Conflicting Memories, Conflicting Stories: Masha Rol’nikaite’s Novel and the Soviet Culture of Holocaust Remembrance

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe article is concerned with three fictional works by the Soviet writer Masha Rol’nikaite: Tri vstrechi (Three Encounters, 1970), Privykni k svetu (Get Used to the Light, 1974), and Dolgoe molchanie (A Long Silence, 1981). It discusses how these texts fit within Soviet memorial culture of World War II. Rol’nikaite is used to illustrate the difficulties of commemorating the Holocaust in Soviet literature, and goes on to show how she confronted Soviet readers with topics such as the trauma of survival, the grey zone, and survivor’s guilt in post-war Jewish culture. It emphasizes the aesthetic strategies she used for integrating these topics into a discourse that was indifferent and sometimes hostile to them.