Svetlana
Alexievich, 2016, Second-Hand Time,
Juggernaut, pp. 570
“Our
children aren’t like us. What are they like? Their own time, each other.”
Somewhere
in the book is the Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times’. This is
the story of the lives and times of the erstwhile Soviet Union, its fall and
the time that came after. What was one day politics became forbidden the next,
what was once crime became business later. How did people live through the
nation once envisioned, in the protracted kitchen spaces of democracy where
there was dissent and disillusionment? Svetlana writes, ‘Freedom was
materialised out of thin air: everyone was intoxicated by it, but no one had
been really prepared. Where was this freedom? Only around kitchen tables where
out of habit people bad mouthed their government….it is when you can live
without having to think about freedom, Freedom is normal.’ That little patch of
freedom was the kitchen talk.
How did
these people normalise the war time spirit that flowed into their peace times,
into generations of loyal dreamers? From the soldiers of a war, people had to
transform themselves to its public servants. When the future determined by a
great idea comes to a standstill with the fall of the idea, faith, beliefs,
lives are lost not to death but to time that keeps flowing. Then time does come
second hand. This space of black and white- of what once was and is lost- blurs
your vision and ruins your spirit. It is a dangerous place to live because
there is no time to enjoy life there. How did they negotiate belief, faith,
joy, love and sorrow and above all the vicissitudes of everyday desires?
This is
history written from below, sewing the voices of many as they retell their
story as they experienced the rise and fall of the soviet. In a form that mixes
reportage and oral history, Svetlana leaves a narrative documentation that
brings voices and counter voices open to new interpretations of a lost time.
Like an epic chorus or a collective novel, the gathering strength of many
voices gives us truth through meandering prose of contradiction. Svetlana lets
people speak for themselves with their jumbled memory, immediacy, proximity and
nostalgia as well as the terrible efforts at erasing longing and arriving at
closure. It is futile to draw ‘meaning’ or interpretation in the narrative;
rather what is overwhelmingly rich is the context that one person is- it is in
her vast miniature expanse that every event happens and every value shatters
and is remade. What makes these voices poignant is the way in which each
individual comes to terms with a great idea that was bestowed on them, the
collective memory that is left unarchived and now the history that is hidden
from everyone. It is a history that is washed with intimate feelings.
