Svetlana Alexievich received the Nobel Prize in Literature - the first in the history of Belarus. Svetlana Alexievich - Nobel Prize laureate in literature Nobel Prize in literature Belarusian writer
Belarusian writer, laureate Nobel Prize in literature Svetlana Aleksandrovna Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948 in Ivano-Frankovsk (Ukraine) in the family of a military man. After his 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, Alexievich worked as a teacher at a boarding school, as a teacher, and also in the editorial office of a newspaper in the city of Narovlya, Gomel Region.
After graduating from university, from 1972 to 1973, she worked for the newspaper "Mayak Communism" in the city of Bereza, Brest Region.
In 1976-1984 - correspondent, head of the department of essays and journalism of the literary and artistic magazine "Neman" - the organ of the Union of Writers of Belarus. Literary activity started in 1975. Alexievich’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, Alexievich’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 during the Afghan War, in 1993 - the book "Enchanted by Death". In 1997, the book "Chernobyl Prayer" was published.
Since the early 2000s, Alexievich 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 book in the artistic and documentary cycle “Voices of Utopia”. The cycle includes her works “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face”, “The Last Witnesses”, “Zinc Boys” and “Chernobyl Prayer”.
Alexievich'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”, dedicated to the publication of a series of books by Svetlana Alexievich in the Belarusian language, was completed.
Films have been made and staged based on Alexievich’s works. theater performances. Cycle documentaries based on the book "War Has Not a Woman's Face" noted State Prize USSR (1985).
Svetlana Alexievich is a laureate of the Lenin Komsomol Prize (1986), awarded Literary Prize named after Nikolai Ostrovsky (1985), Literary Prize named after Konstantin Fedin (1985), as well as the Triumph Prize and the Andrei Sinyavsky Prize (1998).
Her foreign awards include 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 Association (2013), the Polish Freedom Pen Prize. (2013), Polish Ryszard Kapuński Prize (2011, 2015), American Arthur Ross Book Award (2017).
For the first time, a representative of independent Belarus became a laureate of the prestigious award. The name of the next winner of the prestigious award was announced on October 8 in Stockholm by the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Literature of the Swedish Academy, Sarah Danius. "For her polyphonic works about the suffering and difficulties of our time,” reads the formulation of the Nobel Committee.
67-year-old Svetlana Alexievich has topped the ratings of the largest bookmakers in Europe for several years in a row as the most likely winner of the award. She was followed Japanese writer and translator Haruki Murakami and Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiong'o.
According to the Swedish PEN Center, she has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature since 2002 for the cycle of works “Voices of Utopia” (the cycle ended in 2013 with the book “Second-Hand Time”, in total it included six books, among which “War Has No a woman's face", "Zinc Boys", "Enchanted by Death", "The Last Witnesses" and "Chernobyl Prayer").
In the entire history of the award, out of 112 winners, Alexievich became the fourteenth woman to receive the prize in the field of literature. This year the prize money was 8 million Swedish kronor ($953 thousand).
Reaction online: “World-class talent!!!”
Andrey Kureichik, Belarusian director and screenwriter:
“Hurray! I'm proud to be Belarusian! Svetlana, congratulations! And I congratulate all of us that we have such moral authority!”
Arina Lisetskaya, blogger:
“Svetlana Alexievich received a Nobel. Our! Belarusian! Woman! Literature! Yesss!!!"
Anton Krasovsky, Russian journalist:
"All we have to say about the Nobel Prize."
Dmitry Rastaev, blogger, poet:
What a good week!
There is no limit to the darkness yet,
but at the end of the damn tunnel
There was at least a small blaze of light.
Nikolai Statkevich, opposition politician, ex-political prisoner:
“Nobel is ours! I am delighted! Congratulations to Mrs. Svetlana and all Belarusians! I am happy for all of us, for everyone who loves Belarus, regardless of the language in which they express this love. I’m happy that a great talent, of which I am an admirer, has finally been properly appreciated.”
Tatyana Korotkevich, presidential candidate of Belarus:
“Even before the announcement of the jury’s decision, I tried to get through to Svetlana Alexandrovna in order to convey numerous words of support that I heard addressed to her today from ordinary people in Rogachev, Zhlobin and Buda-Koshelevo. We all believed and waited for this with hope. Congratulations to you and all of Belarus on your Nobel. Thank you!".
Most recently, the Nobel Committee decided to award the prize for literature. Its winner was the writer Svetlana Alexievich, whose biography is little known to modern readers.
Let's talk in more detail today about life and creative destiny this ascetic in the literary field.
Brief biographical information about birth and childhood
The future writer was born in Western Ukraine (the city of Ivano-Frankivsk) in 1948. Her father was Belarusian, and her mother was Ukrainian. The life of her family was scorched by the war. The families of both mother and father suffered greatly during the occupation of Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. My father went through the war and was demobilized only after the victory. At the same time, he moved his wife and little daughter to a Belarusian village in the Gomel region. The writer's father and mother worked as teachers.
Svetlana Alexievich has seen a lot in her time, her biography is proof of this.
Having successfully completed school, Svetlana entered the Faculty of Journalism at the prestigious Belarusian University by Soviet standards. State University. After graduating from university, she tried a lot of professions: she worked as an educator, teacher and journalist. Its first newspapers were the publications “Pripyatskaya Pravda” and “Beacon of Communism”.
Mature years
Svetlana became interested in writing in her youth, her essays and short stories began to be published in the Soviet press, and then she was awarded the honor of being admitted to the Union Soviet writers(this event took place in 1983). Until now, she is considered one of the creators of Belarusian literature, which is reflected in the wording of the Nobel Prize: “Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich.” Biography, personal life it took place precisely in Belarus, hence the truth of such formulations.
During the years of perestroika, the writer published several books that caused a lot of noise and classified her as a dissident (we will talk about these publications a little later). In the 2000s. Alexievich moved to Europe, lived and worked in France, Germany and Italy. Recently returned to Belarus.
Svetlana Alexievich: personal life
Question about women's fate The writer has always been of interest to fans of her work, but very little is known in this area.
In her works, Svetlana Aleksandrovna told a lot about women's stories, but for all the journalists who interviewed her, the topic “Svetlana Alexievich: personal life” was closed. The writer devoted herself to literature as the main calling of her life; in all questionnaires she indicates that she is unmarried woman. It is known that for a long time she raised her niece - the daughter of her sister who died early.
Although it cannot be said that Svetlana Alexievich is a deprived person. Her family consists of her books, film scripts and journalism.
First literary experiments
Writer Svetlana Alexievich has always been interested in polemical topics in the history of our country.
Her first book, “I Left the Village,” prepared for publication in 1976, was devoted to the theme of the gradual extinction of the Russian village. The author rightly pointed out that such a mass exodus of the peasantry from the villages was provoked by the authorities with their unreasonable and inhumane policy of general collectivization. Naturally, such interviews (and the book itself is based on these interviews) did not cause delight among the then Soviet officials, so the book was not published in the USSR.
The writer's second book was published in 1983 and caused a lot of noise. It was called “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face.” In this work, the writer collected the memories of many Soviet women who participated in the Great Patriotic War. Some of the memories were cut out by censorship (later the author inserted them into post-Soviet publications). Alexievich actually debunked the image that was created before her in books about the war. In her work, women talk not about exploits and victories, but about fear, suffering, ruined youth and the cruelty of war.
The work “The Last Witnesses: A Book of Non-Children's Stories” (1985) became equally polemical. It was dedicated to the children's memories of terrible events Great Patriotic War. Sad childhood stories were told to readers by Svetlana Alexievich, whose family itself found itself under occupation during the war.
Famous works of the writer
The work “Zinc Boys” (1989), dedicated to sad events for our country, created a lot of noise. Afghan war. Here Alexievich talks about the enormous grief of mothers who lost their sons and do not understand why their children died.
The next book, “Enchanted by Death” (1993), told about the practice of mass suicides of people who lost faith in previous ideals after the collapse of the USSR.
The writer’s work “Chernobyl Prayer” (1997), which told about the sad events of the disaster, became widely known. The author collected in her book interviews with still living participants in the liquidation of the consequences of this disaster.
As we see, over our long writer's life Svetlana Alexievich created many books, reviews about these books are very different. Some readers honor the author’s talent, while others curse Alexievich, accusing her of populism and speculative journalism.
Genre originality and ideological content of the writer’s books
The writer herself defines the genre of her prose as artistic and documentary. She's attracted to how fiction, and journalistic documentary.
Since the themes of her books concern so many people, the writer’s work is the object of close attention from critics. And they differ in their assessments.
Thus, some modern Western literary figures believe that Svetlana Alexievich, whose biography and work are directly related to Soviet Union, like no one else can tell the truth about what the USSR was for its citizens. It turns out that the USSR was a real evil empire that did not spare its people in order to achieve illusory political goals. People were exterminated en masse in the Gulag, driven to slaughter on the fields of World War II, sparing neither children nor women, soviet government plunged the country into the abyss of the Afghan war, allowed the Chernobyl disaster, and so on.
Other critics, who consider themselves to be part of the traditional “Russian world,” on the contrary, reproach the writer for the fact that she can only see negative sides Soviet and Russian reality, without noticing it positive aspects. These critics accuse the author of actually betraying the interests of his homeland. They say that Svetlana Alexievich, whose biography is directly connected with Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, has never said anything good about the importance of the unity of these three countries in her entire life. These critics believe that the author deliberately distorts in his works real facts, creating for Western and Russian readers the image of “evil and insidious Russia.”
The writer's political views
The topic “Svetlana Alexievich: biography, personal life” attracts the attention of journalists, but their greater interest is focused on political views writers.
The fact is that Svetlana is a consistent supporter of Westernist views; she has repeatedly criticized political position both the President of Belarus A. Lukashenko and the President of Russia V. Putin. The author accuses both of them of creating a second-hand empire ( last book The writer’s title is “Second Hand Time” (2013)). Alexievich believes that Putin and Lukashenko want to resurrect the terrible and inhumane Soviet project, therefore, in their public speaking the writer condemns all the actions of the current Belarusian and Russian leaders. She condemns the revival military power Russian Federation, considers Putin to be the culprit for the deaths of people in Donbass, etc.
Nobel Prize: history of the award
The writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice: in 2013 and 2015. In 2013, the prize was awarded to another Canadian author.
In 2015, the Nobel Committee decided to award this prize to Svetlana Alexievich. Immediately after the announcement of this decision, many began to be interested in such a person as Svetlana Alexievich. The Nobel Prize was awarded to her for a reason, and this arouses even greater interest.
This prize has not been awarded to Russian-speaking writers for quite some time. Moreover, it was often used as a tool in the political struggle between Russia and the West: throughout its history, the prize was awarded, as a rule, to those who had clear differences in views with the official authorities Soviet Russia(for example, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Boris Pasternak, Ivan Bunin).
A brief overview of the writer's Nobel speech
By tradition, the Nobel Prize winner in literature gives a speech of gratitude, in which he sums up the unique results of his work.
Svetlana Alexievich also gave such a speech. The Nobel Prize for Literature is given once in a lifetime, so the writer created one of her best texts.
The theme of Alexievich’s speech was the image of the “red man,” that is, a person with a Soviet psyche who still lives in the minds of Russian people and forces them to make certain decisions. Alexievich condemns this man as a product of the totalitarian era.
The author calls Russian people “slaves of Utopia”, who imagine that they have a “special Russian path”, a special spirituality that differs from the spirituality Western countries. The writer sees the salvation of our country in the denial of this eternal slavery and the appeal of Russian people to the values of Western civilization.
The Swedish Academy has announced the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Award and money prize 8 million crowns (about $950 thousand) will be received by a Belarusian writer, author of documentary studies about wars.
The selection of academicians was announced by the new permanent secretary of the academy - the first woman to hold this position, replacing historian Peter Englund on June 1. She also told why the academicians settled on this particular candidate: Alexievich was chosen by the Nobel Committee “for her polyphonic creativity - a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”
Svetlana Alexievich was born in 1948. She is a journalist by training and worked for many years in newspapers and magazines of the Belarusian SSR.
In 1985, she published the book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” - a collection of monologues by women who survived the war.
For her, she became a laureate of the Lenin Komsomol Prize, she was accepted into the Union of Writers of the USSR. In the 80-90s, Alexievich wrote documentary studies “Zinc Boys” (1989), “Chernobyl Prayer” (1997). In the early 2000s, the writer left Belarus and lives in Western Europe.
Svetlana Alexievich first became a favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Then it came out in Sweden A new book“Second hand time”, and bookmakers put the writer in third place in their ranking - ahead of Canadian Alice Monroe, who received the award that year. In 2014, she again entered the top three, but the winner was the Frenchman Patrick Modiani.
“Svetlana Alexievich is the best student of the prominent 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 language literary prose- means to offend people's feelings. Where we're talking about about disasters, wars, personal tragedies- not the place belles lettres. Adamovich thought so. And Svetlana Alexievich apparently thinks the same way.”
Awarding the Alexievich Prize, according to Bykov, means that he is primarily interested in the social significance of the text, and then in its artistic quality.
“Aleksievich, of course, has a masterful command of the language of journalism, but looking for aesthetic revelations in her writings is a strange task,” he noted. — The second thing I would draw attention to is the new narrative techniques, which the Nobel Committee welcomes with its decision. Now, as Swedish academics apparently believe, no one will be surprised by the plot narrative. We need new techniques and new literary devices. Svetlana Alexievich is the embodiment of these innovations.”
Bykov noted that Alexievich became the fifth Soviet writer to receive a Nobel.
“Of course, Belarus is an independent state, etc., but Alexievich formed as an author and became known precisely in Soviet years, so we can talk about her as a compatriot,” he concluded.
The Nobel Prize in Literature was received by, and.
Alexievich became the 14th woman and 108th laureate of the main literary award peace.
On Friday, October 9, the Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced, and on Monday it will be known who will receive the award for economics.
An official reception with presentation of medals and speeches by Nobel Prize laureates will take place in early December.
The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2015 was the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich. The name of the award winner was announced on October 8 in Stockholm (Sweden). Photo courtesy of the Embassy of the French Republic. TUT. BY World news agencies report this.
In the entire history of the award, Svetlana Alexievich became the 14th woman to receive the award in the field of literature (out of 112). This year the prize money was 8 million Swedish kronor ($953,000).
Svetlana Alexievich was born in 1948 in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine). Her father is a Belarusian, a military pilot, her mother is Ukrainian.
Later the family moved to Belarus. Graduated in 1965 high school in Kopatkevichi, Petrikovsky district, Gomel region.
In 1972, Svetlana Alexievich graduated from the journalism department of the Belarusian State University. Lenin. She worked as a teacher at a boarding school. Since 1966 - in the editorial offices of the regional newspapers "Prypyatskaya Prauda" and "Mayak Communism", in the republican "Rural Newspaper", since 1976 - in the magazine "Neman".
“She began her literary activity in 1975. The first book, “War Doesn’t Have 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.
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”. Total circulation reached 2 million copies.
Alexievich also wrote the artistic and non-fiction books “Zinc Boys”, “Chernobyl Prayer”, “Second Hand Time” and other works.
Alexievich has many awards. Among them is the Remarque Prize (2001), National Award critics (USA, 2006), reader's choice prize based on the results of the reader's vote for the award " Big Book"(2014) for the book "Second Hand Time", as well as the Kurt Tucholsky Prize "For Courage and Dignity in Literature", the Andrei Sinyavsky Prize "For Nobility in Literature", the Russian independent Prize "Triumph", the Leipzig Book Prize "For Contribution to European Understanding", the German Prize for the Best Political Book and the Herder Prize.
In 2013, Svetlana Alexievich became a laureate International Prize world of German booksellers.
The writer's books were published in 19 countries, including the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Sweden, France, China, Vietnam, Bulgaria, and India.
In one of the interviews, Svetlana Alexievich outlined main idea of his books: “I always want to understand how much personality there is in a person. And how to protect this person in a person,” writes TUT.BY.
“Now Svetlana Alexievich is completing work on a book called “The Wonderful Deer eternal hunt" The book includes stories about love - men and women different generations tell their stories,” writes BelTA.
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Discussion on the topic
OLEG KASHIN, columnist: “The most formal answer is because she writes in Russian. If this answer is not enough, it would be more correct to classify Svetlana Alexievich as to the last generation Soviet writers, and the uniqueness of the Soviet Belarusian culture was that Belarusian writer(unlike the Ukrainian) was not obliged to demonstratively break away from Russian culture, put on an embroidered shirt, etc. I would compare it with Mozart, whom both Germans and Austrians equally consider one of their own and have the right to do so. Belarusians may consider the Alexievich Prize a recognition of their culture, but for us her prize is the sixth after Bunin, Pasternak, Sholokhov, Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky. Passport and citizenship have nothing to do with it, the real Russian world is what it looks like, and not Putin’s at all.”
ALEXANDER SMOTROV, journalist: “Well, apparently because, although formally it is positioned as Ukrainian-Belarusian, it is largely a product of the synthesis and development of Russian/Soviet literature. And the political aspect is that the prize was given in the year of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, which she comprehended as a writer and humanist.
Plus, in such situations, you rejoice even for “conditionally your own”, because they don’t give real “your own”. And there were considerable expectations and discussions.”
