[Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize]
Account After winning the Nobel Prize for her searing portraits of the Soviet world unraveling, Svetlana Alexievich worries about the revival of its violent, anti-democratic ways. (JB: Above image , found on the Web, evidently inspired by article) By Neil MacFarquhar and Milana Mazaeva Reporting from Berlin The New York Times , Oct. 11, 2025 While writing the book that helped propel her to the Nobel Prize in Literature, the writer Svetlana Alexievich was certain she was chronicling the swan song of the violent, authoritarian ideologues at the heart of the Soviet system. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, only two years after her native Belarus, still a Kremlin satellite, brutally crushed its democracy movement. The mind-set she believed was headed toward extinction had been revived, she said in a recent interview in her apartment in Berlin, where she has lived in exile since 2020. “I want to understand how that happened.” Her last boo...