Remembering the (Post)War in Svetlana Alexievich and Ludmila Ulitskaya

Abstract

This article examines two non-fictional texts composed from the privately communicated memories of historical witnesses to present an ethnography of Soviet childhood during the Second World War and the early post-war year: Svetlana Alexievich’s Last Witnesses. An Oral History of Children in World War (1985) and Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Childhood 45–53. And Tomorrow There Will Be Happiness (2013). How do these texts ‘stage’ post-war memories, given that they both draw on the sensation of dislocation generated by temporal chasms in the process of recreating the childhood memories of now-adult survivors? How do these texts establish a connection between the remembered experience and the process of remembering, particularly considering the epistemic split that arises not only between a child and an adult witness, but also between a child and his or her family members as they mediate the traumatic war experience? Finally, how do narrated memories forge a link between the remembered child and the remembering adult?