Free Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich Page A

adapt, while the old die in silence behind closed doors. They die in poverty, all but forgotten. My pension is fifty dollars a month…[ She laughs. ] I’ve read that Gorbachev’s is also fifty dollars a month…They say that the Communists “lived in mansions and ate black caviar by the spoonful. They built communism for themselves.” My God! I’ve shown you around my “mansion”—a regular two-bedroom apartment, fifty-seven square meters. I haven’t hidden anything from you: my Soviet crystal, my Soviet gold…

    —But what about the special clinics and food rations, “internal queues” for apartments and government-issued dachas? The Party sanatoriums?
    —Honestly? All of that existed…it did…But mostly up there…[ Points up. ] I was always at the bottom, on the lowest rung. On the bottom with the people. Always in full view. The fact that this was the case in some places…I don’t argue with that…I couldn’t deny it! Just like you, that’s what I read about in newspapers during perestroika…About how the children of the secretaries of the Central Committee would fly out to Africa to go big-game hunting. How they’d buy up diamonds…But still, it’s nothing compared to how “new Russians” live today. With their yachts and their castles. Take a look at the houses they’ve built for themselves all around Moscow. Palaces! Two-meter-thick stone fences, electric fences, security cameras. Armed guards. They’re like penal colonies or top-secret military bases. What, is computer genius Bill Gates living there? Or world chess champion Garry Kasparov? That’s how the victors live. There was no official civil war, but there are victors. They’re behind those stone fences. Who are they hiding from? The people? The people thought that they’d overthrow the Communists and usher in a new golden age. Life in paradise. Instead of free people, we now have all these…with their millions and billions…Gangsters! They shoot each other in broad daylight…Even out here, a businessmen’s balcony was shot to pieces. They’re not afraid of anyone. Flying around in their private jets with their gilded toilets and bragging about it to boot. I saw it with my own eyes, on TV…One of them was showing off his watch that cost as much as a bomber jet. Another one, his diamond-studded mobile phone. And no one—no one!—will shout from the rooftops that this is all shameful. Revolting. We used to have Uspensky and Korolenko. Sholokhov *7 wrote Stalin a letter in defense of the peasants. Today I want to…You’re the one asking the questions, but now I want to ask you: Where is our true elite? Why is it that every day I’m reading Berezovsky and Potanin’s opinions on any and every topic instead of Okudzhava…or Iskander *8 …What happened that made you guys give up your seats for them? Your university departments…You were the first ones to chase after the crumbs from the oligarchs’ table. To run to their service. The Russian intelligentsia never used to pander to the rich. Now there’s no one left—no one will speak for the soul except for the priests. Where are the former supporters of perestroika?

    Communists of my generation had very little in common with Pavka Korchagin. *9 They weren’t like the first Bolsheviks with their briefcases and revolvers, all that was left of the forefathers was their army jargon: “soldiers of the Party,” “the labor front,” “the battle for harvest.” We no longer felt like the soldiers of the Party, we were its public servants. Clerks. We had our sacred rites: “the bright future,” a portrait of Lenin in the assembly hall, a red banner in the corner. Sacred rites, rituals…But soldiers were no longer in demand, what we needed were administrators: “Go, go, go,” and if not, then “You can leave your Party membership card on the desk.” If they tell you to do something, you do it. You report. The Party isn’t an army squadron, it’s an apparatus. A