I’ve always found it strange that to think, whether on the metro or while wandering through the streets of my beloved Petersburg, that not thirty years ago this all was a completely different country. By that time, of course, it was clear that the Soviet Union was on its way out. But what would replace it was anybody’s guess. Gorbachev, ever the idealist, hoped to reform the USSR into a new confederation – the Union of Sovereign States – that would alleviate many of that country’s worst failings by decentralizing its power structure. An attempted coup in August of 1991 put this proposal on ice and led to the collapse of the USSR in December of that year. But though the Soviet Union was no more, its people remained. Belorussian writer Svetlana Alexievich’s Second-hand Time gives these people a voice.
Its pages explore the lives of these people whose homeland evaporated before their eyes. The book is structured as a series of interviews, edited into monologues. “I’m trying to honestly hear out all the participants of the socialist drama”, Alexievich explains. These monologues are presented almost without judgement or comment, and are divided in theme between the end of the Soviet Union and Yeltsin’s years of power, and the time after the dawn of the new millennium when Vladimir Putin became dominant. But in contrast to the historic scope of much writing on this period, these stories are fundamentally human in scale. Love again and again comes up, alongside the pain of women and immigrants in a society that – after the collapse of the Soviet Union – became fundamentally reactionary and nationalist in terms of its culture.
A lot of people will tell you it’s a miracle that the Soviet Union collapsed bloodlessly. Second-hand Time goes against that clinical view and shows that even the “little” violence that did take place had a real and terrible human cost. Especially in the West, we also tend to take the rather parochial view that the USSR was an “Evil Empire”, that its citizens were relentlessly crushed under the wheels of a terrifying totalitarian regime. But the Soviet Union outlived Stalin, and things got better than that. Second-hand Time does not paint the closing days of the Union as filled with joy and plenty, but it shows through its many and varied speakers how great the loss experienced by its citizens in many cases was. The creation of the USSR may have been a tragedy, but its collapse – in light of what’s come after – seems even worse.
Maybe Gorbachev had the right idea after all.
Hopes and Ideals
Anybody who has come into contact with Russia and its culture knows that Russia is special. It likes to tell you as much. “we’re so soulful, we’re so special” one speaker says without irony. It retains a belief in itself as a country of chosen people, with a unique path. A path of suffering, not of joy. The Soviet Union was created because of the great faith – and opportunism – of the communists. Its collapse, likewise, was a moment when Russia seemed to be special once again. Freedom meant everything to everybody, and people were soon disappointed. The nineties were a time of lawlessness and extreme poverty – Yegor Gaidar’s “shock therapy” brought capitalism to the masses, but not the money to take advantage of it. People died in the streets and the sheets, and few could afford the coffin to bury them in, or the ambulance to try to save them.
“Instead of a Motherland, we live in a huge supermarket”. Salami comes up again and again as this symbol of capitalism’s allure. In the Soviet Union it wasn’t easy to get access to good meat – and impossible to get to choose it. But people soon realised that meat isn’t a substitute for anything good – especially when you don’t have the money to buy it. The first section of Second-hand Time, The Consolation of Apocalypse, shows people falling out of love with the changes brought about by the collapse of the USSR. There is a continual lament for the values they have lost. In the Soviet Union, people read books, people talked in kitchens – the atmosphere is decidedly intellectual. The small guy was looked after.
But alongside of shock therapy the Russians were also introduced to a new set of values, ones that were more suitable to the new system. Buy buy buy – greed grew dominant. The poor weren’t to be pitied – they had failed to show the skill and hard work that the rich (apparently) had. Instead of discussing books, people get excited about new technology, blue jeans. One speaker, a rich man who made himself in this system, says “money is a test, like power or love”. It’s hard not to agree. And this early part of Second-hand Time shows that the Russians weren’t quite ready to pass it. Next to the chaos of the new free market, socialism is utopian: “Socialism isn’t just labour camps, informants, and the Iron Curtain, it’s also a bright, just world: Everything is shared, the weak are pitied, and compassion rules”. One party official tells Alexievich.
Faulty Memory and Greatness
We remember what we want to remember and, except for those of us whose depression is particularly great, in the end the good memories rise above the bad and we come to remember the past as a better place. For the Russians of today, that innocent trick of the mind is potentially dangerous. It leads to a longing for the Soviet Union. “You forget about the long lines and empty stores faster than you do about the red flag flying over the Reichstag.” Again and again, those interviewed mention the war with Germany as a high point in their nation’s history. They were great; they saved the day.
The challenge that Russians face now, when the belief in their country’s unique path is so strong, is to decide between “great history and banal existence”. It’s not entirely clear which choice is best. One path seems to hold the salvation of the soul, the other the salvation of the body. “I can do without a lot of things, the only thing I can’t do without is the past.” – these are not the words of a salami-lover.
“We all believed that the kingdom of freedom was right around the corner… But life just kept getting worse. Very soon, the only thing you could buy was books. Nothing but books on the store shelves…” Russians turned the wheel of history with the collapse of the USSR, but very soon their naïve hopes turned to bitterness and despair. Socialism was a way of looking at the world, and without it the ground fell out from under people’s feet. And few were ready to fly… There are a great many suicides in Second-hand Time.
“I cannot go on living while my Fatherland is dying and everything I heretofore considered to be the meaning of my life is being destroyed.”
The Butcher Returns
Each one of the stories in Second-hand Time is worth telling. It’s hard to decide what to mention here. Each one hit me in different ways, but some were so powerful – so frightening – that they left me speechless. The final story in the first part of Second-hand Time is such a story. It begins with the experience of a woman who had grown up in one of Stalin’s camps in Kazakhstan as she searched for the truth of her past, but ended even more shockingly with her son’s story of a betrothal gone wrong. He is a lieutenant in the army, about to get married. The girl and her family live well for Soviets. They have crystal chandeliers, porcelain, rugs. The old grandfather, the patriarch, is an honoured veteran. He’d speak at schools, get kids as visitors to hear his stories.
Before the wedding the lieutenant and the veteran go out to the family country house to get drunk. They’re completely alone, and the grandfather begins to talk about his past and his views. He’s an old man, and sounds like one… with a particularly Russian bent. He rails against the liberals, the new generations – they don’t need freedom, they need to work, to suffer. And he reveals he was in the NKVD, how he executed the Soviet people…
“I watch TV, I listen to the radio. It’s the rich and poor all over again. Some people gorge themselves on caviar, buy islands and private jets, while others can’t afford a loaf of white bread. This won’t last long around here! People will once again acknowledge Stalin’s greatness. The axe is right where it always was… the axe will survive the master. Mark my words…”
This idea of the axe, of the power of the state for mass power through fear – this for the grandfather is message of hope. Russia demands a strong leader, it demands control and violence and destruction – not cheese and salami and blue jeans.
It is too much for the lieutenant. He breaks off the engagement without explanation. A note at the end of the story explains that he and his family emigrated to Canada before he let Alexievich publish the story. He adds “I’m glad I left in time. For a while, people liked Russians, now they’re afraid of us again. Aren’t you?”
Support for Stalin is currently at a record high in Russia. In 2000 Vladimir Putin became president and the dominant political actor in Russia, the latter being a role he has not relinquished since then. The story is the perfect end to the chaos of the 1990s. Russia’s period of anarchy – everybody agreed – had to end some way. But it is only the angry old man, filled with hate, who understood fully what would have to happen – since he believed there had been no change to the Russian people, then just as before they needed to be crushed rather than raised up. Putin is no new Stalin, but the idea that Russia needs a strong leader is dangerously ingrained into the Russian idea of its own path that with hindsight it’s hard to see what else could have happened. The second part of Second-hand Time looks at the consequences.
“The Friendship of the Peoples”
The Friendship of the Peoples was a cultural policy introduced under Stalin in 1935, designed to reduce the ethnic barriers between the various peoples of the Soviet Union. Stalin himself was a Georgian; Brezhnev was Ukrainian; and in the USSR as a whole the Russians only constituted about half of the overall population. It was a good idea, but it should be mentioned that Stalin was also responsible for large-scale population transfers, genocide in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, and generally was not exactly a paragon of ethnically harmonious leadership. All the same, the policy continued after his death, and a degree of unity began to form between the peoples of the Union. A number of monologues in Second-hand Time serve as evidence for the success of the policy.
And all this success was destroyed by the collapse of the USSR. In scenes that are reminiscent of the persecution of Jews under the Nazis, so too we read here of families hidden in attics to avoid being murdered – whether by Azeris, or Georgians, or Abkhazians, or Tajiks. Moldavia was split in two, Georgia and Tajikistan underwent civil war, and even in those countries that did not go to war there were still forcible expulsions.
Today there remain many Russians abroad, particularly in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, while in other former Soviet Republics there are almost none. Russia itself attracts immigrants from all over the former Soviet lands, but Second-hand Time shows that the dream of ethnic harmony remains as dead now as it was then. A particularly unpleasant interview deals with the lives of the Tajiks in Moscow in our own days and the ways they are treated by the Russians – killed, beaten, left unpaid. It’s something I’ve come to notice a lot recently in my own time in Russia – just how racist the Russian people are towards those who were once their equals. There’s a hierarchy here, one that’s almost invisible unless you look for it. It’s easy to live in Russia without meeting a single non-Russian. But you see them every day, cleaning the metro, manning stalls at the market.
I’ve travelled in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Armenia, and other former Soviet countries. The people I met there were no better or worse than the Russians are. It’s disappointing that after the collapse of the USSR the peace that very nearly existed was replaced by a revival of ethnic and religious tensions that nobody, really, needs or wants.
The New World and Its Heroes
“What’s the point of changing governments if we don’t change ourselves?” People changed after the end of the Soviet Union – they had to change or else die. Their values, as I’ve written above, were overhauled. But their hearts were harder to change, and many of the characters in Second-hand Time didn’t succeed in shaking off the Soviet past. But Alisa Z, one interviewee, did succeed. She’s 35, an advertising manager, and the kind of shark that found the new world one of endless opportunities. Her monologue is fascinating… in a way, it’s like a deranged Dostoevsky character going on a rant to explain their worldview. She took advantage of the “revolution of desires” to desire everything. Sex, money, power. And she got it.
“Loneliness is freedom… Now, every day, I’m happy I’m free: Will he call or won’t he, will he come over or not? Is he going to dump me? Spare me! Those aren’t problems anymore! So no, I’m not afraid of loneliness… What am I afraid of? I’m afraid of the dentist! People always lie when they talk about love… and money… They’re always lying in so many ways. I don’t want to lie… I just don’t! Excuse me… please forgive me… I haven’t thought about any of this for a long time…”
She’s repulsive; she’s free and completely hedonistic. Her confidence, her directness of experience and existence is mesmerising. She is the kind of person who needed, truly needed, the world of capitalism. She sleeps with oligarchs and eats and drinks and enjoys herself. The world is her oyster. In my own experience of oligarchs (bless the British public school system!) I’ve seen the same brutal hunger. I’m not sure it’s the best way to live, but there’s no denying that this is a type of life… just one that I find terrifying and alluring in equal measure. And when so few of us live, even a repulsive life is more attractive than death-in-life…
Love
History was taking place all the time these people were speaking, but what almost always stands out is not the history, but the love that tries to get in the way of it. A good friend of mine in Moscow is dating a Ukrainian and – would you believe it! – both sets of parents have been trying to keep them apart from the first day of the relationship. But that’s nothing compared to the loves that are described here. There’s a woman who falls in love with a murderer stuck for life in a prison, a woman who is separated from her husband for seven years because his family refuse to let him be with an infidel, and many other examples of loves that refuse to let anything stand in the way.
Russia is a country of romantics, and it seems that love is one of the ways that the Russians – the women especially – were able to survive the horrors that the 1990s brought with them. It’s a way of living and loving that seems strange at best, and silly at worst, to us in the West. But giving oneself up truly to another person, just like giving oneself up completely to an idea like Communism, seems one of the surest ways to salvation of the soul. In any case, the passages of self-sacrifice in the name of love were regularly touching, even if it made me deeply sad to read about all the challenges these people faced, and perhaps ought not have had to.
Conclusion – Future Hopes
The last chapter of Second-hand Time details the experience of a few students in the ill-fated protests in Belarus to Alexander Lukashenko’s re-election in 2010 to the office of president. Many of these people were put in prison and kicked out of university; others were simply beaten by riot police; Lukashenko won, of course. He also won a fourth term in 2015, and is standing for a fifth term in 2020 – although at the time of writing it’s not clear whether Belarus will be absorbed into Russia at some point after that. However much these people faced pain and disappointment, like the protesters in Moscow in 2011, the fact that they tried – Alexievich seems to hint – is already a huge achievement, and a step towards the future.
I’ve lived in Russia for two years now, and I intend to live here after university. I can’t say I love the Russians, but for me they really are a special people, just as theirs is a special country. And the times are changing. The dreams of the 1990s are not yet dead. If there is one thing that gives me more hope than anything else it is the young generation – here, and across the world. People may complain about the present situation – regarding Russia, it’s not my place to – but Russia’s youth will surely, once they come of political age, change the world for the better. Perhaps the dream of love and brotherhood that the Soviet Union held so dear may also, one day, prove not simply idealistic twaddle, but something really worth believing in.
Alexievich’s book is probably the best book I’ve read all year. Both heartwarming and heart-rending, hopeful and hateful, it is a roller-coaster of real emotions. But most importantly, it’s making me go with reopened eyes into the world and realise yet again that every human carries with them their own story, like a cross. And if we do not listen to them, however misguided or deluded they may be, how can we hope to change the world?
For more of the challenges faced by people living today, look at my thoughts on Joker, and on Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism.