Love and Death in Revolution Square

In Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time, a compendium of first-hand accounts by former USSR citizens, the Soviet Union is often represented not as a geopolitical superpower but a nation of moral superiority. This may seem a strange way to describe a state that imprisoned and executed millions of its own citizens. But as one woman reminds Alexievich, “socialism isn’t just labour camps, informants, and the Iron Curtain, it’s also a bright, just world: everything is shared, the weak are pitied, and compassion rules. Instead of grabbing everything you can, you feel for others.”

Vadim Nikitin reviews Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Bela Shayevich.