Our Notes & References

Scarce first book edition, first issue, of “the book that launched Alexievich’s career, pioneered her method of collecting and orchestrating “a history of feelings,” and led ultimately to her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015″ (Holmgren).

A fine example, warmly inscribed by Aleksievich to ‘Alla Borisovna’ dated of August 3, 1985. Although one of the most famous Soviet-Russian singers is Alla Borisovna Pugacheva, the recipient of this copy appears to be different, possibly a member of Moscow publishing circles.

“The first person to receive the Nobel for books that are based entirely on interviews” (Gessen), Svetlana Aleksievich (b. 1948) wrote her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War, in 1983. It could not initially be published because its “primitively naturalist” accounts were deemed to “dethrone” Soviet war heroines (Holmgren). With the onset of Perestroika, a serialised version of the text appeared in early 1984 in the Moscow literary journal Oktiabr (October), followed later that year by several chapters in the journal Neman of the Belarusian Writers’ Union. Some parts were removed by censors or by the author herself.

This first book edition, generously illustrated with photographs of its female narrators, was signed off for printing on 12 May 1985, with a second printing followed on 25 September 1985. The book “eventually sold more than two million copies in Russian, and won Alexievich one of the highest Soviet civilian honors, the Lenin Komsomol Prize […] An uncensored edition was not published until after the Soviet Union fell, six years later” (Gessen).

Aleksievich first employs here what the Swedish Academy later described in its Nobel Prize citation as “polyphonic writing, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”. The book brings together hundreds of monologues by women from across the Soviet republics who served on the front lines of the Second World War as doctors, pilots, tank drivers, cooks, nurses, and snipers. This “novel of voices” reveals previously unheard experiences of women at war: despite more than a million women having served in the Soviet armed forces, their testimonies were quickly silenced and replaced by those of “men or, more aptly, Soviet newspaper accounts ennobling the war through grand, whitewashed narratives of Heroism, Martyrdom, and Victory” (Holmgren). By foregrounding these voices, Aleksievich captures both women’s initial enthusiasm for fighting for their country and the daily realities and horrors of war.

The title is taken from the opening lines of War Under the Roofs (1960) by the Belarusian writer and democratic activist Ales Adamovich (1927-94), who also wrote the preface to this edition. Aleksievich’s principal literary mentor, Adamovich was known for his works on the German occupation of Belarus during World War II, including his screenplay for Come and See (1985), directed by Elem Klimov.

Provenance

‘Alla Borisovna’ (author’s inscription to title in ballpoint pen, dated 3 VIII 1985).

Bibliography

Gessen, Masha. “The Memory Keeper” // The New Yorker, October 2015; Holmgren, Beth, et al. “Their Own Wars” // The Women’s Review of Books, vol. 34, no. 6, 2017, pp. 11–13.