Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (20 page)

*9
“Repression” is a Soviet term broadly covering a process that may include a person’s being denounced—at meetings, assemblies, and in the press—as well as their expulsion from public life, arrest, and execution.

*10
Inessa Armand (1874–1920) was a prominent French-Russian communist politician who joined the Bolsheviks and fought for women’s equality in the Communist Party.

*11
Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez (1895–1989)—known as “La Pasionaria”—was a Republican heroine of the Spanish Civil War and communist politician of Basque origin, known for her famous slogan “¡No Pasarán!” during the Battle for Madrid in November 1936.

*12
Tenth grade was the final year of Soviet secondary school.

*13
A Central Asian village.

FROM INTERVIEWS ON RED SQUARE IN DECEMBER 1991

—I was a student…It all happened so fast. Three days, and the revolution was over…On the news, they reported that the Gang of Eight had been arrested…Minister of Internal Affairs Pugo shot himself, Marshal Akhromeyev hanged himself…At home, we discussed it for a long time. I remember my father saying, “They’re war criminals. They should have met the same fate as the German generals, Speer and Hess.” We were all waiting for our Nuremberg…

We were young…Revolution! When people went out into the streets to stand up against the tanks, for the first time in my life I felt proud of my country. Before that, there’d been Vilnius, Riga, Tbilisi. In Vilnius, the Lithuanians defended their television tower, we’d seen it all on TV. And what were we, sheep? People who had never done anything like that before, who’d been sitting there, venting their frustration in their kitchens, all went out into the streets. They stepped outside…My friend and I grabbed our umbrellas in case it rained and also to use as weapons. [
She laughs.
] I was proud of Yeltsin when he stood on the tank. I felt like he was my president. Mine! Real! There were lots of young people there. Students. All of us had grown up reading Korotich’s
Ogonyok,
the dissident writers of the sixties.
^*1
It felt like a war zone…Someone was screaming into a megaphone, a male voice was begging: “Girls, please leave. There’s going to be shooting and lots of corpses.” A man near me sent his pregnant wife home. She was crying, “Why are you staying?” “This is how it has to be.”

I forgot to mention something really important…about how that day had begun…In the morning, I woke up because my mother was wailing. Inconsolable. She asked my father, “What’s a state of emergency? What do you think they’ve done to Gorbachev?” My grandmother ran back and forth between the TV and the radio in the kitchen: “Was anyone arrested? Shot?” My grandmother was born in 1922. Her whole life, people had been shot and executed. Arrested. That was all she’d ever known…After my grandma passed away, my mother revealed a family secret. She lifted the curtain…those blinds…In 1956, my grandfather was returned to my mother and grandmother from the camps. He came back a bag of bones. From Kazakhstan. He was so weak, someone had had to escort him home. And they kept the fact that he was her father, her husband, a secret from everyone…They were afraid…They told people that they weren’t that close, that he was a very distant relative. This went on for several months, and then they put him in the hospital. That was where he hanged himself. I need to…I have to come to terms with this somehow, with this knowledge. I need to understand it…[
She repeats herself.
] Find some way to live with it…My grandmother’s greatest fear was a new Stalin and another war. Her whole life, she’d been anticipating arrest and starvation. She grew onions in egg cartons on the windowsill, fermented huge pots of cabbage. Stockpiled sugar and butter. Our storage cabinets were glutted with grains. Pearl barley. She always told me, “Don’t say anything! Nothing!” Keep your mouth shut in school…in university…That’s how I was raised, those were the people I grew up with. We had no reason to love the Soviet regime. All of us were for Yeltsin! My friend’s mother wouldn’t even let her out of the house: “Over my dead body! Can’t you see that all of that is back?” We’d been studying at the Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University. People from all over the world studied there, many of them had come to the USSR expecting the land of balalaikas and atom bombs. We were offended. We wanted to live in a different country…

—

—I was a metal worker at a factory…I was in the Voronezh region when I found out about the putsch. Visiting my aunt. All that shouting about the greatness of Russia—total bullshit. Phony patriots! Sitting in front of their zombie box. They should come see what it’s like fifty kilometers outside of Moscow…Look at the houses, see how people really live. Their drunken parties…There’s practically no men in the village; they’ve all died out. They’re like a bunch of horned beasts—they drink themselves to death. Until they collapse. And they’ll drink anything flammable: from cucumber aftershave to gasoline. First they drink, and then they brawl. In every household, there’s someone who’s either doing time or has already been to prison. The police can’t cope. Only the women don’t give up, they keep digging in their vegetable gardens. The few men who don’t drink have long since gone to Moscow in search of work. The only farmer in the village had had his house burned down by arsonists three times before getting the hell out of there! Cut and run! They hated him with a passion…this visceral hatred…

Tanks in Moscow, barricades…In the village, no one was particularly worried about any of it. They didn’t fret. Everyone was much more concerned with potato beetles and cabbage moths. Those beetles are tough to get rid of…The only things the young men care about is munching on sunflower seeds and girls. And where they’ll score a bottle for the night. But overall, the people supported the putschists. From what I gathered, not all of them were communists, but everyone wanted to live in a great country. They were afraid of change because every time there had ever been change, the people had always gotten screwed. I remember what my grandfather used to say: “Our lives used to be shitty, really shitty, and then shit got worse and worse.” Before and after the war, people out there lived without any passports. They didn’t issue them to people in the country because they didn’t want them in the cities. They were slaves. Under house arrest. They came back from the war covered in medals, they’d conquered half of Europe! But they wouldn’t even give them passports.

When I got back to Moscow, I found out that all my friends had been on the barricades. That they’d taken part in that fracas. [
He laughs.
] I could have gotten a medal…

—

—I’m an engineer…Who’s that Marshal Akhromeyev? Crazy for the
sovok.
I lived in the
sovok
and have no desire to go back there. He was a fanatic, sincerely devoted to the communist Idea. My enemy. Just hearing him speak filled me with rage. I knew that he was a person willing to fight to the very end. His suicide? Clearly an extraordinary act that inspires respect. You have to respect death. But I ask myself, “What if they had won?” Look through any textbook…Not a single coup in history went off without terror, everything always ends in blood. With tongues torn out and eyes gouged out. Like the Middle Ages. You don’t have to be a historian to know that…

One morning on television I heard about “Gorbachev’s inability to run the country due to serious illness…” Then I saw tanks in front of my house…I called my friends, and all of them were for Yeltsin. Against the Junta. So let’s go defend Yeltsin! I opened the fridge, put a piece of cheese in my pocket. There were crackers on the table, so I grabbed a handful of crackers. How about a weapon? I needed something…There was a kitchen knife on the table. I held it in my hand for a moment, but then I put it back. [
He grows thoughtful.
] And what if…what if they would have won?

Now, on TV, they show you things like Maestro Rostropovich
^*2
arriving from Paris and sitting there with a machine gun, girls giving soldiers ice cream…a bouquet resting on a tank…My images are different…Moscow grandmothers giving soldiers sandwiches and taking them to their apartments so they could pee. They ordered a tank division into the capital without providing any rations or bathrooms. The boys’ skinny necks sticking out of the hatches and their eyes huge, full of terror. They didn’t understand a thing. By the third day, they were sitting on top of the tanks, hungry and angry. Half asleep. Women surrounded them: “Darling boys, are you really going to shoot at us?” The soldiers were silent, but an officer barked, “If they give the orders, we’ll shoot.” As though they’d been blown away by a strong wind, the soldiers vanished back into the hatches. That’s how it was! My memories aren’t like the photos…We stood there arm in arm, awaiting attack. There were rumors that soon they’d gas us, that there were snipers on the roofs…A woman with military decorations pinned to her shirt came up to us: “Who are you defending? The capitalists?” “Yes, and what about you, Auntie? We’re standing up for our freedom.” “I fought for the Soviet regime—for workers and peasants. Not kiosks and cooperatives. If I had a machine gun right now…”

It was all hanging on by a thread. The smell of blood was in the air. I don’t remember it being a celebration…

—I’m a patriot…Let me have my say. [
A man in an open shearling coat with a massive cross around his neck approaches us.
] We’re living in the most shameful era of our entire history. Ours is the generation of cowards and traitors. That’s how our children will remember us. “Our parents sold out a great country for jeans, Marlboros, and chewing gum,” they’ll say. We failed to defend the USSR, our Motherland. An unspeakable crime. We betrayed everything! I will never get used to the Russian tricolor flag, I will always see the red banner in front of my eyes. The banner of a great nation! Of the great Victory! What had to have happened to us…the Soviet people…to make us close our eyes and run to this motherfucking capitalist paradise? They bought us with candy wrappers, display cases full of salami, colorful packaging. They dazzled and sweet-talked us. We traded everything we had for cars and rags. Don’t tell me any fairy tales…about how the CIA took down the Soviet Union or Zbigniew Brzezinski’s
^*3
machinations…Why didn’t the KGB take down America? It wasn’t the stupid Bolsheviks that fucked up the country, and not even the bastard intelligentsia that destroyed it so that they could go on trips abroad and read
The Gulag Archipelago
…Don’t go looking for a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. We did it ourselves. With our own hands. We dreamed of having a McDonald’s with hot hamburgers, we wanted everyone to be able to buy themselves a Mercedes, a plastic VCR. We wanted pornos in the kiosks…

Russia needs a strong hand. An iron hand. An overseer with a stick. Long live the mighty Stalin! Hurrah! Hurrah! Akhromeyev could have been our Pinochet…our General Jaruzelski…It was a great loss…

—

—I’m a communist…I supported the putschists, or rather, the USSR. I was a fervent supporter because I liked living in an empire. As the famous song goes, “My beloved land is vast…” In 1989, I was sent to Vilnius on a business trip. Before I left, the chief engineer of the factory, who had recently been there, called me into his office and warned me, “Don’t speak Russian to them. They won’t even sell you a box of matches if you ask for them in Russian. Do you remember Ukrainian? Speak Ukrainian.” I could hardly believe my ears—what was this nonsense? He instructed me: “Be careful in the cafeterias, they’re capable of poisoning you or putting powdered glass in your food. They see you as an occupier now, understand?” I still believed in the Friendship of the Peoples
^*4
and all of that other stuff. The Soviet brotherhood. I didn’t believe him until I got to the station in Vilnius. I stepped out onto the platform…and from the very first moment, I was given to understand that when they heard me speaking Russian, I was in a foreign country. As an occupier. From filthy, backward Russia. Russian Ivan, the barbarian.

And then there was that whole song and dance…I heard about the putsch one morning while I was at the store. I ran home, turned on the TV: Had they killed Yeltsin? Who controlled the television tower? What about the army? My friend called me: “Those sons of bitches are going to tighten the screws again. We’ll all be nuts and bolts.” I was enraged: “I support them all the way. I’m for the USSR!” He instantly changed tack: “Down with Mikhail the Marked! Off to Siberia with him!” Do you understand? That’s how you had to talk to people. Convince them. Get them on your side. The first order of business should have been taking over the Ostankino Television Tower
^*5
and broadcasting the message twenty-four hours a day: “We’re going to save the country! The Soviet Motherland is in danger! Hurry up and get rid of the Sobchaks, Afanasievs,
^*6
and all the rest of those traitors!” The people would have stood behind it.