Memory, trauma and history in Russian prose of the 20th-21st centuries and Eastern European literature

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between memory, trauma, and history in Russian prose of the 20th-21st centuries and Eastern European literature. The relevance of the topic is determined by the sustained interest of contemporary humanities in cultural memory, traumatic experience, and literary ways of representing it. The aim of the study is to identify the main models of interpreting historical trauma in Russian and Eastern European prose and to determine similarities and differences in the depiction of individual and collective memory. The material includes works focused on wars, repressions, totalitarian experience, forced migration, and intergenerational transmission of traumatic memory. The methodological basis combines historical-literary, comparative-typological, narratological, and hermeneutic methods, as well as memory studies and trauma studies approaches. The study shows that fragmentation of narration, polyphony, documentary elements, and motifs of silence, rupture, and repetition become key strategies for representing trauma. Russian prose and Eastern European literature demonstrate both common ways of artistically reworking the traumatic past and differences related to national historical contexts and models of collective memory. It is concluded that the literary text functions not only as a form of fixing traumatic experience but also as a space for its interpretation, ethical reflection, and cultural transmission.