On June 28, 2022, the International Culture Federation (ICF) held its twelfth salon event at the M2 Gallery in Improve Canada. The theme of this session was “The Literary Works of Svetlana Alexievich.” This was the third lecture in a series of Ukrainian cultural and art talks organized by ICF. The lecture was delivered by Ms. Foresthill Rose and hosted by Dr. Timur, with co-sponsorship from CYCA and ACPN.
Svetlana Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948, in Ukraine. Her father was Belarusian, and her mother was Ukrainian. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Minsk University and is a Belarusian journalist and prose writer. She writes documentary literature based on interviews with people directly involved in events, chronicling major historical events such as the Second World War, the Afghan War, the Chernobyl disaster, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her major works include War’s Unwomanly Face, The Last Witnesses, I Am a Woman, a Soldier, Boys in Zinc, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, Enchanted with Death, I Still Long for You, Mama, and Second-Hand Time. She has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Swedish PEN Award, the Leipzig Book Award, the French “Witness to the World” Award, the U.S. National Book Critics Award, and the German Book Trade Peace Prize. In 2015, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Alexievich is a remarkable writer whose works carry the emotional intensity reminiscent of the great Russian classics of the 19th century. Her writing is deeply connected to individuals, giving voice to “ordinary people.” She focuses on the inner lives and personal experiences of those wounded by trauma—such as children, women soldiers, and young conscripts—bringing to light their suffering and resilience. Her writing captures not only personal trauma but also collective trauma, from marginalized groups to entire nations, moving from the micro to the macro, recording suffering and reflection. In this sense, her trauma narratives serve as a kind of revelation. She also examines technological and ecological trauma under the conditions of modernity, bearing witness to the collective memory of nations.
In the Nobel Prize citation, Alexievich was praised “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Through oral interviews, she faithfully records the lived experiences of her subjects. If there is any element of fiction, it comes from the interviewees themselves—through memory lapses or personal interpretations. Alexievich herself adds nothing fabricated, yet her documentary works often strike readers as more shocking and unbelievable than fiction itself. She describes her work as the collection of feelings, thoughts, and words of everyday life: “I collect the life of my time. I am interested in the history of the soul—things from everyday life that are ignored or overlooked by grand historical narratives.” Her texts are largely colloquial and fragmented, preserving multiple perspectives, breaking away from monologic narratives, and restoring a vivid, polyphonic history that resists official, singular accounts. Her works, she insists, are not merely literature—they are documents.
Her works—about ten in total—mainly focus on wars and disasters. A few examples:
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Voices from Chernobyl: An Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster recounts the aftermath of the April 26, 1986 reactor explosion, which devastated Belarus, killing some, displacing others, and spreading disease due to radioactive fallout.
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Boys in Zinc portrays the Soviet–Afghan war through the voices of soldiers, officers, nurses, wives, parents, and children, becoming a 20th-century classic of documentary literature.
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I Am a Woman, a Soldier presents moving first-hand accounts from the more than one million Soviet women who fought in WWII—not just as nurses and doctors, but also as paratroopers, tank drivers, machine gunners, and snipers—alongside their stories of love and courage amid war.
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The Last Witnesses records the voices of Soviet children who survived the war—then only 2 to 12 years old—offering an unflinching portrayal of war’s devastation through a child’s eyes.
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I Still Long for You, Mama collects children’s oral testimonies about WWII, showing them as both the most impartial and the most unfortunate witnesses.
Her more recent work, Second-Hand Time, shifts away from war and disaster to focus on the lives of ordinary Russians after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Through two decades of oral interviews (1991–2012), Alexievich portrays the painful transformation of society, recording how ordinary people experienced broken dreams, disillusionment, and the cost of historical upheaval. She traveled across the former Soviet territories, interviewing figures ranging from Soviet marshals and regional officials to ordinary workers, farmers, and ethnic minorities—Armenians in Azerbaijan, Tajiks in Moscow, Russians in Chechnya—capturing both the macro and micro realities of a society in flux. Divided into two volumes, the book serves as a micro-history of Russia in the late 20th century, extending into the Putin era.
This event was jointly organized by the ICF executive team, together with the Federation’s Artists Club, Wellness Club, Women Entrepreneurs Club, and Daoist Philosophy Club.