ABSTRACT Analyzing the “Chechen Syndrome”: Disadaptation of Veterans with War Trauma in Contemporary Russian Literature (original) (raw)
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2012
There is a new army marching onto the field of contemporary Russian literature: veterans of the recent Chechen Wars. The war veteran as author and/or protagonist has become increasingly popular, bringing to light social issues concerning the wars, including the presence of social disadaptation, a term I will define in this thesis, due to war trauma. This thesis analyzes the appearance of war trauma in contemporary works, connecting themes arising in the literary works to Russian psychological literature written about war trauma from 2000-2011. The first chapter focuses on the works of Arkady Babchenko, Andrei Gelasimov and Denis Butov and examines the similarities and differences in the manifestation of war trauma in their works. In particular, the thesis shows that the protagonists in each examined work all suffer or suffered from war trauma and disadaptation and are at different steps in the process of recovery from trauma. The second chapter will analyze the discourse in Russian psychological literature over the past twelve years, drawing mainly from studies and discussions presented in Military Medical Journal (Voenno-meditsinskii zhurnal) and Journal of Psychology (Psikhologicheskii zhurnal). This psychological literature provides insight into the work being done in the field of war trauma today, highlighting similarities and divergences in the specific case of Russian veterans of the Chechen wars. v Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………...…………………………………... iv Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………… vi entirety of this project, from the very first days of brainstorming to the final product. To my readers, Beth Holmgren and Anna Krylova, for all of their time, help and input to strengthen the quality of this project. To the faculty of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University for providing me with the opportunity to further my language and cultural studies, explore this thesis topic and for the various forms of help and support over the past two years. And to my parents for their unwavering support and encouragement of my endeavors, however diverse or bizarre they may be.
A Russian Poetics of Trauma: Encounters with Death and the Literary Reclamation of the Individual
Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies, 2019
Recent Russian literary works illustrate a keen understanding of lingering transgenerational traumas experienced both collectively and individually. Twentieth-century totalitarian regimes' terror tactics and att empts to destroy individual personality created cultures of trauma that left their traces across generations through practices of dominance and mistrust reiterated in private lives. Th ese tactics also fomented lingering internalized and symbolized residues of death anxiety. Soviet Russia is a case in point. Even as totalism receded in the post-Soviet era, premature death has persisted, particularly among men, and it has brought long-term psychological and cognitive stases that have prevented social and relational dynamism necessary for healing and change. Two contemporary Russian women writers, Svetlana Alexievich and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, represent in their testimonial narratives gender-specifi c traumas and death anxieties lingering for two postwar generations. Th ey create a particularly Russian poetics of trauma in response to human diminishment and denied recognition that symbolizes confrontations with death and narratively represents the nature and value of personal struggles to survive, and to break free of regenerative self-defeating mentalities. To analyze the nature of this poetics, I employ trauma and narrative-and recognition-based theories. Russian experience exemplifi es the enormous psychological costs of authoritarian practices and nation-defi ning militarism that objectify
MILITARY PROSE ABOUT THE EVENTS IN CHECHNYA AT THE TURN OF THE 20 ST CENTURY: WAR AND PEACE
LCIR online conference, 2019
Russian prose about the War in Chechnya at the turn of the century is not really accessible to the Western reader due to the very specific context of this conflict and also, because most of the Russian literature about this topic has not been translated. By starting with the familiar - Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and giving some background on how military prose developed in Russia - we move towards the unknown and explore three texts Alexandr Prokhanov's "Walking in the Night", Vladimir Makanin's "Asan" and Marina Akhmedova's "A Chechen Female Diary" looking for general themes. The aim of the paper is to familiarise the reader with a topic that they are probable quite unfamiliar with.
THE FORMATION OF UKRAINIAN LITERARY CANON ON THE DONBASS WAR: EMOTIONAL MATRICES OF NON-COMBATANTS
Plekhanov A.A., Herasimau U.K. The formation of Ukrainian literary canon on the Donbass war: emotional matrices of non-combatants // Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie. 2021. No 4. P. 175–190, 2021
The article examines the representation of non-combatants in Ukrainian literature in the context of formation of a literary canon on the Donbass war. The research focuses on the literary practices instrumental in reconstructing the experience both of the displaced persons and of the civilians trapped in war zones, and aims to show how this experience is reflected in emotional matrices. We draw on the data collected during the 2016-2018 fieldwork in Ukraine, and attempt to analyze it conceptually in the perspective of the interdisciplinary field of studying history of emotions, associated with the work of William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and others. By employing both anthropological and literary approaches, we explore the key texts of the contemporary Ukrainian literature on the subject of war in the East of Ukraine. We argue that the theme of experience of the civilians and the displaced persons, running through the emergent narrative canon, may come to constitute its dominant part.
Veterans remember the war in Soviet and post-Soviet fiction
The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, 2021
In this chapter (published in David L. Hoffmann's edited collection The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge Press, 2021), I discuss the changing representations of war in the fiction and other writing of three Soviet WWII veterans, writers Bulat Okudzhava, Vasil' Bykau, and Viktor Astaf'ev. All three belong to the "boys of 1924," the youngest soldiers called up for the war who went on to live beyond the Soviet era.
Russian Studies in Literature, 2006
This article describes some military subjects and plots which wouldn't had been described in War literature, had writers followed restriction familiar to historians who had been conducting their research in Central Archive of Defense Ministry of Russian Federation (CAMO) in 1990s - 1st half of 2000s. English translation © 2006 ME Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text © 2005 Voprosy literatury. Voennaia literatura bez prava na dokumentalizm, Voprosy literatury, 2005, no. 3, pp. 10724. Translated by Liv Bliss. Page 2. 8 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN LITERATURE ...
Family frames of the Russo-Ukrainian war in contemporary Ukrainian literature
The article aims to investigate the aspects of family relationships in contemporary prose about the Russo-Ukrainian war (with a focus on the 2014-2021 period of the ongoing war). The novels Daughter (2019) by Tamara Horikha Zernia, The Orphanage (2017) by Serhiy Zhadan and Amadoka (2020) by Sofia Andrukhovych are interpreted through the methodological lens of memory, trauma and resilience studies. Using Tamara Hundorova's concept of the post-Chornobyl library, the author tries to approach the theorisation of (post-)traumatic writing about the war. The analysis of the novels highlights the intersections between family frames and memory of political violence. These texts suggest that family can foster both discontinuity and resilience. Finally, working through a difficult past and bearing witness to the challenging present presupposes memory of the Russo-Ukrainian war in the future.
Post-Soviet Contexts and Trauma Studies. In: Slavonica, Volume 17, Number 2, November 2011.
The goal of this article is to consider the agendas that shape the field of post-Soviet cultural studies through an examination of post-Soviet Russian appropriations of the traumatic memory of the Soviet past. Post-Soviet scholarship, in questioning collectivizing constructions of identity, has begun to question its own agendas and cohesion. Parallel with developments in Trauma Studies, post-Soviet scholarship considers the relationship between individual and collective experience while enabling a narrative of self-determination on the part of Soviet subjects and those who study them. By working around the poststructuralist emphasis upon partiality and contingency that has impaired the ability to assert 'an absolute foundation of shared experiences upon which to build an invincible moral stance' (Ball 2000), scholars, contemporary artists and online fora stage interventions that reveal the instability of institutional discourses and reveal the political stakes of discussions about post-Soviet trauma.