Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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[I didn't want to derail the Reading thread with a bunch of words. And Alexievich deserves her own thread.]

Anybody here ever read her? She's a Belarusian writer. Actually, more of an interviewer who compiles oral histories based on Soviet themes. She's one of my favorite nonfiction writers (along with Robert Caro), even tho 90% of the words in her books aren't her own.

She won a Nobel Prize a few years ago 'for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.' And she's still underrated. She interviews a lot of old people, mostly women, who have never told their stories to anybody. Some of them are heartbreakingly sad. These aren't easy books to read.

Her bibliography is somewhat confusing, as all of her books have been republished a bunch of times, with various revisions and added text and new titles.

The Unwomanly Face of War (1985). Women in World War II.

Last Witnesses (1985). Children in World War II.

Boys in Zinc (1991). The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Enchanted With Death (1993). Suicides after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Voices from Chernobyl (1997).

Secondhand Time (2013). More stories about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This woman is a saint. I wish that she could live for another hundred years so that she could keep writing these books. (She's 72, so that's unlikely.) I haven't been able to find 'Enchanted With Death' yet, so at least I have one more book to look forward to. I'm always disappointed when I mention her, and nobody knows who she is. People should read her books! That's why I posted this. Nothing would make me happier than to see somebody bump this thread in a few months raving about 'The Unwomanly Face of War.'

The Chernobyl book is a good place to start. An old woman living with her cat in the Forbidden Zone. Chechens who repatriated there because it was safer than living thru a war. Widows whose husbands died of cancer after being conscripted to put out the fire. Mothers of disabled children.

'Secondhand Time' has an amazing interview with a man who served 17 years in Stalin's camps, and whose wife died there, but still believed in Soviet Communism and ranted about capitalism.
We had the Chimuk brothers in our detachment…They ran into an ambush in their village, took refuge in some barn, there was shooting, the barn was set on fire. They went on shooting till they ran out of cartridges…Then they came out, burned…They were driven around the villages in a cart to see who would recognize them as their own. So that people would give themselves away…

The entire village stood there. Their father and mother stood there, nobody made a sound. What a heart the mother must have had not to cry out. Not to call. She knew that if she began to weep, the whole village would be burned down. She wouldn’t be killed alone. Everybody would be killed. For one German killed they used to burn an entire village. She knew…There exist awards for everything, but no award, not even the highest Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union is enough for that mother…For her silence…
Now…How long have we been sitting here talking? Meanwhile, a storm has come and gone, my neighbor stopped by, the phone rang…Those things also affected me, I responded to them as well. But the only things that will go down on paper are my words…There won’t be anything else: no neighbor, no phone calls…Things I didn’t say but which flashed through my memory, making their presence felt. Tomorrow, I might tell this story completely differently. The words remain, but I’ll have moved on. I have learned to live with this. I know how. I keep going and going.

Who gave me all of this? All of it…Was it God or people? If God gave it to me, then He chose well. Suffering brought me up…It’s my art…my prayer. So many times, I’ve wanted to tell someone all of it. To speak my fill. But no one has ever wanted to know: “And then what…and then what?” I’ve always waited for someone, whether it be a good or bad person, to come and listen to my story—I don’t know who exactly I had in mind, but I was always waiting for someone. My whole life, I’ve been waiting for someone to find me and I would tell them everything…and they would keep asking, “And then what? And then what?” Now, people have started blaming socialism, Stalin, as though Stalin had God-like powers. Everyone has their own God—why didn’t they speak up? My aunt…Our village…I also remember Maria Petrovna Aristova, a respected teacher who’d visit our Vladya in the hospital in Moscow. We weren’t related to her or anything…She’s the one who brought Vladya back to our village, who carried her home…Vladya couldn’t walk anymore. Maria Petrovna would send me pencils and candy and write me letters. And in the temporary foster center, when they were washing and disinfecting me…I was sitting on a high bench…all covered in foam. I could have slipped and broken my bones on the cement floor. I started slipping…sliding down…and a woman I didn’t know…a nanny…caught me in her arms and embraced me: “My little chickadee.”

I saw God.
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Re: Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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Checking my library's collection.
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Re: Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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govmentchedda wrote: Tue Mar 02, 2021 3:41 pm Checking my library's collection.
Nice. I hope you find something.

Here's another excerpt from 'The Unwomanly Face of War':
For a long time I wandered from place to place and finally wound up in the city of Tambov and found a job in a hospital. The hospital was good; after going hungry for a long time I ate well, I became plump. And then when I turned sixteen, they told me that, like all the nurses and doctors, I could give blood. I started giving blood every month. The hospital constantly needed hundreds of liters, there was never enough. I gave a pint of blood twice a month. I was given a donor’s ration: two pounds of sugar, two pounds of farina, two pounds of sausage, to restore my strength. I was friends with a floor attendant, Aunt Niura. She had seven children, and her husband had been killed at the start of the war. The oldest boy, who was eleven, went to the grocery store and lost their ration cards, so I gave them my donor’s ration. One day the doctor said to me, “Let’s attach your address, in case somebody suddenly turns up who has had a transfusion of your blood.” We wrote out my address and stuck the label to the vial.

And a while later, two months, not more, I finished my shift and went to sleep. They came and roused me. “Get up! Get up, your brother has come.”

“What brother? I don’t have a brother.”

Our dormitory was on the top floor. I went down, looked: there stood a handsome young lieutenant. I asked, “Who wants to see Omelchenko?”

He said, “I do.” And he showed me the label the doctor and I had written. “Here…I’m your blood brother.”
He brought me two apples, a bag of candy—it was impossible then to buy candy anywhere. My God! How tasty those candies were! I went to the head of the hospital: “My brother has come…” They gave me a leave. He said, “Let’s go to the theater.” It was the first time in my life I went to the theater, and with a young fellow, at that. A handsome young fellow. An officer!

He left several days later. He had orders to go to the Voronezh front. When he came to say goodbye, I opened the window and waved to him. I couldn’t get a leave: just then a lot of wounded arrived.

I had never received letters from anybody; I had no idea what it was—to receive a letter. And suddenly they handed me a little triangle. I opened it, and there was written, “Your friend, commander of a machine-gun platoon…died a hero’s death…” It was my blood brother. He was from an orphanage, and probably mine was the only address he had. My address…When he was leaving he kept asking me to stay in this hospital, so that after the war he could easily find me. “It’s easy to lose each other during the war,” he said. And a month later I received this letter, that he had been killed…And I was so frightened. I was struck to the heart…I decided to do all I could to go to the front and avenge my blood; I knew that my blood had been spilled somewhere there…
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Re: Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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Looks like we've got Unwomanly Face of War, Voices from Chernobyl, and Last Witnesses. I put in a hold for Chernobyl.
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Re: Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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Four of her books are at my library system (I can get books shipped to my library from any library in the county.) Suggest a good starter?
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Re: Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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sancarlos wrote: Tue Mar 02, 2021 4:49 pm Four of her books are at my library system (I can get books shipped to my library from any library in the county.) Suggest a good starter?
I recommend chernobyl.
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Re: Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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A_B wrote: Tue Mar 02, 2021 4:50 pm
sancarlos wrote: Tue Mar 02, 2021 4:49 pm Four of her books are at my library system (I can get books shipped to my library from any library in the county.) Suggest a good starter?
I recommend chernobyl.
Yeah, I would second this. It's probably the subject that people are most familiar with already. And it's short, compared to some of her others.

It's possible that you've read some of it before. I usually see chapters posted on sites like longform.org around the anniversary every year.

I read this right after I read a few Anna Politkovskaya books. (Russian reporter, enemy of Putin, assassinated in 2006.) She wrote a lot about the Chechen War. To read about Chechens who made a home around Chernobyl was mind-boggling.
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Re: Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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I was actually seconding it because you recommended it as a starting point in the first post!
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Re: Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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A_B wrote: Tue Mar 02, 2021 6:03 pm I was actually seconding it because you recommended it as a starting point in the first post!
Oh. Yes. That. Well, thanks!

This seems like a good place to mention that I read Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago' a few years ago. All however-many-thousand pages of it. It's not something that I would recommend, because I know that most people don't have the time and patience that I do. But it was a hugely rewarding experience. I was in awe of him as I read it. There's a lot of factual/statistical stuff. But mostly just stories, his own and others'. And there are times when you can feel his anger. It's a staggering work.
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Re: Writer of the day: Svetlana Alexievich

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govmentchedda wrote: Tue Mar 02, 2021 4:46 pm Looks like we've got Unwomanly Face of War, Voices from Chernobyl, and Last Witnesses. I put in a hold for Chernobyl.
Had Chernobyl from the library. Never opened it. Just couldn't get psyched up enough for that much depression. My wife saw it, and said that she already owned the book Chernobyl Prayer by her, so I returned the library copy.
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