Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Svetlana Alexievich is re-evaluating her previous belief that she had chronicled the definitive end of violent, authoritarian Soviet ideology. Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the 2020 suppression of a democracy movement in her native Belarus, Alexievich, who has resided in exile in Berlin since 2020, stated her intention to understand the resurgence of a mindset she once thought was nearing extinction.
Her five prior works, culminating in “Secondhand Time,” focused on the unraveling of the Communist experiment. These books utilized extensive interviews with ordinary individuals, detailing their experiences of landmark events such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Alexievich had originally intended to pivot to different thematic topics after completing her work on “Secondhand Time.”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/world/europe/russia-svetlana-alexievich.html