暑假我们一家将首次造访俄国。 对于俄国的了解太过欠缺，我想借这本书来做点补足。
“Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets”by Svetlana Alexievich
此书作者－白俄作家Svetlana Alexievich获得2015年诺贝尔文学奖。 她的写作体裁不是小说，而以口述采访的形式，裁剪、集合数百人的独白。 这本书讲述自苏联解体后二十年间（1991－2012）的震荡和混乱，普通俄罗斯人的生活和挣扎。
书中多处追溯苏联历史。 他们从小被灌输的只有战争，没有生活。
At heart, we’re built for war. We were always either fighting or preparing to fight. We’ve never known anything else—hence our wartime psychology. Even in civilian life, everything was always militarized. The drums were beating, the banners flying, our hearts leaping out of our chests. People didn’t recognize their own slavery—they even liked being slaves.
你会以为俄罗斯人简直就喜欢自虐。 为了维护极端的‘主义’，饿殍遍地，焦土三千也在所不惜。 他们几乎是以享受的态度去经历痛苦，痛苦的魅力被夸大。
Russian life is supposed to be evil and base, that’s what elevates the soul, and forces it to recognize that it doesn’t belong in this world… The cruder and bloodier life is, the more space there is for the soul.
连女人也喜欢找最悲惨的男人。
But why him? Why him specifically? Russian women love finding these unfortunate men.
永远把精神生活放在第一位，为了崇高的理想而牺牲；忽视、打压‘平庸’的幸福。
Russians need something to believe in … Something lofty and luminous. Empire and communism are ingrained in us. We seek out heroic ideals.
苏联解体后，民众满怀对自由的希望，但接踵而至的却是经济崩毁、理想幻灭、价值观粉碎，曾经激情四射的民众陷入彷徨失落。 长期封闭突然打开之后，找不到生活的坐标。 向往民主自由的人民突然发现，新的价值观是钱！钱！钱！ 教授、建筑师、艺术家都丢弃了诗歌和书籍，“Russian novels don't teach you how to become successful.”，卖掉了吉他，变成了倒买倒卖的黑市商贩，要不就在街头烤香肠，只能做最低下的工作以糊口。
人们渴望幸福，但还未从过去的思想中解放出来，还没有预备好独立思考，重建心灵，建设家园，从‘伟大’走向平凡，走向‘狭小’的自身、个人的琐碎幸福。
No one had taught us how to be free. We had only ever been taught how to die for freedom.
For our entire history, we’d been surviving instead of living.
Our people need freedom like a monkey needs glasses. No one would know what to do with it.
I asked everyone I met what “freedom” meant … For the fathers, freedom is the absence of fear…Freedom is never being flogged, although no generation of Russians has yet avoided a flogging. Russians don’t understand freedom, they need the Cossack and the whip. For the children: Freedom is love; inner freedom is an absolute value. Freedom is when you’re not afraid of your own desires; having lots of money so that you’ll have everything; It’s when you can live without having to think about freedom. Freedom is normal.
再节选几段：
We had a war mentality. “If tomorrow war should break out, if tomorrow we must depart…” I can’t find any other explanation … “Keep your eye on death, on death/You poor singer and rider…” At every single gathering, without fail… Within five minutes, we’ll be remembering the war. We’re constantly singing war songs. Is there anyone else in the world like us? The Poles lived under socialism, too, and the Czechs, and the Romanians, but none of them are quite like this…
Why did we hear from you our whole lives? You have to live for others… for a higher purpose… throw yourself under a tank, go down in an airplane for your Motherland. The rumble of the Revolution … Heroic death … We were taught that death is more beautiful than life. That’s why we grew up to be monsters and freaks.
Instead of lullabies, my mother would sing us songs of the Revolution. Now she sings them to her grandchildren. “Are you nuts?” I ask her. She replies, “I don't know any other songs.”
老一辈的旧苏维埃人受到最大的冲击。 社会主义曾经是他们的整个宇宙，取代了他们的个人意识，甚至灵魂。 他们无法摆脱那个时代的烙印，厌恶市场经济带来的物质化和功利化，心灵空虚，唯有缅怀旧苏维埃。
Gorbachev is an American secret agent…a freemason…He betrayed communism. I hate Gorbachev because he stole my Motherland. Yes, we stood in line for discolored chicken and rotting potatoes, but it was our Motherland. I loved it. You lived in a third world country with missiles, but for me, it was a great nation…Happiness is here, huh? Sure, there’s salami and bananas. We’re rolling around in shit and eating foreign food. Instead of a Motherland, we live in a huge supermarket. If this is freedom, I don’t need it.
苏联是一个多么苦难深重的国家，整部书浸透了无比沉重的背叛和痛苦，以致我每读一段就要放下，无法继续。
People who’ve come out of socialism are both like and unlike the rest of humanity — we have our own lexicon, our own conceptions of good and evil, our heroes, our martyrs. We have a special relationship with death. The stories people tell me are full of jarring terms: “shoot,” “execute,” “liquidate,” “eliminate,” or typically Soviet varieties of disappearance such as “arrest,” “ten years without the right of correspondence,” and “emigration.”
独裁统治者擅用人的恐惧来操纵人民，残酷迫害，鼓励人民互相举报，利用外国的敌对势力为借口，号召人民为了建立强大的苏维埃而作出牺牲。 人民忍受着监控和迫害、丧失生活的基本保障，忍受物质的匮乏，换来的却只是更为集权的统治。
长年被威权统治，人格和认知都被扭曲，普通人无法判断是非，也不愿承担责任。
其中一个故事的主人公一向最喜欢Olga姑姑，后来读大学时，才知道Olga姑姑就是告密导致爸爸和叔叔被关进最可怕的集中营，叔叔死在里面。 他鼓起勇气质问姑姑，“Aunt Olga, why did you do it?” 姑姑平静地回答，“Show me an honest person who survived Stalin’s time.”
书中的一位老共产党，虽然一生悲惨，数次入狱，妻子也死于劳改，却终其一生对这个叫他家破人亡的体制忠心耿耿。 而最后他也透露，15岁时，他举报舅舅偷藏粮食，而导致舅舅被红军砍成碎片。
善与恶的混淆，没有人愿意承认自己是罪人。
Everyone thought of themselves as a victim, never a willing accomplice.
“In order to condemn Stalin,” answers one voice, “you’d have to condemn your friends and relatives along with him.” But what about documents? “I worked at an archive myself,” remarks another voice, “I can tell you firsthand: Paper lies even more than people do.”
书中提到两代人的隔阂：老一辈的俄国人被英雄主义洗脑。 从前线回来的退伍军人恨死了把逼自己去的爸爸。
Oh! How Papa dreamed of throwing us under a tank. He wanted us to hurry up and grow up so we could volunteer to fight in a war. He needed us to be heroes! … Papa belonged to the Idea. He wasn't really a human.
I don’t like the word ‘hero’. There are no heroes in war. As soon as someone picks up a weapon, they can no longer be good. They won’t be able to.
但是比起俄罗斯人，那些前苏联加盟共和国的人民受到的创伤更深刻。
在苏联时代，阿塞拜疆和亚美尼亚、俄罗斯都是兄弟。
“The most beautiful holiday, everyone’s favorite, was Navruz. We would all carry our tables into the courtyard and make one long, long table. This table would be covered in Georgian khinkali, Armenian boraki and basturma, Russian bliny, Tatar echpochmak, Ukrainian vareniki, meat and chestnuts Azeri-style … We sang Armenian and Azerbaijani songs. And the Russian “Katyusha”: “The apple and pear trees were in bloom … The mists swam over the river …”
可是解体后，一夜之间阿塞拜疆人和亚美尼亚人反目成仇，昔日里鸡犬相闻的邻居变为你死我活的死敌，屠杀抢劫遍地开花。 不止他们，其他格鲁吉亚人、车臣人、吉尔吉斯、哈萨克斯坦。。。同样的屠杀简直造成了民族清洗。 故事里的这一对，妻子是亚美尼亚人，丈夫是阿塞拜疆人。 为了逃避屠杀，妻子带着女儿逃到莫斯科，等了丈夫足足七年。 丈夫冲破亲友重重阻隔要和妻子团圆，却被亲友质问：
“And where do you think you’re going?” “To be with my wife.” “You’re leaving us for our enemy. You’re no brother of ours. You’re not our son.”
读到我飙泪啊。
可是逃到了莫斯科的夫妻继续过着难民的生活。 “We’re not legally registered to live here … we have no rights … There are as many of us here as there are grains of sand in the desert … They escaped to Moscow, the capital of the USSR, only now it’s the capital of another country. You won’t find our nation anywhere on the map.”
啊，俄罗斯，仍旧在痛苦和罪孽中挣扎困顿的俄罗斯。 唯一的拯救是爱。 问到一位自劳改营活着回来的讲述者。
“How did you make it out of there alive?” “My parents loved me a lot when I was little.”
We’re saved by the amount of love we get, it’s our safety net. Yes … only love can save us. Love is a vitamin that humans can’t live without—the blood curdles, the heart stops.
我希望未来的俄罗斯文学更多一点爱，多很多很多的爱。
