Hearing the Post-Soviet Soul: The Relational Poetics of Listening in Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Abstract: This article examines Svetlana Alexievich's self-portrayal as a listening narrator in Secondhand Time . Drawing on theories of relational subjectivity, I demonstrate how the encounter between listening and narrating subjects in Alexievich's work frames the post-socialist transition not only as a political and economic crisis, but also as a rupture in interpersonal bonds that destabilizes the very foundations of post-Soviet self-formation. I argue that through her self-narration as a listener, Alexievich invokes the conventions of the Russian soul-baring conversation as a reparative form, reconstructing interpersonal connection between post-socialist subjects. The article thus demonstrates how post-socialist life writing can function as an aesthetic and cultural practice for restoring relationality and self-continuity in the aftermath of socialism's collapse. This article is based on a chapter from the author's RMA Thesis "Intimacies in Transition: The Formation of Post-socialist Subjectivity in Life Narratives from Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine" conducted at Utrecht University.