Ulitskaia’s Childhood 45–53: Documenting Nostalgic Images and Memories of Growing Up Soviet after the Great War in Literature

Abstract

This article explores aspects of nostalgia for Soviet childhoods in contemporary Russia. First it describes the complex phenomenon of documentary fiction today and shows how documentary texts create generational and collective memoirs of Soviet childhoods. It then goes on to discuss the position of Liudmila Ulitskaia within this discursive framework and argues that her collection Childhood 45-53 re-creates Soviet childhood as a multifaceted phenomenon. In a next step, the article examines how the photographs in this book contribute to the narrative of growing up Soviet in the 1940s and 1950s, examining the conjoining of childhood and adult spaces in the text. In sum, this article discusses the childhood memories with regard to phenomena of childhood nostalgia and post-socialist nostalgia, and shows that in contrast to common opinion this type of nostalgia is not predominantly regressive or escapist but also conveys elements of cultural critique.