Read Online Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich - Free Book Online Page B

joining the party. Everyone had great expectations. Back then, everyone was naïve, on the left and on the right—the communists and the anti-Soviets alike. Everyone was a romantic. Today, we’re ashamed of our former naïveté. People worship Solzhenitsyn. The great Elder of Vermont! It wasn’t just Solzhenitsyn, there were many other people who understood that we couldn’t go on the way we were. Caught in a web of lies. And the communists—I don’t know whether or not you believe me—we weren’t blind to it, either. There were a number of good and decent people among the communists. Sincere. I personally knew people like this, especially outside of the cities. People like my father…My father wasn’t accepted into the Party, he’d suffered at its hands, but he kept on believing in it. He believed in the Party and in our country. Every morning, he’d start his day by reading Pravda from cover to cover. There were more communists without Party membership cards than those who had them; many people were convinced communists in their souls. [ Silence. ] At all the parades, they carried banners reading, “The People and the Party Are One!” Those words weren’t make-believe, they were the truth. I’m not agitating for anything, I’m just trying to describe the way things really were. Everyone has already forgotten…Many people had joined the Party as an act of conscience, and not out of careerism or some other pragmatic consideration like, “If I’m not a Party member and I steal, they’ll put me in jail, but if I join the Party and steal, they’ll just kick me out of the Party.” I get indignant whenever people start talking about Marxism with disdain and a knowing smirk. Hurry up and toss it on the trash heap! It’s a great teaching, and it will outlive all persecution. And our Soviet misfortune, too. Because…there are a lot of reasons…Socialism isn’t just labor camps, informants, and the Iron Curtain, it’s also a bright, just world: Everything is shared, the weak are pitied, and compassion rules. Instead of grabbing everything you can, you feel for others. They say to me that you couldn’t buy a car—so then no one had a car. No one wore Versace suits or bought houses in Miami. My God! The leaders of the USSR lived like mid-level businessmen, they were nothing like today’s oligarchs. Not one bit! They weren’t building themselves yachts with champagne showers. Can you imagine! Right now, there’s a commercial on TV for copper bathtubs that cost as much as a two-bedroom apartment. Could you explain to me exactly who they’re for? Gilded doorknobs…Is this freedom? The little man, the nobody, is a zero—you’ll find him at the very bottom of the barrel. He used to be able to write a letter to the editor, go and complain at the district Party headquarters about his boss or poor building maintenance…About an unfaithful husband…A lot of things about the system were stupid, I don’t deny it, but who will even listen to the man in the street today? Who needs him? Remember the Soviet place names—Metallurgists Avenue, Enthusiasts Avenue, Factory Street, Proletariat Street…The little man was the most important one around…You say it was all just talk and a cover-up—today, no one even attempts to disguise their disdain for him. You’re broke? Go to hell! Back to your cage! 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.

    With her…[ She nods in the direction of her friend. ] We argue, of course…She wants to prove to me that true socialism demands perfect people who simply do not exist. That it’s nothing but a