Personal and Collective Memories in the Works of Svetlana Alexievich

This article examines the Nobel Prize-winning journalist Svetlana Alexievich’s methodology in the larger context of post-Soviet debates about collective remembering. The article focuses on the relation between individual and collective remembering, specifically, on what it means to remember together, through individual voices and stories. I discuss three different ways to conceptualize collective memory: “collectivized,” “complementary” and “contested” memories. To conclude, I argue that the last one, contestation, is the most suitable paradigm for Alexievich’s work, because it is in harmony with her Bakhtinian principles of polyphonic writing and remembering.