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Humanities
- Literatures in Russian
- Humanities and the arts not elsewhere classified
The Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War (1917-1922) forced many Russians to
flee Russia. Like in other diasporas, the exilic condition sharpened the Russian
émigrés’attention for issues of identity and memory. One of the main things to
remember, one would assume, were the events that forced the émigrés to leave
their homeland –the Revolution and the Civil War. However, these events never
became major literary topics, despite the émigré community’ obvious interest in
the events –hence the many non-literary texts on the topic. This project aims to
study those scarce prose and poetic texts telling (parts of) the traumatic events of
1917-1922 which were published in Europe during the interwar period. The project
will examine how these literary texts present the key events, figures and places of
the Revolution and the Civil War, on the one hand, and the homeland, Russian
culture and Russian identity, on the other. Additionally, the project will scrutinize
what makes this specific type of war literature, “iterature of loss” different from or
similar to other war literatures (e.g., of WWI) and why this genre was so unpopular
among émigré writers and critics. The study will build on studies dealing with
émigré culture and literature, on the one hand, and with (mythologizing)
representations of historical events, figures and places in literary texts, on the
other. Additionally, it will draw on studies on diaspora, trauma and collective
memory.