“I lived in a country where children taught us to die. They taught us to die” – Books

© Associated Press

The text was republished by Free Europe. The title is “Dnevnik”.

“I lived in a country where children taught us to die. They taught us to die.”the writer announced upon receiving the Nobel Prize.

Much has been written about her. Her name as a writer was widely known even before she received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. Her semi-documentary and semi-fiction books are a picture of the time in which the huge country called the Soviet Union lived. Everything is inside: the Stalinist repression, the Holodomor, the war, Chernobyl and Afghanistan.

His homeland is Belarus, the land of his father. Her homeland is also Ukraine, the land of her mother. As a homeland, she also loves Russia, whose literary traditions she has inherited. But her greatest love remains Belarus. In the capital Minsk, she lived her youth, her student life, her first journalistic attempts. She has lived there for the last fifteen years.

Svetlana Aleksievich was in Minsk when people protested en masse on August 9 against the results of the presidential elections. Then the 26-year-old president, Alexander Lukashenko, declared himself the winner. This is unacceptable, forged, misleading, false, protesters said. Minsk has never seen such angry people on the streets.

And the eyes turned to Aleksievich, the great recognizable name in the world.

At first he said disappointingly that his place was not in the squares, because today the voice of the young must be heard. She apologized for her poor health and age (she is 72 years old).

But when the protests began to take shape, despite government repression, when several dozen prominent scientists, experts and artists were expelled from their ranks and joined into the opposition Coordinating Council for the Peaceful Transfer of Power, Aleksievich became joined him. He also became a member of the council’s narrow leadership, its presidium.

The authorities tried to pressure her, as well as so many other opposition figures. She was one of the first to be “cited as a reference” by the investigating authorities. She was sent to the investigation building by sympathizers who stayed outside to wait.

The police did not dare to arrest her, nor to cross the line of “decency”, as they did with other opponents. She was released a few hours later.

Thus, Aleksievich continued to be one of the flags of the resistance against the Lukashenko regime.

On September 9, a month after the elections were rejected, he wrote a speech to Belarusians. On the same day, it became known about the arrest of two of the opposition leaders (who remained in the country), Maria Kalesnikava and Maxim Znak. And when in practice the regime beheaded almost the entire Presidium of the Coordination Council.

“At first, they kidnapped our country, they kidnapped the best among us. But hundreds more will take the place of the kidnapped. It is not the Coordination Council that has risen. The country has risen.” the writer wrote in his address.

And he asked the tortuous question to the Russian intelligentsia: “Why are you silent when you see that they are trampling on a proud little nation? We are still your brothers.”

The day Aleksievich wrote down his address, he announced that he had been subjected to constant harassment on the phone and at the front door by unknown persons. This provoked the intervention of the representations of European countries. Diplomats were sent to the writer’s house as a symbolic defense against the Lukashenko regime.

The news of this action went around the world.

If one looks again for an explanation why, at the beginning of the protests against Lukashenko, Aleksievich did not want to identify with them, it is good to remember what he said about his generation at the Nobel Prize ceremony:

“I lived in a country where children taught us to die. They taught us to die. They told us that man exists to give, to burn, to sacrifice. They taught us to love the man with a rifle. If I had grown up On the other hand , I could not go this way. Evil is ruthless, you have to be vaccinated against it. However, we grew up among executioners and victims. Although our parents lived in fear and did not tell us everything, and often nothing. They told us that the The very air of our lives was poisoned by this. Evil was constantly lurking. “