‘For her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,’ these words accompanied the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian writer, originally born in Ukraine, who writes in Russian.
The days since have witnessed heated discussion in the media and social media. How should we define Alexievich’s work, is it literature or journalism? Who is Alexievich, a Russian or Belarusian writer? Does this prize signal a moment to move away from the Soviet past? For those of us who associate ourselves with the Soviet past, post-Soviet present or both, this event has already gone far beyond the confines of a purely ‘literary event’. The international recognition of Alexievich’s literary contribution tells us much about what kind of historical moment the former Soviet Union is currently experiencing.
Literature and/or journalism?
I was born in 1975 in the country known then as Belorussia (the Soviet name for Belarus), and I am yet to meet a person of my generation who hasn’t at least heard of Alexievich’s work. Alexievich’s first novel War’s unwomanly face (1985) was published in large numbers, at least by today’s standards—after all, her potential audience back then covered the whole USSR. So it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to claim that most people who were born before perestroika (and who speak Russian) are familiar with Alexievich’s work.
