The book The Secondhand Time completes the artistic-documentary cycle of works The Voices of Utopia by S. Aleksievich, a Russian-speaking Belarusian author. Like her other books, it actualizes, in her own words, “the genre of human voices, confessions, testimonies and documents of a human soul”. Unlike Western documentary writers whose works oppose the artistic world by undressing and desacralizing it, S. Aleksievich, by following the traditions of the Russian literature, strives to preserve the sacred in her material, oftentimes introducing the artistic and esthetic elements. The article analyzes the tools that the author uses in her book, such as selecning facts and documents, alternating “voices”, editing them, including other sources in the text, moving from location to locatoin, explicit and implicit depiction of conscience, psychology of interlocutors, accentuating basic elements in monologues and remarks, allusions, reminiscences, etc. The conclusion evaluates artistic value of this work.

The relevance of the study is explained by the fact that adolescence is a critical period of development when essential changes in the personality occur. Achieving personal autonomy is an urgent problem because it indicates the development of the independence of an adolescent and their ability to choose their life goals based on an independent and free choice. In this regard, the purpose of the study is to analyse and diagnose the development of emotional and spiritual independence in adolescents based on the connection with school performance and family environment. The leading techniques for investigating this problem were analysis, classification, observation, experiment, generalisation, and comparison of results. The study identified the role of parents in the development of independence of an adolescent and the connection of this process with success at school; demonstrated aspects and features of the psychological and pedagogical process; etc. A detailed analysis of the literature was conducted and the content, characteristics, and features of this phenomenon were clarified; various forms of parental influence on an adolescent and their psychological autonomy were discovered; the process of indirect influence on children's academic success was considered and other.