Garrett Griffin

Svetlana Alexievich in 2015                                                  Courtesy of Deutsche Welle

When one thinks of Belarus, what normally comes to mind? You may get a response such as “It’s that country somewhere by Russia” or even “Bela-what?” Now, though, everyone will know it as the country from which the first woman, Svetlana Alexievich, to win the Nobel Peace Prize in journalism calls home.

Alexievich is well-known for her hard-line writing of events in plain language that conjure gut-wrenching pictures in the minds of her readers. Much of her writing works to cross a divide that exists in literature whereby the story is not told in her own voice but in that of a non-conceited voice of an oral historian. Her goal is communicate basic human feeling and by this method she executes this without implanting unintended biases. The topics of her works all revolve around the histories of Russia and other, formally Soviet, countries.

In her own country she is secretly admired. The authoritarian government, for concern of retaining power and peace, do not want to mention the existence of challenging voices. Alexievich, who is currently 67, published her first book 30 years ago. Despite relative obscurity to the mainstream public since then, she now has global notoriety. The government-controlled news hesitantly made a small mention of the award’s presentation to Alexiaivich and the president of Belarus even congratulated her on her achievement.

The tides of post-soviet history are beginning to go back out to sea, leaving space for modernistic ideas to penetrate the once unsolvable autocratic governments of former Soviet states. With the help of literary activists like Alexievich, the world is becoming a better place every day.