Recent events,
more exactly, S.Aleksiyevich’s achievement of winning the Nobel Prize for
literature reopened a door that was for a long time left closed in the eyes of
the West. It surely opened a door to a place that many of us would preferred to
stayed locked behind iron gates for eternity, a place of claustrophobia,
darkness, and hopelessness.
The world that is materialized through the
writings of the Belarusian author is one that functions according to rules that
are highly different from the ones that you’ll find outside of its borders, a
world that is both deeply conservative and outstandingly corrupt. Eastern
Europe, or more exactly, the territories that were part of the Soviet Empire managed to be partially or
totally ignored in the last two decades and a half by the Western press.
When there were
actual news about happenings from the former Soviet space they often were made
through a very narrow and one dimensional perspective. Currently places like
Ukraine, Belarus, or Moldova are still blank spots in the collective consciousness
of Europe, places that are known rather for their proximity to Russia rather
for their own achievements.
Many wonder is Aleksiyevich’s achievement will
make a difference. I can state that it totally does, for the moment at least,
but I’m not so sure in the long run. A prize won’t manage to change a society
or a history that is marked by cruelty and totalitarianism, and we should not
actually expect that to even happen.
History always
tends to repeat itself, and always leaves behind patterns that are hard to
break. “One that is born in a prison can
only know to live in a prison can” said Aleksiyevich in one of her interviews
that she offered in regards to her writing career and the many struggles that
she had to face in the USSR. The
fragment strongly suggests the author’s lack of hope for an imminent change in
her homeland, Belarus, in the following years, or even decades. This would be
disappointing for some, totally unsurprising for the many Belarusians that
still go through the many hardships that are described in Aleksiyevich’s works.
In the case of
Belarus, and not only, we can talk about a curse of totalitarianism that will
be hard to remove and will leave for ever a painful mark in the nation’s
history. Still being one of Europe’s most mysterious nations, rarely appearing
in the papers of Western publications, Belarus, or White Ruthenia, as it was
called in the past, will surely become a major subject of interest in the
following period for Western readers that are eager to gain knowledge on
Eastern European culture and Sovietology.
It can be stated
that Aleksiyevich had, has, and will still have, a great contribution towards
outlining a strong voice for the cause of Belarus, a land that was plagued for
most of its history by tragedy, torture, and limitations, but in the same time
managing to transform it in to heart breaking written masterpieces, a ‘monument to suffering in our time’.
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