Holocaust testimony or ‘Soviet Epic’: Svetlana Alexievich’s polyphonic texts

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the wartime fate of the Jews in Belarus as it is represented in Svetlana Alexievich's ‘documentary fiction’. It asks whether the Jewish experience, as reported by survivors, rescuers and bystanders, is presented as part of a broad Soviet history, or, as western readers might expect, as a central part of the Holocaust. The article considers whether this question can be addressed in literary terms by analysing Alexievich’s use of a wide range of social utterances in the composition of her works, to determine whether such polyphony gives expression to Jewish voices or erases their distinctiveness