Second-hand Time

2022-01-20

Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Bela Shayevich, Fitzcarraldo Editions

The US edition of this book is called Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. Because we need the title to be a very clear indicator of exactly what the book will be about.

Interesting companion piece to another Fitzcarraldo Edition In Memory of Memory, which is about how memory is its own kind of creation and storytelling (and also relates to modern Russian history). Second-hand Time both highlights that very issue and overcomes it by presenting you with voice after voice after voice giving you each time a different memory of the same bigger events.

One thing I was really struck by, in addition to an absolute obsession with salami, was a sentiment of "we wanted democracy and freedom, not the capitalist situation that we have now." (I'm not quoting anyone in particular, this is my take of several interviewees.) Which makes one ask, did Russia achieve democracy and freedom with the fall of the USSR? The past decade makes clear no, no it did not.