Svetlana Alexievich: Voice of the Oppressed People

Abstract

Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel laureate for literature, has interviewed hundreds, if not thousands, of people for her books. When she talks about her mission as a writer, she roots herself in the lived experiences of her interviewees, and one gets the feeling that she truly recalls every one of them. An escape from history seems impossible for 2015 Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich. After chronicling the Soviet Union through her “documentary novels,” her own genre often mistaken for oral history, since 1985, she had begun working on two new books, one on love and another on aging and death. She saw these topics as an opportunity for something different, untethered to the history of what she calls the “Red Person” in the former Soviet Union. Alexievich called the war in Ukraine an indication that the former communist mentality among many people in Russia and Belarus has not been eradicated. As Alexievich said, "Now we see that we were so naive and romantic in times of 'perestroika,'" Alexievich said. "We thought and kept saying that people were disappointed with communism, that we managed to deal with it with a peaceful revolution. Now, it turns out that we did not overcome communism. We never prevailed." Alexievich has defined the main thrust of her life and her writings thusly: “I always aim to understand how much humanity is contained in each human being, and how I can protect this humanity in a person.”