Svetlana Aleksandrovna Alexievich (1948) - Soviet and Belarusian writer, journalist, documentary film screenwriter. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2015.

Svetlana Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948 in the city of Stanislav, Western Ukraine (now Ivano-Frankivsk). Her mother was Ukrainian, and her father was Belarusian. Svetlana spent her entire childhood in a village in the Vinnytsia region. Later they moved to Belarus. Her paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather died at the front, and two of Svetlana’s father’s brothers went missing during the war. Her father was the only one who returned from the front. Svetlana Alexievich's parents were teachers in a rural school.

Svetlana graduated from school in the village of Kopatkevichi, Petrikovsky district, Gomel region in 1965.

Journalistic activity

The journalistic biography of Svetlana Alexievich begins in 1972, after graduating from university (BSU, Faculty of Journalism), when she became an employee of the regional newspaper "Mayak Communism" in the Brest region. From 1973 to 1976, he worked as a journalist in the Belarusian Selskaya Gazeta, and from 1976 to 1984, as the head of the essay and journalism department of the Neman magazine.

Creation

Svetlana Alexievich writes in the genre of artistic and documentary prose. She calls Ales Adamovich and Vasil Bykov her teachers. All of Alexievich's books are based on in-depth interviews with people who experienced some difficult event or with their surviving relatives.

Svetlana Alexievich's first book, “I Left the Village,” was prepared for publication in 1976. The book was a collection of monologues by residents of a Belarusian village who moved to the city. However, this book was never published; on the instructions of the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the BSSR, the book was scattered. The writer was accused of criticizing the strict passport regime and “misunderstanding the agrarian policy” of the party. Later, Alexievich herself considered her work too “journalistic” and refused publication.

Since 1983 - member of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

In 1983, a documentary story was written based on interviews with Soviet women who participated in the Great Patriotic War, “War Has No woman's face", which brought Alexievich fame. In 1985, the story was published, it was the first published book by Svetlana Alexievich.

Alexievich’s books form a cycle, which she herself defines as a “chronicle of the Great Utopia” or the story of the “red man.”

The most famous were her books in the genre of artistic and documentary prose “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face”, “Zinc Boys”, “Chernobyl Prayer”, “Second-Hand Time”. Alexievich’s works are dedicated to the life of the late USSR and the post-Soviet era, imbued with feelings of compassion and humanism.

Documentary films based on scripts by Svetlana Alexievich.

“Difficult Conversations” (Belarusfilm, 1979), director Richard Yasinsky
“War does not have a woman’s face” (together with Viktor Dashuk) - a series of seven documentary television films (1981-1984, Belarusfilm), directed by Viktor Dashuk. “Parental Home” - (Belarusian Television, 1982), director Viktor Shevelevich
“Portrait with Dahlias” - (Belarusian Television, 1984), director Valery Basov
“Soldiers” - (Belarusian television, 1985), director Valery Basov
“I’m talking about my time” - (Belarusian television, 1987), director Valery Zhigalko
“The past is yet to come” - (Belarusian television, 1988), director Valery Zhigalko
“These Strange Old People” (Belarusfilm, 1988), director Joseph Pickman
Cycle “From the Abyss” (script together with Marina Goldovskaya), director Marina Goldovskaya (OKO-media, Austria-Russia)
"Men of War" (1990)
"People of the Siege" (1990)
Afghan cycle - documentaries based on the book “Zinc Boys” (script together with Sergei Lukyanchikov), director Sergei Lukyanchikov, Belarusfilm
"Shame" (1991)
“I’m out of control” (1992)
“Cross” - (1994, Russia). Director Gennady Gorodny
"Children of war. The Last Witnesses", directed by Alexey Kitaytsev, script by Lyudmila Romanenko based on the book "The Last Witnesses". Svetlana Alexievich takes part in the film. MB Group Studio, Moscow, 2009. The film was awarded a special prize Open competition documentary film “Man and War” (Ekaterinburg, 2011).
Films based on books by Svetlana Alexievich
"On the Ruins of Utopia" (1999, Germany)
"Russia. Story little man"(2000, NHK, Japan), directed by Hideya Kamakura.
“The Door” (Ireland, 2008), directed by Juanita Wilson, is a short film based on the book “The Chernobyl Prayer.”
“Voices of Chernobyl” is a dramatic film based on the book “Chernobyl Prayer.”

Theater productions

Performance based on the book “Chernobyl Prayer”, Geneva, 2009

Living and working abroad

Starts from 2000 to 2013 new stage in the biography of Svetlana Alexievich: she moves to Italy, later lives and works on her books in France and Germany. In 2013, she returned to her homeland again and currently lives in Belarus.

Among the numerous awards, orders and prizes of Svetlana Alexievich are the Order of the Badge of Honor (USSR, 1984), the Nikolai Ostrovsky Literary Prize of the Union of Writers of the USSR (1984), the Leipzig Book Prize for contribution to European understanding, the Officer's Cross of the Order of Arts and Letters (France) , 2014). She was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (2015) - “for her polyphonic work - a monument to suffering and courage in our time”

Books by Svetlana Alexievich as documentary prose, literary journalism, documentary monologues, oratorio novels, reportage, testimonial novels. The writer herself defines the genre in which she writes as “the history of feelings.”

Svetlana Alexievich's books have been translated into English, German, Polish, French, Swedish, Chinese, Norwegian and other languages. The total circulation of foreign editions of the Chernobyl Prayer amounted to more than 4 million copies.

Soviet and Belarusian writer, journalist. Writes in Russian. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2015.

The most famous were her books in the genre of artistic and documentary prose “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face”, “Zinc Boys”, “Chernobyl Prayer”, “Second-Hand Time”. Alexievich’s works are dedicated to the life of the late USSR and the post-Soviet era, imbued with feelings of suffering and humanism

Svetlana Alexievich was born in the western Ukrainian city of Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine). Father is Belarusian, mother is Ukrainian. Later the family moved to Belarus. In 1965 she graduated from high school in Kopatkevichi, Petrikovsky district, Gomel region. She worked as a teacher, history and German language teacher in schools in the Mozyr region, and as a journalist for the newspaper “Pripyatskaya Prauda” (“Pripyatskaya Pravda”) in Narovlya. In 1972, she graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of BSU and began working at Mayak Communism, a regional newspaper in Bereza, Brest Region. In 1973-1976 she worked at Selskaya Gazeta, in 1976-1984 she was the head of the essay and journalism department of the Neman magazine. In 1983 she was admitted to the USSR Writers' Union.

Since the early 2000s, she lived in Italy, France, and Germany. Since 2013, he has been living in Belarus again. Alexievich names Ales Adamovich and Vasil Bykov among his teachers. The poet Vladimir Neklyaev said that if all Russian literature came from Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” then all of Alexievich’s work came from the documentary book “I am from the fiery village” by Ales Adamovich, Yanka Bryl and Vladimir Kolesnik.

Alexievich’s first book, “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face,” was written in 1983. This documentary story, based on records of stories of women who participated in the Great Patriotic War, was first published in the magazine “October” at the beginning of 1984 (in a magazine version), several more chapters were published in the same year in the magazine “Nyoman”. Soviet critics accused the author of pacifism, naturalism and debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman. In 1985, the book was published as a separate edition simultaneously in several publishing houses, the total circulation by the end of the 1980s reached 2 million copies.

Some critics call Alexievich “a brilliant master of artistic and documentary prose,” while others characterize Alexievich’s work as speculative and tendentious journalism.

Until 2015, Alexievich became a laureate of many foreign literary prizes and awards. Among them are the Remarque Prize (2001), the National Criticism Award (USA, 2006), the Reader's Choice Award based on the results of the reader's vote of the Big Book Award (2014) for the book Second Hand Time, as well as the Kurt Tucholsky Prize for Courage and dignity in literature”, Andrei Sinyavsky Prize “For Nobility in Literature”, Russian independent Prize “Triumph”, Leipzig Book Prize “For Contribution to European Understanding”, German Prize “For the Best Political Book” and the Herder Prize. In 2013, Svetlana Alexievich became a laureate of the International Peace Prize of German Booksellers; received a gold medal at the Belarusian competition “Brand of the Year 2013”.

In 2013, she was considered one of the contenders for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but the prize was awarded to the Canadian writer Alice Munro.

In 2015, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording “for her polyphonic work - a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Svetlana Alexievich - the first Nobel laureate in the history of independent Belarus; she became the first Russian-speaking writer since 1987 to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. For the first time in half a century, the prize was awarded to a writer primarily working in the genre of nonfiction; for the first time in history Nobel Prize in literature awarded to a professional journalist

The cash prize of the award was 8 million Swedish kronor (about 953 thousand dollars at that time)

The Nobel Committee voted unanimously to award the prize to Svetlana Alexievich. “This is an outstanding writer, a great writer who created a new literary genre, going beyond ordinary journalism,” explained the committee’s decision, Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Sarah Danius, who announced the name of the laureate.

Svetlana Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948 in Ivano-Frankivsk. Her father is Belarusian and her mother is Ukrainian. Later the family moved to Belarus, where mother and father worked as rural teachers. In 1967, Svetlana entered the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University state university in Minsk, and after graduating, she worked in regional and republican newspapers, as well as in the literary and artistic magazine “Neman”.

In 1985, her book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” was published - a novel about women at the front. Before this, the work lay in the publishing house for two years - the author was reproached for pacifism and debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman. The total circulation of the book reached 2 million copies, and several dozen performances were staged based on it. The book The Last Witnesses, published the same year, was also dedicated to the war - from the point of view of women and children. Critics called both works “a new discovery of military prose.”

“I create an image of my country from the people living in my time. I would like my books to become a chronicle, an encyclopedia of the generations that I have seen and with which I go. How did they live? What did they believe? How were they killed and did they kill? How they wanted and couldn’t be happy, why they couldn’t do it,” said Svetlana Alexievich in an interview.

Her next chronicle was a novel about the Afghan war, “The Zinc Boys,” published in 1989. To collect material, the writer traveled around the country for four years and talked with former Afghan soldiers and mothers of dead soldiers. For this work, she was harshly criticized by the official press, and in Minsk in 1992, a symbolic “political trial” of the writer and the book was even organized.

"Her technique is a powerful mixture of eloquence and wordlessness, describing incompetence, heroism and sadness,— wrote The Telegraph after “Chernobyl Prayer” was published in the UK.— From the monologues of her characters, the writer creates a story that the reader can really touch, being at any distance from the events.”

The writer’s latest book, Second Hand Time, was published in 2013.

Her books have been published in 19 countries and have been adapted into plays and films. In addition, Svetlana Alexievich became the winner of many prestigious awards: in 2001, the writer was awarded the Remarque Prize, in 2006 - the National Criticism Award (USA), in 2013 - the German Booksellers Criticism Award. In 2014, the writer was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Arts and Letters.


Svetlana Alexievich formulated the main idea of ​​her books as follows: “I always want to understand how much personality there is in a person. And how to protect this person in a person.”

Women have won the Nobel Prize in Literature 13 times. The first to receive this award was Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, and the last to date was Canadian-born Alice Munro in 2013.

Svetlana Alexievich became the first author since 1987 to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, who also writes in Russian.Most often, the prize went to authors writing in English (27 times), French (14 times) and German (13 times). Russian-speaking writers have received this prestigious award five times: in 1933, Ivan Bunin, in 1958, Boris Pasternak, in 1965, Mikhail Sholokhov, in 1970, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and in 1987, Joseph Brodsky.

Svetlana Aleksandrovna Alexievich (05/31/1948, Stanislav, Ukraine) - Soviet and Belarusian writer and journalist. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2015.

Father is Belarusian, mother is Ukrainian. After his father’s demobilization, the family moved to his homeland, Belarus. Graduated from the Department of Journalism of the Lenin State University. She worked as a teacher in a boarding school, as a teacher, in the editorial offices of the regional newspapers “Prypyatskaya Prauda”, “Beacon of Communism”, the republican “Selskaya Gazeta”, and the magazine “Neman”.

She began her literary activity in 1975. " Godfather“One can name the famous Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich with his idea of ​​a new genre, the exact definition of which he was constantly looking for: “conciliar novel”, “oratorio novel”, “testimony novel”, “people telling about themselves”, “epic-choral prose”, etc.

Alexievich’s first book, “War Has Not a Woman’s Face,” was ready in 1983 and remained in the publishing house for two years. The author was accused of pacifism, naturalism and debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman. At that time this was more than serious. “Perestroika” gave a beneficial impetus. The book was published almost simultaneously in the magazine “October”, “Roman-Gazeta”, in the publishing houses “Mastatskaya Literatura”, “ Soviet writer" The total circulation reached 2 million copies.

The fate of the following books was also difficult. "The Last Witnesses" (1985) - children's view of the war. “The Zinc Boys” (1989) - about the criminal war in Afghanistan (the publication of this book caused not only a wave of negative publications in communist and military newspapers, but also a protracted trial, which was stopped only by the active defense of the democratic public and intellectuals for abroad). “Enchanted by Death” (1993) - about suicides. “Chernobyl Prayer” (1997) - about the world after Chernobyl, after nuclear war... Now Alexievich is working on a book about love - “The Wonderful Deer of the Eternal Hunt.”

Member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR, the Union of Writers of the USSR, and the Belarusian PEN Center.

Books were published in 19 countries around the world - America, England, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Germany, India, France, Sweden, Japan, etc.

Films have been made and staged based on Alexievich’s books. theater performances. A series of documentaries based on the book “War Has Not a Woman’s Face” was noted State Prize USSR and "Silver Dove" on international festival documentaries in Leipzig.

She is known for her consistently negative position towards the foreign and domestic policies of President A. Lukashenko, and therefore has been subjected to judicial and extrajudicial persecution. Since the early 2000s he has been living in exile (Italy, France).

Books (6)

War does not have a woman's face

“War Has No Woman's Face” is one of the most famous books about war in the world.

Translated into more than twenty languages, included in school and university curricula in many countries

On the most terrible war In the 20th century, a woman had to become a soldier. She not only saved and bandaged the wounded, but also shot with a sniper, bombed, blew up bridges, went on reconnaissance missions, and took tongues. The woman killed. She killed the enemy, who attacked her land, her home, and her children with unprecedented cruelty. This was the greatest sacrifice they made on the altar of Victory. And an immortal feat, the full depth of which we comprehend over the years of peaceful life.

The last witnesses. Solo for children's voice

The second book (the first was “War Has Not a Woman’s Face”) of the famous artistic and documentary series by Svetlana Alexievich.

Memories of the Great Patriotic War by those who were 6-12 years old during the war - its most impartial and most unfortunate witnesses. A war seen through children's eyes is even more terrible than one captured through a woman's gaze.

Alexievich’s books have nothing to do with that kind of literature where “the writer writes and the reader reads.” But it is in relation to her books that the question most often arises: do we need such a terrible truth? The writer herself answers this question: “An unconscious person is capable of giving birth only to evil and nothing else but evil.”

Zinc boys

Without this book, which has long become a world bestseller, it is no longer possible to imagine either the history of the Afghan war - an unnecessary and unjust war, or the history recent years Soviet power, completely undermined by this war.

The grief of the mothers of the “zinc boys” is inescapable; their desire to know the truth about how and why their sons fought and died in Afghanistan is understandable. But, having learned this truth, many of them were horrified and abandoned it.

Second hand time

The final, fifth book in Svetlana Alexievich’s famous fiction and documentary series “Voices of Utopia.” “Communism had an insane plan,” says the author, “to remake the ‘old’ man, the old Adam. And it worked... Maybe the only thing that worked. For more than seventy years, in the laboratory of Marxism-Leninism, a separate human type was developed - 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 familiar to me, I have lived next to him, side by side for many years. He is me. These are my acquaintances, friends, parents.”

Socialism is over. And we stayed.

Enchanted by Death

A giant empire collapsed. A socialist continent that occupied one sixth of the landmass. Hundreds of thousands of suicides were recorded in the first five years. People knew how to live only under socialism and did not know how to live further... Among the suicides were not only communist fanatics, but also poets, marshals, ordinary communists...

The book is about how we emerged from the anesthesia of the past, from the hypnosis of the Great Deception... Killer ideas...

Reader comments

Irina/ 06/08/2019 Oh, the author had a soul, but it all came out!

Bogdan/ 06.06.2019 I would like to answer Ivan. Knowledge of languages ​​does not mean anything. When they created the computer, someone said, “a mathematical genius,” but the main developer answered, “an idiot with a mathematical bent.” The writer deservedly received the award; she wrote everything correctly. My mother was a partisan and fought; she told me a lot of things. I had neighbors who were veterans. For a woman to fight is a feat and life in war is terrible for her. And about Afghan, if someone tells some funny things, he is a bad person and he should be ashamed. My friends and relatives were there. The song says that whoever has seen many words does not waste them. And they rarely tell. And how many are no longer in this world........

Ivan/ 10.26.2018 About myself. Higher, 8 foreign languages(including Chinese and Arabic) and 4 languages ​​of the peoples of My country. Until the moment of selection of Ms. Alexievich as " Nobel laureate", in my family the opinion of the Nobel Committee was very respected. We made sure to re-read the books of the Laureates that we had already read and read new ones...!
Ms. Alexievich was appointed laureate not for the book, "... not a woman's face" which was written by a wonderful Soviet writer, thank God Soviet culture is rich in wonderful books, and not for books of half-truths, (a worthy student of Dr. Goebbels) such writers a lot of!
It’s a pity that the NK began to give titles because a public person calls the people of Belarus and all the peoples of Russia “cattle”!
It’s a pity that NK makes political decisions to the detriment of its reputation!

mikhail/ 01/07/2018 I read about Afghanistan, what a writer! drives out pure chernukha, six of my classmates fought across the river, well, everything happened, but here there is only crushing chernukha, as if ordered from over a hill, only to denigrate at any cost, belittle the significance, make this war insignificant, and then more - take away the memory, take away country, for which she received an award.

Andrey/ 06/29/2017 I have only read a couple of books in my 30-year life. And today I’m looking on the Internet where I can buy her books. Moreover, since they are trying to denigrate her in this way, it means she really wrote the truth, which hurts my eyes. And I see that there are plenty of paid commentators even here, or they are besotted with their own propaganda. And to you Alexievich, my deepest bow to you. Thank you.

eon/ 08/21/2016 Thank you for the truth, even though it’s terrible

Tatyana A/ 01/3/2016 Present modern Art should influence the emotions of a person (viewer, reader). Congratulations!


Mila/ 10/30/2015 Congratulations on your award. I read the book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face.” I cried. I only empathized so much when I watched the movie “Schindler’s List.” Thank you for stirring up my rusty soul!

The work of Svetlana Alexievich evokes mixed reviews. Some make films and stage plays based on her books, others consider the writer a mouthpiece for post-Soviet smut. She is credited with inventing a new genre in literature - the confessional novel on behalf of a specific person. Alexievich herself said in an interview that she dreams of collecting a hundred stories told by 50 women and 50 men to create a story about the emotional experiences of witnesses to the life and fall of the Soviet empire.

“The most interesting thing now is not politics, not the redivision of the world, but this space of a small person. But at the same time, our culture and our history are highlighted through this space.”

Childhood and youth

Svetlana Aleksandrovna Alexievich was born in the Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankovsk (then Stanislav) on May 31, 1948. The writer's family is international. My father was born in Belarus, my mother in Ukraine. After demobilization, the head of the family moved his relatives to Belarus, to the Gomel region. There, Svetlana Alexievich graduated from school in 1965 and entered the university, choosing the faculty of journalism. In 1972, the future writer received a diploma from the Belarusian State University.

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Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexievich’s work biography began with work at school. At first she worked as a teacher at a boarding school, then she taught children history and German in the Mozyr region. Alexievich had long been attracted to writing, and she got a job as a correspondent for the regional newspaper Pripyatskaya Pravda. Then she moved to another publication - “Beacon of Communism” in one of the regional centers of the Brest region.

From 1973 to 1976, Svetlana Alexievich worked at the regional Selskaya Gazeta. In 1976, she was offered a position as head of the essay and journalism department at Neman magazine. Alexievich worked there until 1984. In 1983 she was admitted to the USSR Writers' Union.

Since the early 2000s, Svetlana Alexievich lived abroad, first in Italy, then in France and Germany, and eventually returned to Belarus.

Books

Svetlana Aleksandrovna Alexievich says that each book took from 4 to 7 years of life. During the period of writing, she met and talked with hundreds of people who witnessed the events described in the works. These people, as a rule, had a very difficult fate behind them: they went through Stalin’s camps, revolutions, fought in various wars, or survived the Chernobyl disaster.

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Writer Svetlana Alexievich

The first book that begins creative biography Svetlana Alexievich - “I left the village”, exposing the state’s attitude towards rural residents. The publication was prepared for printing back in the mid-70s, but the book never reached the reader. Typography was banned by the party leadership, and later the author herself refused to publish.

“War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” is a book about women who fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. They were snipers, pilots, tank crews, and underground fighters. Their vision and perception of war is completely different from that of men. They experienced other people's deaths, blood, and murders more difficult. And after the end of the war, a second front began for female veterans: they needed to adapt to peaceful life, forget about the horrors of war and become women again: wear dresses, high-heeled shoes, give birth to children.

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Svetlana Alexievich - “War does not have a woman’s face”

The book “War Has Not a Woman’s Face” was not published for 2 years, having lain in the publishing house. Alexievich was accused of distorting the heroic image of Soviet women, of pacifism and excessive naturalism. The work was published during the years of perestroika and was published in several thick magazines.

The fate of subsequent works also turned out to be difficult. The second book was called "The Last Witnesses." It consisted of 100 children's stories about the horrors of war. There is even more naturalism and terrible details, seen through the eyes of children from 7 to 12 years old.

In the third work, Svetlana Alexievich spoke about the crimes of the Afghan war. The book "The Zinc Boys" was published in 1989. Its release was accompanied by a wave of negative reviews and criticism. And also by the trial, which was stopped after Western human rights activists and the public came to the defense of the disgraced writer.

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Svetlana Alexievich signs books for fans

War occupies a central place in the works of Svetlana Alexievich. The writer herself explains this by saying that all soviet history associated with war and imbued with it. She claims that all the heroes and most of the ideals of the Soviet man are military.

The fourth book, entitled Spellbound by Death, was published in 1993 and also received mixed reviews. This work is about suicides recorded in the first 5 years after the disappearance of the USSR. In it, the author tries to understand the reasons and “charm” of death, which claims the lives of thousands of people - ordinary communists, marshals, poets, officials who committed suicide after the collapse of a gigantic empire. As Alexievich herself states, this is a reflection on how the country emerged from the “anaesthesia of the past” and the “hypnosis of the great Deception.”

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Svetlana Alexievich - “Chernobyl Prayer”

The fifth work entitled “Chernobyl Prayer” is about peace and life after the Chernobyl disaster. Svetlana Aleksandrovna believes that after the Chernobyl accident, not only did the gene code and blood formula of the population of a large country change, but the entire socialist continent disappeared under water.

Throughout all of Alexievich’s books there is a debunking of the communist idea or, as the writer claims, “the great and terrible Utopia - communism, the idea of ​​which has not completely died not only in Russia, but throughout the world.”

“The Wonderful Deer of the Eternal Hunt” is a work about love, but again from Alexievich’s specific angle. Previously, in Svetlana’s works, the hero found himself in extreme situations. In the new story, love becomes an environment in which human qualities manifest themselves with no less zeal and depth.

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Svetlana Alexievich - “Second hand time”

“Second Hand Time” (“The End of the Red Man”) is dedicated to the memories of 20 people about the time from the beginning of perestroika to the beginning of the 21st century. These people talk about the hopes they pinned on a change in the political system in the country, about how they survived in the “wild 90s,” when everything that was worth any money was sold, about how loved ones died in unnecessary Chechen conflicts.

Svetlana Alexievich has been a contender for the Nobel Prize in the Literature category since 2013. But then the prize was awarded to Canadian writer Alice Munro. In 2014, the French writer Patrick Modiano received it.

Presentation of the Nobel Prize to Svetlana Alexievich

In 2015, Alexievich was again among the candidates who, in addition to the prize, could become the owner of a monetary reward of 8 million Swedish kronor ($953 thousand). In addition to her, the candidacies of the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, the Kenyan Ngui Wa Thiong'o, the Norwegian Jun Fosse and the American Philip Roth were considered.

On October 8 in Stockholm, the Nobel Prize was nevertheless awarded to Svetlana Alexievich. The news of the award to the Belarusian writer was met with ambiguity both in Russia and in Belarus.

Many people talk about the political choice of the candidate. Alexievich is an ardent anti-Soviet, known for her criticism of the domestic and foreign policies of presidents and. The writer is accused of speculative and tendentious journalism and an anti-Russian position.

Personal life

When asked about her personal life, Alexievich replies that she can’t be happy. As the media found out, Svetlana does not have a husband, nor do she have any children of her own. The writer raised her niece Natalya, the daughter of her prematurely deceased sister. The girl has her own family; she gave her granddaughter, Yana, to her named mother. Photos of loved ones practically never appear in the press; mostly photographs of Alexievich are published.

Svetlana Alexievich now

In 2018, Svetlana Alexievich became the laureate of the award for “bravely speaking about the injustice” existing in the countries of the former USSR, “criticizing the Russian annexation of Crimea and human rights violations in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as growing nationalism and oligarchy in Ukraine.” . The award was presented by the human rights organization Reach All Women in War.