The final, fifth book of the famous artistic and documentary cycle “Voices of Utopia” by Svetlana Alexievich, laureate of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her many-voiced creativity — a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”

“Communism had a crazy plan,” the author says, “to remake the “old” man, the aged Adam. And it succeeded… perhaps the only thing that succeeded. Over seventy-plus years, a special human type has been bred in the laboratory of Marxism-Leninism — homo soveticus. Some believe that this is a tragic character, others call him a “scoop.” It seems to me that I know this man, he is well known to me, I am next to him, shoulder to shoulder, I have lived for many years. He is me. These are my acquaintances, parents, friends.” Socialism is over. And we are left.

On February 24, 2022, the war in Ukraine began. We realized that we were naive in thinking about the end of the communist idea and the “red man”.

Today the “red man” is bombing Kharkov, Kiev…

Translated from Russian by Ekaterina Matievskaya.