'It's a shame the road to freedom is so long'

Svetlana Alexievich, the Belarusian writer and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 2015, left Belarus over a year ago — for just a few months, she thought. It hasn't turned out like that. She now lives in Berlin, where she is working on a new book about the aftermath of the internationally disputed presidential election in Belarus in 2020.

DW: Ms. Alexievich, what did you expect of Belarus's presidential election on August 9, 2020?

Svetlana Alexievich: I was totally skeptical. But I saw it as my duty to go and vote, although it was clear that it was utterly pointless. To be honest with you, I personally did not have faith in my people. It seemed to me that people would not take to the streets and that we would carry on living as before, as if time had stood still.

After three days of beatings and humiliations, after stun grenades and rubber bullets, which have the impact of a rifle bullet when they're fired from 10 meters (33 feet) away, after three days that shook the world, when women took to the streets, followed by hundreds of thousands of people, I was overwhelmed. We were all ecstatic.

What did you find most astonishing and overwhelming at the time?

Hundreds of people who were arrested were held in the prison on Okrestina Street in Minsk. You could hear them being beaten. But their parents sat outside the walls and did nothing. I believe Georgians would have taken that prison apart stone by stone. But our people simply waited for their children.

What was overwhelming was that so many young people, the ones we were always complaining about, took part in the protests. The older generation was also astonishing. These events were so much about human dignity, and I want to write a book about that. I'm collecting testaments to our dignity. It's important for all of us, especially now, when we are in the hands of the military and our civil society has been annihilated. I wouldn't describe it as a defeat, rather as a halt in the movement. Because all we went through is not going to disappear. But, as we now understand, there is still a long way to go along the road to freedom.

Are people such as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko capable of giving up power?

I don't believe so. Power was always what he secretly dreamed of. But what I remember is people going on marches with absolutely no thought of armed uprising. For us, it was a celebration, a celebration of discovery and excitement. Excitement about ourselves. But then, of course, we lost time. We have to admit that the protests had no leadership as such. The Coordination Council [the opposition — Editor's note] didn't control what went on. We should have stayed on the streets until Lukashenko stepped down.

But I didn't want blood to be shed, and I say this again and again. Otherwise we would have come to a point where we no longer occupied the moral high ground. At the time, we prevailed through wisdom and nonviolence. This was how we got international public opinion on our side. It was impossible to crush us like in Tiananmen Square in China. If we'd acted differently, we would have given Lukashenko the right to do it. And, most importantly, the best of our young people would have died. I understand Maria Kolesnikova [opposition politician and civil liberties campaigner, currently in prison — Editor's note], who was at the front, and halted thousands of people a few hundred meters from Lukashenko's residence. Like her, I didn't want any bloodshed. I'm more sympathetic to Gandhism. Gandhi, not Lenin.

A lot of people are now saying the Belarusian revolution is lost. Is that true?

No, I don't think so. Firstly, you have an elite there who are joining forces in a completely new kind of way. Then you have the Belarusian people, whose eyes have been opened. The people will never forget how they sat in backyards drinking tea, how they went out on the marches together. Many of the heroes of my book say this: "We lived from one Sunday to the next, and we got so much energy from it that it strengthened our backbones." We have started to become a nation.

Secondly: It's true that we can't demonstrate on the street now. Things only happen in our heads. But the people still expect changes. At some point everything will change, either as a result of sanctions, or because of Lukashenko himself, because he's his own worst enemy. I think that then it will happen very fast.

What we mustn't do now is wrap ourselves in a cocoon of powerlessness; we must prepare ourselves for a new era. We must help those who are in prison, their families and children. I have no hesitation in saying that they are children of heroes, the best among us.

Is Svetlana Alexievich before and after 2020 still the same person?

I don't think it's a case of different personalities, because my convictions haven't changed. I've simply understood that life is short, and that it's a shame the road to freedom is so long.

You know, I dream of my fellow Belarusians living like people in Germany. When I get up from my desk and go out into the street, I see them sitting in cafes, laughing. Will such nonchalance ever be the norm for us? Germans talk about life. We sit at a table, and we don't talk about what we've read, where we were, who we've fallen in love with, or who we've left; we talk about Lukashenko, about the nightmare in our country. I would never have thought that military vehicles would confront us on the streets of my hometown, and that I myself would have to live in exile.

You said that, days before you left the country, you observed minivans with tinted windows and plainclothes policemen outside your house.

In September 2020, plainclothes security forces were stationed outside my house for 10 days. Even the concierge called me and asked me not to go out: "It's not safe here, there are strange people wandering about and buses standing around." On a couple of occasions, diplomats from European countries, 18 people in all, came to me at home. Later, each of them in turn stayed a night at my house. I am very grateful to all of them for that and for everything they're doing for all of us.

When I left the country, I wasn't on my own: I was escorted by diplomats. It would hardly have been possible for me to fly otherwise. I was detained for about an hour at the border. My passport was taken away. They said: "Oh, our computer has crashed. Oh, I can't get through on the phone." I asked, "What's the matter?" There was silence. But eventually they let me go.

Did it help that you are a Nobel laureate?

I was at least able to leave the country, just as a criminal proceedings were initiated against the Coordination Council. Lukashenko hates me. When I turned 70, it wasn't mentioned in a single newspaper.

You're currently living in Berlin. Do you feel at home there?

I've lived in Berlin before, in the years of my first exile, when Vasil Bykau [Belarusian writer — Editor's note] and I had to leave the country. I love the spirit of Berlin and the diversity of life here. I love Germany and am grateful to it. During my first exile, I had the possibility of having an apartment in Vienna and staying there. But I want to live in Belarus. I travel around the world with interest, and I've seen a great deal, but returning home is important to me.

If the Lukashenko regime were to guarantee your safety, would you go back?

When you're a writer, you can live in your own world, and it doesn't matter where in the physical world this is. I've already heard thoughts or suggestions from diplomats along these lines, but I answered that this was impossible. How could I look people in the eye who had to leave behind young children and sick mothers in Belarus? They'll remain in exile, and I'll go home? I can't imagine it; it would be a betrayal.

You've been working on a new book for a year now. What are the questions to which you're seeking answers?

There are many. The question of war and peace is one. Were we right in seeking to avoid bloodshed? I ask everyone this. People respond differently, incidentally. I would like to write about the masked men, and the temptation of the dark; about why we're still living as if we're in the books of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Why is our entire history flanked by people under arrest, with plastic bags over their heads? Why did some people hide demonstrators, while others led special forces to them?

And one more question: We will have to live with those who beat and tortured us — how can we understand them so that we don't degenerate into hatred? And so on, and on ... Where did they come from, all these wonderful people who took to the streets? How did they become the people they are? Who are their parents? It's important to me to recount as much as I can about them.

What's it like to write a book when the story is not yet complete and the end is yet to come?

I hope that the end will come while I'm writing the book.

The Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. Alexievich is known for her opposition to the Lukashenko regime, but after receiving the Nobel Prize she returned from exile to live in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. During the protests in 2020, she was part of the opposition's Coordination Council, whose the members were persecuted by the Belarusian regime. In September 2020, Alexievich went into exile in Germany.

This interview was translated from Russian