The memory of the deportation of kalmyks of “generation 1.5”: narrative construction

Abstract

The memory of the deportation of the Kalmyks as a traumatic event is not homogeneous. Women and men, expelled as teenagers or adults, or Kalmyk children born as “spetspereselency”, had different experiences of eviction and survival and remember these years in different ways. The oral stories I have collected show the memory of the community through personal narratives, revealing variety of personal strategies and resistance. In this publication, I would like to show, using the example of one interview, the features of social memory about the deportation of the Kalmyks and the specifics of the narrative about this “generation 1.5”. The main research task was to analyze the plots, images, assessments that form the narrative about the deportation of the Kalmyks from the “children of Siberia”. Other objectives of the publication: to find out how the language of trauma works in the narrative about the deportation of the Kalmyks, to show the possibilities of commentary as a scholarly genre. The article consists of three parts: an introduction, fragments of the text of a spontaneous interview and comments on them. The study used the method of discursive analysis and generational theory. The field material is presented in the form of a transcribed text of an interview recorded by the author in 2006. The discursive strategies of the narrative speak of its positive nature.