“The immobile Mongol,” Marx wrote of Russia. Russia was changing and hating itself for changing. We thought that this time, we’d finally get it right. Now we would live no worse than anyone else. They reviled Yeltsin and Gorbachev: Yeltsin for changing Russia, and Gorbachev for changing everything. Where was this freedom? Only around kitchen tables, where out of habit people continued to badmouth the government. One person would say, “I did time, too” another, “I fought in the war” a third, “I built my city up from the ruins, hauling bricks day and night.” Freedom had materialized out of thin air: Everyone was intoxicated by it, but no one had really been prepared. If I brought up repentance, the response would be, “What do I have to repent for?” Everyone thought of themselves as a victim, never a willing accomplice. Where’s the real truth? You used to be able to get up in the morning, read Pravda, and know all you needed to know, understand everything you needed to understand.” People were slow to come out from under the narcosis of old ideas. “I buy three newspapers and each one of them has its own version of the truth.
Photo by Elke Wetzig (CC BY-SA 3.0) A lot of people will tell you it’s a miracle that the Soviet Union collapsed bloodlessly. As you read Second-hand Time it’s worth remembering that Alexievich lost her homeland too. “More often, people were irritated with freedom. Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel prize in literature in 2015, was born in Ukraine, is Belorussian, but writes in Russian.
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