To honor the memory of survivors and witnesses to history, Svetlana Alexievitch has interviewed survivors of the disaster. Liquidators, liquidators women, children, party official, military, hunters, simple people ... The supplication brings their voices, forever frozen in amber. To better understand the thing, the author disappears behind the evidence and only organize as a flood of terrible and terrifying monologues but mostly incredibly touching. Without judging, trying Alexievitch work of comparable memory which is about the Holocaust. In 250 pages and dozens of testimonials, Supplication form a choir terrible cursed children.
In it, you will come across those who have seen and fought Chernobyl. These fantastic stories, the fruit of a long work, together so much that the final density of the book scares. We first found there fear, unspeakable and terrible, incredible fear of an unseen enemy that eats the flesh and spirit. But also fear of the Soviet mammoth, this policy lead weight that unfolds over the heads of victims. In this world where the end of the peaceful atom coincides with the end of the communist era, there is the loss of illusions, of innocence, the same loss of hope. Not only we discover with horror the immense injustice and loneliness of the victims but also outright neglect of human sacrifice.
Supplication talk about that, human. He talks about the slow disintegration of humanity the horror he created. Quickly, the reader feels disgusted, disgusted at these people, these "terrorists" who sell us the atom and nuclear power as the supreme power. Then it's simply the horror that is required, the affliction. Before our eyes, liquidators women's words, they sacrificed abandoned dying slowly eroded by radiation. A premium of 500 rubles, a diploma and a concrete coffin. That is the whole greatness Communist. Difficult to transcribe any, to pass the immense emotion of these stories almost post-apocalyptic. Sometimes difficult to keep reading as when the wife speaks of her young husband, a guard firefighter is called in the night to extinguish the fire which declared its nuclear plant and which participated, with his friends, colleagues in an outfit of cloth and with her courage and poured water on dozens of tons of radioactive material ... for incandescent agony during 14 days under the eyes of his young wife, literally transformed into a monster. Also difficult to read the vain and ridiculous combat this nuclear institute director to save his people ... Really hard. But necessary.
Each finds in these pages a piece of eternity, Secretary unable to justify his lies to the young children who see their buddies die even as they agonize. Surprisingly, this is also the incomprehension that prevails in The Supplication, facing an invisible, odorless threat. Comparisons with the war keep coming back but this one ... War of the Soviet people lost it. In fact, it even seems to never have understood. As Westerners, even asking us if the Nuclear is a bad or a good thing, that even while the Japanese also paying the price. Humans definitely sounds crazy and Supplication, are the desperate cries of mothers and wives that resonate these shocking stories of woe and pain that desperate call to memory, to reason. Svetlana Alexievitch demonstrated a sublime humility and sefface behind the controls, it acts conscientious architect and honors, finally, life and death "Tchernobyliens".
Supplication refers, in a sense, if He was a man of Primo Levi. Both speak of an unspeakable crime but also the ground by man human. But if Primo tells his story, Svetlana tells us that of his country, his people. For one as for the other one conclusion: you have to read them, to remember. And underneath all, act.
Read emergency.
