Svetlana Alexievitch: portrait of Nobel laureate 2015 – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The surprise came at noon. “The Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to the Belarusian Svetlana Alexievitch”

Please reported news agencies. Who? From which country?

Alexijewitsch, 67 years old, lives in Minsk, capital of Belarus, a small nation with almost ten million inhabitants. The Nobel Prize but she got because she traces in their accounts of a much larger home. An empire that collapsed as a state before a quarter of a century, in many people’s minds but remained alive: the Soviet Union. She would have also “called Belarusian writer. At the same time I feel this Soviet commonality,” says Alexijewitsch.

your theme is the failure of the democratic change in Eastern Europe. If Alexijewitsch looking out the kitchen window of their apartment Minsk, you can see Alexander Lukashenko drive to work, Belarusian President for 21 years, nicknamed “Europe’s last dictator”. At the big neighbor Russia Vladimir Putin has let gleichschalten television and Parliament. National Day on May 9 flutter again red flags in Russian cities

pinprick against Putin

. “Thrift time – life in the ruins of socialism” she has called her latest book. She has questioned the fact Russians about their feelings after the breakup of the Soviet empire. “. Russia has risen from his knees This is a dangerous moment”, says there is one of their interviewees

The award for Alexijewitsch is also a pinprick against a man who was not mentioned by name by the Nobel Prize Committee.: Vladimir Putin. Alexijewitsch – daughter of Belarussians and one Ukrainian and born in Western Ukraine – has taken sides for Maidan revolution (“The people want a new life, and they are prepared to have to fight”). The annexation of the Crimea on the other hand it has condemned as “criminal”: “How could you destroy this fragile post-war peace?”

It has become difficult for the West at all to talk with Putin. He had completely moved on power politics. The desire of the West for dialogue interpret the Kremlin Lord as a weakness. “Of course it is right to want dialogue, but you have to know who you’re dealing with,” said the 2014 has Alexijewitsch SPIEGEL. The West have forgotten, “that the Russians have a very different psychological constitution”.

“Very aggressive man”

Russians and Belarusians, so it looks Alexijewitsch have deliberately opted for a return to authoritarianism. The contradictions with the West would not dissolve even under other leadership. The foreigners to understand the case, however, difficult. “Only the Soviet people can Soviet people understand,” she says. And: “An Putin sits in every Russian”

In the East they had “betrayed the people until 70 years and then stole another 20 years.”. That was in Russia and Belarus “brought very aggressive people who are dangerous for the world.”

Among the Moscow hawks Alexijewitsch said his object of hate. They call “for war against Russia”, which is popular with hardliners portal Svobodnaya wrote press in June. You probably hope that will increase their chances of winning the Nobel Prize. Ever Alexijewitsch was an “American project”.

supercooled Fair now also fell the congratulations of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry made. We welcome the decision to give the prize “our compatriot”. It states that it is the “first award of a citizen of our sovereign country”. It was optimistic that more would follow. No word on the other hand to Alexijewitschs work.

They corresponds to the image of the supposedly guided by the West puppet very bad. Clear, Belarus rulers Lukashenko has called it a “psychopath”. The verdict on his pro-Western opponent falls hardly milder: The opposition (“cultural scientist, dreamers and romantics”) have neither a concept nor a program.

If Alexijewitsch journalists are interviews, their statements often open themselves again in question. The most important is: “Why is changing all our suffering, the suffering of our grandfathers, our great-not at liberty?”