Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (2 page)
Read Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets Online
Authors: Svetlana Alexievich
Tags: #Political Science, #History, #Russia & the Former Soviet Union, #Russian & Former Soviet Union, #Former Soviet Republics, #World, #Europe
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Contents
Chronology: Russia After Stalin
Part One: The Consolation of Apocalypse
Snatches of Street Noise and Kitchen Conversations (1991–2001)
Ten Stories in a Red Interior
On the Beauty of Dictatorship and the Mystery of Butterflies Crushed Against the Pavement
On Brothers and Sisters, Victims and Executioners…and the Electorate
On Cries and Whispers…and Exhilaration
On the Lonely Red Marshal and Three Days of Forgotten Revolution
On the Mercy of Memories and the Lust for Meaning
On a Different Bible and a Different Kind of Believer
On the Cruelty of the Flames and Salvation from Above
On the Sweetness of Suffering and the Trick of the Russian Soul
On a Time When Anyone Who Kills Believes That They Are Serving God
On the Little Red Flag and the Smile of the Axe
Part Two: The Charms of Emptiness
Snatches of Street Noise and Kitchen Conversations (2002–2012)
Ten Stories in the Absence of an Interior
On Romeo and Juliet…Except Their Names Were Margarita and Abulfaz
On People Who Instantly Transformed After the Fall of Communism
On a Loneliness That Resembles Happiness
On Wanting to Kill Them All and the Horror of Realizing That You Really Wanted to Do It
On the Old Crone with a Braid and the Beautiful Young Woman
On a Stranger’s Grief That God Has Deposited on Your Doorstep
On Life the Bitch and One Hundred Grams of Fine Powder in a Little White Vase
On How Nothing Disgusts the Dead and the Silence of Dust
On the Darkness of the Evil One and “the Other Life We Can Build Out of This One”
On Courage and What Comes After
Victim and executioner are equally ignoble; the lesson of the camps is brotherhood in abjection.
—DAVID ROUSSET,
THE DAYS OF OUR DEATH
In any event, we must remember that it’s not the blinded wrongdoers who are primarily responsible for the triumph of evil in the world, but the spiritually sighted servants of the good.
—FYODOR STEPUN,
FOREGONE AND GONE FOREVER
1953:
Josef Stalin dies on March 5. On September 14, Nikita Khrushchev becomes First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
FEBRUARY 1956:
Khrushchev delivers a speech to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality and the excesses of his policies. Over the next decades, this speech circulates covertly through
samizdat
and is discussed at closed Party meetings, shocking many. The speech marks the beginning of de-Stalinization and the Khrushchev Thaw, a time of relative liberalization.
NOVEMBER 1956:
The Soviet army violently puts down an uprising in Hungary.
NOVEMBER 1957:
The Italian publisher Feltrinelli publishes
Doctor Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak. Under pressure from the Soviet authorities, Pasternak is forced to turn down the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year.
NOVEMBER 1962:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is published in
Novy Mir,
an influential Russian literary magazine. It is the first time that the Soviet labor camps had been written about openly. Nevertheless, a crackdown on dissident groups marks the end of the Thaw.
1964:
Khrushchev is removed from power and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev.
1968:
The Soviet military invades Czechoslovakia in an attempt to counteract the series of liberalizing reforms known as the Prague Spring reforms, sparking off waves of protests and nonviolent resistance.
1973–1974:
Solzhenitsyn’s
Gulag Archipelago
is published in the West in Russian and other languages. In February 1974 Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Soviet Union.
1975:
Thirty-five states, including the USSR and the United States, sign the Helsinki Accords, an attempt to improve relations between the Communist Bloc and the West. The document cites respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms such as freedom of speech.
1979:
Soviet troops invade Afghanistan.
NOVEMBER 1982:
Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1964 to 1982, dies of a heart attack. Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, succeeds him.
FEBRUARY 1984:
Andropov dies of renal failure. Konstantin Chernenko replaces him.
MARCH 1985:
Chernenko dies of emphysema. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party and takes steps toward reform, marking the beginning of perestroika.
Novy Mir
commences serialization of
Doctor Zhivago
three years later.
Important reforms undertaken by Gorbachev between 1985 and 1991 under the umbrella of perestroika and glasnost: restitution of land to peasants after sixty years of collectivized agriculture; progressive restoration of political pluralism and freedom of speech, liberation of political prisoners, publication of banned literature; withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan; creation of a new legislative assembly, the Congress of People’s Deputies. The Congress elects Gorbachev to the presidency of the Soviet Union for five years and institutes constitutional reforms in March 1990. Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) agreements are signed with the United States in 1991.
FEBRUARY 1986:
Boris Yeltsin becomes a member of the Politburo a few months after being named First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee (effectively making him the mayor of Moscow). He is removed from the Politburo in 1988.
APRIL 26, 1986:
Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes, leading to serious contamination of Soviet territory.
MARCH 1989:
Yeltsin is elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies.
NOVEMBER 1989:
East Berlin permits passage to West Berlin, marking the effective end of the Cold War and the beginning of the reunification of Germany.
DECEMBER 1989:
Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush announce the end of the Cold War in Malta.
JUNE 1990:
The Congress of People’s Deputies of the Republic adopts the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), pitting the Soviet Union against the Russian Federation and other constituent republics and signaling the beginning of constitutional reform in Russia.
MAY 1991:
Boris Yeltsin is elected president of the RSFSR.
AUGUST 1991:
A group of eight high-ranking officials led by Gorbachev’s vice president, Gennady Yanayev, form the General Committee on the State Emergency, the GKChP, and stage an attempted coup of the government. It becomes known as “the putsch.” The GKChP issues an emergency decree suspending all political activity, banning most newspapers, and putting Gorbachev, who is on holiday in Foros, Crimea, under house arrest.
Thousands of protesters come out to stand against the putsch in front of the White House, the Russian Federation’s parliament building and office of Boris Yeltsin, building barricades to protect their positions. Yeltsin famously addresses the crowd from atop a tank. The Army forces dispatched by the GKChP ultimately refuse to storm the barricades and side with the protesters. After three days, the putsch collapses. Gorbachev returns from Foros, and members of the GKChP are arrested. On August 24, Gorbachev dissolves the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and resigns as its general secretary.
NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 1991:
In the Ukrainian popular referendum on December 1, 1991, 90 percent of voters opt for independence from the Soviet Union.
