Svetlana Alexievich: Monster Died, But Rats Are Still Here

The Nobel Prize winner - about some post-Soviet rulers.

Famous Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich compared two epochs - the USSR and the post-Soviet period - in her interview to the HB magazine.

According to her, today's times are even more terrible than under communism.

"There is such a good statement by artist Ilya Kabakov. He said: there was the Soviet time when we were fighting against the monster-communism. It was a big monster, and we defeated it. But then we looked around and saw that we still had to fight rats. Suddenly, a lot of things came out of the man, which our literature had not even warned us about. And rats are scarier than monsters, because they can't be controlled. And a man is no longer infatuated with the idea, and the power has no control over him. So, I think today's time is even scarier," - Alexievich explained.

In 2015, Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.