Secondhand Time: A Reflection on the Last of the Soviets

Maggie Berg: I spent over six years teaching and living in Russia and Ukraine. Many of these stories ring familiar except for the extremely perverse blood-thirsty and blind-love stories which it seems there are a bit too many for a realist perspective; it left me wondering how many interviews the author had to do to get to some of the more tormented individuals. The book is a great lesson on democracy which will always be destroyed by capitalism. Any capitalist nation will become an oligarchy (as Russians complain) or a plutocracy (like the usa). The voices of the older generation robbed of their Socialist dreams stay with me the most because so many of their children conveyed their stories to me when I taught in classrooms and shared meals in their homes. From comfort to chaos and poverty, the struggle was far more difficult for them than (the) demonstrators who can never seem to think beyond their cardboard placard. This book is the only one of Alexievich's books I could actually read though I have tried the others--Unwomanly War, Zinky, Chernobyl. She is drawn to the macabre, definitely, but having lived a parallel life with the storytellers of this text, I endured the numerous stories of...

United States on Jun 09, 2023

vivekvivek:

India on Sep 03, 2022

Helena: Gostei que chegou logo e bem embalado. Ainda não li mas sei que vou gostar.

Brazil on Oct 20, 2021

John Cook: A super book about the very complex and difficult transition from communism to capitalism, from an almost religious sense of communal life to the challenges and disappointments of the competitive market economy.

Canada on Aug 04, 2018

peter graff: Fascinating picture of a period as experienced & perceived though the eyes & words of its protagonists. A real insight into Russia during the so-called hey day, decline of communism.

Canada on Mar 06, 2018

Bohdan Hodiak: My family, long ago, came from Ukraine so I have a special interest in this book, though most of the interviews are with Russians. Over the decades I read many books, before and after the collapse of the USSR, These books would describe the great events, the leaders, the wars, the financial shenanigans, but they were like getting all the nutritional and marketing information on a food product but never being able to taste it. Do you want to know what the collapse of the USSR meant to most of its people? Read this great book. Svetlana Alexievich, of Belarus and Ukrainian parents, spent years on this book. She has a genius on getting people to open up and, distilling thousands of hours of recorded interviews into the most relevant, revealing and interesting passages. That takes a great deal of skill and artistry. . It lifts this book to the level of literature. I cannot remember reading a book that was so moving; much more so than some of the best novels I have read. Svetlana deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature she was awarded in 2015, primarily for her books on the Aphganistan war and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. She was the first journalist, who only wrote non-fiction, to...

United States on Mar 07, 2017

Sarah rathbone: I would say 5 stars but ...the unrelenting repetitive theme of death was stifling in the same way unrelenting attempts at comedy eventually repel. I held on until two thirds of the way through, then I could find nothing new to grasp and all the oxygen went out of the read, it suffocated me in the end, maybe that's the author's goal? I recommend to anyone with an urge to investigate the wounds and suffering of others, especially if you feel you have endured none of your own and want a close encounter.

Australia on Jan 20, 2017