Elliot Lecture: 'The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul'

Politics and International Relations Podcasts

St Antony's College hosts the 2015 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, for a discussion of her the Soviet soul and her current and former projects. Conducted in Russian and translated by Oxford DPhil student Margarita Vaysman, the discussion captures key insights into Alexievich's writing process, often described as a new genre between journalism and literature for her extensive usage of interviews to craft a global voice. Alexievich explains the pique of her interest for storytelling from a conversation with her grandmother and the methods she uses to approach her subjects as neighbors who form part of the same history of the Soviet experience. Her profound musings on truth, suffering and evil versus good provide a broader context for her works Second-Hand Time (newly translated to English this year) and Chernobyl Prayer as well as many others.