Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time chronicles the transition from the Soviet mode of power to Russia’s new capitalist mode of power. And it is unique because it is written not from the top, but from the bottom. The book is a collection of interviews conducted over a period of more than twenty years following the fall of communism. Alexievich spoke with many people from all walks of life, old and young, communist and anti-communist, those who lived in the Soviet Union and others born after its collapse. None of them belonged to the elite. They were all from the underlying population.
The stories are riveting, sometime mind-bending and often horrific. They are also very diverse and therefore difficult to generalize, certainly not after the first read.
But one lesson seems clear: hierarchical modes power, be they communist, capitalist or something else, are incredibly powerful. Stalin’s regime, like its tsarist predecessors, managed to butcher, enslave, terrorize and condition Russians in the millions. And the capitalist oligarchs and their current czar, Putin, use new social technologies to achieve similar ends.
Faced with these mega-machines, the path toward direct democracy is daunting indeed.