The image of the time in the book of S. Alexievich “Second-hand Time”: the originality of the artistic conflict

Fictional conflict in prose of S. Aleksievich is one of the instruments for presenting general image of the XXth century in its’ most tragic features. Thanks to the targeted selection of “human documents”, confessions of ordinary people, as well as due to the cyclically built composition, the author embodies in the book “Second-hand Time” the conflict of two eras - the Past and the Present and the two spaces of the Soviet Union and Russia. The acuteness of the artistic conflict embodied in the book is due to the appeal to the fate of individuals seeking to understand their place in history, to find justification for their ideals, or, conversely, to justify their rejection of the past. The author is an artist who proves his right to use a living “human document” as a material, to expand the possibilities of the document, and as a result to draw objective images of Time and Man, infused with a living human feeling.