Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets Read Online Free PDF

socialism? Capitalists are fat and scary—that’s what they’d been telling us since we were little kids…[ She laughs. ]
    Our country was suddenly covered in banks and billboards. A new breed of goods appeared. Instead of crummy boots and frumpy dresses, we finally got the stuff we’d always dreamed of: blue jeans, winter coats, lingerie, decent dishware…Everything bright and beautiful. Our old Soviet stuff was gray, ascetic, and looked as if it had been manufactured in wartime. The libraries and theaters stood empty. Markets and stores had taken their place. Everyone decided that they wanted to be happy and they wanted it now. We were all like children discovering a new world…Eventually, we stopped fainting at supermarkets…A guy I know went into business. He told me about how the first time he shipped in a thousand cans of instant coffee, people bought them up in a matter of days. He used the profits to buy a hundred vacuum cleaners, and those went just as quickly. Coats, sweaters, this and that—if you’re selling, they’re buying! Everyone was making themselves over, getting a whole new wardrobe. New furniture and appliances. Remodeling their dachas…They wanted pretty little fences and charming roofs…When my friends and I start remembering this stuff, we die laughing…Savages! We were completely impoverished people. We had to relearn how to live from scratch. In Soviet times, you were allowed to have a lot of books but not an expensive car or house. We had to learn how to dress, cook good food, drink juice and eat yogurt in the morning…Before, I had hated money, I didn’t know what it was. My family never talked about it—it was considered shameful. We grew up in a country where money essentially did not exist. Like everyone else, I would get my 120 rubles a month and that had been enough. Money appeared with perestroika . With Gaidar. Real money. Instead of “Our Future is Communism,” the signs began exclaiming, “Buy now!” If you want to, you can travel. See Paris…Spain…fiesta…bullfighting….When I read about it in Hemingway, I’d been sure that I’d never see any of it with my own eyes. Back then, books replaced life…This was the end of our nightly kitchen vigils and the beginning of making money then making more money on the side. Money became synonymous with freedom. Everyone was completely preoccupied with it. The strongest and most aggressive started doing business. We forgot all about Lenin and Stalin. And that’s what saved us from another civil war with Reds on the one side and Whites on the other. Friends and foes. Instead of blood, there was all this new stuff…Life! We chose the beautiful life. No one wanted to die beautifully anymore, everyone wanted to live beautifully instead. The only problem was that there wasn’t really enough to go around…
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    —In Soviet times, the word had a holy, magical significance. Out of inertia, the intelligentsia still sat in their kitchens discussing Pasternak, making soup without putting down their Astafiev and Bykov, *16 but all the while, life kept demonstrating that none of that mattered anymore. Words no longer meant anything. In 1991, our mother came down with acute pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. She came home a hero, having spent her convalescence talking away in the ward. She told everyone about Stalin, the assassination of Kirov, Bukharin *17 …People were prepared to listen to her day and night. In those days, everyone wanted to have their eyes opened. She was recently in the hospital again, but this time, she never said a word. It’s only been five years, but things are completely different now. Instead of her, the star of the ward was the wife of a big-time businessman. Her stories had everyone hypnotized…She talked about their house—three hundred square meters! All of their help: a cook, a nanny, a driver, a gardener…Their vacations to Europe—the museums are nice, of course, but you should see the