Monday, December 9, 2019

Life Today Worse than Communist Times Because ‘Monster is Dead but Rats Remain,’ Aleksiyevich Says


Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 7 – The present-day is “even more horrible” than were at least the last years of communist rule, Belarusian Nobelist Svetlana Aleksiyevich says, because of something the artist Ilya Kabakov has pointed to, the dispersal of the evil throughout the system that had been concentrated in Soviet times.

            In Kabakov’s words, Aleksiyevich says, “In Soviet times, we struggled with the monster of communism. This was a great beast, and we defeated him. But them we looked around and saw that we still had to struggle with the rats” left behind (nv.ua/world/countries/belorusskaya-pisatelnica-aleksievich-o-sssr-i-segodnya-50057627.html).

            That has created circumstances which “even our literature did not warn us about” because “the rats are more horrible than the monster since it is impossible to control them.” There are too many, they are not linked together by a hated ideology, and they are beyond the control of someone who could be attacked and defeated at one go, the writer says.

            For that reason, Alekseiyevich argues, “today’s times are much more terrible” than those which came before.

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