Belarus Nobel Prize laureate disillusioned with Communism, scared of resurgent fascism (video)
Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, answered questions of journalists in Stockholm on Sunday.
What is the difference between Svetlana Alexievich of the period of War’s Unwomanly Face and Svetlana Alexievich of Second-hand time?
[When I was writing War’s Unwomanly Face] I was young, and it took me time to get rid of communist illusions. The recent book Second-hand time was written by a human being who is free of illusion. And now it is more difficult for me to believe in the person, in the future. I still believe, but not blindly.
To perceive personal stories is hard. How did you cope with it?
I cannot agree with you. My sister died of cancer. I spent a lot of time in the hospital [with her] and saw what doctors, especially pediatric surgeons, experienced. And then I said to myself that I would never say that my work is heavier than theirs. I saw a nun praying frantically, and also thought that I never prayed more than she did.
You wrote about women and their role in the Second World War, about soldiers in Afghanistan. Now we see Russian military in Ukraine and Syria. Do you thinking about the Third World War? What do you think about the situation?
My friends, who managed to keep an adequate attitude to reality in post-Soviet countries, mainly read memories [of those who lived] before the revolution of 1917 and books about the 1930s in Germany, i.e. about fascism in our lives. That is the feeling which I also live with.
Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist and prose writer. She wrote narratives from interviews with witnesses to the most dramatic events in the country, such as World War II, Soviet-Afghan war, fall of the Soviet Union, and Chernobyl disaster.
Her first book War’s Unwomanly Face came out in 1985. It was repeatedly reprinted and sold out in more than two million copies. This novel is made up of monologues of women in the war speaking about the aspects of World War II that had never been related before.
Her most notable works in English translation are about first-hand accounts from the war in Afghanistan (Zinky Boys) and a highly praised oral history of the Chernobyl disaster (Voices from Chernobyl).
in 2000 Alexievich became the target of the Lukashenka regime: she was accused of collaborating with US intelligence agencies, her phone was tapped, and her works were no longer published.
