Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (19 page)

I’ve recounted everything honestly…and I don’t even know why it’s shameful to talk about all this now…

When Gagarin went into space…People went out into the streets laughing, embracing, and crying. Strangers. Workers came out of their factories, still in their jumpsuits; medics in white caps, throwing them up into the sky: “We’re the first! Our man is in space!” It was an unforgettable moment! It took your breath away, the awe. To this day, I get excited when I hear the song:

We don’t dream of cosmodromes

It’s not all that azure ice

But the grass around our homes

We dream of green, green grass…

The Cuban revolution…Young Castro…I shouted, “Mama! Papa! They won! Viva Cuba!” [
She sings.
]

Cuba my love!

Island of the crimson dawn,

The song is heard around the world,

Cuba, my true love!

Veterans from the Spanish Civil War would come to our school. We sang “Grenada” with them: “I left my home, I went to fight, / To win Grenada for the peasants…” I had a photo of Dolores Ibárruri
^*11
hanging over my desk. Yes…we dreamed of Grenada…and then of Cuba…Some decades later, a new generation of boys spoke in those same fervent tones, only now it was about Afghanistan. We were easy to fool. But still, still…I won’t forget it! I’ll never forget how the whole tenth grade
^*12
left to volunteer to work on the Virgin Lands. They marched off in a column, in backpacks, with banners flying. Some of them carried guitars. “There go true heroes,” I thought. Many of them later returned sick. They never made it to the Virgin Lands, they were sent to the taiga somewhere to build a railway, dragging rails on their backs, waist-deep in ice water. There wasn’t enough machinery…All they had to eat were rotten potatoes, so all of them came down with scurvy. But they did it! There was a girl, too, seeing them off, brimming with admiration. That girl was me. My memories…I refuse to give them up for anyone: not the communists, not the democrats, not the brokers. They’re mine! All mine! I can go without many things: I don’t need a lot of money, expensive food, or fancy clothes…a nice car…In our Zhigulis, we drove across the whole Union: I saw Karelia, Lake Sevan, the Pamir mountains. All of it was our Motherland. My Motherland, the USSR. I can do without a lot of things, the only thing I can’t do without is the past. [
She is silent for a long time. Such a long time that I have to call her back.
]

Don’t worry…I’m fine…I’m fine now…For the time being, I’ve been staying home…petting the cat, knitting mittens. Simple things like knitting help most of all…What kept me from going all the way? I never hit bottom…No…As a doctor, I could clearly picture how it would all turn out…in graphic detail…Death is hideous, it’s not pretty. I’ve seen people who’ve hanged themselves…In their final moments, they have orgasms, or they get covered in urine or feces. Gas turns people blue, purple…Just the thought of it is awful to a woman. I couldn’t harbor any illusions about a beautiful death. But something throws you for a loop, triggers you, sends you flying…You’re in a fit of despair. There’s a pulse and a rhythm…and then a sudden burst of energy…It’s hard to restrain yourself. Pull the emergency brake! Stop! I somehow managed to stop myself in time. I chucked out the clothesline. Ran into the street. Got soaked in the rain, which was so beautiful after all that—it was so good getting soaked! [
Silence.
] For a long time, I didn’t say a word to anyone…I spent eight months in bed, terribly depressed. I forgot how to walk. Then, finally, I got up. Learned to walk again. I am…I am once again on solid footing…But I was really sick…deflated like a balloon…What am I talking about? Enough! That’s enough…[
She sits and weeps.
] Enough…

1990…Fifteen people were living in our three-bedroom apartment in Minsk, plus a newborn. First, my husband’s relatives arrived from Baku, his sister with her family and his cousins. They weren’t visiting, they came with the word “war” on their lips. They entered the house shouting, their eyes dulled…It was autumn or maybe winter…I remember that it was already cold out. Yes, they came in the autumn, because that winter, there were even more of us. That winter, my sister…My sister, her family, and her husband’s parents came from Dushanbe, Tajikistan. That’s how it happened…like that…People slept everywhere—in summer, even out on the balcony. And…They didn’t talk, they screamed…about how they’d fled their homes with war at their heels. Burning the soles of their feet. And they…All of them were like me, they were Soviets…completely Soviet people. One hundred percent! And proud of it. Then suddenly, it had all been taken out from underneath them. Gone! They woke up one morning, looked out the window, and there was a new flag. Suddenly finding themselves in another country. They became foreigners overnight.

I listened. And listened. They talked…

“…It was such an amazing time! Gorbachev came to power…Then, all of a sudden, there was shooting outside. Dear Lord! Right in the capital! In Dushanbe…Everyone sat in front of their TVs, anxious not to miss the latest updates. We had a women’s collective in our factory, it was predominantly Russian. I asked them, ‘Girls, what’s going to happen?’ ‘A war is starting, Russians are already getting killed.’ A few days later, a store was robbed in the middle of the day…And then another…”

“…In the first months, I cried, but then I stopped. The tears dry up quickly. Most of all, I was afraid of men, the ones I knew as much as the ones I didn’t know. That they could drag me into a building, into a car…‘Pretty lady! Hey lady, let’s fuck…’ A neighbor girl had been raped by her classmates. Tajik boys we knew. Her mother went to see one of their families. ‘What did you want, coming here?’ they shouted back at her. ‘Go back to your Russia. Pretty soon there won’t be any of you Russians left here. You’ll be running away in your underwear.’ ”

“…Why did we move out there? We were on a Komsomol trip, building the Nurek Dam and an aluminum plant…I studied Tajik:
chaikhana, piala, aryk, archa, chinara…
They called us ‘Shuvari.’ Russian brothers.”

“…I still have dreams about the pink hills, the almond trees in bloom. I wake up in tears…”

“…In Baku…We lived in a nine-story building. One morning, they took all the Armenian families out into the courtyard…Everyone gathered around them, and every single person there went up to us and hit us with something. A little boy—five years old—came up to me and hit me with a toy shovel. An old Azerbaijani woman patted him on the head…”

“…Our Azerbaijani friends hid us in their basement. They covered us in junk and boxes. At night, they’d bring us food…”

“…I was running to work one morning, and I saw dead bodies lying there on the street. Just lying there or leaning against the wall—sitting there, propped up as though they were alive. Some had been covered in tablecloths, others hadn’t. There hadn’t been time. The majority of them were naked…both the men and the women…The ones who were sitting up hadn’t been undressed—it must have been too hard to move them…”

“…I used to think that Tajiks were like little kids, totally harmless. In a matter of just six months, maybe even less than that, Dushanbe became unrecognizable, and so did the people. The morgues were filled to capacity. In the mornings, before they were absorbed into the asphalt, there’d be puddles of coagulated blood…like gelatin…”

“…For days, people walked by our house carrying posters that read, ‘Death to the Armenians! Death!’ Men and women. A furious mob, not a single human face among them. The newspapers were filled with ads: ‘Trading a three-bedroom apartment in Baku for any apartment in any Russian city…’ We sold our apartment for three hundred dollars. Like it was a refrigerator. And if we hadn’t sold it that cheap, they could have killed us…”

“…With the money we got for our apartment, we bought a Chinese down jacket for me and a pair of warm boots for my husband. Furniture, dishes, rugs…We left all of that behind…”

“…We lived without gas or electricity…without running water…The prices at the market were awful. They opened a new kiosk next to our building. All they sold were flowers and funeral wreaths…”

“…One night, someone painted the words, ‘Be afraid, you Russian bastards! Your tanks won’t help you!’ on the wall of the building across from ours. Russians were being removed from administrative positions…They’d shoot you from around the corner…The city quickly grew as filthy as a
kishlak.
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It became a foreign city. No longer Soviet…”

“…They could kill you for anything…If you hadn’t been born in the right place, if you didn’t speak the right language. If someone with a machine gun simply didn’t like the looks of you…How had we lived before then? On holidays, our first toast had always been, ‘To friendship,’ and
‘es kes sirum em’
(‘I love you’ in Armenian). Or
‘Man sani seviram’
(‘I love you’ in Azerbaijani). We’d lived happily side by side…”

“…Regular people…Our Tajik friends would lock their sons up, they wouldn’t let them out of the house, so no one could teach them or force them to kill.”

“…We decided to leave…We were already on the train, the steam was billowing out from under the wheels. The final moments before departure. Someone starting shooting at the wheels with a machine gun. Soldiers had to make a corridor to protect us. If it weren’t for the soldiers, we wouldn’t have even made it onto the train alive. Today, when I see war on TV, I can immediately smell that smell…the smell of fried human flesh…a sickening, sweet candy smell…”

Six months later, my husband had his first heart attack. And another six months later, his second. His sister had a stroke. All of it was making me lose my mind…Have you heard of how hair goes crazy? It becomes coarse, like fishing line. The hair is the first to go…Who can bear it? Little Karina…By day, she was a normal kid, but when it would start getting dark outside, she’d begin trembling. She screamed, “Mama, don’t go! If I fall asleep, they’ll kill you and Papa!” I would run to work in the morning and pray to be hit by a car. I’d never gone to church before, but after that, I started spending hours on my knees: “O Holy Mother of God! Can you hear me?” I stopped sleeping, couldn’t eat anymore. I’m no politician, I don’t know anything about politics. I’m simply a person who lives in fear. What else did you want to ask me? I’ve told you everything…That’s all!!

*1
The Bolshevik uprising, which turned into the October Revolution, took place the night of October 24–25, 1917, according to the Julian calendar, which is November 6–7 according to the Gregorian calendar that was subsequently adopted in the USSR. Known as the Day of the October Revolution, it was celebrated with military parades attended by most citizens.

*2
Many of the Decembrists, a group of young aristocrats who had organized a small but resonant uprising against the Tsar, were exiled to Irkutsk in 1825. Others were executed.

*3
Alexander Kolchak (1874–1920) was a polar explorer and commander in the Imperial Russian Navy who was internationally recognized as the ruler of Russia during the Russian Civil War. Anton Denikin (1872–1947) was a leading general of the Whites in the Russian Civil War. He lived out his final two decades in France.

*4
A well-known phrase of Stalin’s describing writers and other cultural workers.

*5
In a 1960s Soviet pop song of the same name, “blue cities” are the dream cities of the future.

*6
The Zaporozhian Sich was an autonomous Cossak polity from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries in the lower Dnieper River region. It fell to the Russian empire in 1775 but remains a symbol of the ongoing struggle for Ukrainian independence from Russia.

*7
Pavlik Morozov (1918–1932) was a young peasant boy who became a Soviet martyr, a hero of Soviet mythology. According to the legend, during collectivization Pavlik allegedly informed on his own father for forging documents. His father was executed, but Pavlik’s relatives took revenge on him and murdered him in retribution. They were then killed by a firing squad. This story, immortalized in song, verse, plays, and even an opera, was held up as an example of loyalty to the Party to Soviet children, encouraging the youth to hold their Motherland above all else—even their families. The story is likely apocryphal.

*8
The Cheka was the Soviet secret police, established by Lenin in 1917 and first led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, a predecessor to the NKVD and, in turn, the KGB. Officers of the secret police were colloquially known as “Chekisty” or Chekists until the fall of the Soviet Union.