海角大神

Having grown up in and accommodated oneself to Stalin and then the post-Stalin Soviet Union, how disorienting it must have been to wake up in 1991 in a new country: 鈥淚 can鈥檛 say what鈥檚 worse,鈥� reflects a former citizen, 鈥渨hat we have today or the history of the Communist Party.鈥� Life used to be bad, and now it鈥檚 outright frightening.鈥�

Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize winner from Belarus, says almost nothing herself here. As she did in her previous translated oral histories ("Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War" and "Voices from Chernobyl"), she instead presents the voices of the generations 鈥渨ho had been permanently bound to the Soviet idea, who had allowed it to penetrate them so deeply that there was no separating them: The state had become their entire cosmos, blocking out everything else, even their own lives. They couldn鈥檛 just walk away from History.鈥澛�

Alexievich has a magic potion for drawing out each member of the Soviet chorus: patience, curiosity and a camaraderie even with angry 鈥淪ovoks,鈥� those bewildered and bewildering ones who miss the old days: 鈥淏ut 鈥� what鈥檚 the point of remembering all this?鈥� says a retiree. 鈥淚t鈥檚 as good as collecting the nails after a fire.鈥�

鈥淚鈥檓 rushing to make impressions of [the USSR鈥檚] traces, its familiar faces,鈥� explains Alexievich. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 ask people about socialism, I want to know about love, jealousy, childhood, old age. Music, dances, hairdos. The myriad sundry details of a vanished way of life.鈥�

Many of the hundred or so voices she quotes say they don鈥檛 trust words, memory or even Alexievich, and yet as they unwind, she gently prompts them into recollecting the details of everyday life and of their ideas of 鈥渇reedom.鈥�

Of course, believing in the freedom of speech in the former countries of the USSR continues to be dangerous for anyone determined to have a public and independent voice. Alexievich鈥檚 witnesses are those who haven鈥檛 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鈥檚 own story: 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know why I鈥檓 crying.鈥� I already know all this.鈥� I know my own life. But there you go.鈥�

As a reader, so many passages clouded my eyes with tears, moments that Alexievich has waited for and caught and then transcribed and arranged. Decades ago, she realized she 鈥渟hould turn on the tape recorder so as not to miss this transformation of life 鈥� everyday life 鈥� into literature. I鈥檓 always listening for it, in every conversation, both general and private.鈥�

But there's been nothing in Russian literature as great or personal or troubling as "Secondhand Time" since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn鈥檚 "The Gulag Archipelago," nothing as necessary and overdue. And yet, could it be so, as one of the monologists remarks, that 鈥淵ou鈥檒l write it down, publish it.鈥� Good people will read it, they鈥檒l cry, but the bad ones, the important ones 鈥� they鈥檒l never read it鈥�? Anyway, we can read it and be shocked by what people could and can do.

This is the kind of history, otherwise almost unacknowledged by today鈥檚 dictatorships, that matters. What is the cultural reluctance to confront the past? 鈥淚n order to condemn Stalin,鈥� answers one voice, 鈥測ou鈥檇 have to condemn your friends and relatives along with him.鈥� But what about documents? 鈥淚 worked at an archive myself,鈥� remarks another voice, 鈥淚 can tell you firsthand: Paper lies even more than people do.鈥�

While there are the confounding witnesses who wish for a Stalin鈥檚 return, others restore our belief in the possibility of redemption. Ravshan, who helps Tajik migrant workers in Moscow, muses: 鈥淵ou know what I am? I鈥檓 an alchemist.... We run a nonprofit 鈥� no money, no power, just good people....* Our results materialize out of nothing: just nerve, intuition, eastern flattery, Russian pity, and simple words like 鈥榤y dear, 鈥榤y good man,鈥� 鈥業 knew you were a real man and wouldn鈥檛 fail to help a woman in need.鈥� 鈥楤oys,鈥� I say to the sadists in uniform, 鈥業 have faith in you. I know that you鈥檙e human.鈥欌��

Those sentences burst into color because back in the USSR, the government believed in stomping out any unauthorized personal narrative or opinion. Thanks to President Putin, that brutal practice has revived. But, warns a former army officer, 鈥淒on鈥檛 make things up about what our people are like, saying that Russians are so good at heart. No one is prepared to repent.鈥�

Random House has provided footnotes and a post-1953 (that is, post-Stalin) chronology for English readers. (The 2016 Russian edition of "Vremya Second Hand" has no need of chronology or footnotes but concludes with a useful author interview.) Bela Shayevich鈥檚 translation of the 2013 work is excellent, idiomatic; in the nearly 500 pages, there are only a few occasions where I was aware of a grain of Russian grammar or vocabulary.

"Secondhand Time," the fifth and, Alexievich says,** last volume in her 鈥淩ed cycle,鈥� is, among other things, the most ambitious Russian literary work of art of the century.

Bob Blaisdell, editor of "Essays on Civil Disobedience," frequently reviews books for the Monitor.

* All the other ellipses are Alexievich鈥檚.

** See page 506 of the Russian edition (from an interview with her by Natal鈥檡a Igrunova, the title more or less 鈥淪ocialism Has Ended. But We Remain鈥�).