Most recently, the Nobel Committee decided to award the Literature Prize. The winner was the writer Svetlana Aleksievich, whose biography is little known to modern readers.

Let's talk today in more detail about the life and creative destiny of 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. Then 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 Aleksievich has seen a lot in her lifetime, her biography confirms this.

After successfully graduating from school, Svetlana entered the faculty of journalism at the Belarusian State University, prestigious by Soviet standards. After graduation, she tried a lot of professions: she worked as an educator, teacher and journalist. Its first newspapers were Pripyatskaya Pravda and Mayak Kommunizma.

mature years

Svetlana became interested in writing in her youth, her essays and short stories began to be published in the Soviet press, at the same time she was honored to be admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers (this event took place in 1983). Until now, she is ranked among the creators of Belarusian literature, which is reflected in the wording of the Nobel Prize: “Belarusian writer Svetlana Aleksievich.” Her biography, her personal life took place precisely in Belarus, hence the truth of such formulations.

During the perestroika years, the writer published several books that made a lot of noise and ranked her as a dissident (we will talk about these publications a little later). In the 2000s Aleksievich moved to Europe, lived and worked in France, Germany and Italy. Recently returned to Belarus.

Svetlana Aleksievich: personal life

The question of the female fate of the writer has always interested fans of her work, but very little is known in this area.

In her works, Svetlana Aleksandrovna told a lot of purely female stories, but for all the journalists who interviewed her, the topic “Svetlana Aleksievich: personal life” was closed. The writer devoted herself to literature as the main vocation of her life, in all questionnaires she indicates that she is an unmarried woman. It is known that for a long time she raised her niece - the daughter of an early deceased sister.

Although it cannot be said that Aleksievich Svetlana is a deprived person. Her family consists of her books, film scripts and journalistic work.

First literary experiences

The writer Svetlana Aleksievich 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 arouse enthusiasm among the then Soviet officials, so the book was not published in the USSR.

The second book of the writer was published in 1983 and made a lot of noise. It was called "War does not 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 memoirs were cut out by censors (later the author inserted them into post-Soviet publications). Aleksievich actually debunked the image that was created before her in books about the war. In her work, women tell 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 just as polemical. It was dedicated to the memories of children about the terrible events of the Great Patriotic War. Svetlana Aleksievich told sad childhood stories to readers, whose family herself was in the occupation during the war.

Notable works of the writer

The work Zinc Boys (1989), dedicated to the sad events of the Afghan war for our country, made a lot of noise. Here Aleksievich tells about the great grief of mothers who lost their sons and do not understand why their children died.

The next book - "Charmed by Death" (1993) - told about the practice of mass suicides of people who lost faith in their former ideals after the collapse of the USSR.

The work of the writer "Chernobyl Prayer" (1997), which told about the sad events of the disaster, became widely known. The author has collected in her book interviews with still living participants in the aftermath of this disaster.

As we can see, Svetlana Aleksievich created many books during her long life as a writer, reviews of these books are very different. Some of the readers honor the author's talent, while others curse Aleksievich, accusing him 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 fiction and documentary. She is attracted to both fiction and journalistic documentaries.

Since the topics of her books excite so many people, the work of the writer is the object of close attention from critics. And they differ in their assessments.

So, some modern Western literary figures believe that Svetlana Aleksievich, whose biography and work are directly related to the 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, which did not spare its people in order to achieve illusory political goals. People were massacred in the Gulag, driven to slaughter on the fields of World War II, sparing neither children nor women, the 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 being able to see only the negative aspects of Soviet and Russian reality, not noticing its positive aspects. These critics accuse the author of actually betraying the interests of his homeland. They say that Svetlana Aleksievich, whose biography is directly connected with Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, has not 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 real facts in his works, creating for the Western and Russian readers the image of "evil and insidious Russia."

Political views of the writer

The topic “Svetlana Aleksievich: biography, personal life” attracts the attention of journalists, but their greater interest is riveted to the political views of the writer.

The fact is that Svetlana is a consistent supporter of Western views, she has repeatedly criticized the political position of 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 (the last book of the writer is called “Second Hand Time” (2013)). Aleksievich believes that Putin and Lukashenko want to resurrect the terrible and inhuman Soviet project, therefore, in her public speeches, the writer condemns all the actions of the current Belarusian and Russian leaders. She condemns the revival of the military power of the Russian Federation, considers Putin to be the culprit of the death of people in the Donbass, etc.

Nobel Prize: the history of the award

The writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice: in 2013 and in 2015. In 2013, the prize was awarded to another author from Canada.

In 2015, the Nobel Committee decided to award this prize to Svetlana Aleksievich. Immediately after the announcement of this decision, many became interested in such a person as Svetlana Aleksievich. The Nobel Prize was awarded to her for a reason, and this is even more interesting.

This award has not been awarded to Russian-speaking writers for quite a long 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 obvious differences of opinion with the official authorities of Soviet Russia (for example, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Boris Pasternak, Ivan Bunin).

A brief overview of the writer's Nobel speech

By tradition, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature delivers a speech of thanks, in which he sums up the unique results of his work.

Svetlana Aleksievich also made such a speech. The Nobel Prize in Literature is given once in a lifetime, so the writer has created one of her best texts.

The topic of Aleksievich's speech was the image of a "red man", that is, a man with a Soviet psyche, who still lives in the minds of Russian people and forces them to make certain decisions. Aleksievich condemns this man as a product of the totalitarian era.

The author calls the Russian people "slaves of Utopia", who imagine that they have a "special Russian way", a special spirituality that differs from the spirituality of Western countries. The writer sees the salvation of our country in the denial of this eternal slavery and the conversion of Russian people to the values ​​of Western civilization.

Svetlana Alexandrovna Aleksievich (05/31/1948, Stanislav, Ukraine) - Soviet and Belarusian writer, journalist. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2015.

Father is Belarusian, mother is Ukrainian. After the demobilization of his father, the family moved to his homeland, to Belarus. Graduated from the Department of Journalism of the Belarusian State University named after Lenin. She worked as an educator at a boarding school, as a teacher, in the editorial offices of the regional newspapers Prypyatskaya Pravda, Mayak Kommunizma, the republican Selskaya Gazeta, and the Neman magazine.

She began her literary career in 1975. The “Godfather” can be called the famous Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich with his idea of ​​a new genre, the exact definition of which he was constantly looking for: “cathedral novel”, “oratorio novel”, “testimonial novel”, “people telling about themselves”, “ epic-choral prose”, etc.

Aleksievich's first book, War Has Not a Woman's Face, was ready in 1983 and lay in the publishing house for two years. The author was accused of pacifism, naturalism and debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman. At the time, it was more than serious. "Perestroika" gave a beneficial impetus. The book was published almost simultaneously in the magazine "October", "Roman-gazeta", in the publishing houses "Mastatskaya Litaratura", "Soviet Writer". The total circulation reached 2 million copies.

The fate of the following books was not easy either. "Last Witnesses" (1985) - children's view of the war. The Zinc Boys (1989) is about the criminal war in Afghanistan (the publication of this book caused not only a wave of negative publications in communist and military newspapers, but also a protracted trial, which was stopped only by the active defense of the democratic public and intellectuals for abroad). Charmed by Death (1993) is about suicides. "Chernobyl Prayer" (1997) - about the world after Chernobyl, after a nuclear war ... Now Aleksievich is working on a book about love - "Wonderful deer of the eternal hunt."

Member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR, the Union of Writers of the USSR, the Belarusian PEN Center.

Books were published in 19 countries of the world - America, England, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Germany, India, France, Sweden, Japan, etc.

Based on the books of Aleksievich, films were made and theatrical performances were staged. The cycle of documentaries based on the book “War Has No Woman's Face” was awarded the USSR State Prize and the Silver Dove at the Leipzig International Documentary Film Festival.

She is known for her consistently negative attitude towards the foreign and domestic policy of President A. Lukashenko, in connection with which she was subjected to judicial and extrajudicial persecution. Since the beginning of the 2000s, he has been living in exile (Italy, France).

Books (6)

War has no woman's face

“War has no woman’s face” is one of the most famous war books in the world.

Translated into more than twenty languages, included in school and university programs in many countries

In the most terrible war of the 20th century, a woman had to become a soldier. She not only rescued and bandaged the wounded, but also fired from a "sniper", bombed, undermined bridges, went on reconnaissance, took language. The woman killed. She killed the enemy, who fell with unprecedented cruelty on her land, on her house, on her children. It was the greatest sacrifice they made on the altar of Victory. And an immortal feat, the full depth of which we comprehend over the years of peaceful life.

Last Witnesses. Solo for children's voice

The second book (the first was "The War Doesn't Have a Woman's Face") of the famous documentary cycle by Svetlana Aleksievich.

Memories of the Great Patriotic War of those who were 6-12 years old during the war - the most impartial and most unfortunate witnesses of it. A war seen by children's eyes is even more terrible than a war captured by a woman's eyes.

Aleksievich's books have nothing to do with the kind of literature where "the writer pees and the reader reads." But it is in relation to her books that the question most often arises: do we need such a terrible truth? The writer herself answers this question: "A man without memory is capable of generating only evil and nothing else but evil."

Zinc Boys

Without this book, which has long become a world bestseller, it is already impossible to imagine either the history of the Afghan war - an unnecessary and unjust war, or the history of the last years of Soviet power, completely undermined by this war.

The grief of the mothers of “zinc boys” is inescapable, their desire to know the truth about how and for what their sons fought and died in Afghanistan is understandable. But, having learned this truth, many of them were horrified and refused it.

second hand time

The final, fifth book of the famous documentary series by Svetlana Aleksievich "Voices of Utopia". “Communism had a crazy plan,” says the author, “to remake the ‘old’ man, the old Adam. And it worked... Maybe the only thing that worked. For more than seventy years, a separate human type has been bred in the laboratory of Marxism-Leninism - homo soveticus. Some believe that this is a tragic character, others call him a "scoop". It seems to me that I know this person, he is well known to me, I am next to him, I have lived side by side for many years. He is me. These are my acquaintances, friends, parents.”

Socialism is over. And we stayed.

Charmed by death

A gigantic empire collapsed. The socialist mainland, which occupied one sixth of the land. In the first five years, hundreds of thousands of suicides were recorded. People knew how to live only under socialism and did not know how to live on ... Among the suicides were not only communist fanatics, but also poets, marshals, ordinary communists ...

The book is about how we emerged from the anesthesia of the past, from the hypnosis of the Great Deception... Killer ideas...

Reader Comments

Irina/ 06/8/2019 Oh, the author had a soul, but it all came out!

Bogdan/ 6.06.2019 I want to answer Ivan. Knowledge of languages ​​does not say anything yet. When the computer was created, someone said “a mathematical genius”, but the main developer answered, an idiot with a mathematical bias. The writer received the award deservedly, she wrote everything correctly. My mother was a partisan and fought, she told a lot of things. I had neighbors who were veterans. To fight a woman is a feat and life in war is terrible for her. And about Afghanistan, if someone tells some kind of gaiety, he is a bad person and he should be ashamed. My friends and relatives were there. The song is sung, who saw a lot of words does not waste. And they rarely tell. And how many are no longer in this world ........

Ivan/ 26.10.2018 About myself. Higher education, 8 foreign languages ​​(including Chinese and Arabic) and 4 languages ​​of the peoples of my country. Prior to the selection of Ms. Aleksievich as a "Nobel laureate", the opinion of the Nobel Committee was highly respected in my family. Be sure to re-read the books of the Laureates who have already read and read new ones ...!
Ms. Aleksievich was appointed a laureate not for a book "... not a woman's face" written by a wonderful Soviet writer, thank God Soviet culture is rich in wonderful books, and not for half-truth books (a worthy student of Dr. Goebels) of such writers a lot of!
It's a pity that the People's Commissariat began to give titles because a public person calls the people of Belarus and all the peoples of Russia "cattle"!
It's a pity that NC makes political decisions to the detriment of its reputation!

Michael/ 01/07/2018 I read about Afghanistan, well, and a writer! it drives a solid rubbish, six of my classmates fought across the river, well, there was everything, but here there is only oppressive rubbish, as if ordered from behind a hillock, only to denigrate at any cost, to belittle the significance, to make this war insignificant, and then more - to take away memory, take away country, for which she received the award.

Andrey/ 06/29/2017 I have only read a couple of books in my 30-year life. And today I'm looking for online where you can buy her books. Especially since they are trying to denigrate her like that, it means that she really wrote the truth, which hurts her eyes. Yes, and I see there are enough paid commentators even here, well, or they are drugged by their own propaganda. And to you Aleksievich low bow from me. Thank you.

eon/ 08/21/2016 Thank you for the truth, even though it is terrible

Tatyana A/ 3.01.2016 True contemporary art should influence the emotions of a person (viewer, reader). Congratulations!

Mila/ 30.10.2015 Congratulations on your award. I read the book "War has no woman's face." I cried. I felt so empathetic only when I watched the movie "Schindler's List". Thank you for stirring up my rusty soul!

Svetlana Alexandrovna Aleksievich (1948) - Soviet and Belarusian writer, journalist, screenwriter of documentaries. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2015.

Svetlana Aleksievich was born on May 31, 1948 in the city of Stanislav in Western Ukraine (now Ivano-Frankivsk). Her mother was Ukrainian, and her father was Belarusian. Svetlana spent all her childhood in a village in the Vinnitsa region. Later they moved to Belarus. Grandmother on the side of the father and grandfather on the side of the mother died at the front, and two brothers of Svetlana's father went missing during the war years. Her father was the only one who returned from the front. Svetlana Aleksievich's parents were teachers in a rural school.

Svetlana graduated from high school in the village of Kopatkevichi, Petrikovsky district, Gomel region in 1965.

Journalistic activity

The journalistic biography of Svetlana Aleksievich begins in 1972, after graduating from the university (BSU, Faculty of Journalism), when she becomes an employee of the Mayak Kommunizma regional newspaper in the Brest region. From 1973 to 1976 - worked as a journalist in the Belarusian "Selskaya Gazeta", and from 1976 to 1984 - head of the essay and journalism department of the "Neman" magazine.

Creation

Svetlana Aleksievich writes in the genre of fiction and documentary prose. She calls Ales Adamovich and Vasil Bykov her teachers. All of Aleksievich's books are based on detailed interviews with people who have experienced some kind of difficult event or with their surviving relatives.

The first book by Svetlana Aleksievich "I left the village" was prepared for publication in 1976. The book was a collection of monologues of Belarusian villagers who moved to the city. However, this book was never published; at the direction of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the BSSR, the set of the book was scattered. The writer was accused of criticizing the strict passport regime and "misunderstanding the agrarian policy" of the party. Later, Aleksievich herself considered her work excessively "journalistic" and refused to publish it.

Since 1983 - a member of the Writers' Union of the USSR.

In 1983, a documentary story was written based on interviews with Soviet women who participated in the Great Patriotic War "The war has no woman's face", which brought Aleksievich fame. In 1985, the story was published, it was the first published book by Svetlana Aleksievich.

Aleksievich's books form a cycle that she herself defines as "the chronicle of the Great Utopia" or the story of the "red man".

The most famous were her books in the genre of non-fiction prose "War has no female face", "Zinc Boys", "Chernobyl Prayer", "Second Hand Time". Aleksievich's works are devoted to the life of the late USSR and the post-Soviet era, imbued with feelings of compassion and humanism.

Documentary films based on scripts by Svetlana Aleksievich.

Difficult Conversations (Belarusfilm, 1979), director Richard Yasinsky
“War has no female face” (together with Viktor Dashuk) - a series of seven documentary television films (1981-1984, Belarusfilm), directed by Viktor Dashuk. "Parent's House" - (Belarusian television, 1982), director Viktor Shevelevich
"Portrait with dahlias" - (Belarusian television, 1984), director Valery Basov
"Soldiers" - (Belarusian television, 1985), director Valery Basov
“I am talking about my time” - (Belarusian television, 1987), director Valery Zhigalko
“The past is still ahead” - (Belarusian television, 1988), director Valery Zhigalko
"These obscure old people" (Belarusfilm, 1988), director Iosif Pikman
Cycle "From the Abyss" (script with Marina Goldovskaya), director Marina Goldovskaya (OKO-media, Austria-Russia)
"People of War" (1990)
Blockade People (1990)
Afghan cycle - documentary films based on the book "Zinc Boys" (script with Sergey Lukyanchikov), director Sergey Lukyanchikov, Belarusfilm
"Shame" (1991)
"I got out of obedience" (1992)
"Cross" - (1994, Russia). Director Gennady Gorodniy
"Children of war. The Last Witnesses, directed by Alexei Kitaytsev, screenplay by Lyudmila Romanenko based on the book The Last Witnesses. Svetlana Aleksievich takes part in the film. Studio MB Group, Moscow, 2009. The film was awarded a special prize at the Open Documentary Film Competition "Man and War" (Yekaterinburg, 2011).
Films based on books by Svetlana Aleksievich
"On the ruins of utopia" (1999, Germany)
"Russia. The Story of a Little Man (2000, NHK, Japan), directed by Hideya Kamakura.
"The Door" (Ireland, 2008), directed by Juanita Wilson - a short film based on the book "Chernobyl Prayer".
"Voices of Chernobyl" - a drama film based on the book "Chernobyl Prayer".

Theatrical performances

Performance based on the book "Chernobyl Prayer", Geneva, 2009

Living and working abroad

From 2000 to 2013, a new stage in the biography of Svetlana Aleksievich begins: she moves to Italy, later lives and works on her books in France and Germany. In 2013, she returned to her homeland again and currently lives in Belarus.

Among the numerous awards, orders and prizes of Svetlana Aleksievich are the Order of the Badge of Honor (USSR, 1984), the Nikolai Ostrovsky Literary Prize of the Union of Writers of the USSR (1984), the Leipzig Book Prize for contribution to European mutual understanding, the Officer's Cross of the Order of Arts and Letters (France , 2014). And also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (2015) - "for her many-voiced work - a monument to suffering and courage in our time"

Svetlana Aleksievich's books as documentary prose, literary journalism, documentary monologues, oratorio novels, reportage, testimonial novels. The writer herself defines the genre in which she writes as "the history of feelings."

Svetlana Aleksievich's books have been translated into English, German, Polish, French, Swedish, Chinese, Norwegian and other languages. The total circulation of foreign editions of the Chernobyl Prayer amounted to more than 4 million copies.

The Nobel Committee voted unanimously to award the prize to Svetlana Aleksievich. “This is an outstanding writer, a great writer who created a new literary genre, going beyond ordinary journalism,” explained Sarah Danius, secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who announced the name of the laureate.

Svetlana Aleksievich was born on May 31, 1948 in Ivano-Frankivsk. Her father is Belarusian and her mother is Ukrainian. Later, the family moved to Belarus, where mother and father worked as rural teachers. In 1967, Svetlana entered the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University in Minsk, and after graduating, she worked in regional and republican newspapers, as well as in the literary and art magazine Neman.

In 1985, her book “War Does Not Have a Woman’s Face” was published - a novel about women front-line soldiers. Prior to this, the work lay in the publishing house for two years - the author was reproached for pacifism and debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman. The total circulation of the book reached 2 million copies, several dozen performances were staged based on it. The Last Witnesses, published the same year, was also about the war, from the point of view of women and children. Critics called both works "a new discovery of military prose."

“I build the image of my country from the people living in my time. I would like my books to become a chronicle, an encyclopedia of the generations that I have found and with whom I am going. How did they live? What did they believe? How were they killed and how did they kill? How they wanted and didn’t know how to be happy, why they didn’t succeed, ”said Svetlana Aleksievich in an interview.

Her next chronicle was the novel about the Afghan war "The Zinc Boys", published in 1989. To collect material, the writer traveled around the country for four years and talked with former Afghan soldiers and mothers of dead soldiers. For this work, she was severely criticized by the official press, and in Minsk in 1992 a symbolic “political trial” was even organized over the writer and the book.

"Her technique is a powerful mixture of eloquence and wordlessness, describing incompetence, heroism and sadness,— wrote The Telegraph after "Chernobyl Prayer" was published in the UK.— From the monologues of her characters, the writer creates a story that the reader can really touch, being at any distance from the events.

The last book of the writer at the moment, Second Hand Time, was published in 2013.

Her books have been published in 19 countries around the world, performances and films have been staged based on them. In addition, Svetlana Aleksievich became the winner of many prestigious awards: in 2001 the writer was awarded the Remarque Prize, in 2006 - the National Criticism Prize (USA), in 2013 - the German Booksellers Criticism Prize. In 2014, the writer was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Svetlana Aleksievich formulated the main idea of ​​her books as follows: “I always want to understand how many people there are in a person. And how to protect this person in a person.

Women have won the Nobel Prize in Literature 13 times. The Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf was the first to receive the award, and the most recent was Canadian-born Alice Munro in 2013.

Svetlana Aleksievich became the first author since 1987 to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, which also writes in Russian.Most often, the award went to authors writing in English (27 times), French (14 times) and German (13 times) languages. Russian-speaking writers have received this prestigious award five times: in 1933 Ivan Bunin, in 1958 Boris Pasternak, in 1965 Mikhail Sholokhov, in 1970 Alexander Solzhenitsyn and in 1987 Joseph Brodsky.

Aleksievich Svetlana (Aleksievich Svyatlana) is a Belarusian writer and journalist.

She was born on May 31, 1948 in Ukraine in the city of Stanislav (after 1962 - Ivano-Frankivsk). Father is Belarusian, mother is Ukrainian.

They say that now the power of the oligarchs, capital, but Russia is an irrational country, just like Belarus: money, by and large, does not always decide everything.

Aleksievich Svetlana Alexandrovna

After the demobilization of his father, the family moved to his homeland, to Belarus. She graduated from the Department of Journalism of the Belarusian State University named after Lenin (1972). She worked as an educator in a boarding school, as a teacher (1965), in the editorial offices of the regional newspapers Prypyatskaya Pravda (Narovlya, 1966), Mayak Kommunizma (Bereza, 1972-1973), the republican Selskaya Gazeta "(1973-1976), the magazine "Neman" (1976-1984).

She began her literary career in 1975. The “Godfather” can be called the famous Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich with his idea of ​​a new genre, the exact definition of which he was constantly looking for: “cathedral novel”, “oratorio novel”, “testimonial novel”, “people who tell about themselves”, “ epic-choral prose”, etc.

Aleksievich's first book - "The war has no woman's face" - was ready in 1983 and lay in the publishing house for two years. The author was accused of pacifism, naturalism and debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman. At the time, it was more than serious. "Perestroika" gave a beneficial impetus. The book was almost simultaneously published in the magazine "October", "Roman-gazeta", in the publishing houses "Mastatskaya Litaratura", "Soviet Writer". The total circulation reached 2 million copies.

The fate of the following books was not easy either. "The Last Witnesses" (1985) - children's view of the war. "Zinc Boys" (1989) - about the criminal war in Afghanistan (the publication of this book caused not only a wave of negative publications in communist and military newspapers, but also a protracted trial, which was stopped only by the active defense of the democratic public and intellectuals for abroad). "Charmed by Death" (1993) - about suicides. "Chernobyl Prayer" (1997) - about the world after Chernobyl, after a nuclear war ... Now Aleksievich is working on a book about love - "Wonderful deer of eternal hunting."

Member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR (1976), the Union of Writers of the USSR (1983), the Belarusian PEN Center (1989). Books were published in 19 countries of the world - America, England, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Germany, India, France, Sweden, Japan, etc. Winner of the literary awards of the N. Ostrovsky Writers' Union of the USSR (1984), K. Fedin (1985), Leninsky Prize Komsomol (1986), was awarded the international Kurt Tucholsky Prize (Swedish PEN) for "courage and dignity in literature", Andrei Sinyavsky "for nobility in literature", the Russian independent Triumph Prize, the Leipzig Prize "For European Understanding-98", the German "For the best political book" and the Austrian name of Herder.

Based on the books of Aleksievich, films were made and theatrical performances were staged. A cycle of documentaries based on the book "War has no woman's face" was awarded the USSR State Prize (1985) and the "Silver Dove" at the international documentary film festival in Leipzig.