Svetlana Alexevitch - "Voices from the People: The Rise and Fall of the Russian-Soviet Dream"

Bartels World Affairs Fellowship Lecture: Svetlana Alexievich Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, presents the Bartels World Affairs Fellowship Lecture entitled "Voices from the People: The Rise and Fall of the Russian-Soviet Dream." Svetlana Alexievich, a writer of international renown and a dedicated critic of the dictatorial regime of her country, was born in Ivano-Frankovsk, Ukraine. At present, she is living in Minsk, Belarus. Alexievich has created a literary nonfiction genre that is entirely her own. She writes “novels of voices.” She has developed this genre book after book, constantly honing the esthetic of her documentary prose, which is based on hundreds of interviews. Her skill at this allows her to intertwine the original voices of her subjects into an artful condensation of a panorama of souls. Alexievich’s five great prose volumes represent an impressive history of a people’s mentality—but not merely of the Soviet people. Each subsequent book questions not only the meaning and meaninglessness of political ideologies, but also the very makings of humankind.