Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets An Oral History by Svetlana Alexievich translated by Bela Shayevich
Svetlana Alexievich is an investigative journalist who in her book Secondhand Time has compiled powerful narratives that reveal the impact of the dissolution of the Soviet Union on its people. Through these narratives, Alexievich explores the lives of individuals whose homeland evaporated before their eyes. Writers, waiters, doctors, soldiers, former Kremlin apparatchiks, gulag survivors: all are given space to share their stories of anger and betrayal; many of their confessions taking place in Russian apartments at kitchen tables. The book is structured not in question-answer format but as monologues presented almost without judgement or comment. This mosaic of overlapping voices is divided into two time periods: one between the end of the Soviet Union and Yeltsin’s years of power, and the other after the dawn of the new millennium when Vladimir Putin became dominant. In contrast to the usual broad, sweeping focus of historical facts, these stories are fundamentally human in scale. In the author’s words:
In writing, I’m piecing together the history of “domestic,” “interior” socialism. As it existed in a person’s soul. I’ve always been drawn to this miniature expanse: one person, the individual. It’s where everything really happens. [p. 4]
From the promise of perestroika to the unexpected shift to capitalism, the reader is introduced to what people believed in or mistrusted, what illusions, hopes and fears they experienced. The author’s compilation of interviews embraces hundreds of people from several generations. It starts with the memories of people who witnessed the 1917 Revolution, through the wars and Stalinist gulags, and reaches the present times. This is a story of one Soviet-Russian soul—a “communist collective memory.” [p. 5]
Most of the stories in Secondhand Time are about the promises of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras, promises that individuals now living in Russia believe were broken. Some state that instead of tolerance and opportunity people were presented with a thuggish form of capitalism, one that divided citizens into winners and losers. Instead of peace after the 1991 breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics into independent states, vicious racial hatreds re-emerged. As one interviewee states:
—Gorbachev is an American secret agent … a freemason …He betrayed communism. “All communists to the trash heap, all Komsomol members to the dump!” I hate Gorbachev because he stole my Motherland. I treasure my Soviet passport like it’s my most precious possession. Yes, we stood in line for discolored chicken and rotting potatoes, but it was our Motherland. I loved it. [p. 21]
I wasn’t familiar with Alexievich’s work prior to reading Secondhand Time. Her other books that are considered “novels of voices” or “novels in voices” include Voices from Chernobyl, The Unwomanly Face of War, and Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War. The author describes her craft in the quote below:
“I see the world as voices, as colors, as it were. From book to book, I change, the subjects change, but the narrative thread remains the same. It is the narrative thread of the people I have come to know … With thousands of voices I can create – you could hardly call it reality, since reality remains unfathomable – an image of my time, of my country … It all forms a sort of small encyclopedia, the encyclopedia of my generation, of the people I came to meet. How did they live? What did they believe in? How did they die and how did they kill? And how hard did they pursue happiness, and did they fail to catch it?” Source: Svetlana Alexievich, Biographical
I purchased Secondhand Time because it appeared as number three on The Guardian List of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century which I was re-creating for this blog. If you want to understand Russia as it is today, this is essential reading. It is a masterpiece!
Check Amazon for more on this book I love.
