I am interested in the little man
Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 was the writer of Belarus Svetlana Aleksievich. The prize was awarded “for its polyphonic work – a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Svetlana Aleksievich was often a guest of Radio Liberty. Here are excerpts from an interview which the writer gave the radio station:
1998. About the home and cosmopolitanism:
– I want to live at home in Belarus. Of course, I could live in many other places, and I have the opportunity to have this. But what I know and I understand it in this piece of land. Not only in Belarus, will be called “post-Soviet space.” The only person that I can guess something or understand something, – a person with whom I grew up together, in a culture where I grew up. That’s my job. It was this man. When I say, “Who are you – Belarusian or Russian?” – I can say what culture I represent, but the views I – cosmopolitan, especially since Chernobyl. On this earth you’re just dead man who is trying to find some meaning in this life, in everything that is around us.
– Every defeat, if you look at history, totalitarian powerful energy terrible idea – is primarily a defeat men. In their role as something happens and there is something they did not expect to get used to the role of the winner of the hunter: he came home, threw the skin of a mammoth or steep salaries and the woman left. I recorded the confession of one man. He has in the recent past major, squadron commander, he now found himself, as it were thrown out of the army at age 42, he seems to be no, everything must start again to work as a watchman somewhere in his former subordinate. And this role is not for him, his role was at epaulettes, almost not to notice how children grow, somewhere to sit on duty, the steering wheel to keep away in the sky and come home only as a hero, as a winner. And suddenly it turns out that the family includes wife of two years, who knows the language, and in general our women today to keep balance in society: it brings wages, she thinks, what to feed … And it turns out, he needs more courage, not here this mammoth hunters, and the courage to go to her son, to talk to him, lead him out kindergarten, cook, in the end, even though milk soup and vacuumed the apartment. And he said to me: “I can not live like this, it’s not my role, we are not set up for this purpose.” He is ready to go to Chechnya, on some kind of war, to climb on the roof of the reactor, and he says: “I’ll probably do the same, my friend.” That is another of the same war, his friend committed suicide. For me it is a very imaginative picture for today. and the courage to go to her son, to talk to him, lead him out of kindergarten, cook, in the end, even though milk soup and vacuumed the apartment. And he said to me: “I can not live like this, it’s not my role, we are not set up for this purpose.” He is ready to go to Chechnya, on some kind of war, to climb on the roof of the reactor, and he says: “I’ll probably do the same, my friend.” That is another of the same war, his friend committed suicide. For me it is a very imaginative picture for today. and the courage to go to her son, to talk to him, lead him out of kindergarten, cook, in the end, even though milk soup and vacuumed the apartment. And he said to me: “I can not live like this, it’s not my role, we are not set up for this purpose.” He is ready to go to Chechnya, on some kind of war, to climb on the roof of the reactor, and he says: “I’ll probably do the same, my friend.” That is another of the same war, his friend committed suicide. For me it is a very imaginative picture for today.
1999. About the heroes of the day segodnyashy
– Hero, which to me today is interesting, – this is not a priest, it is not an intellectual and not the sixties, is, oddly enough, this little man who survives, who somehow pulls out of this nightmare everyday of their children, lugging bags with China with Manchuria, Poland and stands on this sun, in the bazaar, cheating the state. It was he, this little man, collects this new experience of life, and the first time he said: is my life, I am responsible for myself, for the first time for himself, for the idea is not for the state, for something. And here is the most interesting character for me today.
1999. About the time of the disaster and the people of Utopia
– The time in which we were proved, this time the disaster and disaster-utopia. And we can even do not fully understand what time we got, and may have to be remote, and we otherwise take a look at it. I wrote and now was finishing the story of the people of Utopia, that is, people who will never be, I would have said, because now this person leaves the stage of history. And it’s not in my world, but the fact that this man lived so because I just went with it, that’s 20 years old I was, and was a man who was at the right time in the right place. I have found the revolution of people who started it all, the idea was young, strong, attractive. I tracked up to the end of all that had happened to her, before the collapse and before Chernobyl. And so what we are saying –I honestly fulfilled its duty as a writer, just the way I was brought up in Russian culture and Russian literature. But the fact that in this cycle, I call him “man-friend”, I realized that there are no two books, which will be a private person: it is a book about love, and the seventh and final book in the series – a man in his old age , a man alone with this departure, disappearance, when he asks: why all this? And this need has appeared to me from the street sensations, because the genre in which I work, requires that the ear was on the street, and there is time in the rhythm, but in this music. And I can say that the most important feeling in me today that my inner tool requires some refurbishment and that I otherwise want to talk with someone. I want to talk to the individual, to hear, to hear him.
1999. On the Psychology of the victim
– I often wonder, when in trains or airplanes meet with our people who come from the West, and they say, well, what’s the Germans, what the French, they are rational, are uninteresting, we like and smarter, and more deeply, and wider, but life is not obtained. Why can not – is unclear. Denial reaction. And of course, I think the depth of another – it is our psychology of the victim, when the suffering – a matter of life, an excuse. It’s so deep in us. And the victim, she was in a situation where we were today, when few winners and many losers, the victim only two reactions –insult or aggression. And so I think, and in Belarus, where I live, this is especially true since this process is long, 3-4 years, it is triggered by the top authority, I think that the development of these were expected, and I was even in a sense, I wonder why we are surprised by this. When I wrote “The Boys in Zinc,” “Charmed death”, I asked hundreds of people, and no one was looking at myself, all nodded off somewhere upstairs, showed up. That is, the sea of blood behind a mass grave, but no one said it was my fault, I was shooting, I was informed. Everyone said that someone is guilty, but he did not.
1999. On feminism and male culture
– Men’s world – they are united around here the god Mars, it can be in various forms, but it is their world, their culture, their traditions. And like enough to museums all over the world to see that we are a nation epoch of wars and revolutions. Has to offer today a woman, especially in Russia, the collapse of these, when everyone in the bazaars and the old sense disappeared, no new? We can only complain. This is also a whole culture of salaries, is a women’s culture today. But we have no idea, because it is no coincidence feminism in crisis around the world.
2000. On the role of the writer, and the new generation
– In its midst and in their generation, we talk a lot about citizenship, on the place of the intellectual today, but it’s all in some old forms. But when I go down to another generation, and talk to people, as a genre, which I am doing – is an art that was lying in the street art of voices and stories of votes, when I start to listen to the street, I heard a very sharp difference between the older generation and younger. Junior does not speak about politics. For them, Putin some mythical figure, but they do not put your life in addiction, they are engaged in quite other matters, some metaphysical problems, pragmatic problems of survival. And I think that is produced by a new outlook, a new value orientation. The struggle and the confrontation of reason and ignorance, it is still going on, but from other positions. Man talks about dignity, about their own life, that is, this man has not pound so the barricade, not to send, I hope, in the Barents Sea without a safety net, so do not send to Chechnya. That is, it is a different operating time, it goes to another aesthetics, in other forms. And I am afraid that somehow we imagine our role pastor and exaggerate its role. Surely we should just quietly become knowledge workers and to think of us in this life is not so much depends, but if something depends, it is actually to teach myself, and if need be, to someone else, a simple I thought that no technique, no president does not free us from work to suffer, to think, to love, do look for some meaning to his life. I hope, in the Barents Sea without a safety net, so do not send to Chechnya. That is, it is a different operating time, it goes to another aesthetics, in other forms. And I am afraid that somehow we imagine our role pastor and exaggerate its role. Surely we should just quietly become knowledge workers and to think of us in this life is not so much depends, but if something depends, it is actually to teach myself, and if need be, to someone else, a simple I thought that no technique, no president does not free us from work to suffer, to think, to love, do look for some meaning to his life. I hope, in the Barents Sea without a safety net, so do not send to Chechnya. That is, it is a different operating time, it goes to another aesthetics, in other forms. And I am afraid that somehow we imagine our role pastor and exaggerate its role. Surely we should just quietly become knowledge workers and to think of us in this life is not so much depends, but if something depends, it is actually to teach myself, and if need be, to someone else, a simple I thought that no technique, no president does not free us from work to suffer, to think, to love, do look for some meaning to his life.
2000. About the mass consciousness
– Our big problem is that we still like to deal with the ideas that we have in mind, and not with the reality that overturns our ideas instantly. Here we are dealing with an ideal and discounted. You just have to understand that we are very undeveloped mass consciousness. Just recently I went from Sweden with one businessman. Well-dressed man who said that he had several houses. I ask him: what struck you in Sweden? He says: life. Here in my house there is a washing machine. I say, as you do not have a washing machine, and there are a few houses? He says: washing machine I have a wife. That’s about the level of our mass consciousness, enough to leave any political club, party a little further the Garden Ring for St. Petersburg or Moscow. Since these people have to work for a stepwise movement should be.
2001. About the meaning of life and survival of the void
–People are tired of being humiliated. And spiritual humiliation – it may be even more terrible than the material, I would have said so. It is quite clear today that the jump did not work, jump in freedom and for freedom. I think for a long time will have to live in this intermediate time, in such a dark, gloomy, deaf enough, with some glimpses of some hope, with new technologies, but the darkness of the old. And the answers were much deeper than we previously thought. These are the ideas of the sixties, dissidence, they now seem to me the intellectual traps, this is simply denial. Because, I think, still deeper, in spite of all the blood. The fact that the whole story – a huge mass grave, it is still something the idea of socialism coincided with the Russian mentality, with this mysterious Russian soul. There was some kind of fatal romanticism, taste some metaphysical mystery. Man joined some kind of huge space. And despite all these camps, he always had a chance of becoming a statistician, not only in the camp dust, but some main protagonist. I think it was the answer to the meaning of life. This is no answer today, people are left alone with the void, alone with survival.
2002. On the Phenomenon of Lukashenka
– A large gap between the mass consciousness, the study of which I am engaged, and between the views of the political elite. Belarus – a territory, canned due to the authoritarian regime, and it is quite strongly conserved. After Utopia, as we know, we are not only bad roads and bad at home, but the wickedness of man, the man with the instinct and sense of sacrifice. I can say that in the beginning, 5-7 years ago, or even 10 years ago underestimated the phenomenon as Lukashenko, who all focus and all this to bring the pure idea. I think that today, and Russian politicians, and our Belarusian opposition would be nice to not repeat this estimate, underestimate Lukashenko, underestimate the cunning and rather complicated his situation in which he finds himself today, and how he would try this be turned out, and I think, its potential is still undervalued. This is one of the mistakes that we made, I am afraid that this is not repeated. Because, I say again, the more I travel across Belarus, the more I am convinced that the time has stopped. The feeling that we seem to have fallen out of time, the same person who has a very strong foundation Lukashenko.
2010. On the impossibility of revolution
– There will be no revolution in Belarus, the revolution we missed, it could be 15 years ago. Nobody here does not die of hunger. Corks in Minsk, and what a good car! People, in general, began to live well. This is an authoritarian regime, is one of those types of authoritarian regime that emerged in the post-Soviet space. But everyone calls it a dictatorship, and no one thinks, because one authoritarian regime you have in Russia, and the second here. And we have it more dangerous. Because Lukashenko chose a social contract with the public. We, the opposition, say that we have a bad thing. But we can not live in Germany, and, unlike the opposition, people understand it. And human rights, democracy – is Chinese charter for rural peasants with whom I spoke yesterday. They confuse freedom with the possibilities. Sausage in bulk, bulk cheese,
2013. On the unity of cultures
– I’m a man of Russian culture. And here is my project in which I was engaged in 35 years of the history of the red man red civilization. She spoke in Russian, this utopia. And I wrote in Russian. At the same time Belarus – my homeland. I think that after the disappearance of the empire is very difficult to clean up the nation too. All of us very hard, very confused. In Chernobyl, I generally free from such issues. When I wrote the book about Chernobyl, and there, in this zone, you feel all mosquito somehow. You are on a par with the hedgehog, hare. You do not feel there is a Belarusian or French. You’re just a species that may disappear. It all human division. It’s like Alexander Men, when he said, that’s the church, there are Catholics, there are Orthodox. He replied: “These walls do not reach up to Him.” rather, I’m the man with the world still experience. How do I ask questions about our nationalists: “And why do you have heroes Russian?” Well, this is a serious question, yes? I think no, no. The world is becoming increasingly common. Of course, there is a division, but for me personally a person – it is something common, unified.
– I liked the first Maidan, and the second Maidan, I liked the people who did it. As for the second Maidan, there are problems with the “right sector”, with the radicals, but I like the people themselves. But politicians who then peddling the Maidan, turned it into something else – it is a completely different aspect of the matter. And it seems to me that Ukraine is very weak now, and if Europe, America does not help Ukraine economically, politically, it would be very tragic. This can really become a Yugoslavia near here. After all, the people there are very bad lives, and there is bitterness. And the poor man to get someone to hate very easily. And if you are more or less will keep the economic situation, if there is a leader, not as passionate as Tymoshenko, some strong, intelligent person, a sober person that will take the West, with whom Russia will be considered, – it seems to me, this time the West is united enough, and Russia felt the power of the West – then continue the Ukrainian state. I know a lot of people in Ukraine, they believe in their future. Probably you have to live there to feel it. As far as I was disappointed in some of my Russian friends, the Ukrainian people are so delighted me. It seems to me that this country has a future, but right now she has a very difficult time. As for Putin, I think he still does not give the military campaigns carried out, and I have a feeling that he himself does not want it. But he just took on a role, a mission, and now he is forced to conform to it. And actually, the little guy is hard to always be greater in a certain messianic pose. It seems to me that it is too mystify.
2015. About Nadezhda Savchenko
– I love this woman! I remember the very first interview with Hope as she spoke honestly about everything that happened to her. This is a man of conviction, a man with his eyes. This soldier who did his job – to protect the homeland. I think that the Ukrainian army to protect their homeland. Savchenko fraudulently abducted, taken to the Russian prosecutor’s office is not against any evidence, she has an alibi. When I signed the text of a letter <in defense Savchenko>, remember the famous picture in which Putin is depicted on horseback – half-naked, torso as powerful. And I think, well, how it gets along with the fact that a man fighting with a woman? With such a strong, interesting women? When it is clear that very little is left to Hope did not become. On the most terrible wars decided to respect the will and resistance of the enemy, This makes even the Germans during World War II, many such examples. And for some reason that’s the Russian government is not capable.
2015. The victory of the new world
– Russia and Belarus, of course, is the old world. On new machines the streets, the buildings have little new architecture, people wear new costumes, but it’s old world, the world of old concepts, and today he went to the last Soviet battle. Not for the supreme justice, which can be learned from the Soviet experience – there were a lot of Stalinist betrayals, but still in the beginning there were a lot of romantic hopes, which have suffered a complete disaster. It all ended in blood, as one of my characters says: “Barrels of meat left and a sea of blood, so we end the whole story …”
This will be a very long struggle, I think it will be delayed for several decades. But no matter how hard Nashi and lukashisty, today ossification fly off, because the world is still moving and we can not sit on the sidelines, it is impossible if only because of new technologies. At any time, you can create a reservation, well, maybe even for a long time (after all, there is the experience of North Korea), but nevertheless humanity is moving towards a more normal sense of life, when the human spirit is not humiliated when human concepts are not humiliated. This applies to all of the past – not only the war but also of the Gulag, which also turned out to be a controversial notion, as it turns out. For example, the museum “Perm-36” – is not a museum of victims of the Gulag, and the Gulag Museum workers. Now let us bow to the executioners, to read as they are in pain, mocking the victims …
All very mixed up, but I think that the old idea fizzles out. The world is going in the direction that the person remains a person is in the divine sense of the word – it wrote Alexander Men and Aleksandr Shmeman – when really it is about the human spirit.
Sourse, 08/10/2015
