Narratives of Exile and Identity

Soviet Deportation Memoirs from the Baltic States
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-963-386-183-7
Verlag: Amsterdam University Press

Buch, Englisch, 230 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 498 g

In an innovative effort to situate Baltic testimonies to the Gulag in the broader international context of research on displacement and memory, scholars from the Baltic States, Western Europe, Canada, and the United States seek answers to the following questions: Do different groups of deportees experience deportation differently? How do the accounts of women, children and men differ in their representation? Do various ethnic groups remember the past differently: how do they use historical and cultural paradigms to structure their experience in unique ways? The scholars researched the archives, read testimonies, interviewed former deportees, and examined artifacts of memory produced since the late 1980s, applying crossdisciplinary approaches used at the study of the Holocaust testimonies; the testimonies of women have received a particular emphasis. The essays in the book also examine the issues of transmittance, commemoration and public uses of the memory of deportations in contemporary social, cultural and political contexts of Baltic societies, including the reflection of Gulag legacy in literature, the cinema and museums.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Balkelis, Tomas

Davoliute, Violeta

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Foreword
Katherine Jolluck
Introduction
Violeta Davoliute and Tomas Balkelis

Part I: Experience of Deportation
A Soviet Story: Mass Deportation, Isolation, Return
Alain Blum and Emilia Koustova
Ethnicity and Identity in the Memoirs of Lithuanian Children Deported to the Gulag
Tomas Balkelis
Homeless Forever: Home and Homelessness among Deportees from Estonia
Aigi Rahi-Tamm
Official and Individual Perceptions: Squaring the History of Soviet Deportations with the Circle of Testimony in Latvia
Aldis Purs

Part II: Commemoration and Transference of the Memory of Deportation
Gendering “History of Fighting and Suffering”: War and Deportation in the Narratives of Women Resistance Fighters in Lithuania
Dovile Budryte
“We Are All Deportees.” The Trauma of Displacement and the Consolidation of National Identity during the Popular Movement in Lithuania
Violeta Davoliute
Hegemony or Grassroots Movement? The Musealization of Soviet Deportations
Egle RindzeviSiute
Breaking the Silence? Contradiction and Consistency in Representing Victimhood in Baltic Museums of Occupations
Aro Velmet

Bibliography
Index
List of Contributors

Über Autor(innen)

Balkelis, Tomas
Tomas Balkelis is a senior fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History in Vilnius.

Davoliute, Violeta
Violeta Davoli.t. is Senior Researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History, Professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University, and Project Leader of Facing the Past: Public History for a Stronger Europe (Horizon Europe, 2022-2025). She is co-series editor of CEU Press’s new series Memory, Heritage and Public History in Central and Eastern Europe.