Author scandalous interview with Nobel Prize winner in literature Svetlana Alexievich Today he will be fired from the newspaper Delovoy Peterburg. Journalist Sergei Gurkin himself reported this on his Facebook page.
According to him, the reason was that he published an interview with Alexievich in the Regnum agency after the DP editors refused to publish the scandalous material.
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“An interview with Svetlana Alexievich on June 19 was provided to DP. It was decided that it would not be published in DP due to the inconsistency between the topic and tone of the interview. I informed that the interview would be sent by me to another publication and/or posted on the social network Facebook.
The interview was published on the evening of the same day. Today, June 20, the management of “DP” suggested that I contact the Regnum news agency with a request to remove the text. I refused. The management of the publication took the initiative to dismiss by agreement of the parties. I agreed,” Gurkin wrote.
The agreement will be finalized today. In the last two years, by agreement with the management of Business Petersburg, Gurkin collaborated with the Regnum news agency in his free time from his main job. The fact of cooperation was not hidden.
Alexievich herself is now discussing with her literary agent what actions can be taken in connection with the publication of the interview. She reported this to the Belarusian opposition news agency BelaPAN.
The writer does not rule out that this incident will affect her further interaction with journalists, primarily Russian ones.
“I can’t trust any of them anymore. It's difficult to talk there even with friends. Even if someone wants to maintain friendship, they say: “Svetlana, you are in one camp, I am in another,” the Nobel laureate noted.
Let us recall that Gurkin immediately warned Alexievich that he was her ideological opponent. The writer agreed to a conversation in this format, but then began to insult the journalist and, in the end, banned the publication of the interview. Nevertheless, Gurkin made the decision to publish it because he considered it socially significant.
“This interview - thanks not to me, but to her - is good because it finally says a lot directly. And therefore - thanks not to me, but to her - it is worth a hundred conversations “softly and about nothing.” But now we have found out: people can be prohibited from speaking their native language if there is a state need for it (says the writer); those who killed the writer for his views can be understood (says the writer, humanist and democrat); Russification is bad, Ukrainization is good (says a person who thinks, speaks and writes in Russian); And so on and so forth. This is a real, real face. This is honest. I also did not remove direct insults addressed to me. This is also important. It's about the ability to dialogue. About respect,” Gurkin wrote.