Belarusian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature

[Larry1]

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2015/announcement.html

Here is more about her work:

Belarusian writer and investigative journalist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2015, "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". Svetlana Alexievich is known for her meticulously reseached chonicles of modern history, such as the Soviet war in Afghanistan, fall of the Soviet Empire, and Chernobyl disaster. Her books are characterized by the use of multiple voices that record the emotional experience during the course of social upheavals. Alexievich writes in Russian.

"I don't know what I should talk about – about death or about love? Or are they the same? Which one should I talk about?" (from Voices from Chermobyl, 1997)

Svetlana Alexievich was born in Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk) in western Ukraine. Her father was a Belarusian and mother a Ukrainian. Both of her parents were teachers. Alexievich began writing while still at school. After working as a teacher in a rural school, she entered the University of Minsk, where she studied journalism. Alexievich graduated in 1972 and then worked as a journalist in Beresa and then in Minsk. For a  period she was a correspondent for the literary magazine Neman, before becoming the head of the section for non-fiction.

Her first book, I've Left My Village, was labelled anti-Communist and destroyed. In 1983 she completed War’s Unwomanly Face, which consisted of testimonies of hundreds of female WWII veterans. The book came out two years later in a censored form with many cuts. A new edition, in which Alexievich added some new material and restored the censored parts was published by the Palmira publishing house (Moscow) twenty years later.

Zinky Boys (1989), about the Soviet-Afghan war, which contributed to the fall of the Soviet empire, drew on interviews of officers, soldiers, wives, mothers and widows. The title refers to the sealed zinc coffins in which the Sovied dead were shipped back. "I don't want to hear any talk about a 'political mistake', OK? Give me my legs back if it was really a mistake," says one of the officers. After the publication of the work, the KGB and military authorities organized a campaign of persecution against Alexievich. In 1993 the mothers of two veterans sued her for slandering the Soviet Army. The court confiscated all her tapes and files as evidence.

http://authorscalendar.info/alexie.htm

[Larry1]

This article discusses the similarities between the Soviet response to Solzhenitsyn winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Russian response to Alexievich's being awarded the Nobel Prize. Here are some excerpts from the article. If you would like to learn more about this read the entire article.

Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 and his book "The Gulag Archipelago" was first published in the West in 1973. The Soviet press ran large-scale propaganda campaigns in response to both events.

However, one publication was different — Literaturnaya Gazeta. Readers considered it the most progressive publication. The paper was so popular that it had a print run of 3.2 million copies, and yet it was still difficult to obtain a subscription. Kremlin spin doctors exploited that fact, placing their most rabid propaganda in the newspaper alongside "scathing" investigative reports on Soviet shortcomings in trade and housing.

Issue after issue of the paper featured entire pages filled with articles about Solzhenitsyn that carried such titles as "The Self-Incrimination of the Accuser," "Traitor to His Homeland," "The Logic of Moral Decline" and "The Shame of the Literary Vlasov" — a reference to those who supported Soviet World War II lieutenant general and eventual Nazi collaborator Andrei Vlasov. Nobody worried about the fact that they were accusing an honored battlefield veteran and the holder of two Soviet military medals of being a "Vlasov."

Their main charge: Solzhenitsyn opposed the peaceful policies of the Soviet state and must therefore have sold out to the United States...

Now, more than 40 years later, the Nobel Committee has awarded the prize for literature to Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarussian writer who writes in Russian. But most importantly, she is critical of the regime of President Vladimir Putin.

And what do you think? Immediately, that very same Literaturnaya Gazeta and another "institution of the creative intelligentsia," the Kultura newspaper, published articles that repeated practically word for word the things written about Solzhenitsyn in the 1970s. The similarities are striking.

In its most recent issue, Literaturnaya Gazeta wrote:

"Svetlana Alexievich is a classic anti-Soviet. … As before, the people of Russia do not share those anti-Soviet ideas. In addition, the vast majority supports Putin, and Alexievich's comments about the Russian president would make people at least wonder about the motives of the Nobel Committee...

"The Nobel Committee obviously based its decision on political considerations. Its primary purpose was to raise Alexievich's status and to draw attention to the author."

... "Ms. Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for her statements that have no connection with reality. The award was used as an attack on Russia and Putin. It was a political action that had nothing to do with literature."

Putin's time machine has taken Russia several decades into the past.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/alexievich-gets-the-solzhenitsyn-treatment/540084.html

[Larry1]

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Svetlana Alexievich on Sunday defended herself against accusations that she "poured dirt" over her home country of Belarus, saying her criticism was targeted at the regime, not its people, the Govorit Moskva radio station reported Sunday.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko — who earlier this month was re-elected into a fifth term in office — on Saturday took a swipe at the writer while speaking at a cultural award ceremony in Minsk.

"Some of our 'artists,' creative individuals, even Nobel Prize winners … went abroad and tried to pour a bucket of dirt over their country. That's wrong, that's not being in opposition. It is completely wrong because, like your parents, or your mother, you don't choose your motherland, your land," Lukashenko was cited as saying in a transcript of his speech on the president's website.

"[Belarus] is what it is. If you speak badly about your motherland, are ashamed of her, that means you, above all, are a bad son," he added.

In an interview with Govorit Moskva on Sunday, Alexievich struck back.

"The people are waiting for reforms, there has been a build-up of energy. And they have no ideas at all. Except to maintain power. If that is an insult to the Belarussian or Russian people, I don't know what times we are living in," Alexievich quipped.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/540308.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+themoscowtimes%2Fnews+%28The+Moscow+Times+News%29

[msmob]

LukaShouldGo has had him arrested