8 October 2015

Source: HRO.org (info)

• Moscow region and Moscow  Human rights education   Belarus   Ukraine

Winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich announced that she loves the "world of Russian literature, ballet and music", but "doesn't love the world of Beria and Stalin".

"Some people, even in Belarus, write that I hate the Belarusian people, that I don't only hate the government but the people too. I think that no one likes the truth. I say what I think. I love the Russian people, I love the Belarusian people, my relatives on my father's side were Belarusians, as was my favourite grandfather. I was the fourth generation in my family to be a village school teacher. […] My grandmother and my mother were Ukrainian, though. I really love Ukraine. Recently I went to the Maidan Square, and when I saw the photographs of the men who died there, I burst into tears. It's my land too", she said, according to Dozhd, the independent Russian television channel.

According to BuzzFeed's Kiev correspondent Max Seddon who was writing on Twitter, Alexievich compared Russia's participation in the Syrian war to conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya.

On 8 October 2015, the Nobel committee in Stockholm announced that the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich is the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature.

The Nobel academy commented that the prize was awarded in recognition "of her polyphonic work – it is a monument to the suffering and courage of our time", reports Radio Svoboda.

Svetlana Alexievich was born in 1948 in the Ukrainian town of Ivano-Frankovsk, but subsequently moved to Belarus with her family. She graduated from the journalism faculty of Belarus State University and worked for the local newspaper in the Brest region. She was a member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR.

Alexievich, who is 67, writes in Russian. She has written prose about the First World War and about the Chernobyl catastrophe. Her published books include "War's Unwomanly Face", "Voices from Chernobyl", "Zinky Boys" and "Second-hand Time".

Translated by Suzanne Eade Roberts