Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist, and oral historian who writes in Russian, born on 31 May 1948 in Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk), Ukraine, to a Belarusian father and Ukrainian mother. She grew up in Belarus, graduated from Belarusian State University in 1972, and specialised in 'documentary literature'—collages of interviews forming polyphonic oral histories of pivotal Soviet-era events, including World War II, the Soviet-Afghan War, the Chernobyl disaster, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Her breakthrough work, War's Unwomanly Face (1985), compiled monologues from women who served in World War II, selling over two million copies. Read more →