The suicide of the Soviet Union,Brexit and Svetlana Alexievich’s ‘Secondhand time’

Abstract

Spurred by Literature Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s empathic reports in Secondhand time: The last of the Soviets—An Oral History (2016b), the authors reflect on the dynamics of suicide and self-harm at individual and communal and national levels. Themes explored in relation to two of Alexievich’s individual cases of suicide, the demise of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union itself, as well as the result of the Brexit referendum, include feelings of hopelessness, fantasies and experiences of transcendence and the will to control. The necessity of a pluralistic perspective and the possibility of complementary or alternative understandings of Alexievich’s accounts and the people and events discussed in this article are acknowledged.