A Russian Poetics of TraumaEncounters with Death and the Literary Reclamation of the Individual Laurie Vickroy (bio) Recent Russian literary works illustrate a keen understanding of lingering transgenerational traumas experienced both collectively and individually. Twentieth-century totalitarian regimes' terror tactics and attempts to destroy individual personality created cultures of trauma that left their traces across generations through practices of dominance and mistrust reiterated in private lives. These tactics also fomented lingering internalized and symbolized residues of death anxiety. Soviet Russia is a case in point. Even as totalism receded in the post-Soviet era, premature death has persisted, particularly among men, and it has brought long-term psychological and cognitive stases that have prevented social and relational dynamism necessary for healing and change. Two contemporary Russian women writers, Svetlana Alexievich and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, represent in their testimonial narratives gender-specific traumas and death anxieties lingering for two postwar generations. They create a particularly Russian poetics of trauma in response to human diminishment and denied recognition that symbolizes confrontations with death and narratively represents the nature and value of personal struggles to survive, and to break free of regenerative self-defeating mentalities. To analyze the nature of this poetics, I employ trauma and narrative- and recognition-based theories. Russian experience exemplifies the enormous psychological costs of authoritarian practices and nation-defining militarism that objectify [End Page 103] citizens and provide few outlets for healing. The Soviet people endured massive death and hardship during the twentieth century due to world wars, revolution, civil war, atrocities by German invaders, and Stalinist genocide, starvation, and political oppression.1 The "Great Patriotic War," Russia's costly defeat of the German army in World War II, alone resulted in 26 million dead, of whom two-thirds were civilians. The war in Afghanistan (1979–89) had enormous consequences on the Soviet economy, contributed to national collapse, and created a new generation of war dead and traumatized veterans. The long-term effects of all this to the nation included shortages of men and housing, militaristic and survivalist mentalities, and a symbolic focus on victory and ideology in lieu of more pressing human needs.2 A history of perpetual wars and a failure to address social and psychological problems has produced high percentages of male alcoholics and suicides,3 dysfunctional families, and impoverished elders. New social and economic crises after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and 2000s brought many new social problems. It could be fairly characterized as a culture of trauma.4 It is not my intention to indict Russia or totalist societies as the sole creators of trauma and identity crises. US culture overemphasizes individual pleasure and materialism, and capitalism can lead to soul-deadening objectification of workers and consumers too—but we can learn from what Russians endured when ideological priorities ignore human well-being. This study will examine literature's unique testimonial value in this context, that it provides otherwise unavailable, suppressed facts and perspectives of individualized historical traumas. My analysis will employ psychoanalyst Robert J. Lifton's conceptions of survivor themes or symptoms and the symbolization of death imagery that illustrate traumatized victims' ways of coping with and representing their exposure to death. These survivor themes are the death imprint, death guilt, psychic numbing, conflicts around nurturing, and struggles with meaning.5 These conceptions will help me analyze the trauma symptoms, symbolization, and survival strategies depicted in the literary texts. Also important to examination of long-term traumatic effects are psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin's and ethical philosopher Axel Honneth's explanations of how failed recognition, that is, nullifying or denigrating the unique qualities and experiences of individuals, is another repercussion of oppression—creating [End Page 104] sociopsychological disconnections precluding intersubjective recognition crucial to healthy human development and interactions. My methods endeavor to illuminate how Alexievich's and Petrushevskaya's writings undermine the valuing of destructive ideologies and policies that have wounded generations by several means: by raising ethical questions regarding effects of injustice on individual psyches; by illustrating emotionally impaired thought processes and defenses common to trauma that help survival but are relational liabilities; but also offering resilience in the face of death anxiety. Their narrative strategies, like focalization...