Standing on the ruins of the USSR, Russia's new empire was in no hurry to say goodbye to its past, which, moreover, put up a diabolical resistance to the new age. This gave rise to a transitional epoch, which Svitlana Aleksievich rightly called the second-hand period. Second-hand time is a monologue of people who were "lucky" to live in the USSR and in the period its disintegration. From these revelations - from lovingly nostalgic to terribly sad - and makes a mosaic portrait of the "Soviet man", who, despite the difficulties of life at the time - persecution by the authorities, ideological pressure, ascetic life - more misses the time and enough These monologues are rarely saturated with human suffering, physical and mental pain, painful longing for the lost, the desire to complain about a difficult fate, disappointment in the present and romanticization of some unfulfilled past.
< Together with her characters, the writer shows that the period of Yeltsin's democracy was a screen that no profound social change took place. And the Soviet system demanded the continuation
in another monster ...