Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievitch

2016

Am I exaggerating if I say, in the USA, we have a king? No, not the President, but Money. Cash is king. Amidst the comforts of Capitalism, inequality grows while politicians fund tax cuts for the wealthy on the backs of the poor.

The other day this made me want to say: What would be so bad about having a system where all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs. No rich and no poor. Oh right, that's the definition of Communism. I wanted to find out more about this system we call evil.

First, I thought of reading Karl Marx to see for myself what he had to say, but his work is too difficult to decipher. Instead, I ordered a companion-to-Marx book (by David Harvey), which promised to simplify, but alas, did not. I gave up after one page.

Then, in Julia's old high school books, I came across Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich. Alexievich's trademark is creating literature out of the words of common people; she talked to hundreds of them across Russia and the former Soviet Union in order to record how they had experienced the sudden switch from Communism to Capitalism in the 1990s. In her acceptance speech for the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature, she discusses how art is created when many voices come together to reveal truth.

Throughout the conversations in Secondhand Time, we read on the one hand, "Communism was a nightmare, we were overjoyed when it ended," but on the other hand, we are surprised to also hear, "We were better off before, what we have now is worse."

It's easy for us to imagine those celebrating Communism's demise. If you were sent to a gulag, and treated like less than human, left to starve or die, or had your head pushed into a bucket of shit to force you to give up the names of your comrades; if you were sent to prison for 10 years because you were caught reselling a potato for a tiny profit, or saw people being disappeared or killed, then you were glad Communism was over.

But if you'd been left in peace to live on your monthly stipend from the government in exchange for your work, and now had no job and no money, or the small amount you'd saved was suddenly worth nothing due to 2,500% inflation; if before you had a house, but after, the mafia tricked and tortured you into selling and you ended up homeless, then you wished for a return to the "good old days" of Communism.

Secondhand Time helped me understand more vividly and in detail the horror of Communism, a system maintained through ruthless treatment of any opposition, real or imagined. I feel lucky to have grown up under a Democratic government. Communism didn't work, but how much longer can the excesses and extremes of Capitalism work, either? Can't we be more satisfied with having what we need instead of needing to get more and more of what we want? Can't we share more with others? (Listen carefully to Tupac on that subject, here.)

Do I recommend this book? You have to be ready to plunge into the darkness, but the reward is great. I'd like to read some of these other works by Alexievitch, also based on conversations:

The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II

Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II

Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

I recommend her essay In Search of the Free Individual: The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul (click to read)

Here's the cover of the French version of Secondhand Time, which is more striking than the English version cover (above).

French title and cover for Secondhand Time (Translation: The End of the Red Man or A Time of Disenchantment