Svetlana Alexievich Quotes

Is there anything more frightening than people?

No one had taught us how to be free. We had only ever been taught how to die for freedom.

I'm not afraid of God. I'm afraid of man.

Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air.

Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples!’ Someone told her not to advertise that, no one will buy them. ‘Don’t worry!’ she says. ‘They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss.

Yo tengo miedo. Tengo miedo de una cosa, de que en nuestra vida el miedo ocupe el lugar del amor.

Show me a fantasy novel about Chernobyl--there isn't one! Because reality is more fantastic.

There can't be one heart for hatred and another for love. We only have one, and I always thought about how to save my heart.

I write not about war, but about human beings in war. I write not the history of a war, but the history of feelings. I am a historian of the soul.

Man lives with death, but he doesn’t understand what it is.

The most important thing is spiritual labor...Books...You can wear the same suit for twenty years, two coats are enough for a lifetime, but you can't live without Pushkin or the complete works of Gorky.

Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone- the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no fairness on earth.

En la vida las cosas más terribles ocurren en silencio y de manera natural.

Women’s” war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. Its own words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.

I don’t like the word “hero.” There are no heroes in war. As soon as someone picks up a weapon, they can no longer be good. They won’t be able to.

How can we preserve our planet on which little girls are supposed to sleep in their beds, and not lie dead on the road with unplaited pigtails? And so that childhood would never again be called war-time childhood.

Fear is more human than bravery, you’re scared and you’re sorry, at least for yourself, but you force your fear back into your subconscious.

Everyone found a justification for themselves, an explanation. I experimented on myself. And basically I found out that the frightening things in life happen quietly and naturally. Zoya

الرجال يقاتلون في الحرب، أما النساء فبعدها

People ask me: “Why don’t you take photos in color? In color!” But Chernobyl: literally it means black event. There are no other colors there.

الضمير هو ترف بالنسبة الى جندي

Let time be the judge. Time is just, but only in the long term—not in the short term. The time we won’t live to see, which will be free of our prejudices.

Solo recuerdo lo que me ocurrió a mí. Recuerdo mi guerra. En la guerra hay mucha gente a tu alrededor, pero siempre estás sola, porque ante la muerte el ser humano siempre está solo. Recuerdo esa terrible soledad.

I believe that in each of us there is a small piece of history. In one half a page, in another two or three. Together we write the book of time. We each call out our own truth. The nightmare of nuances.

Courage in war and courage of thought are two different courages. I used to think they were the same.

People are constantly forced to choose between having freedom and having success and stability; freedom with suffering or happiness without freedom. The majority choose the latter.

Happiness is beyond the mountains, but grief is just over the shoulder

Reality has always attracted me like a magnet, tortured and hypnotized me, and I wanted to capture it on paper. So I immediately appropriated this genre of actual human voices and confessions, witness evidences and documents. This is how I hear and see the world—as a chorus of individual voices and a collage of everyday details. In this way all my mental and emotional potential is realized to the full. In this way I can be simultaneously a writer, reporter, sociologist, psychologist and preacher.

We were told that we had to win. Against whom? The atom? Physics? The universe? Victory is not an event for us, but a process.

Se dice que en la guerra te conviertes en mitad humano, mitad animal. Totalmente cierto... No hay otra forma de sobrevivir. Si te limitas a ser humano, no hay salvación. ¡Perderás la cabeza! En la guerra uno debe recordar algo perdido dentro de sí. Algo arcano... Algo que procede de los tiempos en que el hombre no era del todo humano...

We're often silent. We don't yell and we don't complain. We're patient, as always. Because we don't have the words yet. We're afraid to talk about it. We don't know how. It's not an ordinary experience, and the questions it raises are not ordinary. The world has been split in two: there's us, the Chernobylites, and then there's you, the others. Have you noticed? No one here points out that they're Russian or Belarussian or Ukrainian. We all call ourselves Chernobylites. "We're from Chernobyl." "I'm a Chernobylite." As if this is a separate people. A new nation.

The only righteous thing on the face of the earth is death. No one has ever bribed their way out of that. The earth takes us all: the good, the evil and the sinners. And that's all the justice you'll find in this world.

Morirse no es difícil, solo da miedo.

In five years, everything can change in Russia, but in two hundred—nothing. Boundless

Truth is communal.

Es imposible tener un corazón para el odio y otro para el amor. El ser humano tiene un solo corazón, y yo siempre pensaba en cómo salvar el mío.

We’ll die, and then we’ll become science,

Today, no one has time for feelings, they’re all out making money. The discovery of money hit us like an atom bomb…

A bullet is alone, and man is alone; a bullet flies wherever it likes, and fate twists a man however it likes.

Así es como vivo. Vivo a la vez en un mundo real y en otro irreal. Y no sé dónde estoy mejor.

Recordar es, sobre todo, un acto creativo. Al relatar, la gente crea, redacta, su vida.

I'm a product of my time. I'm not a criminal.

That’s how it was in the beginning. We didn’t just lose a town, we lost our whole lives.

The soul will fly home of its own accord, but shipping a coffin is pretty expensive.

Today many people, especially the young, think it was only America that defeated Hitler. Little is known about the price the Soviet people paid for the victory—twenty million human lives in four years.

For a child, the loss of a parent is the loss of memory itself.

In the center there is always this: how unbearable and unthinkable it is to die. And how much more unbearable and unthinkable it is to kill, because a woman gives life. Gives it. Bears it in herself for a long time, nurses it. I understood that it is more difficult for women to kill.

How did you make it out of there alive?” “My parents loved me a lot when I was little.” We’re saved by the amount of love we get, it’s our safety net. Yes…only love can save us. Love is a vitamin that humans can’t live without—the blood curdles, the heart stops. I

The mechanism of evil will work under conditions of apocalypse, also. That's what I understood. Man will gossip, and kiss up to the bosses, and save his television and ugly fur coat. And people will be the same until the end of time. Always.

قالوا لنا يجب أن ننتصر، على من؟ على الذرة، الفيزياء، الفضاء!!!! النصر عندنا ليس حدث، بل عملية مستمرة

As my physics teacher always said, “My dear students! Just remember that money solves all problems, even differential equations.

Los tiempos cambian, pero ¿y los humanos?

My life has always been like a change jar. It’s full, then it’s empty, then it’s full again, then it’s empty again.

People came from all around on their cars and their bikes to have a look. We didn’t know that death could be so beautiful.

I'll explain it to you: it's terrible to remember, but it's far more terrible not to remember.

Instead of lullabies, my mother would sing us songs of the Revolution. Now she sings them to her grandchildren. 'Are you nuts?' I ask her. She replies, 'I don't know any other songs.

At that time my notions of nuclear power were utterly idyllic. At school and at the university we'd been taught that this was a magical factory that made "energy out of nothing," where people in white robes sat and pushed buttons. Chernobyl blew up when we weren't prepared.

Pretty soon, I'll be decomposing into phosphorous, calcium, and so on. Who else will you find to tell you the truth? All that's left are the archives. Pieces of paper. And the truth is... I worked at an archive myself, I can tell you first hand: paper lies even more than people do.

Transcurrieron unos treinta años hasta que empezaron a rendirnos honores... A invitarnos a dar ponencias... Al principio nos escondíamos, ni siquiera enseñábamos nuestras condecoraciones. Los hombres se las ponían, las mujeres no. Los hombres eran los vencedores, los héroes; los novios habían hecho la guerra, pero a nosotros nos miraban con otros ojos. De un modo muy diferente... Nos arrebataron la Victoria, ¿sabes?

Well, I admit it. I had the greatest respect for the Afghan people, even while I was shooting and killing them. I still do. You could even say I love them. I like their songs and prayers, as peaceful and timeless as their mountains.

The doctors said that I got sick because my father worked at Chernobyl. And after that I was born. I love my father.

We were told that this was a just war, that we were helping the Afghan people to put an end to feudalism and build a wonderful socialist society.

¿Qué diferencia hay entre la muerte y el asesinato, dónde está la frontera entre lo humano y lo inhumano?

Мъжете се бояха, че жените „ще разкажат някаква друга война, и не както трябва.

Instead of a Motherland, we live in a huge supermarket. If this is freedom, I don't need it. To hell with it!

Our people need freedom like a monkey needs glasses. No one would know what to do with it.

ان ماينقذ الإنسان في الحرب هو تشتت وتبدد وعيه

I'm afraid of freedom, it feels like some drunk guy could show up and burn my dacha at any moment.

Защо не осъдихме Сталин? Ще ви отговоря… За да осъдиш Сталин, трябва да осъдиш роднините си, познатите си. Най-близките си хора.

I often thought that the simples fact, the mechanical fact, is no closer to the truth than a vague feeling, rumor, vision. Why repeat the facts - they cover up our feelings. The development of these feelings, the spilling of these feelings past the facts, is what fascinantes me. I try to find them, collect them, protect them.

I told you. There’s nothing heroic here, nothing for the writer’s pen. I had thoughts like, It’s not wartime, why should I have to risk myself while someone else is sleeping with my wife? Why me again, and not him? To be honest, I didn’t see any heroes there. I saw nutcases, who didn’t care about their own lives, and I had enough craziness myself, but it wasn’t necessary. I also have medals and awards—but that’s because I wasn’t afraid of dying. I didn’t care! It was even something of an out. They’d have buried me with honors. And the government would have paid for it.

They die, but no one’s really asked us. No one’s asked what we’ve been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them. But I was telling you about love. About my love . . . Lyudmilla

The battle ended during the night. In the morning fresh snow fell. Under it the dead…Many had their arms raised up…toward the sky…You ask me: what is happiness? I answer…To suddenly find a living man among the dead…

There’s a fragment of some conversation, I’m remembering it. Someone is saying: “You have to understand: this is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning. You’re not suicidal. Get ahold of yourself.” And I’m like someone who’s lost her mind: “But I love him! I love him!” He’s sleeping, and I’m whispering: “I love you!” Walking in the hospital courtyard, “I love you.” Carrying his sanitary tray, “I love you.

We all live through it by ourselves, we don't know what else to do. I can't understand it with my mind. My mother especially has felt confused. She teaches Russian literature, and she always taught me to live with books. But there are no books about this. She became confused. She doesn't know how to do without books. Without Chekhov and Tolstoy.

These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unknown. I felt like I was recording the future. Svetlana

Lo que ha pasado es algo desconocido. Es otro miedo. No se oye, no se ve, no huele, no tiene color; en cambio nosotros cambiamos física y psíquicamente.

Life was full of adventure: I learnt the smell of danger — I’ve got a sixth sense for it now. We’re homesick for it, some of us; it’s called the ‘Afghan syndrome’.

A soldier must be like a bullet, constantly ready to be fired.’ I learnt that by heart. You go to war in order to kill. Killing is my profession — that’s what I was trained to do.

Back then everyone was saying: "We're going to die, we're going to die. By the year 2000, there won't be any Belarussians left.

Dreptul omului de a nu ucide. De a nu învața să ucidă. Neînscris în nicio constituție.

It's certainly true that Chernobyl, while an accident in the sense that no one intentionally set it off, was also the deliberate product of a culture of cronyism, laziness, and a deep-seated indifference toward the general population. The literature on the subject is pretty unanimous in its opinion that the Soviet system had taken a poorly designed reactor and then staffed it with a group of incompetents. It then proceeded, as the interviews in this book attest, to lie about the disaster in the most criminal way. In the crucial first ten days, when the reactor core was burning and releasing a steady stream of highly radioactive material into the surrounding areas, the authorities repeatedly claimed that the situation was under control. . . In the week after the accident, while refusing to admit to the world that anything really serious had gone wrong, the Soviets poured thousands of men into the breach. . . The machines they brought broke down because of the radiation. The humans wouldn't break down until weeks or months later, at which point they'd die horribly.

No conocíamos el mundo sin guerra, el mundo de la guerra era el único cercano, y la gente de la guerra era la única gente que conocíamos. Hasta ahora no conozco otro mundo, ni a otra gente. ¿Acaso existieron alguna vez?

He’s going to die.” I understood later on that you can’t think that way. I cried in the bathroom. None of the mothers cry in the hospital rooms. They cry in the toilets, the baths. I come back cheerful: “Your cheeks are red. You’re getting better.” “Mom, take me out of the hospital. I’m going to die here. Everyone here dies.” Now where am I going to cry? In the bathroom? There’s a line for the bathroom—everyone like me is in that line.

We don’t need anything. Just listen to us and try to understand. Society is good at doing things, ‘giving’ medical help, pensions, flats. But all this so-called giving has been paid for in very expensive currency. Our blood.

¿Cómo elegir entre el amor y la muerte? ¿Entre el pasado y el ignorado presente? ¿Y quién se creerá con derecho a echar en cara a otras esposas y madres que no se quedaran junto a sus maridos e hijos? Junto a esos elementos radiactivos. En su mundo se vio alterado incluso el amor. Hasta la muerte. Ha cambiado todo. Todo menos nosotros.

truths. History is concerned solely with the facts; emotions are outside of its realm of interest. In fact, it’s considered improper to admit feelings into history. But I look at the world as a writer and not a historian. I am fascinated by people.

Somebody betrayed us... The Germans learned the location of our partisan troop. They surrounded the forest from all sides. We were hiding in the deep woods, hiding in the swamps where the torturers did not go [...] A radio operator was with us. She gave birth recently. The baby was hungry... Wanting the breast... But the mother is starving, she has no milk, and the baby is crying. The Germans are nearby... With dogs... If the dogs hear the baby, we're all dead. All of us - thirty people... Do you understand? We make a decision... Nobody dares to tell her the commader's order, but the mother guesses it herself. She puts the bundle with the baby into the water and holds it there for a long time... The baby does not cry... Not a sound... And we cannot lift our eyes. We cannot look at the mother or at each other

There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called--Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don't leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In an instant. They just drop--someone will be walking, he falls down, goes to sleep, never wakes up. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them. But I was telling you about love. About my love... -- Lyudmila, Ignatenko, wife of deceased fireman, Vasily Ignatenko

I hear about death so often that I don’t even notice anymore. Have you ever heard kids talk about death? My seventh-graders argue about it: is it scary or not? Kids used to ask: where do we come from? How are babies made? Now they’re worried about what’ll happen after the nuclear war.

If you don’t play, you lose. There was a Ukrainian woman at the market selling big red apples. ‘Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples!’ Someone told her not to advertise that, no one will buy them. ‘Don’t worry!’ she says. ‘They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss.’

I met this one man, he was saying that this is because we place a low value on human life. That it’s an Asiatic fatalism. A person who sacrifices himself doesn’t feel himself to be a unique individual. He experiences a longing for his role in life. Earlier he was a person without a text, a statistic. He had no theme, he served as the background. And now suddenly he’s the main protagonist. It’s a longing for meaning.

But I’m never lonely, a man who believes can never be lonely. I ride around the villages—I used to find spaghetti, flour—even vegetable oil. Canned fruit. Now I go to the cemeteries—people leave food and drink for the dead. But the dead don’t need it. They don’t mind. In the fields there’s wild grain, and in the forest there are mushrooms and berries. Freedom is here. I

During the war, one out of every four Belarussians was killed; today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. This amounts to 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Among the demographic factors responsible for the depopulation of Belarus, radiation is number one. In the Gomel and Mogilev regions, which suffered the most from Chernobyl, mortality rates exceed birth rates by 20%. As

But… it was men writing about men—that much was clear at once. Everything we know about war we know with “a man’s voice.” We are all captives of “men’s” notions and “men’s” sense of war. “Men’s” words. Women are silent. No one but me ever questioned my grandmother. My mother. Even those who were at the front say nothing. If they suddenly begin to remember, they don’t talk about the “women’s” war but about the “men’s.” They tune in to the canon. And only at home or waxing tearful among their combat girlfriends do they begin to talk about their war, the war unknown to me. Not only to me, to all of us.

Whatever women talk about, the thought is constantly present in them: war is first of all murder, and then hard work. And then simply ordinary life: singing, falling in love, putting your hair in curlers… In the center there is always this: how unbearable and unthinkable it is to die. And how much more unbearable and unthinkable it is to kill, because a woman gives life. Gives it. Bears it in herself for a long time, nurses it. I understood that it is more difficult for women to kill.

Con los años, el ser humano comprende que la vida se ha quedado atrás y que ha llegado el momento de resignarse y de prepararse para marchar. Es una pena desaparecer sin más. De cualquier manera. Sobre la marcha. Al mirar atrás, uno siente el deseo de no solo contar lo suyo, sino de llegar al misterio de la vida. De responder a la pregunta: ¿para qué ha sido todo esto? Observar el mundo con una mirada un poco de despedida, un poco triste… Casi desde otro lado… Ya no necesita engañar ni engañarse. Y comprende que la visión del ser humano es imposible sin la noción de la muerte. Que el misterio de la muerte está por encima de todo.

Мъжът на моя позната беше пилот, командир на ескадрила. Уволниха го като запасен. Когато тя загуби работата си, веднага се преквалифицира – беше инженер, стана фризьор. А той си седи у дома и пие от негодувание, пие, защото той, бойният пилот, оставил Афганистан зад гърба си, трябва да прави каша на децата. Та така… На всички е обиден. Злобее. Ходил във военното окръжие, питал дали не могат да го пратят някъде на война, със специална задача – отказали му. Пълно е с желаещи. Ние имаме хиляди безработни военни, такива, които познават само автомата и танка. Непригодни за друг живот. На нашите жени им се налага да бъдат по-силни от мъжете.

У дома рядко идваха бивши лагерници, той не ги търсеше. Когато се появяваха вкъщи, аз се чувствах като чужденка, те идваха оттам, където мен още ме е нямало. Знаеха за него повече от мен. Открих, че той има и някакъв друг живот… Разбрах, че жената може да разкаже за своите унижения, а мъжът – не, на жената ѝ е по-леко да признае, защото някъде дълбоко в себе си тя е готова за насилието, вземете дори самия полов акт…. Всеки месец жената започва живота наново… тези цикли… Самата природа ѝ помага. Сред жените, които са били в лагерите, много са сами. Малко такива двойки съм виждала, при които и двамата – и той, и тя, да са оттам. Тайната не ги обединява, а ги разединява.

At the Minsk tractor factory I was looking for a woman who had served in the army as a sniper. She had been a famous sniper. The newspapers from the front had written about her more than once. Her Moscow girlfriends gave me her home phone number, but it was old. And the last name I had noted down was her maiden name. I went to the factory where I knew she worked in the personnel department, and I heard from the men (the director of the factory and the head of the personnel department): “Aren’t there enough men? What do you need these women’s stories for? Women’s fantasies…” The men were afraid that women would tell about some wrong sort of war. I visited a family…Both husband and wife had fought. They met at the front and got married there: “We celebrated our wedding in the trench. Before the battle. I made a white dress for myself out of a German parachute.” He had been a machine gunner, she a radio operator. The man immediately sent his wife to the kitchen: “Prepare something for us.” The kettle was already boiling, and the sandwiches were served, she sat down with us, but the husband immediately got her to her feet again: “Where are the strawberries? Where are our treats from the country?” After my repeated requests, he reluctantly relinquished his place, saying: “Tell it the way I taught you. Without tears and women’s trifles: how you wanted to be beautiful, how you wept when they cut off your braid.” Later she whispered to me: “He studied The History of the Great Patriotic War with me all last night. He was afraid for me. And now he’s worried I won’t remember right. Not the way I should.” That happened more than once, in more than one house.