Second-Hand Time

The concluding, fifth book of the famous artistic-documentary cycle "Voices from Utopia" by Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize laureate in literature "for multi-voiced creation – a monument to the suffering and courage of our time." "Communism had a mad plan," the author recounts, "to remake the 'old' person, the decrepit Adam. And it worked... Perhaps the only thing that worked. Over seventy years in the laboratory of Marxism-Leninism, a separate human type was produced - homo soveticus. Some consider him a tragic character, others call him a 'sovok.' It seems to me that I know this person well; I have lived next to him, side by side, for many years. He is me. He is my acquaintances, friends, parents." The monologues included in the book were recorded over ten years during trips.