Posted on 01/23/2022 2:16:10 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
When things fall apart
Alexievich’s most recent book, Time Second-Hand – the result of years of research and hundreds of interviews – recreates the trauma of the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Using the voices of narrators coming from all walks of life and corners of the region, it tells the story of Soviet collapse, and the subsequent ethnic cleansing, civil wars, impoverishment, and the loss of meaning for the millions of former Soviet citizens.
It’s also about how the communist way of life vanished and, with it, how a general apathy settled into the psyche of millions who now questioned what they had suffered for.
As one of the narrators in Time Second-Hand explains, “We were building socialism. Now socialism is gone, and we are left.”
Alexievich explains:
Over the course of seventy years, a new human specimen was bred in the laboratory of Marxism-Leninism: Homo Soveticus. Some believe that this is a tragic character; others call him a “sovok.” I think I know this person. I know him really well, I have lived next to him for many years. This person is me. He is the people I know, my friends, my parents...
(Excerpt) Read more at theconversation.com ...
Ingrained in the Soviet worldview was the powerful idea of overcoming suffering. The idea was that one suffered for a reason, for a greater cause, whether it was building an unrivaled communist state, achieving social justice, or winning World War II.
Is that what our socialists/communists here are thinking?
Sounds like the author is “pining for the...borscht.”
The collapse of the Soviet Union and its horrific communism was a gift for the Russian people, and those of the Soviet satellites. The problem is, they failed to make the most of it (with a few exceptions, particularly the Poles, the Czechs, and the Hungarians). The Baltic countries are trying.
The problem with Ukraine is it is so f***ing corrupt. It would be better managed by the Poles.
I remember a history teacher I had many, many years ago. He said when studying the history of Europe, forget the maps, because national boundaries changed as often as we change our socks; and countries disappeared and new ones were created out of nothing, many of which themselves quickly disappeared. He said it will drive you nuts. He said pick a specific period, and study what made that period good or bad, and why it is worth studying. And if you use a map, just remember it only reflects a very specific and a very brief point in time, and thus is limited in its value.
I confess: I like maps.
“Ingrained in the Soviet worldview was the powerful idea of overcoming suffering.”
That worldview did not start with the Soviets. It has been an ingrained trait of the Russian people for millennia. They are the world’s most avowed fatalists, for good or ill.
In 1967, when Polish mercenary Rafal Ganowicz was asked what it felt like to take human life, replied: "I wouldn't know, I've only ever killed communists."
Russian true believers are different. They see Gorbachev as a weak cowardly fool. The crisis called for a ‘true Russian of the I
Ron willed Stalin breed’ who would have known to the Army and the GULAG to crush the dissidents and put the world on notice that was as ever great, powerful, and one and bend your knee before it or else.
Very sad if they’re missing what they had. From what I remember of the collapse, the country was largely taken over by criminals. The old guard made money by distributing assets, while the common person got nothing.
With no God & no Guns, the average person was ill-equipped to make it turn out correctly.
Sounds like nostalgia for the hammer and sickle.
CC
In their own way those who long for the Soviet union are like the post WWI German fascists with their “stab in the back” myth and nostalgia for the Kaiser.
CC
their own way those who long for the Soviet union are like the post WWI German fascists with their “stab in the back” myth and nostalgia for the Kaiser.
_______________^^
THIS is exactly right. As Stalin (or someone in his orbit) once said, “Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
Boris Pasternak nailed it in his novel “Dr. Zhivago’’ when he spoke to why the Russian people endured so much hardship, privation, war and famine
‘’
“We endure it’’ he wrote “Because of our cursed capacity to endure’’.
The Russians are a weird people.
Ah, yes; I remember that line (but my mind must be slipping because I thought it was in Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamozov”). Haven’t read either in almost fifty years.
Same here FRiend. Same here. But that quote has always stuck in my mind.
I remember as a kid my dad took me to see “Dr. Zhivago’’..
Couldn’t take my eyes off Julie Christie. Didn’t know why either. I was just a kid...
It has always irked me how the Russkies always go on about how they ‘’won’’ the Second World War.
Yet they almost never dwell on how chummy they were with the Nazis until Hitler decided in 1941 that he didn’t need a partner anymore.
Rd later.
“Couldn’t take my eyes off Julie Christie. Didn’t know why either. I was just a kid...”
Well, I was in high school in 1965, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her, either. She was sexy. And those eyes! They looked right through you.
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