The United Order and other Like Beliefs Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich
School paper from June 2019 Have you ever had a question answered, but not consciously realizing you had been asking the question? Suddenly, the answer is there and you realize you had been wondering about that very same thing. This has been my experience while reading Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich. My long buried question is this, “What were the opinions and stories of the people of Russia during the time frame of my own lifetime?” From news and politicians (theirs and ours), I had heard so much about them over the years (I was born in 1960). I also studied Western Civilization last summer where I learned about the highs and lows of Russian history. But how did the people feel about it all? I had long suspected that there was much more to the story than I was hearing. The author, Svetlana Alexievich, was awarded the Nobel Prize. She was credited for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” in which one describes “a history of emotions...