What is *Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets* about?

*Secondhand Time* documents the collapse of the Soviet Union through hundreds of personal interviews, capturing raw emotions, ideological disillusionment, and the psychological toll of transitioning to capitalism. Svetlana Alexievich stitches together a "history of human feelings" from grief-stricken survivors, former communists, and ordinary citizens grappling with loss, identity, and shattered utopias.

Who should read *Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets*?

This book is essential for readers seeking to understand post-Soviet life beyond political analysis. Historians, sociologists, and fans of oral history will appreciate its unfiltered human narratives, while general audiences gain visceral insights into resilience, trauma, and the human cost of ideological shifts.

Is *Secondhand Time* worth reading?

Yes. Acclaimed as a "literary masterpiece" and compared to *War and Peace*, it won Alexievich the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. While emotionally heavy, its mosaic of voices offers unparalleled depth on Soviet collapse, making it a seminal work for understanding 20th-century history.

What are the main themes in *Secondhand Time*?

Key themes include: - **Loss of collective identity** after the USSR’s dissolution. - **Nostalgia for socialism** amid capitalist disillusionment. - **Intergenerational trauma** from political repression and war. - **The clash** between Soviet-era ideals and post-1991 realities.

What is Svetlana Alexievich’s writing style in *Secondhand Time*?

Alexievich uses a "documentary novel" approach, blending journalistic interviews with literary depth. Her polyphonic method prioritizes raw, unfiltered testimonies over narrative structure, creating a chorus of voices that reveal shared cultural trauma.

What criticism has *Secondhand Time* received?

Some critics note the repetitive, fragmented structure can feel overwhelming. Others argue its bleak tone lacks solutions, while defenders assert its power lies in unflinching honesty about suffering.

How does *Secondhand Time* explore Soviet nostalgia?

The book reveals paradoxical longing for the USSR’s stability and equality, even among those who suffered under it. Interviewees mourn lost social safety nets while acknowledging Stalinist horrors, illustrating complexity in post-Soviet identity.

What quotes define *Secondhand Time*?

Notable lines: - “We’d been raised to die, and now we had to learn how to live.” - “Freedom turned out to be a prison where you’re alone with yourself.” These encapsulate the disorientation and existential void after the Soviet fall.

Secondhand-Zeit

Svetlana Alexievich

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Überblick über Secondhand-Zeit

Die Nobelpreisträgerin Swetlana Alexijewitsch fängt tausende ungefilterte Stimmen aus dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion ein und erschafft so eine kaleidoskopische Zeitkapsel, die die offizielle Geschichtsschreibung infrage stellt. Über zwei Jahrzehnte hinweg offenbart diese tiefgreifende Oral History, wie gewöhnliche Menschen den gewaltigen Umbruch vom Kommunismus zum Kapitalismus erlebten – ihre Desillusionierung, ihren Stolz und unerwartete Wahrheiten.

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Kapitel 1

Voices from the Ruins: A Nation's Intimate Reckoning

"Secondhand Time" is a monumental work that has captivated readers worldwide since its publication, with figures from Barack Obama to Mikhail Gorbachev citing it as essential reading for understanding post-Soviet reality. Svetlana Alexievich, who received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for her groundbreaking "polyphonic writing," spent decades collecting these oral histories-creating what The New York Times called "a symphonic requiem for a dream." Through intimate testimonies of ordinary people, she captures the psychological aftermath of the Soviet collapse more powerfully than any traditional historical account. The book's brilliance lies in its radical honesty-these aren't sanitized narratives but raw confessions from people wrestling with the disorientation of seeing their entire worldview collapse overnight.

Kapitel 2

The Soviet Person: A Laboratory-Made Species

The book begins with Alexievich's profound examination of Homo sovieticus-a unique psychological type meticulously formed through decades in the "Marxist-Leninist laboratory." These people share not just a distinctive lexicon and heroes, but a complex relationship with death, having endured gulags, wars, mass deportations, and systematic state repression. Their collective trauma created a shared consciousness that manifested in both resilience and deep-seated fear. For the older generation who lived through Stalin's terror, freedom meant simply the absence of fear, crystallized in those three transformative days defeating the 1991 putsch. For their children, raised in the twilight of the Soviet era, freedom evolved to represent more abstract concepts: love, self-actualization, inner value, and the possibility of a normal life without ideological constraints. The Soviet kitchen became the heart of cultural resistance-those cramped nine-to-twelve-square-meter spaces in Khrushchyovka apartments transcended their physical limitations to function as dining rooms, philosophical salons, underground offices, and collective therapy spaces. While 19th century Russian culture flourished on sprawling aristocratic estates, 20th century culture found its sanctuary in these modest kitchens. It was here that perestroika truly took root, and 1960s dissident life flourished in whispered conversations. Thanks to Khrushchev's housing reform that provided private apartments, people could finally criticize the government without immediate fear of reprisal, surrounded by trusted friends and family. These kitchen gatherings became laboratories of free thought where Russians concocted revolutionary ideas, crafted biting political satire, and raised children on a diet of banned music and literature. Families would huddle around small radios, straining to hear illegal BBC broadcasts through the government jamming signals. Over endless cups of tea and bottles of vodka, they engaged in passionate discussions about politics, philosophy, the meaning of life, and dreams of universal happiness. Most participants were "kitchen dissidents"-masters of duality who perfected the art of leading double lives, outwardly conforming to Soviet expectations while privately maintaining their resistance, "fingers crossed behind our backs" in silent protest. The Russian soul, shaped by centuries of autocracy and collective experience, contains fundamental contradictions that continue to influence the nation's trajectory. Russians are eternal dreamers who tend to believe in magical intervention rather than sustained effort and methodical work. Their beloved folklore heroes-Ivanushka the Fool and Emelya-epitomize a cultural preference for good fortune without labor, wanting prosperity to materialize while metaphorically lying on the stove. Despite a deeply ingrained belief in Russian exceptionalism, their primary claim to greatness rests largely on vast natural resources rather than human achievement or innovation. They remain a nation of Oblomovs-dreamers waiting for miraculous transformation while harboring a complex mixture of envy and disdain for the industrious Stoltzes who build factories, create wealth, and embrace pragmatic progress.

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Kapitel 3

The Brief Euphoria of Freedom

The Gorbachev era began with radiant faces and freedom in the air. People devoured newspapers hungrily, running to rallies to learn truths about Stalin and the gulag. Many believed democracy would transform Russia into paradise. But most Russians weren't anti-Soviet-they simply wanted better lives with blue jeans, VCRs, and cars. For some, Gorbachev became a traitor-an American agent who stole their Motherland. Despite standing in lines for discolored chicken and rotting potatoes, they treasured their Soviet passports. "We used to be a civilization without rags and junk. The Soviet civilization!" Now they saw their country as merely a resource storehouse for Western powers. Others recall the era with nostalgia for its hope. University graduates who dreamed of academic careers found themselves becoming traders, carrying bags of light bulbs to Poland to survive. The former Party nomenklatura became the new business owners with mansions in Cyprus and Miami. Many reformers believe they "went home too early"-they should have stayed in the squares fighting for a Nuremberg trial for the Communist Party. Instead, "black marketeers and money changers took power." When tanks appeared outside Moscow apartments during the August 1991 putsch, citizens were shocked to find Swan Lake playing on TV and emergency announcements on the radio. The city split immediately-some feared retribution for hiding Lenin busts, others rushed to defend the White House. Young people pinned on Gorbachev buttons, made sandwiches, and headed to join the resistance. Outside, tanks were everywhere, manned by frightened young soldiers whom old ladies fed hardboiled eggs and bliny. At the White House, tens of thousands gathered in high spirits, chanting "Yeltsin!" Self-defense squadrons formed, accepting only the young, which upset older citizens: "The communists stole my life from me! Let me at least have a beautiful death!" Three days later, when the "kinder tanks" rolled out of Moscow, victory celebrations erupted with kissing and jubilation. But looking back years later, Russians remain divided about what actually happened. Some call it a holiday, others a tragedy.

Kapitel 4

From Ideas to Stuff: The Capitalist Revolution

After the Soviet collapse, Russian society froze in place, unsure where to go next. The country was suddenly covered in banks, billboards, and colorful consumer goods replacing the gray, ascetic Soviet products that "looked as if they had been manufactured in wartime." Libraries and theaters emptied while markets and stores flourished. Money, which had barely existed in Soviet life, suddenly became synonymous with freedom. The strongest and most aggressive citizens went into business. One entrepreneur described how he first sold coffee, then vacuum cleaners, all selling out immediately to a population desperate for consumer goods. "We were completely impoverished people. We had to relearn how to live from scratch." Instead of discussing Pasternak in kitchens, people focused on acquiring beautiful things-remodeling dachas, buying new furniture, learning to dress fashionably. The intelligentsia sold off their prized book collections-not just from poverty, but from disillusionment. "Russian novels don't teach you how to become successful. How to get rich... Oblomov lies on his couch, Chekhov's protagonists drink tea and complain about their lives." The famous orange-bound classics that once drove people mad now sat untouched on bookstore shelves. Murder became commonplace in post-Soviet Russia. People found bodies in their apartment courtyards and eventually stopped being shocked. "After Stalin, we have a different relationship to murder. We remember how our people had killed their own... It's stayed with us, it's part of our lives. We grew up among victims and executioners." One man explained why Stalin was never put on trial: "In order to condemn Stalin, you'd have to condemn your friends and relatives along with him." His own father was arrested in 1937 and returned after ten years in the camps, while his father's brother vanished forever. Years later, he discovered his father had been informed on by both their neighbor Yuri and by "beautiful Aunt Olga"-his uncle's niece. When confronted, the elderly Aunt Olga first recalled 1937 as "the happiest year of my life. I was in love." When pressed about her betrayal, she simply replied, "Show me an honest person who survived Stalin's time."

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Kapitel 5

The Impossible Choice: Great History or Normal Life

At beer stands across Russia, people from all walks of life gather to drink and philosophize about Russia's fate and communism. A self-described "drinking man" admits he drinks because "I don't like my life. I want to do an impossible somersault and, with the help of alcohol, transport myself to another place where everything is good and beautiful." The fundamental question emerges: "Where do I want to live, in a great country or a normal one?" Many express nostalgia for empire, finding post-Soviet life "boring" and "tedious." They argue that Russians need "something lofty and luminous" to believe in, as "empire and communism are ingrained in us." Under socialism, "the people were participating in History... living through something great." Others reject this romantic view: "Fucking shit! Look at us, we're so soulful, we're so special." One person wants to live in "a small country like Denmark. No nuclear weapons, no oil, no gas. So no one would ever hit me over the head with their pistol." Another remembers Soviet reality more starkly: "We used to live in a great country where we stood in line for toilet paper... I remember the smell of Soviet cafeterias and grocery stores all too well." A woman who was "90 percent Soviet" recalls her confusion during the market reforms of the 1990s. When economist Yegor Gaidar appeared on TV promoting capitalism-"You buy a bottle of mineral water on one corner and sell it on another-that's business"-she would "come home, lock the door, and weep." The reforms so frightened her mother that she suffered a stroke. Working at a perfume factory, she was paid in cosmetics instead of money. Russians' relationship with suffering emerges as a central theme: "We're always talking about suffering... That's our path to wisdom." One teacher contrasts this with Western attitudes: "People in the West seem naive to us because they don't suffer like we do, they have a remedy for every little pimple." When sharing these thoughts with students, they laugh: "We don't want to suffer. That's not what our lives are about."

Kapitel 6

Competing Narratives: The Battle for Memory

Elena Yurievna, a former high-ranking member of the communist nomenklatura, passionately defends socialism against its mounting critics in post-Soviet Russia. Speaking from her Moscow apartment filled with carefully preserved Soviet-era books and memorabilia, she feels unjustly silenced and criminalized by the new order, emphasizing repeatedly that she has "not a single drop of blood" on her hands. With the conviction of a historian, she argues that only future generations, removed from immediate emotional trauma, will write objectively about socialism, "without all the tears and obscenities," drawing a parallel to Heinrich Schliemann's methodical excavation of ancient Troy. The contrast between Moscow's increasingly European facade and the authentic Russia deeply troubles her. In provincial cities like Samara and Tolyatti, where factories stand idle and pensioners sell their possessions in street markets, people live in grinding poverty and direct their anger at the newly rich. These citizens, many former factory workers and engineers, feel doubly betrayed - first by the promise that socialism would merely be reformed, not dismantled, and then by their own participation in pro-democracy rallies. While they chanted "Yeltsin!" at demonstrations and celebrated the fall of the old regime, the country's factories, natural resources, and collective wealth were divided among a select few through privatization schemes they barely understood. Elena vividly recalls the early days of perestroika, when people's eyes "gleamed" with an almost religious anti-communist fervor. She describes witnessing entire libraries being purged - works by Gorky, Mayakovsky, and Lenin tossed into dumpsters like common trash. She would secretly rescue these books at night, preserving what others sought to destroy. With unmistakable pride, she declares her communist convictions remained unchanged, unlike many former party members who transformed overnight into "ultra-democrats" or "religious liberals," adapting their ideology to the changing political winds with remarkable flexibility. In stark contrast, Anna Ilinichna captures the electric atmosphere of perestroika from the perspective of the reformers. She describes how people voted with their hearts rather than reason, experiencing freedom like a rush of fresh air after being trapped in a stuck elevator. When her French friend, puzzled by the seemingly directionless enthusiasm, asked what all this energy was for, she could only respond with the raw emotion of the moment: "The energy is pulsing, and that's it." The period was marked by an unprecedented political awakening - people walked their dogs with transistor radios pressed to their ears, television sets remained on constantly for breaking news, and entire families would abandon dinner to watch live Congress speeches. They admired Anatoly Sobchak's confident European style with his Italian silk tie, drew inspiration from Andrei Sakharov's principled stands at the podium, and took pride in Raisa Gorbacheva's elegant appearance at international summits - "the first time we'd ever seen the wife of a general secretary we didn't have to be embarrassed of." This obsession with politics transformed everyday life into a continuous public forum, where taxi drivers debated constitutional law and schoolteachers analyzed economic reforms.

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Kapitel 7

The Cost of Empire: Personal Tragedies

The human toll of the Soviet collapse emerges in countless personal tragedies, each story revealing the profound sacrifices made in service of the communist dream. Marina's brutal labor experiences epitomize the harsh realities faced by millions: felling massive timber in freezing conditions, dragging hundred-pound railway ties across endless tracks, and working at remote communist construction sites in the depths of Siberia. They traveled like cattle in unheated freight cars with no basic comforts, using "your fist for a pillow," their voices growing hoarse from singing mandatory Komsomol songs that celebrated their supposed voluntary sacrifice. Life in the taiga tested human endurance to its limits. Workers suffered from debilitating scurvy due to vitamin deficiency, their bodies covered in lice while struggling to fulfill impossible production quotas. Their diet consisted almost entirely of bland kasha (buckwheat porridge), with occasional fresh meat only when the male workers successfully hunted bear or other wild game. The constant hunger became a faithful companion, as normal as breathing. Marina's brush with imprisonment for oversleeping at the brick factory illustrates the system's ruthlessness. Women were expected to manually process thousands of heavy bricks per shift, their hands cracking and bleeding from the rough clay. The slightest infractions could result in years in the gulag. After Stalin's death in 1953, she noticed a palpable change: "people started smiling again; before that, they lived carefully" - a euphemism for the constant fear that dominated daily life. Now, looking back at their decades of sacrifice, she feels a deep sense of betrayal: "Everything burned down to the ground! Our whole life..." The doctor Margarita's reflections capture the complex psychology of Soviet citizens. "We were poor but never knew it," she explains, describing their make-do existence with cheap pencil cases, canvas shoes they brightened with tooth powder, and rubber boots that froze their feet in winter. Yet they maintained an almost religious faith that tomorrow would bring the communist paradise they were promised. Her greatest aspiration was self-sacrifice for the collective good - a sentiment that seems almost incomprehensible in today's individualistic world. When joining the Communist Party, Margarita wrote with complete sincerity: "I am prepared to devote all my energy, and if necessary, give my life to my Motherland." The depth of this commitment makes today's mockery particularly painful - people now dismissively label her generation as "sovok" (Soviet trash), simple-minded dupes who believed in a failed utopia. The moment of Yuri Gagarin's space flight captures both the heights of Soviet achievement and the genuine collective pride it inspired. Strangers spontaneously embraced in the streets, crying "We're the first!" with tears of joy. It was a rare moment when the promise of Soviet superiority felt real and tangible. "I don't feel sorry for myself," Margarita concludes with dignity, "I feel bad for everything we used to love" - a sentiment that encapsulates the loss not just of a political system, but of an entire way of life and set of beliefs that gave meaning to millions of lives.

Kapitel 8

The Lonely Red Marshal: A Symbol of Lost Faith

The tragedy of Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev-who committed suicide after the failed August 1991 coup-powerfully symbolizes the devastating collapse of Soviet ideals and the end of an era. On August 24, 1991, Kremlin security officers discovered him hanging in his office, a decorated military leader reduced to a final desperate act. Five meticulously handwritten notes were found, each revealing different facets of his tormented final hours: one addressed to his family explaining his decision to end his life, another making practical requests for his funeral arrangements, a third containing money to settle a modest cafeteria debt (highlighting his characteristic attention to detail even in death), a fourth containing his famous declaration "I cannot go on living while my Fatherland is dying," and a fifth note describing an unsuccessful first suicide attempt. A high-ranking Kremlin insider who knew Akhromeyev well portrays him as "an idealist, a romantic communist" who steadfastly "believed in the 'glittering peaks of communism'" until the very end. Unlike many party pragmatists who adapted to changing times, Akhromeyev "thought that communism was forever." This same witness vividly describes the paranoid atmosphere that gripped Communist officials in the coup's aftermath-senior Party members hastily abandoning their offices, stuffing personal belongings into plastic bags, seeking refuge in relatives' apartments, and living in constant fear of facing violent reprisals similar to those seen in Romania against the Ceausescu regime. For Akhromeyev, watching "young predators" of nascent Russian capitalism replace the portraits of Marx and Lenin with symbols of Western materialism was unbearable. His position as the only presidential advisor who openly supported the coup plotters left him isolated and expecting arrest after their detention. The witness strongly refutes various conspiracy theories about Akhromeyev's death, maintaining that the Marshal simply couldn't reconcile himself to seeing Soviet achievements-"the great industrialization, the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the space program"-being "stamped underfoot" by the new order. His lament for lost Soviet greatness was captured in his bitter observation: "Where is our great country? The way we are now, we'd never triumph over anyone. Gagarin wouldn't have even gotten off the ground." The final indignity came after death. Akhromeyev's funeral was notably sparse, with former colleagues conspicuously absent and no traditional military salute to honor his decades of service. In a grotesque epilogue that seemed to confirm his worst fears about the new Russia, his grave was later desecrated by opportunistic thieves who stole his marshal's uniform and military medals to sell on the black market-a final symbolic transformation of Soviet glory into mere commercial commodity.

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Kapitel 9

Love and Suffering in the New Russia

The book's most poignant stories involve ordinary people trying to find meaning in post-Soviet chaos. Olga Karimova recounts her love affair with Gleb, who had spent twelve years in Stalin's camps. Despite his being "awkward, practically blind, chronically short of breath," they connected deeply. People would ask, "Is that your grandpa?" He'd been imprisoned at sixteen; his father executed, his mother frozen to death "somewhere far away, off in the snows." His camp experiences haunted him-eating all bread methodically because "it's your ration," watching teachers make students draw prison bars over purged officials' portraits in textbooks, seeing Leningrad Blockade survivors imprisoned for keeping dead relatives' bread cards. Russians "love to suffer"-it's "the trick of the Russian soul." Unlike Italians who enjoy life, Russians rarely talk about joy. During perestroika, Gleb was elated: "I lived to see the total victory of anticommunism." When diagnosed with cancer, he was "yellow and very happy"-"Death was just another change of circumstances." His last request: "Write that I was a happy man on my tombstone. That I was loved. The most terrible torment is not being loved." In post-Soviet Russia, ethnic tensions erupted violently. An Armenian woman from Baku recalls: "Before the troubles, Baku was paradise with Azerbaijanis, Russians, Armenians living as one family, celebrating together with doors unlocked." But in 1988, everything changed. People gathered on squares dressed in black, dancing with knives. Armenian and Azerbaijani girls suddenly sat at separate tables. When violence erupted, she was hidden in attics while her Azerbaijani husband was beaten for "living with the enemy." During the bloodbath in Baku, she hid pregnant in an attic at her Azerbaijani friend's home. Through a crack, she saw only a thin ribbon of sky. She heard horrific stories-old Lazar beaten in the street, families murdered, a young girl shot from a tree "like a little bird."

Kapitel 10

The Charms of Emptiness: Finding Meaning After Ideology

The book's second part explores how Russians navigate a world without the familiar structures and beliefs that once defined their existence. Through fragmented dialogues and overheard exchanges, it documents how ordinary citizens processed their changing reality, revealing the persistent echoes of Soviet thinking alongside emerging capitalist values. Russians describe the Putin era in contradictory terms: "Overcast...gray...brutal...Chekist...glamorous...stable...sovereign...Russian Orthodox." Many express imperial pride, with one declaring, "Russia is, has always been, and will always be an empire" with "our own path." They boast of Russia's natural resources while debating whether capitalism can truly take root in Russian soil. Some celebrate Putin ("Putin is my president!") while others lament that Russia ended up "in a place that's even more terrifying than the one we came from." Many blame not leaders but Russians themselves: "Our problem isn't Yeltsin or Putin, the problem is that we're slaves. Our slavish little souls!" They argue that capitalism fails because "the Russian man isn't rational or mercantile" but rather "elemental, more of a watcher than a doer" who "wants to participate in some great undertaking." An ordinary woman reflects on her unchanged life through Soviet collapse: "What have I really lost? I've always lived in the same little house without any amenities... All I had to eat was macaroni and potatoes, and that's all I eat today." Political changes mean nothing to her daily existence: "Whether it's socialism or capitalism. Who's Red, who's White-it makes no difference. The important thing is to make it to spring. Plant potatoes..." Alexievich's genius lies in letting these voices speak for themselves, creating a polyphonic chorus that captures the full complexity of the Soviet collapse. Through these intimate testimonies, we understand not just what happened, but how it felt-the disorientation, the nostalgia, the betrayal, and the tentative hope of a people caught between two worlds, living in what she calls "secondhand time."

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Kernthemen in Secondhand-Zeit

soviet psychological legacy
post-communist transition trauma
oral history narratives
homo sovieticus identity
failed democratic euphoria

Zitate aus Secondhand-Zeit

The Soviet civilization!
Black marketeers and money changers took power.
We had to relearn how to live from scratch.
The communists stole my life from me!
Money...suddenly became synonymous with freedom.

Personen in Secondhand-Zeit

Svetlana AlexievichAuthor and Nobel Prize-winning oral historian
Mikhail GorbachevSoviet leader whose reforms led to the collapse
Boris YeltsinPolitical figure and leader of the resistance

Über den Autor

Svetlana Alexievich, die mit dem Nobelpreis ausgezeichnete Autorin von Secondhand-Zeit, ist eine belarussische investigative Journalistin und Oral-Historikerin, die für ihre wegweisenden Dokumentarromane über das sowjetische und postsowjetische Leben bekannt ist.

Geboren 1948 in der Ukraine als Tochter eines belarussischen Militärangehörigen und einer ukrainischen Lehrerin, studierte sie Journalismus an der Universität Minsk. Später entwickelte sie ihren charakteristischen „polyphonen“ Stil – eine Verflechtung von Augenzeugenberichten aus erster Hand, um kollektive Traumata festzuhalten.

Secondhand-Zeit, ihre Untersuchung des Zusammenbruchs des Kommunismus und seiner menschlichen Folgen, setzt ihren Zyklus „Stimmen der Utopie“ fort und reiht sich ein in gefeierte Werke wie Tschernobyl. Eine Chronik der Zukunft (ein erschütternder Bericht über die Nuklearkatastrophe) und Der Krieg hat kein weibliches Gesicht (eine Untersuchung der Erfahrungen sowjetischer Frauen im Zweiten Weltkrieg).

Ihre Bücher, die in Belarus während der Sowjetära wegen ihrer schonungslosen Kritik verboten waren, wurden in über 40 Sprachen übersetzt. In der Begründung für den Nobelpreis für Literatur 2015 wurden Alexievichs Werke als „ein Denkmal des Leidens und des Mut“ gewürdigt, was ihr globales Vermächtnis als Chronistin des historischen Gedächtnisses festigte.

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@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

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"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

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"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

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"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

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483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

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"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

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"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

@Chloe, Solo founder, LA

117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

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"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

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@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

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"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

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483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

Erfahren Sie mehr darüber, wie BeFreed im Web diskutiert wird

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Kapitel 6

Secondhand-Zeit

ÜberblickÜberblick über Secondhand-Zeit

Ein Buch. Viele Arten, es zu hören.

Voices from the Ruins: A Nation's Intimate Reckoning

The Soviet Person: A Laboratory-Made Species

Sieh jedes Wort, während du es hörst

The Brief Euphoria of Freedom

From Ideas to Stuff: The Capitalist Revolution

Hol mehr aus Secondhand-Zeit heraus

The Impossible Choice: Great History or Normal Life

Competing Narratives: The Battle for Memory

Sieh jedes Wort, während du es hörst

The Cost of Empire: Personal Tragedies

The Lonely Red Marshal: A Symbol of Lost Faith

Hol mehr aus Secondhand-Zeit heraus

Love and Suffering in the New Russia

The Charms of Emptiness: Finding Meaning After Ideology

Du bist am Ende von Secondhand-Zeit angekommen

Kernthemen in Secondhand-Zeit

Zitate aus Secondhand-Zeit

Personen in Secondhand-Zeit

Über den Autor

Zusammenfassung von Secondhand-Zeit herunterladen

Nutzern gefiel auch

FAQ zu diesem Buch

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Who should read Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets?

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Teil eines Lernplans

Communism

Local historical records

Mehr entdecken

1,000,000+ curious minds.

1,000,000+ curious minds.

Ein Buch. Viele Arten, es zu hören.

Voices from the Ruins: A Nation's Intimate Reckoning

The Soviet Person: A Laboratory-Made Species

Sieh jedes Wort, während du es hörst

The Brief Euphoria of Freedom

From Ideas to Stuff: The Capitalist Revolution

Hol mehr aus Secondhand-Zeit heraus

The Impossible Choice: Great History or Normal Life

Competing Narratives: The Battle for Memory

Sieh jedes Wort, während du es hörst

The Cost of Empire: Personal Tragedies

The Lonely Red Marshal: A Symbol of Lost Faith

Hol mehr aus Secondhand-Zeit heraus

Love and Suffering in the New Russia

The Charms of Emptiness: Finding Meaning After Ideology

Du bist am Ende von Secondhand-Zeit angekommen

Nutzern gefiel auch

Teil eines Lernplans

Communism

Local historical records

Mehr entdecken

Überblick über Secondhand-Zeit