In our conversation, the writer returns to the image of the “red man” and the tragedy of generations, reflecting on pain and hope, fear and responsibility, silence and humanitarian culture that can not only bear witness but also preserve. The history of the past does not disappear without a trace—it leaves its mark on the inner state of contemporaries. Among other things, it supports faith in something better when it seems that the whole world is collapsing around you.
The tragic figures of history
When I was working on Second-Hand Time, I even had a subtitle in mind—the end of the red man… I truly believed it then. But in reality, he has not disappeared. He doesn’t just still exist—he’s shooting in Ukraine, writing denunciations in Russia, restarting Stalin’s machine all over again…
Does this mean your seventh book is a continuation of the theme?
Yes. But this is no longer just about the past. It is about the future. And not only our future. Because there is new material that does not let me stop. Here is our Belarusian revolution, then the war in Ukraine, and in general everything that is happening in the world right now, with Trump and others. I managed to catch some very long echo in human nature amid the ruins, the debris of the Soviet empire.
But hasn’t the image of the red man become a convenient label today? A new generation often hides its own mistakes behind it, saying the regime survives because of the older generations… In fact, our ancestors are blamed. For conformism, weakness, compromise. And you say they are victims.
They are tragic figures of history. That is much more complex than simply the insulting label “conformists.”
Like my father. He was a village teacher, a school director—an extraordinarily interesting person. He loved my mother very much, loved fishing and nature. I still remember how we used to walk in the forest, go to the river, and always talked a lot—we were friends. He was a communist, and when he was dying, he asked…
To have a monument with a star?
No: to have his party membership card placed in the coffin—he wanted to take it with him to the heavens…
What faith!
Today I feel remorse because out of ignorance I more than once drove this close, beloved person to tears. This was before 2020, even before 2010. I reproached his generation. He studied at the Institute of Journalism in Minsk. And when students came back after holidays, they would see many of their professors had disappeared. One time, only two remained… When I heard this, I yelled: “How could you all stay silent?!” He didn’t answer. He was silent. And I thought: this is cowardice, the cowardice that gave birth to the Gulag. An enormous, almost cosmic cowardice.
Then when I came back from Afghanistan, from the war, I also started right away, full force: “Dad, your students are over there killing innocent people!” And again, he didn’t say anything. He just sat silently—and suddenly he cried. That’s when I felt so ashamed: I must be missing something, because even if we had different views, we loved each other! We felt good together! Even when we just sat in silence… Through my father, I began to grasp the tragedy of an entire generation, of an era.
That is what saved me from the attitude that during perestroika in the nineties pinned contemptuous labels on those people—sovok, sovki… But by then I could no longer accept such scornful, unjust treatment. Because earlier I had come to understand the immense inner tragedy of that time. When they also lived, loved, believed—but lost themselves in the idea.
It’s not true that my father was “sovok.” No! He joined the Party at Stalingrad, after a friend died in his arms, and the next morning before the battle, he filed an application. And I have not experienced even a tenth of what he lived through in his time!
In all this modern attitude toward the red man, literature and art are also to blame. Just name even one book describing the nineties! Yes, if you look, you’ll find something—but it’s shallow. Those descriptions don’t move the young…
Time flew so fast, changed so quickly, that we ourselves didn’t manage to make sense of our past—and all the more so to explain it to the new generations.
A celebration of abandoning asceticism
And what should a book about the nineties describe?
It should show what happened to us. How everything unfolded.
Including why people started saying “sovok”?
I think it came from ignorance. No one told anything—about the Gulag, about World War II, about the partisan movement… The new generation didn’t fully know the tragedy the nation had lived through.
Do you see a parallel between the feelings of your father’s generation and the newest one—the generation that tried to break the system and became the driving force of 2020? In that moment when the illusion of tomorrow’s victory vanished and a terrifying reality of possible retribution appeared?
Perhaps in the very last moment before handing in the final version of Second-Hand Time to the publisher, I managed to add one more episode. A young woman was telling me that she had been a student and took part in the 2010 revolution. And she said: only in the detention cell did she regret that she had never read Doctor Zhivago… She should have, but skipped it—the book seemed boring and altogether felt like some old, irrelevant story… And there, behind the wire, almost every step she encountered Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn. For example, her investigator’s favorite torture was to pull a plastic bag over the head of the person he was interrogating so the defenseless victim would suffocate… You see, once we risked our freedom to get our hands on those books, and the new generation didn’t care—they just lay around in second-hand stalls.
And what instead of books?
People back then boasted to each other: “I bought a washing machine!” “I got a fridge!” “I managed to find a coffee grinder!”… Material asceticism was replaced by a rush for consumption. And maybe that saved us. Otherwise, people would have reached for weapons. The Party never stepped aside willingly. People were carried away by the idea of getting rich. No one thought that some would end up in servitude…
The more I traveled then, especially around Russia, the more I thought about it. And when later my interlocutors recalled the nineties, they would first mention all their acquisitions of that time—and only then the factories that closed, the lost jobs… But at the start, I repeat, there was a celebration of abandoning asceticism. And in some strange way, all that took the danger of civil war away.
And what about disappointment? About that inner feeling that the future has gone silent, and responsibility for your own failures is shifted onto others—especially those “at the top”? Because, allegedly, we personally are not to blame for anything.
Indeed, that is how people talk. But the problem goes deeper: there are no ideas. Neither at the bottom nor at the top—ideas have simply disappeared. People tried to cling to something. At first—to religion. Then—to private life. Because there was nothing else left. I remember about twenty years ago there was a time of open cynicism. Today—it’s a different condition. Cynicism has given way to fear. And now a lonely person can only try to hold on to another person. There is nothing else, or no one else, to hold on to.
Is this theme of violence against the individual some kind of Belarusian peculiarity—or does it belong to America and Europe too? Or is it everywhere, wherever trust in the future collapses?
Why only Belarusian? My God, just look at the war in Ukraine! As for the future—it has disappeared as a category altogether. None of us can predict it, or even guess anything about tomorrow. No serious artist will dare to speak about it. Today, you can’t even predict the past, let alone the future. This present moment is impossible to grasp. And we are its witnesses. Able to bear witness to the world only as much as our strength allows.
What can restore meaning
You are working on a book about the pain of 2020. In those stories, is it deeply personal experience—or ultimately collective trauma?
This pain often does not lead outward but inward—into silence, emigration, isolation. But pain itself is not the worst thing. The trouble begins when it turns into a cult. When all attention focuses only on suffering—this is a trap. Because beyond it, there is no next step, no analysis or understanding of what has happened to us. Pain cannot be ignored, but it must be overcome. And we must search for something higher: the question of meaning. Why did a person, unexpectedly even for themselves, end up descending into that basement? What happened to them—and to all of us?
This is what literature must be about today. It must restore not only truth to a person—but meaning. And now the writer’s voice is drowned out by noise: television, Telegram channels, social media. And pain, if it remains without questions, turns into a dead end.
Do you feel this personally?
Very much so. I notice it in myself: when I read online—it all somehow passes by my consciousness. Not at all like when you are alone with a book. There are people who are carried along by the current. And there are those who want to reflect on their lives. And for such people, the main thing today is to endure. Not to let yourself be crushed, not to lose yourself in everything happening around you.
Culture as salvation
And this is no longer about ideology, but about culture, about the content of the person?
Yes. About what you are made of as a human being. Whether you have any ground beneath you. Without culture, without a humanitarian foundation, a person is defenseless. And today, the humanities are shrinking—both in schools and in universities. They say only applied knowledge matters. But that alone is not enough. I love the image of Einstein playing the violin. That, to me, is the formula of humanity. Everything must be humanized. Science without culture does not redeem.
Recently, I was on a plane and saw a little book someone had left behind: Obama corresponding with Michelle, including about books. The reflections of two thoughtful people. That was such a level of cultural depth that it is simply unattainable for our current leaders. They have no antennas for picking up those sounds in the world…
Is it only presidents, chancellors, chairmen who lack that depth of life? Shouldn’t we also talk about the “deep people”? Who are everywhere: in Belarus and Germany, in Poland and America, in Italy…
That’s true. I remember when relics were brought to Minsk for the first time. I lived near the church then. I saw those lines—two kilometers long, people in headscarves, in silence, with hope. Teachers stood watch at night to keep order. And I realized: this is the people the authorities are betting on. But they haven’t awakened. They haven’t recognized themselves. Perhaps they are simply tired of history. As all of us are.
But still, we must not lose ourselves, right?
Yes. Even if we are only witnesses. Only faint voices in the noise of the world. But that is our duty: to bear witness and to live. Through culture, through the word. And through the pain, which must be overcome and rethought.
On June 16, Nobel laureate and honorary chair of PEN Belarus, Svetlana Alexievich, will meet with her readers in Warsaw. We are glad to invite you to join this gathering!