Niewolnicy wolności (Swietłana Aleksijewicz, Czasy secondhand. Koniec czerwonego człowieka) .......... 101

THE SLAVES OF FREEDOM
(Svetlana Alekhsyevitch, Times of Secondhand. The End of a Red Man)

According to Svetlana Alekhsyevitch, the main aim of the October Revolution in Russia was a utopian experiment connected with the creation of a new kind of man called homo sovieticus or, as the reporter writes – a red man. In her book, Alekhsyevitch compares two „different” times: the past (the October revolution, the Great Terror, the Second World War, the „thaw”, Brezhnyev’s stagnation, the collapse of the USSR) and the present: the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. She concentrates first of all on changes in human personality which were caused by terror, repressions, censorship and obstacles in every sphere of life. Although there are no concentration camps any longer, the remains of communism exist all the time. People are not able to change and there is nobody who can help them. The former Soviet human creatures have to find a solution to their numerous problems on their own. They should learn what freedom is and in what way one can use it. Now it is possible because people regained independence but they do not know what to do with it. It would be a good idea to focus on universal values included in religion and the truth and the value of work, which were supposed to disappear after the October Revolution. Alekhsyevitch emphasizes that those terrible events must not be repeated. She believes that the Russians will manage to „rebuild” their natural, traditional lifestyle and in this way they will be able to live as free, independent people who are not governed by ideology.