Secondhand Time

The Last of the Soviets

By: Svetlana Alexievich, Bela Shayevich - translator

Narrated by: Amanda Carlin, Mark Bramhall, Cassandra Campbell, Kimberly Farr, Kirby Heyborne, Hillary Huber, Rebecca Lowman, Jorjeana Marie, Coleen Marlo, Kathleen McInerney, Fred Sanders

Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

The magnum opus and latest work from Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature - a symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia.

When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre", describing her work as "a history of emotions - a history of the soul". Alexievich's distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation.

In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past 30 years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it's like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning from 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres - but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world.

A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. "Through the voices of those who confided in her," The Nation writes, "Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil - in a word, about ourselves."

©2016 Svetlana Alexievich (P)2016 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“There are many worthwhile books on the post-Soviet period and Putin’s ascent.... But the nonfiction volume that has done the most to deepen the emotional understanding of Russia during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union of late is Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history Secondhand Time.” (David Remnick, The New Yorker)

“Like the greatest works of fiction, Secondhand Time is a comprehensive and unflinching exploration of the human condition.... Alexievich’s tools are different from those of a novelist, yet in its scope and wisdom, Secondhand Time is comparable to War and Peace.” (The Wall Street Journal)

“The most ambitious Russian literary work of art of the century... There’s been nothing in Russian literature as great or personal or troubling as Secondhand Time since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, nothing as necessary and overdue.... Alexievich’s witnesses are those who haven’t had a say. She shows us from these conversations, many of them coming at the confessional kitchen table of Russian apartments, that it’s powerful simply to be allowed to tell one’s own story.... This is the kind of history, otherwise almost unacknowledged by today’s dictatorships, that matters.” (The Christian Science Monitor)

Wow

Stunning and devastating all at once. A deeply, tragically important story that history must never forget.

Fascinating history of modern Russia

I see why the author won the Nobel prize. She interviews people with the most compelling stories, whose descriptions are vivid, moving and enlightening. She interviews family members with contrasting views, and she does not evaluate any of what they recount, she simply documents their experiences, puts them in an order that is powerful and revealing, And frequently follows up with more interviews years later. It’s her life’s work, one that is an objective,Painstaking labor of love. You won’t see Russia the same way.
The cast of readers is varied and talented.

collection of first person recollections

It actually took me a confused hour or so to realize the entire book is a collection of interviews, presented in snippets from 10 seconds to half an hour or so. Very intersting to hear a cross section of reminiscence about Soviet and post breakup Soviet Union. It is very long, so you gotta dig in with some patience.

Should be required listening!

Sad warning. I wish I could meet the people who shared their lives here, just so I could be kind to them. Thanks to Svetlana Alexievich for the work and to Bela Shayevich for translating.

What helped this audiobook work for me were the narrators. Flawless! I listen to perhaps 50 books each year—these women and men were chosen perfectly to narrate these hard stories.

My heart is for the sufferers of the USSR/formerUSSR. May God help you to find comfort, true peace, and genuine love.

Beyond a cartoon

This oral history of former Soviets, The willing and the unwilling, goes beyond the summaries and cartoons we often get in history. From the mouths of the willing we hear defiant loyalty, cultish devotion, and no recognition that the 10s of millions of dead who cannot tell their stories were not worth the trouble of brutalizing Russia into imperial poverty and slavery. From the unwilling? Well, there are some; though, admittedly, most of them are already dead.

Really vivid picture of life in ex ussr

a great documentary about people in ex ussr. Enjoyed the reading! It really got me more interested in knowing more.

Touching! Powerful!!

This was an amazing book! It gives you such a great understanding of the Soviet mentality. The personal stories gnaw at your heart.

It was at times beautiful....

It was at times beautiful, at times horrific... and always eye-opening.

I'm not going to lie, many of these stories were very difficult to hear. But if you're interested in hearing other people's life experiences, I would absolutely recommend it.

Russia - a profound explication

I have studied the Russian language, Russia and the Soviet Union all my adult life (several decades). This splendid work does an exceptional job of explaining Russia, it's culture and its people.

Depressing yet eye opening

This should be mandatory reading for every high school student a sad history of the culture of statism that has embedded it’s depressing world view within the soul of modern Russian society and explains Putin’s support among the tortured souls…