them stories about the Soviet Union. They were sure that a new future awaited them. Now it’s a different story…Today’s students have truly seen and felt capitalism: the inequality, the poverty, the shameless wealth. They’ve witnessed the lives of their parents, who never got anything out of the plundering of our country. "
Russians need “blacks” so they can feel “white.” So they have someone to look down on.
People in the West seem naive 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.
Capitalism isn't taking root here. The spirit of capitalism is foreign to us. ... And we're not the right people. The Russian man isn't rational or mercantile, he'll give you the shirt off his back, but sometimes he'll steal. He's elemental, more of a watcher than a doer. He can get by on very little. Accumulating money isn't for him, saving bores him. He had a very acute sense of fairness. We're a Bolshevik people. And finally Russians don't want to just live, they want to live for something. They want to participate in some great undertaking.
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.
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.