HOLODOMOR GENERATION: LITERARY RESPONSES TO COLLECTIVE TRAUMA

Анотація

This article examines Ukrainian works of literature of the Holodomor generation during the period when the Great Famine of 1932–1933 was still unmentionable in the Soviet press and largely unknown or forgotten elsewhere. Totalitarianism created the phenomenon of mass martyrdom with a drive to suppress the memory of the witness, to prevent the act of witnessing. While this half-century, from the mid-1930s to the mid-1980s, was characterized by social and cultural amnesia, there were Ukrainian writers who attempted to bring about some dissident bonds of mnemonic solidarity. They addressed those in the know – their own generation, who witnessed, struggled through and still remember the famine and collectivization of suffering, though escaped own recollection in fear and silence. Writing under censorship (including self-censorship) and under impact of trauma these writers posed painful and sensitive questions attempting to speak up for the dead in the form of generational autobiography. Keywords: Holodomor, generation, memory work, literary responses to trauma