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Svetlana Alexievich Biography

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“Somos guerreros. Mi padre, en todo el tiempo que recuerdo, llevó ropa militar, aunque no lo era. Pensar en el dinero era de burgueses; preocuparte por tu propia vida, no patriótico. El estado normal era el hambre. Ellos, nuestros padres, sobrevivieron al desastre, por tanto también nosotros debíamos superarlo. No había otra manera de convertirse en un hombre de verdad. Nos han enseñado a luchar y a sobrevivir bajo cualquier circunstancia. A mí mismo, después del servicio militar, la vida civil me resultaba insulsa. Salíamos en grupo por la noche a la ciudad en busca de emociones fuertes.”

PeopleHumansWarHistoryHeroesWarriorsChernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“Гуляет по лесу дракон. Встретил медведя. «Медведь, — говорит дракон, — у меня в восемь часов ужин. Приходи — я тебя съем». Идет дальше. Бежит лиса. «Лиса, — говорит дракон, — у меня в семь утра завтрак. Приходи — я тебя съем». Идет дальше. Скачет заяц. «Стой, заяц, — говорит дракон, — у меня в два часа обед. Приходи — я тебя съем». — «У меня вопрос», — поднял заяц лапу. — «Давай». — «Можно не приходить?» — «Можно. Я тебя вычеркиваю из списка». Но мало кто способен задать такой вопрос… Бляааа!”

JokeTotalitarianism
Book:Czasy secondhand. Koniec czerwonego człowieka
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“There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called--Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don't leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In an instant. They just drop--someone will be walking, he falls down, goes to sleep, never wakes up. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them. But I was telling you about love. About my love... -- Lyudmila, Ignatenko, wife of deceased fireman, Vasily Ignatenko”

Grief And LossDeath Of A Loved OneUnreason
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“No quiero alejarme de mi hijo, de mis nietos. Me espanta la idea de separarme de ellos aunque sea por un día. Mi hijo tampoco se aleja de mí. Pronto hará veinticinco años que trabaja y ni una vez se ha ido de viaje. En su trabajo, la gente se sorprende. “Mejor me quedo contigo, mamá”, es lo que él me dice. Y mi nuera es igual. Es indescriptible… Si no tenemos una casa de veraneo es simplemente porque no somos capaces de separarnos ni por unos días. Ni un minuto puedo vivir sin ellos. Quien haya estado en la guerra sabe lo que significa separarse por un día. Por un solo día.”

WarGuerra
Book:War's Unwomanly Face
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“Fino a quando continueremo a porre sempre questa nostra eterna domanda: di chi è la colpa? Vostra, tua, loro? Il problema è un altro. Ѐ nella scelta che dipende da ciascuno di noi: sparare o non sparare, tacere o non tacere, andarci o non andarci... Bisogna interrogare se stessi su ogni questione... Ma ci manca quest'abitudine a rientrare in noi stessi, a tornare nel nostro profondo.”

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Book:Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War
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“They asked all sorts of questions, but one really cut into my memory. This boy, stammering and blushing, you could tell he was one of the quiet ones, asked: "Why couldn't anyone help the animals?" This was already a person from the future. I couldn't answer that question. Our art is all about the sufferings and loves of people, but not of everything living. We don't descend to their level: animals, plants, that other world. And with Chernobyl man just waved his hand at everything.”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“We came home. I took off all the clothes that I'd worn there and threw them down the trash chute. I gave my cap to my little son. he really wanted it. And he wore it all the time. Two years later they gave him a diagnosis: a tumor in his brain...You can write the rest of this yourself. I don't want to talk anymore.”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“At night I wake up from my mother saying, "Sonny, why aren't you saying anything? You're not asleep, you're lying there with your eyes open. And your light's on." I don't say anything. No one can speak to me in a way I can answer. In my own language. No one can understand where I've come back from. And I can't tell anyone.”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“I've wondered why everyone was silent about Chernobyl, why our writers weren't writing much about it -- they write about the war, or the camps, but here they're silent. Why? Do you think it's an accident? If we'd beaten Chernobyl, people would talk about it and write about it more. Or if we'd understood Chernobyl. But we don't know how to capture any meaning from it. We're not capable of it. We can't place it in our human experience or our human time-frame. So what's better, to remember or to forget?”

Chernobyl
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“I want to make a film, to see everything through the eyes of an animal. "What are you shooting?" people say to me. "Look around you. There's a war on in Chechnya." But Saint Francis preached to the birds. He spoke to them as equals. What if these birds spoke to him in their bird language, and it wasn't he who condescended to them?”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“His friend proposed to me. He'd been in love with me long ago, back when we were in school. Then he married my friend, and then they got divorced. "You'll live like a queen." He owns a store, has a huge apartment in the city, he had a dacha. I thought and thought about it. Then one day he came in drunk: "You're not going to forget your hero, is that it?" He went to Chernobyl, and I refused. I'm alive, and he's a memorial.”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“We're afraid of everything. We're afraid for our children, and for our grandchildren, who don't exist yet. They don't exist, and we're already afraid. People smile less, they sing less at holidays. The landscape changes, because instead of fields the forest rises up again, but the national character changes too. Everyone's depressed. It's a feeling of doom. Chernobyl is a metaphor, a symbol. And it's changed our everyday life, and our thinking.”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“They wash the windows, the roof, the door, all of it. Then a crane drags the house from its spot and puts it down into the pit. There's dolls and books and cans all scattered around. The excavator picks them up. Then it covers everything with sand and clay, leveling it. And then instead of a village, you have an empty field. They sowed our land with corn. Our house is lying there, and our school and our village council office. My plants are there and two albums of stamps, I was hoping to bring them with me. Also I had a bike.”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“We started thinking about it -- I guess it must have been -- three years later. One of the guys got sick, then another. Someone died. Another went insane and killed himself. That's when we started thinking. But we'll only really understand in about 20-30 years. For me, Afghanistan (I was there two years) and then Chernobyl (I was there three months), are the most memorable moments of my life.”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“Okay, maybe you could move the ones that were above the earth, but what about the ones who were in the earth -- the bugs and the worms? And the ones in the sky? How do you evacuate a pigeon or a sparrow? What do you do with them? We don't have any way of giving them, the necessary information. It's also a philosophical dilemma. A perestroika of our feelings is happening here.”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“We had lead underwear, we wore it over our pants. Write that. We had good jokes, too. Here's one: An American robot is on the roof for five minutes, and then it breaks down. The Japanese robot is on the roof for five minutes, , and then -- breaks down. The Russian robot is up there two hours! Then a command comes in over the loudspeaker: "Private Ivanov! In two hours you're welcome to come down and have a cigarette break." Ha-Ha! [laughs.]”

Chernobyl
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“They held political discussions with us -- they explained that we were heroes, accomplishing things, on the front line. It was all military language. But what's a bec? A curie? What's a milliroentgen? We ask our commander, he can't answer that, they didn't teach it at the military academy. Milli, micro, it's all Chinese to him. "What do you need to know for? Just do what you're ordered. Here you're soldiers." Yes, soldiers -- but not convicts.”

Chernobyl
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“My prayer is simple. I say it silently. 'Lord, i cry unto me! Give ear!' Man is crafty only in evil, but he's so simple and open in his plain words of love. Even for philosophers, the word is only an approximation of the thought they have experienced. The word genuinely attunes to what's in our soul only in prayer, and in prayerful thoughts. I can feel it physically. 'Lord, I cry unto me! Give ear!' And man too. Man frightens me, but I always like meeting one. A good man. That's it.”

Chernobyl
Author:Svetlana Alexievich
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