An Hour after Nobel — Full Text of Sviatlana Alexievich’s Press Conference

So how did she feel?

— I didn’t think about myself, of course. A few days ago, a Ger­man the­ater which stages The War’s Unwom­an­ly Face want­ed some hero­ines to come to Frank­furt. And you know, I called around 50 of them, and nobody’s alive. And before that I had the same expe­ri­ence with my hero from Cher­nobyl. And I thought: what a pity it is that these peo­ple wouldn’t know. But they once had the book in their hands. I thought that it was not only my reward, but the reward… to our cul­ture in our lit­tle coun­try, which through­out the whole his­to­ry has been grind­ed, pres­sured from all sides. Once I thought about it. I won’t hide it — of course, it was a strong per­son­al joy, and of course there was alarm, because after all there are such great shad­ows — Bunin, Paster­nak… These shad­ows are too great, and they seem to come to life for me, this is very seri­ous. And if some­times I thought that I was tired, I was dis­ap­point­ed in some things, but then I thought that it will be impos­si­ble to slow down. Those were my main feel­ings.

— And whom would you like to thank in the first place?

— First of all, I would cer­tain­ly say thank you to my teach­ers: Ales Adamovich and Vasil Bykau. These are my teach­ers. Vasil Bykau, who was an exam­ple of human resis­tance, and Ales Adamovich, who, I would say, influ­enced my way think­ing. I don’t know any­body equal to him in the Euro­pean scale of think­ing in the Belaru­sian cul­ture. I thought at first about these peo­ple with regard to Belarus. But I have lots of them: my heroes, my pub­lish­ers around the world, the peo­ple who made me think about some­thing or who gave me some guess about humankind, because in order to hear some­thing new about humans, you need to ask in a new way. So we all are made of the teach­ers. We all stand on the shoul­ders of the fam­i­ly, on the shoul­ders of the peo­ple we’ve met.

— What this award will mean for peo­ple, in your opin­ion?

— Just yes­ter­day, I read in blogs that one per­son wrote: “when I was asked how I feel about the fact that Alex­ievich could get the prize, I said that hadn’t read her books, I watched only her movie”. And he wrote that he felt proud. So I want­ed it to be pride. We are a small proud coun­try.

— Can you explain what it means to you to be a Belaru­sian writer who writes in Russ­ian?

— I’m writ­ing about a utopia man, a red man, 70 years of this utopia, and then 20 years as we are com­ing out of this utopia. And it spoke Russ­ian. That’s where the lan­guage comes from, because my heroes are Ukraini­ans, Rus­sians, Belaru­sians, Tatars and Gyp­sies – there was even one gyp­sy hero­ine – they are dif­fer­ent. I could say that I feel like being a human of the Belaru­sian world, a human of the Russ­ian cul­ture, a very pow­er­ful inoc­u­la­tion of the Russ­ian cul­ture, and a human who lived a long time in the world and is cer­tain­ly cos­mopoli­tan. The per­son who sees the world as a great space. I was also con­vinced of this by Cher­nobyl, when after Cher­nobyl I trav­elled a lot. And I have the book Cher­nobyl Prayer, and there, you know, you don’t feel like “I am Belaru­sian”, but you feel that you are equal to the hedge­hog, the hare, all liv­ing in the same world, that we are all one liv­ing species. This is a very strong feel­ing. And all this togeth­er is in me.

— Why have you not yet been con­grat­u­lat­ed by the Belaru­sian pres­i­dent, and what is the atti­tude of the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to you?

— Well, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties pre­tend that I don’t exist. My books are not pub­lished, I can’t speak any­where, at least at the Belaru­sian tele­vi­sion… Oh, are they already there? And the Belaru­sian Pres­i­dent. Two hours have passed since the deci­sion of the Nobel Prize Com­mit­tee was announced, and I have received around 200 let­ters, and in one of them, a very good guy wrote: I won­der how Lukashen­ka is going to behave. He award­ed Darya Dom­rache­va the Hero of Belarus, so what will he do now? The Russ­ian Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion, Mr. Grig­oriev, only con­grat­u­lat­ed me, he was one of the first to con­grat­u­late.

— Will you accept the title of the Hero of Belarus, if there is an offer?

— I need to think, but it would be an award not from Lukashen­ka, but from the Moth­er­land.

— As soon as the world knew that you got the prize, many com­ments appeared on the Russ­ian web­sites, say­ing that you got the Nobel Prize because of hatred for Rus­sia, the “Russ­ian world”, Putin, etc. Do you think that it’s true? That you got the Prize only because of hatred. And do you have hatred for the “Russ­ian world”? By the way, Oleg Kashin con­sid­ers you an adept of the “Russ­ian world”, of the Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture.

— When peo­ple have such fanat­i­cal ideas, they cer­tain­ly look for them every­where. I just read a piece of what Kashin wrote, and I was very sur­prised. There’s also Zakhar Prilepin who writes. I mean, that some peo­ple are writ­ing the same things in Belarus – that I hate not only the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, but peo­ple as well. I do not think any­one likes the truth. I say what I think. I do not hate, I love the Russ­ian peo­ple, I love the Belaru­sian peo­ple, my fam­i­ly on my father’s side is com­plete­ly Belaru­sian, for exam­ple my beloved grand­fa­ther. And all I’m a fourth-gen­er­a­tion rur­al teacher, my great-grand­fa­ther stud­ied with Jakub Kolas, so I feel, it is my home­land, my land. At the same time, my grand­moth­er and my moth­er are Ukrain­ian. I love Ukraine. And when I recent­ly was on the Maid­an and saw these pho­tos of young peo­ple, of the “Heaven’s Hun­dred”, I stood and cried. This is also my land. So, it’s not hatred. It’s hard to be an hon­est man in our time. And we must not suc­cumb to this con­cil­i­a­tion on which total­i­tar­i­an pow­er always counts. I love the book Con­science of the Nazi, from time to time I re-read it — it is about how fas­cism crept into the life of the Ger­mans in the 30s. First, when the Ger­mans were said not to go to some doc­tors or tai­lors, they, on the con­trary, went to Jew­ish doc­tors and tai­lors. But a very pow­er­ful machine is run­ning, it press­es the most prim­i­tive “but­tons” in a per­son, what we can see today, espe­cial­ly in Rus­sia — in ten years they have changed peo­ple a lot. I asked my father “How have you sur­vived that?” And he told me only one thing: it was very scary. I think that it’s always scary to remain a human; it’s always dif­fi­cult, even if peo­ple are not so mas­sive­ly tak­en into pris­ons as in those years. But you can see, in Rus­sia they are already being tak­en to prison, and in Belarus as well. We must have this courage, and what they say – well…

— And can you define your atti­tude to the “Russ­ian world”? Which “Russ­ian world” you like and which one you don’t like, giv­en that you write in Russ­ian?

— My heroes are Rus­sians, right? I love the Russ­ian world, how­ev­er, I still can’t under­stand what they mean. I love a good Russ­ian world, a human­i­tar­i­an Russ­ian world, a world which is respect­ed by the whole world — the lit­er­a­ture, the bal­let, the great music. Yes, I love this world. But I do not love the world of Beria, Stal­in, Putin, Shoigu — it’s not my world.

— The char­ac­ter of a red man… Is it rel­e­vant in today’s envi­ron­ment?

— I think that this book is not about the past (Sec­ond Hand Time), but about what we stand for, our ground. It’s about where we come from. I val­ue the words that I had spe­cial­ly put in the epi­graph, that total­i­tar­i­an­ism, the camp, let’s call it this way, cor­rupts both the exe­cu­tion­er and the vic­tim. We can’t say that the vic­tim comes out total­ly not trau­ma­tized. Here we are now liv­ing in that “trau­ma­tized” peri­od. We all, even you (young jour­nal­is­tic audi­ence) are some­how nailed to this Sovi­et expe­ri­ence. And then, as they pro­voked and esca­lat­ed the sit­u­a­tion in Rus­sia, and 86% of peo­ple became hap­py to see how peo­ple in Donet­sk were killed and laughed at the Ukraini­ans. Or those who now believe that every­thing can be solved using just strength.

— Do you think that the Belaru­sians will rec­og­nize the country’s first Nobel Prize win­ner in the street? And would you like it?

— (Laughs) In 2013, when I was among the three can­di­dates, I remem­ber the sit­u­a­tion when I was trav­el­ling from Berlin or some­thing and was so tired, and a very young man approached me and asked: “Are you Svi­at­lana Alex­ievich?” I said yes. “Wow! You are can­di­date for the Nobel Prize! Oh my God, I have nei­ther your book, nor even some paper”. And he took out a box of cig­a­rettes and asked me to sign it for him! I am not a vain­glo­ri­ous per­son absolute­ly, and I don’t like pub­lic­i­ty, I don’t like when peo­ple rec­og­nize you because you’re dif­fer­ent, and not always ready for the peo­ple, one can be very tired. But there are moments when you think – there is some­thing in you that touch­es this man. It is not by acci­dent. If it wasn’t real­ly impor­tant for him, he wouldn’t have run up to me with this box of cig­a­rettes. I do not want to be like Kirko­rov and mask myself when going out, but some­times, when you see that peo­ple need it and they are ready to talk to you and they trust you as a com­pan­ion, it is cer­tain­ly nice.

— In your last book you show the read­ers how dif­fi­cult it was for a usu­al man to sur­vive the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union. Are there some moments from this expe­ri­ence that are under­val­ued and described not in detail, and that should be stressed once more, in your opin­ion? Maybe some dif­fi­cul­ties of tran­si­tion to anoth­er way of life?

— I think, of course, we haven’t yet reflect­ed on it and hadn’t even realised it. I wrote the book, but I think a hun­dred of Solzhen­it­syns can work in this area, because it’s been 70 and some­thing years, mil­lions of peo­ple dead, an idea that began with the desire to build a “city of the sun” end­ed with so much blood. This is much to think about more. I do not think I man­aged to tell every­thing. But I could tell what I real­ized in these five books in the series of “The red man”. Some­body of you should come and do this (laughs).

The War’s Unwom­an­ly Face, cov­er

Find descrip­tion on books page by Svi­at­lana Alex­ievich

— What are you work­ing on now?

— Now I’m work­ing on two books. Meta­phys­i­cal top­ics. Our life, of course, doesn’t always get well. We start to build some­thing, and all the end will be just the same – like in that joke, with “Kalash­nikov”. But oth­er peo­ple, who want to be hap­py, live now. They want to love. They know the joy of life. Many have seen the world. I’m writ­ing a book about love — men and women tell about love in it. And the sec­ond one is about age, dis­ap­pear­ance, about the end of life. What it all mat­ters and what it is. The cul­ture, espe­cial­ly the Russ­ian one, is more pre­pared for the sec­ond book. But for the book about hap­pi­ness… Every­one wants to be hap­py, but nobody knows what it is.

— This week­end we have the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Will you vote? And if yes, for whom?

— I won’t vote. But if I did, I would have vot­ed for Tat­siana Karatke­vich. Because of women’s sol­i­dar­i­ty. Due to the fact that I see a nor­mal per­son, hear nor­mal speech­es, which I absolute­ly do not hear from male politi­cians. Nor­mal suits, nor­mal reac­tions, which male politi­cians lack. And just because of some hope. And the fact that “Karatke­vich is a “decoy duck”, accord­ing to Paz­ni­ak… I don’t believe it. I don’t know who is behind her, where she gets the mon­ey… But I know that it would be a new turn in our lives. I won’t vote, because me and you already know the win­ner. We know that Lukashen­ka will win. And per­haps he would have 76%. I think so. He will look into the pub­lic moods and esti­mate how much he could have.

— You men­tioned Adamovich, Bykau… And what is the role of intel­li­gentsia, Belaru­sian under­ground in the soci­ety, how much is it form­ing, impor­tant, how essen­tial is it to have these moral author­i­ties?

— I think our Mohi­cans died not in their due time. We miss Adamovich and Bykau very much, we miss their word, their under­stand­ing and their lev­el. I think they would not allow to them­selves some things that are now gen­er­al­ly allowed. We can­not afford such free­dom – to sit some­where, like my Ger­man col­leagues who go to the coun­try­side and write. We live in such imper­fect time, imper­fect soci­ety. I am not a man of bar­ri­cades, but I con­stant­ly feel bar­ri­cades-sick because of our time. Because it is a shame, it’s a shame for what’s going on.

— Do you think that your voice will become weight­i­er in the Belaru­sian soci­ety?

— Well, I don’t know, you see, we have such author­i­ties… I hope that they will be explained what the Nobel is, and maybe a some­what rel­e­vant reac­tion will fol­low, at least a care­ful one. The polit­i­cal elite is gen­er­al­ly Sovi­et-mind­ed. Or even worse. The Sovi­et elite had some bench­marks that were observed. There were some peo­ple who need­ed to climb long stairs to crawl up to the top. And today you are from rags to rich­es – and you are already a boss. Look who have been a Min­is­ter of Cul­ture – a builder, and some khabza­yets (note — a stu­dent of sec­ondary spe­cial­ized pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion­al estab­lish­ment, usu­al­ly for blue-col­lar work), who­ev­er it was. I think you should do your own busi­ness and say what you think.

— How would you eval­u­ate the fact that it has been the first Nobel Prize in lit­er­a­ture in Belarus?

— It is hard to say. As for sci­en­tif­ic research, physics, chem­istry, it requires both high tech­no­log­i­cal lev­el and strong sci­en­tif­ic poten­tial. It seems to me that every­thing has been ruined here. We have a lot of tal­ent­ed peo­ple, and they have to either emi­grate or live their lives defi­cient­ly.

— What do you think of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine and the Russ­ian air­base in Belarus?

— I think we don’t need a Russ­ian air­base. But I fear we will have one. I don’t see that Lukashen­ka is strong enough or resource­ful to resist it. And I don’t see these resis­tance forces in the soci­ety. The soci­ety will accept any­thing the author­i­ties would offer, unfor­tu­nate­ly. As for Ukraine, I still con­sid­er it to be an occu­pa­tion, a for­eign inter­ven­tion. Although there are peo­ple, many of them, who were dis­sat­is­fied by what had been in Ukraine and had always longed for changes, but they would nev­er fight. They would find some oth­er way of changes. Bring us two dozen trucks, and you will always find peo­ple to arm. I hear it from a man, a fel­low trav­el­er from a train who made a nice impres­sion, an elder­ly Russ­ian lieu­tenant colonel. But he was so shocked when the Crimea was occu­pied, and said: “We also can shake the cob­webs, we’ve got also the gun and the pea-jack­et.” Here you are.

— Are you going to vis­it Ukraine?

— I’ve been there recent­ly. My granny died, and I have no more such close rel­a­tives.

— In your view, are there any signs of changes in Belarus, a hope for changes, and what will be the direc­tion of their devel­op­ment?

— Lukashen­ka is in a high­ly com­pli­cat­ed posi­tion now. He would like to loosen ties with Rus­sia. But who would allow? On the one hand, he is attached to his own past. On the oth­er hand, this is Putin who is hold­ing him. Say­ing about the past, I mean that he does not know any oth­er rules of the game. He’s grown up with it, although, one should admit, he has a strong polit­i­cal intu­ition.

— Is the base being imposed on him?

— Of course, the base is being imposed. I don’t think he wants it by him­self. There is a res­cue for Belarus to turn face to the EU. But nobody would let it go.

— What would you tell the Nobel Com­mis­sion?

— Well, I don’t know any­one of them. I can only say “thank you.”

— When did you have the phone call?

— A few min­utes before you found it out. I had just returned from the coun­try­side, and there it rang.

— Where were you yes­ter­day, at dacha?

— Yes.

— Are you going to live in Belarus?

— Yes.

— What will you spend the award on?

—I always buy free­dom for awards. It takes me very much time to write my books – five to ten years. It’s quite a long time when you need mon­ey, need to trav­el, to type. Now I can work freely with­out think­ing where to take the mon­ey.

— Will your vic­to­ry influ­ence the atti­tude to the Belaru­sian cul­ture abroad, at the world lev­el?

— It is dif­fi­cult for me to say, I think it takes more than one name. In any case, when I was in Aus­tria, I met some peo­ple ask­ing where I was from. And when I said I was from Belarus, they men­tion Dom­rache­va, Lukashen­ka. So, you see, they know already a lit­tle.

— What Belarus would you like to live in?

— I would cer­tain­ly want Belarus to resem­ble Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries… It is of course a dream for such a small coun­try like ours. Or, at least, to look like the Baltic.

— You also received an award for your work about the Afghan War. Do you think that Putin risks repeat­ing the Afghan expe­ri­ence in Syr­ia now?

— There was an anniver­sary of the Afghan War, and Putin was asked if it had been a mis­take. He answered no, it was right that we had been there. If not we, then it would have been the Amer­i­cans. I think so: after the Afghans, there were the Chechens, and now will be the Syr­i­ans. I met peo­ple who had fought in Africa in Sovi­et time. This is a coun­try of sol­diers, either famous or clan­des­tine ones. We are gen­er­al­ly liv­ing in mil­i­tary sur­round­ing and mil­i­tary think­ing. It is from top to bot­tom, from the gov­ern­ment to ordi­nary peo­ple.

The book cov­er of Cher­nobyl Prayer

— Does it refer to Belarus, Rus­sia, post-Sovi­et coun­tries?

— Yes, I think we are still all tied in this knot.

— Are you going to write in the Belaru­sian lan­guage?

— I am often asked the ques­tion. What is the Belaru­sian lan­guage gen­uine­ly? I know Belaru­sian, but not so good as to write in it. And the lan­guage I know is narko­mov­ka (note — accept­ed lit­er­ary lan­guage, with a cer­tain rules of Gram­mar, type of vocab­u­lary, used by offi­cial mass media and in offi­cial doc­u­ments, for com­mon com­mu­ni­ca­tion). In my time, we stud­ied only this lan­guage. So for me it will nev­er be a goal in itself.

— Where is it more com­fort­able for you to live and to write, in what coun­try? You lived in lots of places.

— Well, per­haps, at home, in Belarus. At dacha.

— Where were you when you got the phone call, and were told about the prize?

— I was at home, iron­ing, by the way.

— Haven’t you real­ly pub­lished your books in Belarus for twen­ty years? And isn’t there real­ly a sin­gle Belaru­sian lit­er­ary prize award­ed to you?

— No.

— You told that you any­way belong to the Belaru­sian world. What is it, the Belaru­sian world, in your opin­ion?

— My father was Belaru­sian.  His gen­tle and placid eyes. He would nev­er say a bad word. He was a school head­mas­ter, then, in old­er age, a teacher. These were old women among whom I grew up. The vil­lagers. The voice. The poet­ry of their glances. And even when the Cher­nobyl hap­pened, I saw offi­cials, mil­i­taries and sci­en­tists at a loss, and only those old women, peas­ants, peo­ple close to nature, they found their points of sup­port. They had a mono­lith­ic under­stand­ing of what had hap­pened.  Although it was tough, because such peo­ple of nature suf­fered the most.

— Will your vic­to­ry help pop­u­lar­ize Belaru­sian lit­er­a­ture in wide pub­lish­ing? Both in the world and here.

— You know, it does not depend on that, it depends on the book. Imag­ine a book, it is pub­lished not because the coun­try is well-known. The Latin Amer­i­cans offered a new out­look, so the whole world pub­lished them. Ryszard Kapuś­cińs­ki offered his out­look, and he was pub­lished every­where. What­ev­er pub­lish­ing house I vis­it­ed – they were say­ing they were pub­lish­ing Ryszard Kapuś­cińs­ki. And the point is not about who is in the coun­try, the point is that we’ve got to come out to the world with some text. We had this text, the Cher­nobyl text, then this text of post-dic­ta­tor­ship, what is mutat­ing and how. But, unfor­tu­nate­ly these post-Sovi­et clichés don’t let set us free and give some new inter­pre­ta­tion to all this.

— You are writ­ing about the fate of a small Sovi­et and post-Sovi­et man, do you agree that your prize belongs to Belarus?

— Well, per­haps, it is wider, because pro­tag­o­nists of my books are all from the post-Sovi­et area. The War’s Unwom­an­ly Face… I remem­ber one Belaru­sian sci­en­tist telling me that I shouldn’t have tak­en Russ­ian women for heroes. I should have tak­en Belaru­sian women for this. But no, my book is broad­er in philo­soph­i­cal terms: a woman and a war, a per­son and a war. So, the scope is wider.

— You were talk­ing about Kapuś­cińs­ki, has his cre­ativ­i­ty influ­enced you?

— I was very inter­est­ed in his views when I first time read his book The Empire, I saw how curi­ous­ly he searched in the sphere of doc­u­men­tal writ­ing, which is my sphere, too. I liked the Pol­ish author Han­na Krall, she is work­ing inter­est­ing­ly in this sphere, and Kapuś­cińs­ki. And there is noth­ing of the kind in Belarus, although there is a book by Adamovich, Bryl and Kolesnik “I am from Fiery Vil­lage”. I con­sid­er it a genial book, but in Poland a doc­u­men­tal book is a whole lay­er of cul­ture. Because the Russ­ian and the Belaru­sian cul­tures, they a kind of didn’t let the world in, they a lit­tle bit tra­di­tion­al, self-suf­fi­cient, things in them­selves. And I opened up the world for me through such fig­ures as Han­na Krall and Kapuś­cińs­ki.

— You said you would not vote at the elec­tions, as it does not make any sense. Do you think Belaru­sian cit­i­zens should fol­low your exam­ple?

— One must not boy­cott elec­tions in any case. Because if you boy­cott, Lukashen­ka gets more chances.  Because if 800 peo­ple come to vote out of thou­sand, he will be able to draw a cer­tain num­ber of votes to him­self. But if only 500 peo­ple come to vote, the per­cent­age ris­es. It is a wrong behav­ior. I think the calls for boy­cott are the opposition’s mis­take. You can sim­ply cal­cu­late that if we boy­cott the elec­tions, we give Lukashen­ka a chance to raise the per­cent­age. It is very sim­ple. I am some­where dis­ap­point­ed by our oppo­si­tion, and by our peo­ple, if I may say so. Why don’t we wake up? And when? I think it is a long way.

— When was your book last time pub­lished in Belarus? Do you remem­ber it?

— Around 25 years ago…

— But the last book pub­lished, The Time Sec­ond Hand?

— Oh, yes, but this is a kind of half-under­ground book, non-state.

— And what state pub­lish­ing hous­es pub­lished your books, and what books?

— It seems, some small pub­lish­ing house pub­lished The Zink Boys… It was the pub­lish­ing house “Belarus”. But it was also a small pub­lish­ing house, and it was a per­son­al deed of the edi­tor.

— Now the whole world and the whole Belarus are lis­ten­ing to you.  If you have to tell some­thing to the Belaru­sians in one sen­tence, what would it be?

— Let’s try to live in a coun­try of worth. Every­one has to do some­thing for it.  One should not wait for the neigh­bor, the son, the grand­son to do it, every­one should. Oth­er­wise, being all on one’s own, it is easy to black­mail, to threat­en, to deal with us. Let’s go togeth­er, but at the same time I am against a rev­o­lu­tion. I don’t like blood. I don’t want even a sin­gle life of a young guy to be lost here. I con­sid­er we’ve got to find our Belaru­sain Gan­dism. If we are togeth­er, we will find it cer­tain­ly.

— There are now many wars in the world, don’t you feel, as a writer, some dis­ap­point­ment that books a kind of don’t teach peo­ple any­thing? Is rap­proche­ment for the East and the West pos­si­ble, not a new cold war, but a com­mon world, nei­ther Russ­ian, nor West­ern?

— There are not only books in the world, Tol­stoy or some­body else, there is also the Bible, and Fran­cis of Assisi, and Antho­ny of Sourozh was stand­ing on the stone for so many days, all those reli­gious mar­tyrs… But, a man does not change. Still, I’d like to think that some­thing is chang­ing, though the events in Donet­sk and Odessa fright­ened me per­son­al­ly: how fast cul­ture comes off and the beast steps out from a man. So, I think if we give up doing our job, it can be worse. How the Apos­tle Paul said — woe be to me if I should not preach the Gospel. As for the anti-West move­ment, espe­cial­ly the one in Rus­sia, I think it will come to nil.  It will be gone togeth­er with today’s lead­ers. There is no such hatred in the peo­ple. There is no hatred to the West or to Europe either in Rus­sians or in Belaru­sians. These are bub­bles cre­at­ed by politi­cians. And there will always be young guys will­ing to play some game. So, it is not deep, but not the only one, so we will live in such a tran­si­to­ry time for quite long. We were too naïve in the 90ies, we thought we could become free at once. No, it is impos­si­ble, as it turned out. It looked to every­one, that peo­ple will read Solzhen­it­syn, and will become pure, but peo­ple killed every day some­one at home entrances. I think that the heav­i­est her­itage of the social­ism is a man, a trau­ma­tized man because a camp per­verts both the hang­man and the vic­tim.

— And how do you start writ­ing? Tell how the process looks.

— It is a big ques­tion. It is a long talk.