Secondhand Time summary

Every Russian will give you his take on Communism if you ask. Someone born under Stalin will likely respond differently from someone born after perestroika. And there’s a geographical divide too. Country folk will have different views to city dwellers.

The author set about gathering stories because she wanted personal perspectives that would help her understand how people felt about Russia.

Can you imagine what it was like to be raised under Communism? Unlike capitalism, the state ideology was almost religious in quality. Its citizens felt they had meaning and purpose. They were happy to tolerate awful conditions because they believed they were creating a utopia based on equality.

People were so deeply schooled in this mind-set that they died for its aims. In fact, when they felt their system collapsing it was too much for many to bear and many people died by suicide.

Among other things, perestroika revealed the prevalence of torture and the inhumane conditions in the prisons and infamous work camps known as the gulags.

Unbelievably, people returned from incarceration willing to defend Communism even more.

The prisons and gulags instituted by Stalin were central to the functioning of Soviet Russia. Your neighbor or co-worker could inform on you. Other Russians were employed to torture or murder their comrades. This climate of fear colored everything.

Let’s return to Elena’s friend, Anna. She had a son. To her pride and joy, he got a government job. Unbeknownst to her, he was an executioner. Now, under capitalism, he sells vodka, clothing and plumbing fixtures. And which of the jobs is Anna ashamed of? That’s right. His tradesman hustling. She is still unaware that he had daily killing quotas and became deaf in his right ear from shooting so many people, or that he used to drown people by tying them up in stone-filled containers and dropping them in the ocean.

Olga thinks a great deal about death. She’s like a lot of the former Soviet citizens the author interviewed. She witnessed brutal murders in her home region of Abkhazia when her neighbors started killing each other.

Before 1992, residents of Abkhazia just saw themselves as part of the Soviet Union. It made no difference whether you were Armenian or Georgian. But when Communism fell that all changed.

In some parts of Russia, capitalism changed everything. However, elsewhere, some village squares still have their Lenin statues. In fact, many parts of Russia have not been touched by capitalism.

Another thing that hasn’t changed is the role of the military. It is a constant presence, and Russia remains a military nation.