Victims of Soviet Terror in the Prose of Sergey Lebedev and Nikolay Kononov: The Prism of Postmemory

This article discusses the prose of Russian writers Sergey Lebedev and Nikolay V. Kononov, who address state terror violence. The aforementioned authors take into account experience post-Holocaust European culture remembrance, which is constituted by figure victim tends to interpret tragic events Soviet past using concepts theoretical frameworks memory trauma studies. In this article, Lebedev’s Kononov’s seen as an integral part liberal-oriented project, based on late-Soviet dissident culture, perestroika “culture repentance,” Western cultural models “working through past.” rediscovering topic Stalinist terror, Kononov reassert its ideological moral significance attempt place it current public agenda. Both proceed from need redress injustices against victims violence, whose suffering was long silenced in USSR. They work with documents, personal testimonies, family history tell stories missing historical record thus undermine dominance state-supported heroic narrative. Such approach brings closer tradition camp prose, but testimony, created survivors camps: modern novelists have no such rely their imagination, previous representations terror. consider perspective postmemory (M. Hirsch), prompts them postulate existence so-called “inherited trauma” explore social emotional consequences lives different generations. Thus, they observe “post-existence GULAG” paradoxical interactions between perpetrators prism “inherited” memory.