[b]Svetlana Alexievich
I remembered some lines from the papers: our nuclear stations are absolutely safe, we could build one on Red Square, they’re safer than samovars. They’re like stars and we’ll “light” the whole earth with them.[/b]
Samovar: a heated metal container traditionally used to heat and boil water in Russia.
We were told that we had to win. Against whom? The atom? Physics? The universe?
Of course we were told the same thing here.
There’s a note on the door: “Dear kind person, Please don’t look for valuables here. We never had any. Use whatever you want, but don’t trash the place. We’ll be back.” I saw signs on other houses in different colors—“Dear house, forgive us!” People said goodbye to their homes like they were people. Or they’d written: “we’re leaving in the morning,” or, “we’re leaving at night,” and they’d put the date and even the time. There were notes written on school notebook paper: “Don’t beat the cat. Otherwise the rats will eat everything.” And then in a child’s handwriting: “Don’t kill our Zhulka. She’s a good cat.”
The fucking human condition. If only one tiny speck of it.
That’s where perestroika really took place. 1960s dissident life is the kitchen life. Thanks, Khrushchev! He’s the one who led us out of the communal apartments; under his rule, we got our own private kitchens where we could criticize the government and, most importantly, not be afraid, because in the kitchen you were always among friends.
I guess you had to be there.
The mechanism of evil will work under conditions of apocalypse, also. That’s what I understood. Man will gossip, and kiss up to the bosses, and save his television and ugly fur coat. And people will be the same until the end of time. Always.
That can’t be good.
Sometimes I get strange thoughts, sometimes I think Chernobyl saved me, forced me to think.
Either the best or the worst of all possible ironies.