Six Nobel Prize winners with Belarusian roots. Chronicle of dehumanization

Farewell, unwashed Russia, hello, blissful Europe, which, after receiving the Nobel Prize, has become even more blissful.

I am not a professional philologist, and I evaluate books solely in terms of likes or dislikes. In addition, after the Peace Prize was awarded to Barack Obama, my confidence in the Nobel Prize was, to put it mildly, undermined. Alekseevich's personality only confirmed these doubts.

So, the prize was awarded with the wording "for many-voiced creativity - a monument to suffering and courage in our time." The last phrase - "in our time" - in my opinion, the most relevant. The fact is that Aleksievich, the author of "Chernobyl Prayer" and the famous book "War has no woman's face," in recent years has become the source of many controversial statements about Russia, its history, people and political development.

A small selection of quotes:

About Victory and Emptiness
Millions burned in the fire of the war, but millions also lie in the permafrost of the Gulag, and in the land of our city parks and forests. Great, undoubtedly, the Great Victory was immediately betrayed. It shielded us from Stalin's crimes. And now they are taking advantage of the victory so that no one will guess what a void we are in.
About joy after the return of Crimea
The rally for the victory in Crimea brought together 20,000 people with posters: "The Russian spirit is invincible!", "We will not give Ukraine to America!", "Ukraine, freedom, Putin." Prayers, priests, banners, pathetic speeches - some kind of archaic. A flurry of applause stood after the speech of one speaker: "Russian troops in the Crimea have captured all the key strategic objects ..." I looked around: rage and hatred on their faces....
About the Ukrainian conflict
How is it possible to flood the country with blood, carry out the criminal annexation of Crimea and generally destroy this entire fragile post-war world? No excuse can be found for this. I have just come from Kyiv and I am shocked by those faces and those people whom I saw. People want a new life, and they are tuned in to a new life. And they will fight for it.
Impressive? But these are still flowers. Let's look at the attitude of the writer towards the Russians:

About the president's supporters
It's scary to even talk to people. All they say is “our Crimean”, “Donbassnash” and “Odessa was unfairly presented”. And these are all different people. 86% of Putin's supporters is a real figure. After all, many Russian people simply fell silent. They are scared, just like us, those who are around this vast Russia.

About the feeling of life
One Italian restaurateur put up an ad "We do not serve Russians." This is a good metaphor. Today the world is again beginning to be afraid: what is there in this hole, in this abyss that has nuclear weapons, crazy geopolitical ideas and does not know the concepts of international law. I live with the feeling of defeat.
About Russian people
We are dealing with a Russian man who has fought for almost 150 years over the past 200 years. And never lived well. Human life is worth nothing to him, and the concept of greatness is not that a person should live well, but that the state should be large and stuffed with missiles. In this vast post-Soviet space, especially in Russia and Belarus, where people were deceived for 70 years at first, then robbed for another 20 years, very aggressive and dangerous people have grown up.

About a free life
Take a look at the Baltic States - there is a completely different life there today. It was necessary to consistently build that same new life that we talked about so much in the 1990s. We really wanted a truly free life, to enter this common world. Now what? Second hand full.

On new points of support for Russia
Well, certainly not Orthodoxy, autocracy, and what is there ... nationality? This is also second hand. We need to look for these points together, and for this we need to talk. How the Polish elite spoke to their people, how the German elite spoke to their people after fascism. We have been silent for these 20 years.
Naturally, she could not ignore the personality of Vladimir Putin.

About Putin and the Church
And Putin seems to have come for a long time. He plunged people into such barbarism, such archaism, the Middle Ages. You know it's for a long time. And the church is also involved in this ... This is not our church. There is no church.
In society, it is believed that the Nobel Prize is the main prize of the world, given out for the highest achievements. But isn't this a delusion? Why was Alekseevich awarded? Without a doubt, she is very talented, but, you see, if she had not spoken out against Russia, nothing of the sort would have happened.

And how can you expect anything objective from a prize founded with money from the sale of explosives? Weapons only value other weapons. Proza Alekseevich is the same weapon directed against Russia as the "fighter for peace" Obama is against the whole world.

Belarusian writer, Nobel Prize winner in literature Svetlana Alexandrovna Aleksievich was born on May 31, 1948 in Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine) in the family of a military man. After the father was demobilized from the army, the family moved to Belarus.

In 1972 she graduated from the journalism department of the Belarusian State University.

In the 1960s, Aleksievich worked as a teacher at a boarding school, a teacher, and also in the editorial office of a newspaper in the city of Narovl, Gomel Region.

After graduating from the university, from 1972 to 1973 she worked for the Mayak Kommunizma newspaper in the town of Bereza, Brest region.

In 1976-1984 she was a correspondent, head of the essay and journalism department of the literary and artistic magazine Neman, an organ of the Union of Writers of Belarus. She began her literary career in 1975. Aleksievich's first book was a collection of essays "I left the village", which included monologues of people who left their homes.

In 1983, she wrote the book "War has no woman's face", which lay in the publishing house for two years. The author was accused of pacifism, naturalism and debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman. In 1985, the work was published almost simultaneously in the magazine "October", "Roman-gazeta", in the publishing houses "Mastatskaya Litaratura" and "Soviet Writer", the total circulation was two million copies.

In 1985, Aleksievich's second book, The Last Witnesses (One Hundred Non-Children's Stories) was published. In 1989, her book "Zinc Boys" was published - about Soviet soldiers in the Afghan war, in 1993 - the book "Charmed by Death". In 1997, the book "Chernobyl Prayer" was published.

Since the early 2000s, Aleksievich has lived in Italy, France, and Germany.

In 2013, the writer's book "Second-hand Time (The End of the Red Man)" was published, which became the final one in the "Voices of Utopia" documentary cycle. The cycle includes her works "War has no woman's face", "Last Witnesses", "Zinc Boys" and "Chernobyl Prayer".

Aleksievich's books were published in Bulgaria, Great Britain, Vietnam, Germany, India, USA, France, Sweden, Japan and other countries.

In April 2018, the crowdfunding project "Voices of Utopia" was completed, dedicated to the publication of a series of books by Svetlana Aleksievich in the Belarusian language.

Based on the works of Aleksievich, films were made and theatrical performances were staged. The series of documentaries based on the book War Has Not a Woman's Face was awarded the USSR State Prize (1985).

Svetlana Aleksievich is a laureate of the Lenin Komsomol Prize (1986), was awarded the Nikolai Ostrovsky Literary Prize (1985), the Konstantin Fedin Literary Prize (1985), as well as the Triumph Prize and the Andrei Sinyavsky Prize (1998).

Among her foreign awards are the Kurt Tucholsky Prize (Swedish PEN, 1996), the German Prize "For the best political book" (1998), the Austrian Herder Prize (1999), the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Union (2013), the Polish Prize "Freedom Pen" (2013), Ryszard Kapustinsky Polish Awards (2011, 2015), Arthur Ross American Book Award (2017).

The Swedish Academy has announced the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The award and a cash prize of 8 million kroons (about $950,000) will be given to a Belarusian writer and author of documentary studies about wars.

The choice of academicians was announced by the new permanent secretary of the academy, the first woman in this position, who replaced the historian Peter Englund on June 1. She also explained why the academicians chose this candidate: Aleksievich was chosen by the Nobel Committee "for her many-voiced work - a monument to suffering and courage in our time."

Svetlana Aleksievich was born in 1948. She is a journalist by education, worked for many years in newspapers and magazines of the Byelorussian SSR.

In 1985, she published the book "War Does Not Have a Woman's Face" - a collection of monologues of women who survived the war.

For her, she became a laureate of the Lenin Komsomol Prize, she was accepted into the Writers' Union of the USSR. In the 80s and 90s, Aleksievich wrote documentary studies Zinc Boys (1989), Chernobyl Prayer (1997). In the early 2000s, the writer left Belarus and lives in Western Europe.

Svetlana Aleksievich first became the favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Then her new book “Second Hand Time” was published in Sweden, and bookmakers put the writer in third place in their rating - ahead of Canadian Alice Monroe, who received the award that year. In 2014, she again entered the top three, but the Frenchman Patrick Modiani became the winner.

“Svetlana Aleksievich is the best student of the major Belarusian publicist Ales Adamovich,” the writer told Gazeta.Ru. --

Adamovich, as you know, was convinced that writing about the tragedies of the 20th century in the language of fiction means insulting people's feelings. Where we are talking about catastrophes, wars, personal tragedies, there is no place for belles-lettres. So Adamovich thought. And apparently Svetlana Aleksievich thinks the same way.”

The award of the Aleksievich Prize, according to Bykov, means that he is primarily interested in the social significance of the text, and only then in its artistic quality.

“Aleksievich, of course, masterfully speaks the language of journalism, but looking for aesthetic revelations in her writings is a strange occupation,” he noted. - The second thing I would pay attention to is the new narrative techniques, which the Nobel Committee welcomes with its decision. Now, as the Swedish academicians seem to believe, you will not surprise anyone with a plot narrative. New techniques and new literary means are needed. Svetlana Aleksievich is the embodiment of these innovations.”

Bykov noted that Aleksievich became the fifth Soviet writer to receive the Nobel.

“Of course, Belarus is an independent state, etc., but Aleksievich was formed as an author and became known precisely in the Soviet years, so we can talk about her as a compatriot,” he concluded.

The Nobel Prize in Literature received, and.

Aleksievich became the 14th woman and the 108th laureate of the world's main literary award.

On Friday, October 9, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced, and on Monday it will be known who will receive the award for economics.

The official reception with the awarding of medals and speeches by Nobel Prize winners will take place in early December.

Today in Stockholm announced the name of the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Svetlana Alexievich! The Belarusian writer, whose books are read all over the world in dozens of languages, has received the most prestigious world award.

This news has been awaited for the last three years: Aleksievich was nominated back in 2013. As in this year, then the bookmakers called her among the leaders.

Sarah Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, says today: Aleksievich did not immediately realize that she was being called from the Nobel Committee

I have already contacted Svetlana, - Sarah Danius, chairman of the jury for the Nobel Prize in Literature, said in an interview (it was she who announced that the award went to Aleksievich). When she finally realized who was calling her, she was wild with joy. And she commented on it like this: “Fantastic!”

We got through to Alexievich.

Svetlana Alexandrovna, Komsomolskaya Pravda congratulates you and all Belarusians on your victory! The entire editorial staff screamed with delight and overflowing emotions! Your first word was: "Fantastic!" We believed and knew that justice would prevail in the end. What did you doubt?

You know, Einstein, Bunin have been waiting for 10 years - it is noticeable that the writer is also overwhelmed with emotions, she is worried.

So you've been waiting too!

But I only waited a couple of years. This news will always be unexpected, such great shadows around: Sholokhov, Brodsky. So that I would sit and know that I am so great and will definitely get it - no, there were no such thoughts.

- Bookmakers bet on your victory for the third time, was the hope stronger?

No, I treat these things as natural phenomena: I cannot influence this, these things must happen by themselves. I didn't think much about it. ()

In an interview in Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2014, Svetlana Aleksievich answered the question about the Nobel Prize:

Awards for me are a parallel life ... I have received a large number of awards in my life. Just at the time when the Nobel Prize was awarded, I received the International Peace Prize of the German Booksellers, this is a big award - the Peace Prize. And I was glad that the name of my little Belarus sounds. It was important for me to formulate what I was doing at the award ceremony. To formulate it so that it would be clear in another world.

DOSSIER "KP"

Svetlana Alexandrovna Aleksievich was born on May 31, 1948 in Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine) in the family of a military man. The writer's father is Belarusian, mother is Ukrainian. After the demobilization of his father from the army, the Alekseevich family moved to Belarus. Svetlana Aleksievich graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Belarusian State University in 1972.

Top 5 books by Aleksievich

"War has no woman's face"

"Chernobyl Prayer"

"Zinc Boys"

"Wonderful deer of eternal hunting"

"Second hand time"

The Nobel Committee voted unanimously to award the prize to Svetlana Aleksievich. “This is an outstanding writer, a great writer who created a new literary genre, going beyond ordinary journalism,” explained Sarah Danius, secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 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 in Minsk, and after graduating, she worked in regional and republican newspapers, as well as in the literary and art magazine Neman.

In 1985, her book “War Does Not Have a Woman’s Face” was published - a novel about women front-line soldiers. Prior to 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, several dozen performances were staged based on it. The Last Witnesses, published the same year, was also about the war, from the point of view of women and children. Critics called both works "a new discovery of military prose."

“I build the 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 found and with whom I am going. How did they live? What did they believe? How were they killed and how did they kill? How they wanted and didn’t know how to be happy, why they didn’t succeed, ”said Svetlana Aleksievich in an interview.

Her next chronicle was the 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 severely criticized by the official press, and in Minsk in 1992 a symbolic “political trial” was even organized over the writer and the book.

"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 last book of the writer at the moment, Second Hand Time, was published in 2013.

Her books have been published in 19 countries around the world, performances and films have been staged based on them. In addition, Svetlana Aleksievich became the winner of many prestigious awards: in 2001 the writer was awarded the Remarque Prize, in 2006 - the National Criticism Prize (USA), in 2013 - the German Bookseller Criticism Prize. In 2014, the writer was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Svetlana Aleksievich formulated the main idea of ​​her books as follows: “I always want to understand how many people there are in a person. And how to protect this person in a person.

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

Svetlana Aleksievich became the first author since 1987 to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, which also writes in Russian.Most often, the award went to authors writing in English (27 times), French (14 times) and German (13 times) languages. 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.