Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (7 page)

Out of habit, I would go into the used bookstore where the full two-hundred-volume sets of the World Classics Library and Library of Adventures now stood calmly, not flying off the shelves. Those orange bindings, the books that had once driven me mad. I’d stare at their spines and linger, inhaling their smell. Mountains of books! The intelligentsia were selling off their libraries. People had grown poor, of course, but it wasn’t just for the spare cash—ultimately books had disappointed them. People were disillusioned. It became rude to ask, “What are you reading?” Too much about our lives had changed, and these weren’t things that you could read about in books. Russian novels don’t teach you how to become successful. How to get rich…Oblomov lies on his couch, Chekhov’s protagonists drink tea and complain about their lives…[
She falls silent.
] There’s a famous Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Few of us remained unchanged. Decent people seem to have disappeared. Now it’s teeth and elbows everywhere…

—

—You want to talk about the nineties…I wouldn’t call it a beautiful time, I’d say it was revolting. People’s minds flipped 180 degrees. Some couldn’t handle it, they went crazy, the psych wards were overflowing. I visited a friend of mine in one of them. One guy was screaming, “I’m Stalin! I’m Stalin!” while another one screamed, “I’m Berezovsky! I’m Berezovsky!” The whole ward was filled with these Stalins and Berezovskys.
^*18
Outside, there was always gunfire in the streets. A huge number of people were killed. Shootouts every day. You have to make it, you have to snatch it—get your hands on it before anyone else can snag it! Some people went broke, others went to jail. Down from the throne, straight into the gutter. On the other hand, it was cool to see all that happening right before your eyes…

People were lining up at the banks eager to try their hands at business: They wanted to open bakeries, sell electronics…I stood in one of those lines myself. It surprised me how many of us were there. Some woman in a knit beret, a boy in a tracksuit, this big guy who looked like he might have done time…For over seventy years, they’d told us that money wasn’t happiness, that the best things in life were free. Like love, for example. But the minute someone from the podium said “Sell and prosper!” all of that went out the window. Everyone forgot the Soviet books. These people were nothing like the ones I’d been staying up all night with, strumming the guitar. I barely knew three chords. The only thing they had in common with the kitchen folk was that they were also sick of the red calico flags and all that flotsam: the Komsomol meetings, political literacy classes. Socialism had treated the people like they were dummies…

I know full well what it means to dream. My whole childhood, I begged for a bicycle, and I never did get one. We were too poor. In school, I sold blue jeans on the side; in college, it was Soviet war uniforms and memorabilia. Foreigners loved that stuff. Your run-of-the-mill black market goods. In Soviet times, you could get three to five years for that if they caught you. My father would chase me around the house with his belt, screaming, “You profiteer! I spilled blood defending Moscow only to raise a little shithead!” Yesterday, it was crime—today, it’s business. You buy nails in one place, heel caps someplace else, put them together in a plastic bag and sell them as a set, like new. That’s how you bring home the bacon. I was making sure that we always had a full fridge while my parents kept waiting for them to come for me. [
He laughs.
] I sold household appliances. Pressure cookers, steamers. I would go to Germany and haul back truckloads of that stuff. And it would all sell out…I kept a computer box full of cash in my office—that was the only way I could feel like I really had money. You keep taking bills out of it, but there’s always more inside. At a certain point, I felt like I’d already bought everything I’d ever wanted: wheels, an apartment…a Rolex…I remember the intoxication…You can make all of your dreams come true, all of your secret fantasies. I learned a lot about myself: First of all, I have bad taste; second of all, I’m completely neurotic. I’m just no good with money. I didn’t know that you’re supposed to put big money to work, that it can’t just lie there. Money is a test, like power or love…I had this dream…so I went to Monaco. Lost big at a casino in Monte Carlo, it was really a lot of money. Things were slipping away from me…I’d become the slave of my box. Is there money in there or not? How much? There had to keep being more and more. I lost interest in everything that I used to be interested in. Politics, protests…Sakharov died. I went to pay my respects. A hundred thousand people gathered at his funeral…Everybody was weeping, and I wept, too. The other day, I read about him in the paper, “a great Russian holy fool died,” and I thought to myself that he probably died just in time. Solzhenitsyn came back from America, and everyone fell at his feet. But he didn’t understand us, and we didn’t understand him. He was a foreigner. He’d returned to Russia but found Chicago in its place…

What would I have been if not for perestroika? An engineer with a pathetic salary. [
He laughs.
] Now I own an optometrist’s office. A few hundred people, counting the children, grandmothers, grandfathers, all depend on me. You, you delve into yourselves, you reflect on your lives…I don’t have that problem. I work day and night. I bought all new, cutting-edge equipment, sent my doctors to France for training. But I’m not an altruist, I make good money. I’m a self-made man. I started out with three hundred dollars in my pocket…If you saw what my first business partners looked like, you’d pass out from fear. Gorillas! With ferocious stares! They’re not around anymore, those guys went extinct like the dinosaurs. I used wear a bulletproof vest; I’ve been shot at. If someone eats worse salami than I do, I don’t care. All of you wanted capitalism. You dreamt of it! Don’t go crying now that you’ve been lied to…

ON HOW WE GREW UP AMONG VICTIMS AND EXECUTIONERS

—One night we were walking home from the movies and stumbled on a man lying in a pool of blood. There was a bullet hole in the back of his trench coat and a cop standing over him. That was the first time I’d ever seen someone who’d been murdered. Pretty soon, it became a familiar sight. We live in a big building with twenty entrances. Every morning, they’d find another body in the courtyard—eventually, we stopped being shocked. Real capitalism was here. With blood. I thought that I’d be disturbed, but I wasn’t. After Stalin, we have a different relationship to murder. We remember how our people had killed their own…the mass murder of people who didn’t understand why they were being killed…It’s stayed with us, it’s part of our lives. We grew up among victims and executioners. For us, living together is normal. There’s no line between peacetime and wartime, we’re always at war. Turn on the TV, everyone’s speaking in prison camp slang: the politicians, the businessmen, even the president; kickbacks, bribes, siphoning…Human life—you can just spit and rub someone out. Just like in prison…

—Why didn’t we put Stalin on trial? I’ll tell you why…In order to condemn Stalin, you’d have to condemn your friends and relatives along with him. The people closest to you. I’ll tell you about my own family. My father was arrested in 1937 and, thank God, came back after doing ten years in the camps. He returned eager to live. He himself was amazed that he still wanted to after everything that he’d seen. This wasn’t the case with everyone, not by a long shot…My generation grew up with fathers who’d either returned from the camps or the war. The only thing they could tell us about was violence. Death. They rarely laughed and were mostly silent. They drank…and drank…until they finally drank themselves to death. The other option…the people who were never arrested spent their whole lives fearing arrest. This wouldn’t be for a month or two, it would go on for years—years! And if they didn’t get time, they’d wonder, “Why did they arrest everybody but me? What am I doing wrong?” They could put you in prison or they could put you to work for the NKVD
^*19
…The party requests, the party commands. It’s not a pleasant choice to have to make, but many were forced to make it. As for the executioners…the everyday ones, not the monsters…our neighbor Yuri turned out to have been the one who informed on my father. For nothing, as my mother would say. I was seven. Yuri would take me and his kids fishing and horseback riding. He’d mend our fence. You end up with a completely different picture of what an executioner is like—just a regular person, even a decent one…a normal guy…They arrested my father, then a few months later, they took his brother. When Yeltsin came to power, I got a copy of his file, which included several informants’ reports. It turned out that one of them had been written by Aunt Olga…his niece. A beautiful woman, full of joy…a good singer…By the time I found out, she was already old. I asked her, “Aunt Olga, tell me about 1937.” “That was the happiest year of my life. I was in love.” My father’s brother never returned. Vanished. We still don’t know whether it was in jail or the camps. It was hard for me, but I asked her the question that had been tormenting me, “Aunt Olga, why did you do it?” “Show me an honest person who survived Stalin’s time.” [
He is silent.
] Then there was Uncle Pavel who served in the NKVD in Siberia…When it comes down to it, there is no such thing as chemically pure evil. It’s not just Stalin and Beria,
^*20
it’s also our neighbor Yuri and beautiful Aunt Olga…”

—

It’s May 1. On this day, communists march through the streets of Moscow by the thousands. The capital “reddens” once again, filling with red flags, red balloons, and red T-shirts with hammers and sickles. Portraits of Lenin and Stalin soar over the crowd. More Stalins than Lenins. The signs read, “We’ll see your capitalism dead and buried!” “Red banners advance on the Kremlin!” Regular Moscow watches from the sidewalk as Red Moscow barrels down the road. Skirmishes flare up at the crowd’s edges; here and there, they escalate into fistfights. The police are incapable of untangling these two Moscows. I barely have time to write down everything I hear…

—

—Bury Lenin already, and without any honors.

—You American lackey! What did you sell out our country for?

—You’re idiots, brothers…

—Yeltsin and his gang robbed us blind. Drink! Prosper! One day, it’ll all come crashing down…

—Are they afraid of telling the people outright that we’re building capitalism? Everyone is prepared to pick up a gun, even my housewife mother.

—You can get a lot done with a bayonet, but sitting on one is uncomfortable.

—I’d like to run over all of those damn bourgeois with a tank!

—Communism was dreamt up by that Jew, Marx…

—There’s only one person who can save us, and that’s Comrade Stalin. If only he’d come back for just two days…he’d have them all shot, and then he can once again be laid to rest.

—And glory be, Dear Lord! I’ll bow down before all of the saints…

—You Stalinist bitches! The blood on your hands hasn’t even had a chance to dry yet. What did you murder the Tsar’s family for? You didn’t even spare the kids.

—You can’t build a Great Russia without a Great Stalin.

—You’ve filled the people’s brains with shit…

—I’m a simple man. Stalin didn’t touch regular people like me. No one in my family was affected, and all of them were workers. It was the bosses’ heads that flew, regular people lived regular lives.

—You red KGB goons! Soon enough, you’ll start saying that the only camps we had were Young Pioneer camps. My grandfather was a street sweeper.

—And mine was a land surveyor.

—Mine was an engine driver…

—

A rally begins in front of the Belorussky Railway Station. The crowd bursts into applause and cries of “Hurrah! Hurrah! Glory!” At the end, the whole square sings a song to the tune of the “Warszawianka,” the Russian “Marseillaise,” but with new lyrics: “We’ll cast off these liberal chains / Cast off this bloody criminal regime.” After that, packing up their red flags, some hurry toward the Metro, while others line up in front of the kiosks for pastries and beer. The real party begins. There’s singing and dancing. An old lady in a red kerchief twirls and stomps her feet around an accordion player, singing, “We’re merrily dancing / Around a big tree. / In our Motherland, / We are happy and free. / We’re merrily dancing / And singing our song / The one who we sing for / Is Comrade Stalin…” By the very entrance of the Metro, I can still hear snatches of a drunken folk ditty: “All the bad stuff can fuck off! And the good stuff fuck right on!”

ON THE CHOICE WE MUST MAKE BETWEEN GREAT HISTORY AND BANAL EXISTENCE

It’s always noisy by the beer stand. All sorts of people gather there. You can meet a professor, a working stiff, a student, a homeless man…They drink and philosophize. The conversation is always about the same thing—the fate of Russia. And communism.

—

—I’m a drinking man. Why do I drink? I don’t like my life. I want to do an impossible somersault and, with the help of alcohol, transport myself to another place where everything is good and beautiful.

—For me, it’s more of a concrete question: Where do I want to live, in a great country or a normal one?

—I loved the empire…Life after the fall of the empire has been boring. Tedious.

—A great Idea demands blood. Today, nobody wants to go off and die somewhere. Fighting in some war. It’s like that song: “Money, money, money everywhere, / Money everywhere, gentlemen…” But if you insist that we do have a goal, then what is it exactly? That everyone drive a Mercedes and have tickets to Miami?

—Russians need something to believe in…Something lofty and luminous. Empire and communism are ingrained in us. We seek out heroic ideals.

—With socialism, the people were participating in History…They were living through something great…

—Fucking shit! Look at us, we’re so soulful, we’re so special.

—We’ve never had democracy. What kind of democrats would you and I make?