1
How were you taken prisoner?' The interrogator asked my father. 'The Finns pulled me out of a lake.' 'You traitor! You were saving your own skin instead of the Motherland.' My father also considered himself guilty. That's how they'd been trained.Svetlana Alexievich
2
I'm afraid of freedom, it feels like some drunk guy could show up and burn my dacha at any moment.Svetlana Alexievich
3
The mysterious Russian soul... Everyone wants to understand it. They read Dostoevsky: what's behind that soul of theirs? Well, behind our soul there's just more soul.Svetlana Alexievich
4
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.Svetlana Alexievich
5
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.Svetlana Alexievich
6
Why didn't we put Stalin on trial? I'll tell you why.. In order to condemn Stalin, you'd have to condemn your friends and relatives along with him. The people closest to you..our neighbor Yuri turned out to have been the one who informed on my father. For nothing, as my mother would say.. When Yeltsin came to power, I got a copy of his file, which included several informants' reports. It turned out that one of them had been written by Aunt Olga..his niece..a beautiful woman, full of joy.. It's not just Stalin and Beria, it's also our neighbor Yuri and beautiful Aunt Olga.. .Svetlana Alexievich
7
Many greeted the truth as an enemy. And freedom as well.Svetlana Alexievich