ОБРАЗ МУЖЧИНЫ НА ФОНЕ ОБРАЗА ЖЕНЩИНЫ В ТВОРЧЕСТВЕ СВЕТЛАНЫ АЛЕКСИЕВИЧ

Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian writer and journalist, winner of numerous international awards, including the Nobel Prize for literature in 2015. In her work, Alexievich touches upon themes relating to the Second World War, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster. Her chosen genre is a combination of collective novel, novel-testimony and epic choral prose. The historical works War has nothing of a woman in it and The Last Witnesses show World War II through the eyes of women and children. In this article, specifically focusing on male characters in the writer's selected books, we attempt to show the figure of the woman in opposition to representatives of the male sex. It is known from war-time sources that women, apart from the medical services, also operated in the infantry, artillery, reconnaissance and were even snipers; all of which proves that women took an active role in almost every sphere of the armed forces. However, Alexievich demonstrates that a clear division between the sexes appeared in the USSR in terms of promotions and assignments. Despite the million or more women with guns, which is surely a precedent on a global scale, the army did not want women to command men. In the The Last Witnesses we especially focus on the memories of boys and a perception of war which is reminiscent of a male reception of the event, often devoid of emo-tionality, as previously observed in War has nothing of a woman.