My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The fall of the Soviet Union is a watershed moment in the history of the 20th century and is often viewed by the West as a triumphant moment. But what about the people of the Soviet Union who lived through it? Svetlana Alexievich attempts to gives voice to the ordinary Russians and people living under the Soviets in this book and, many times, offers compelling oral testimony about what the end of communism looked like on the inside, but too often is unbearably slow and lacking in any meaningful context to help a Western reader orient themselves.
If you are living in the West, especially in the United States, before you pick up this book you should keep in mind that you are definitely not the intended audience. This was written in Russian for Russian-speaking people. Throughout the book there are references to Soviet political and cultural icons many of whom are incredibly obscure to a Western audience. They are so obscure in fact that this book is littered with footnotes from the editor explaining who this person was. Normally, footnotes are not a problem, but there are so many here that it may make it difficult for a Western reader to fully immerse themselves in this world.
Another thing to keep in mind about this book is that it is an oral history and one that is quite unlike any other oral history you may have read before. In most oral histories, the author will interject some narrative and context behind the person who is speaking, maybe even a little biography of the person and their background. Ms. Alexievich forgoes all of that in favor of letting the speaker completely speak for themselves. She never mentions what questions she asked to get such responses from her subjects and only rarely jumps in with with some italicized narrative throughout the book. Reading this book is the equivalent of reading a series of longwinded interviews with the interviewer almost entirely scrubbed out of the story.
This refusal to inject herself into the book’s narrative can be both a blessing and a curse. With some of her most interesting subjects, such as those who were either in the Kremlin or were apart of some of the critical moments, such as the August 1991 putsch in Moscow or the demonstrations against President Lukashenko in Belarus. These were some of the best and most dramatic parts of this book. However, a lot of this book does not center around these key historical events. Thus, many of the interviews have this searching quality to it with people asking what did it all mean? What did Soviets fight for in the Second World War if communism would just end? Is the capitalist system that replaced it any better? For a Russian-speaking reader, there may be some identification with these pondering, but for a Western reader with little love for the Soviet Union, not so much. Thus again, Western readers may have trouble sympathizing with some of the subjects in this book.
Then there are the purely ordinary Soviets just trying to live their lives in a new world. Again some of these stories are interesting, but others are so melodramatic as to be almost a parody of life in Russia. There are copious stories about alcohol abuse and domestic violence throughout this book and particularly in the second half. Indeed, almost no marriage in this book doesn’t include alcoholism or domestic abuse or both. The first few tales are interesting, but the ninth or tenth time it is told become repetitive and maudlin. None of this is helped by the glacial space of this book. Many of the chapters are unbearably slow, tedious reading. This is not a book you should pick up for a quick breezy read as you should expect to sink a lot of time into reading it.
Ultimately, this book is a very mixed bag. Some stories are incredibly fascinating and dramatic, especially the ones that link up with key historical moments. But many other are incredibly slow, plodding stories with very little narrative meat for people to orient or attach themselves to. If you are someone who is already familiar with this period in Russian history or already have your head soaked in the tales of ordinary modern life in Russia and the former Soviet states, you might find this book rather interesting. However, if you’ve never learned about the fall of the Soviet Union and want to do so, read something else like The Future is History by Masha Gessen first before picking this book up.
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