Svetlana Alexievich: ‘I’m not a supporter now of revolution’

This article was published in March 2026.

The day after the 2020 election that ushered in the Belarusian president’s sixth consecutive term in office, Svetlana Alexievich remembers seeing “hundreds of thousands of people” marching past her apartment in Minsk.

“I thought they would never rise up, but they did. It was perhaps one of the most powerful feelings I have ever experienced in my life,” says the author.

Part of that feeling, she says, was “a naive hope – but still, hope.”

Alexievich joined the protests against an election widely regarded as rigged and became part of a Co-ordination Council intended to make preparations for new elections and a peaceful transition of power.

But bit by bit, as the weeks went by, the feeling of hope was extinguished.

“Now it’s clear how romantic we were,” she says.

The protests were brutally crushed while members of the Co-ordination Council were arrested one by one, until Alexievich, then 72, was the only one left.

When masked men tried to break into her apartment, foreign embassies came to her rescue. For two weeks, European diplomats and their spouses took turns to keep watch at her home, but eventually it became clear she would have to leave.

Alexievich says it’s only because German deputy ambassador Anna Luther accompanied her to the airport that she was allowed on to a flight to Berlin.

She took almost nothing with her, hoping she would soon return, but she has now been in the German capital for five years, with little prospect of going home.

Describing ‘utopia’

Now 77, Svetlana Alexievich has spent more than 40 years documenting the lives of people in the Soviet Union and the independent states that sprang from it. She has recorded their experiences in World War Two, the Soviet-Afghan war, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The books are collectively known as Voices from Utopia, in an ironic reference to the 70-year communist experiment.

But the reality she describes is far from utopian. As a result, her books have been removed from the curriculum in Russia and Belarus. She has been censored, prosecuted, and now effectively exiled.

Internationally, it’s a different story. Alexievich’s books have been translated into 52 languages and published in 55 countries. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2015.

A large wooden table in her Berlin apartment is strewn with notes for her next book, which she began to write after the events of 2020.

For this work she is speaking to young people who went out on to the streets, asking what they wanted, and what they are disappointed with today.

“Maybe we loved revolutions too much,” she says. “They don’t always justify our hopes… Well I’m not a supporter now of revolution, I’m not a supporter of bloodshed.”

‘I love the lone human voice’

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, “it seemed to us that we had all broken free from captivity,” says Alexievich, describing another time of hope.

But she says that “the red man” – the embodiment of the Soviet regime – did not perish with the empire.

“He is shooting in Ukraine, he is sitting in the Kremlin,” she says. “No, he is not dead yet.”

For each of her books, Alexievich interviews hundreds of people, artfully combining their testimonies in what she calls “a novel in voices.”

“It is an attempt to turn ordinary life into literature. You simply choose pieces of art from real life,” she says, comparing it to the method of the sculptor, Rodin, who said he started with a block of marble and chopped off whatever he didn’t need.

“I love how humans talk,” she said in her 2015 Nobel Prize lecture. “I love the lone human voice. It is my greatest love and passion.”

The reaction to her Nobel Prize in Belarus was “wonderful,” she says. Minsk reportedly ran out of champagne and people hugged her in the streets.

Even Alexander Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager who has now been president for 31 years, said he would read her books – although she doubts he did.

“He has a different view of the world,” she says.

‘Beloved heroines’

Alexievich remembers growing up in villages mainly populated by women, after the devastation of World War Two.

Millions of Belarusians died in the war, and millions who had fought in Europe were sent to the gulag when they returned.

“Only during weddings were people cheerful, but they were very rare, because most of the young men had died.”

This is why, she says, women are the “main beloved heroines” of her books. Her first, The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), was about female veterans.

A million Soviet women volunteered as soldiers and medics but their contribution was largely ignored until Alexievich wrote about them.

The accounts are grisly and terrifying, but not without humour – one woman told Alexievich that one of the worst things about serving in the army was having to wear men’s underwear.

‘Spying’ on pain

“If they hadn’t told their stories, and I hadn’t recorded them, it would all have disappeared, and we wouldn’t know about it,” she says.

After the perestroika reforms of the 1980s, Alexievich’s book became a best-seller, with two million copies published in Russian.

But her next book, Zinky Boys (1991) caused controversy. It was named after the zinc-lined coffins that Soviet soldiers’ bodies were sent home in from Afghanistan.

Alexievich had been to Kabul as a journalist and found something beautiful about the handsome men in uniforms, and their shiny weapons. But war also disgusted her, particularly the sight of entire villages flattened by multiple rocket launchers. She says it was important for her, as a writer, to witness what people are capable of.

“In general, art is immoral. You spy on other people’s pain. It is other people’s pain that gives you the opportunity to grow.”

After the book came out, Alexievich was taken to court by veterans and the mothers of fallen soldiers, who accused her of defamation and desecration of the soldiers’ honour.

“The book talked about what a terrible thing their children had been drawn into, that they had become killers,” she says. “And then they came face-to-face with the truths they feared.”

Chernobyl prayer

But the book that she most wants everyone to read is Chernobyl Prayer (1997) which has the subtitle: a chronicle of the future.

Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian power stations, including those that supply backup power to keep nuclear reactors safe, could cause a new disaster, she fears.

The Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986 sent radioactive clouds north over her home in Minsk.

She then spent time in the exclusion zone around the stricken power plant, interviewing people who continued to live there, and sharing their food – despite the risk of contamination.

“I couldn’t, like Western journalists did, listen to all these terrible stories about how a daughter died, was born without arms, without legs, and then, when we were invited to the table, eat a separate sandwich,” she says.

Alexievich’s book inspired several characters in the high-profile 2019 TV miniseries, Chernobyl – including the wife of one of the first firemen to die of radiation poisoning, Lyudmila Ignatenko. When the series aired, she was upset about the huge media interest in her life.

“But there is no way of telling a story without intruding on someone’s life,” says Alexievich.

And many people want their stories to be known.

The wife of another firefighter interviewed by Alexievich bribed her way into the hospital where her husband lay dying, in order to be with him in the final days of his life. His pain was only alleviated, she told Alexievich, when they made love – “then, he was silent for a while.”

To shield the woman from public condemnation, Alexievich gave her a false name. But she telephoned after the first edition came out to ask why.

“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” Alexievich told her.

She replied: “No, I suffered so much, he suffered so much. Tell the truth, even at the cost of my heart.”

Despite the dark subject matter, love is a consistent theme in Alexievich’s books.

“I’ve always believed that I’m writing about love. I don’t collect horrors, I collect demonstrations of the human spirit,” she said in 2015.

Written by Vibeke Venema and Tatsiana Yanutsevich, BBC World Service

This content was created as a co-production between Nobel Prize Outreach and the BBC.

Published March 2026