Abstract
The text follows the post-cultural turn oral history paradigm, as expressed in concepts of Luisa Passerini, Alessandro Portelli, and others. It also makes use of the “dream stories” (Traumgeschichten) research by Reinhart Koselleck, to discover and interpret the cultural processes and forms related to the problematic historical subjectivity of an ex-Czechoslovak People’s Army conscript. The main historical source is the recorded oral-history narrative of a person, whose compulsory military service (1975–1977) led to a decidedly negative turn in his life. The narrator attempted to treat his shaken historical subjectivity through the creative construction of an elaborate uchronic story, merging his own military experience with motifs of imaginary service in units armed with nuclear weapons, with contemporary legends dealing with similar topics, and with older cultural strata, highlighting the phenomenon of “magical mountains” and apocalyptic military prophecies.
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