{"id":15669,"date":"2017-07-09T12:54:28","date_gmt":"2017-07-09T16:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=15669"},"modified":"2017-07-09T12:54:28","modified_gmt":"2017-07-09T16:54:28","slug":"relations-between-the-sexes-after-the-transition-from-socialism-to-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/09\/relations-between-the-sexes-after-the-transition-from-socialism-to-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Relations between the sexes after the transition from socialism to capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Nobel laureate\u00a0Svetlana Alexievich’s\u00a0Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Love? That\u2019s not even an option\u2026 I\u2019m not against all that happy shiny stuff, but you\u2019re probably the first person to say that word to me in ten years. It\u2019s the twenty-first century: It\u2019s all about money, sex, and two smoking barrels, and here you are talking about feelings\u2026 Everyone finally got their hands on some dough, for the first time ever\u2026 I was in no hurry to get married, have kids, I\u2019ve always put my career first. I value myself, my time, and my life. And where did you ever get the idea that men are looking for love? Ooh, love\u2026 Men consider women game, war trophies, prey, and themselves hunters. Those are the rules that have been developed over the course of centuries. And women aren\u2019t looking for their knight in shining armor to come galloping in on a white horse\u2014they want him on a sack of gold. A knight of indeterminate age\u2026 even a \u201cdaddy\u201d will do\u2026 So what? Money rules the world! But I\u2019m no prey, I\u2019m a huntress myself\u2026 I came to Moscow ten years ago. I was wild, fired up, I told myself that I was born to be happy, that only the weak suffer, and modesty is nothing but adornment for the weak. I\u2019m from Rostov\u2026 My parents work at a school, my father\u2019s a chemist, and my mother\u2019s a Russian language and literature teacher. They got married when they were in college, my father only owned one decent suit but had more than his share of ideas. Back then, that was enough to make a young girl swoon. They still love to remember how, for ages, they got by with one set of linens, one pillow, and one pair of slippers. They\u2019d spend their nights reciting Pasternak\u2014they knew it all by heart! \u201cAnywhere is heaven with the one you love!\u201d \u201cUntil the first frosts,\u201d I\u2019d laugh. \u201cYou have no imagination,\u201d my mother would reply, hurt. We were your typical Soviet family: For breakfast, it was always buckwheat or noodles with butter; we only had oranges once a year, on New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n

It took a long time for people like my parents to realize that capitalism had already begun in earnest. Russian capitalism, young and thick-skinned, the same beast that had been put down in 1917\u2026[ She falls into thought.] Do they understand it today? It\u2019s hard to say\u2026 There\u2019s one thing I know for sure: Capitalism was not what my parents ordered. No two ways about it. It\u2019s what I ordered, it\u2019s made for people like me, who didn\u2019t want to stay in the cage. The young and the strong.<\/p>\n

I was looking up\u2026 to the top of the tall ladder of life\u2026 I never dreamed of being fucked in stairwells or saunas in exchange for expensive dinners. I had a lot of admirers\u2026 I didn\u2019t pay any attention to my peers\u2014we could be friends, go to the library together. It was unserious and safe. I preferred older, more successful men who had already made it. They were interesting, fun, and useful.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when I met him\u2026 You could say that I loved him. This sounds like a confession, doesn\u2019t it? [She laughs.] He was twenty years older than me, married with two sons. A jealous wife. He lived under a microscope\u2026\u00a0Now I see that love is also a kind of business, everyone is taking their own measure of risk. You have to be ready for new configurations\u2014always! These days, few people go weak in the knees for love. Everyone saves their strength for the leap forward! For their career! In our smoking room, the girls gossip about their love lives, and if any of them has real feelings, everyone feels sorry for her\u2014like, what an idiot, she\u2019s head over heels.<\/p>\n

Loneliness is freedom\u2026 Now, every day, I\u2019m happy I\u2019m free: Will he call or won\u2019t he, will he come over or not? Is he going to dump me? Spare me! Those aren\u2019t my problems anymore! So no, I\u2019m not afraid of loneliness\u2026 What am I afraid of? I\u2019m afraid of the dentist! [She suddenly loses control.] People always lie when they talk about love\u2026 and money\u2026 They\u2019re always lying in so many different ways. I don\u2019t want to lie\u2026 I just don\u2019t!<\/p>\n

The plot? A tale as old as time\u2026 I wanted to have his baby, I got pregnant\u2026 Maybe it scared him? Men are such cowards! Whether they\u2019re bums or oligarchs\u2014makes no difference. They\u2019ll go to war, start a revolution, but when it comes to love, they\u2019re traitors.<\/p>\n

I am filled with horror when I consider how hard you have to work to keep someone in your life. It\u2019s like breaking rocks at a quarry! You have to forget about yourself, reject yourself, liberate yourself from yourself. There is no freedom in love. Even if you find your ideal partner, he\u2019ll wear the wrong cologne, he\u2019ll like fried meat and mock you for your little salads, leave his socks and pants all over the place. And you always have to suffer. Suffer?! For love\u2026 for that harmony\u2026 I don\u2019t want to do that work anymore, it\u2019s easier for me to rely on myself.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never be able to fall in love with a man from a dormitory town who doesn\u2019t have any money. From a prefab ghetto, from Harlem. I hate people who grew up in poverty, their pauper\u2019s mentality; money means so much to them, you can\u2019t trust them. I don\u2019t like the poor, the insulted and the humiliated.<\/p>\n

The whole ride home, he lectured me on common sense: \u201cIt\u2019s all bullshit! Nothing but idiocy! In 1991, I was a student in Moscow, I also ran around to demonstrations. There were more of us than there are of you. And we won. We dreamed that every one of us would start a business and get rich. And what do you think happened? When the Communists were in power, I was an engineer\u2014now I\u2019m a cabbie. We chased out one group of bastards, and another group of bastards took their place. Black, gray, or orange, they\u2019re all the same. In our country, power will corrupt anyone. I\u2019m a realist. The only things I believe in are myself and my family. While the newest round of idiots tries to usher in the latest revolution, I just keep my nose to the grindstone. This month, I need to make enough money to buy my daughters new coats, and next month, my wife needs boots. You\u2019re a pretty girl. You\u2019d be better off finding yourself a good man and getting married.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More: read\u00a0Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Nobel laureate\u00a0Svetlana Alexievich’s\u00a0Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets: Love? That\u2019s not even an option\u2026 I\u2019m not against all that happy shiny stuff, but you\u2019re probably the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRelations between the sexes after the transition from socialism to capitalism - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/09\/relations-between-the-sexes-after-the-transition-from-socialism-to-capitalism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Relations between the sexes after the transition from socialism to capitalism - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From Nobel laureate\u00a0Svetlana Alexievich’s\u00a0Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets: Love? 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