The article explores the peculiarity of literary interpretation of the Soviet past in the family trilogy by Maryna Hrymych. The author navigates through time, from post-war Kyiv to the late 1980s. Hrymych creates a unique three-dimensional reflection (the story of three generations) intertwining it with her own experiences and personal reckonings with the past. Attentive to details at the level of toponims (Kyiv, taiga, Crimea, Chernobyl) and everyday life, the author shifts the focus from the collective to the individual stuff stripping the past of monumentality and infusing it with intimacy. Her protagonists attempt to adapt to life in a totalitarian state (Klavka and Yura) or reclaim lost national identity (Lara). In the novel "Klavka," the author delves into the literary scene of 1940s post-war Kyiv focusing on the character of Klavka, the secretary of the Writers' Union of Ukraine. Klavka finds herself at the center of the events of 1947 including the Plenum where the names of Ukrainian writers Maxim Rylskyi and Yurii Yanovskyi were denounced. Hrymych intertwines the stories of artists (the Writers' Union, the ROLIT house, Irpin dachas) with the story of a young woman seeking her place in the world. The next novel, "Yura," is set in 1968, a pivotal time for the Soviet totalitarian state (Khrushchev Thaw gives way to the repressions of the 1970s). Klavka and the following generation of the youth are depicted as adherents of the Soviet world, conformists who adapt to and feel secure as well as fully-fledged in the reality around them. The trilogy concludes with the novel "Lara," unfolding in four locations: the taiga in the northern Tomsk region (1986), Kyiv and Crimea (1987) and Chernobyl (1988). Hrymych intertwines the stories of two nations – Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars – forced to share not only one territory but also a fate in the totalitarian Russian world. While the older generation (Klavka and her son Yura) may settle for culinary reconciliation (Uzbek plov and chebureks), the third generation (Lara) finds conformity in decisions and the substitution of concepts unacceptable. The main heroine not only reflects on history (both general and individual one) but also demands self-definition ("Not Lara – Diliara").