Soviet Secret Research Articles

The Film Ivan by Oleksandr Dovzhenko in the Light of the Soviet Intelligence Services

A set of archival documents of the Soviet secret services (agent messages, reports, summaries, etc.) related to Dovzhenko’s work on the film Ivan in 1931–1932 is analyzed in the article. Ivan is just the film that has the largest number of documents of this kind among the works. The agents have informed the secret services about the work on the script, its passage through the censorship authorities, and the filming period in their reports. The criticism of the author has started in Ukraine after the completion of the film. During this period the agents have recorded the artist’s difficult moral and psychological state, his negative statements against the Ukrainian party leadership and representatives of the literary and artistic intelligentsia, and the measures taken by the leaders of the Ukrainian and Soviet cinematographers to level the negative assessment of the film in the press. Relevant experts have been engaged to write reviews to obtain more complete information about the film. The director has been forced to move to Moscow because of the considerable pressure and negative attitude in Ukraine. He is introduced to Joseph Stalin there. The dictator has liked the movie. Following Stalin, official criticism also has changed its mind about Ivan, and the film was allowed to be shown. Dovzhenko was saved from seemingly certain death. The director has soon started work on his next film, called Aerograd. But the Soviet secret services did not let the artist out of their sight in Moscow. In general, the surveillance of O. Dovzhenko during his work on the film Ivan was part of a much wider range of operational activities of the special services to obtain compromising materials about the artist’s “anti-Soviet” activities and continued until his death.

Tuskulėnai Mass Burial Grounds Occurence: 1944 or 1945?

The purpose of this article is to establish the date when Soviet secret police agencies started to use the territory of Tuskulėnai Manor as mass burial grounds in Vilnius. The remains of people executed at the inner prison of the NKGB (MGB) of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic were buried there. At the same time, another question had to be answered: who choose this place, Tuskulėnai Manor, as a location suitable for mass graves. Historiographical sources frequently apply a simplified scheme, stating that the territory of Tuskulėnai Manor started to be used as mass burial grounds from the date when at the inner prison of the NKGB of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic death penalties started to be carried out, i.e., from the 28th September 1944. Still, when analysing more closely the data of archeologic excavations 1994-1996 in the territory of Tuskulėnai Manor, as well as reports of 2003 and NKGB (MGB) documents, some doubts occur whether there could be remains of 45 people buried that had been executed at secret police inner prison in September –December of the year 1944. Statistical analysis allows us to think than in autumn and winter of 1944, the territory of Tuskulėnai Manor had not been used for mass graves. NKGB (MGB) officers could bury the remains of the executed people employing other ways that had not been new for them: in single graves in the woods in Vilnius neighbourhood or in old cemeteries. Such methods were applied by the Soviet secret police agencies from the year 1950. Historiographical sources claim that the territory of Tuskulėnai Manor had been chosen for mass graves by Ivan Tkachenko, a lieutenant general, who had been appointed an authorized person by NKGB and NKVD of the USSR for Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. This fact is confirmed in the documents of the Soviet secret police institutions. Still, there is no exact date of choosing this location indicated in these documents. I. Tkachenko, to coordinate activity of the repressive structures as an authorized person to Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic was appointed on 14th December 1944, while execution of prisoners at the inner prison of NKGB of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic started on 28th September 1944. Such a chronological mismatch suggests that I. Tkachenko selected the territory of Tuskulėnai Manor for mass graves at the end of 1944 or at the beginning of 1945. New documents found in the archives confirm that Tuskulėnai Manor was handed over to the NKGB of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic in January of 1945. Therefore, it can be stated, that the remains of people executed in the inner prison of the NKGB of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, first had been buried in the territory of Tuskulėnai Manor in January of 1945, while before that date, the Soviet secret police agencies applied different methods.

Inner Prison of the NKGB (MGB, KGB) of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic 1944–1959

This study discloses the 1944-1959 period history of the inner prison of NKGB (Narodny Komissariat Gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, English translation – The People‘s Commissariat for State Security) of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, including MGB (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, English translation – the Ministry for State Security) and KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, English translation – Committee for State Security) as users of this prison. The significance of this prison in the common system of prisons under State Security Institutions is analysed as well as the cases of collaboration with the prisons operating under Ministry of Internal Affairs. Inner prison routine is analysed: living conditions of prisoners, regime, etc. Direct links between the work of the Interrogation Division of the NKGB (MGB, KGB) of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and inner prison are disclosed, as well as the procedure of execution at the inner prison. The inner prison was the most important prison of the Soviet secret police organization (Cheka) in Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic – political prisoners of special importance were imprisoned there and interrogated in the Interrogation Division located in the same building. In the first post-war years, the inner prison was overcrowded, and prison conditions were poor. They improved just at the end of the fifth decade, because the number of imprisoned persons decreased, and bunks were installed in the cells. In the first post-war decade, during interrogation sessions, employees at the Interrogation Division used to apply not only psychological violence against prisoners, but physical violence as well. In 1953, officially, physical torture measures were prohibited, still cases of physical torturing of prisoners happened even much later. In the period 1944–1969, death sentences were carried out in the inner prison. Over one quarter of the last century, 1 019 persons were executed. Although an official method of carrying out the capital punishment used to be squad firing, the investigation of remains of those executed and buried in the burial grounds in Tuskulėnai, show that people who had been sentenced to death penalty, sometimes, during first post-war years at least, were just tortured to death.

The Structure of the Anti-Religious Unit of the Soviet Secret Service (1953 – 1956)

The Structure of the Anti-Religious Unit of the Soviet Secret Service (1953 – 1956)

EMBELLISHED, MARGINALIZED, AND MISUNDERSTOOD: WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES IN UKRAINIAN WOMEN’S PROSE ABOUT THE STRUGGLE OF UIA

The paper examines the role of literature in creating a social framework for the memory of women combatants. The aim is to outline the problematic issues of forming a collective memory of women in the UIA ranks, based on the analysis of the literary representation of their experiences in prose. The objects of the study are the novels “Lemkivshchyna in Fire” by Mariia Ostromyra, “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” by Oksana Zabuzhko, and “Because It Hurts” by Yevheniia Senik. To achieve this goal, the paper considers aspects of women’s experiences in the UIA as presented by historians and then compares the real experiences with those depicted in the analyzed texts, identifying and interpreting problematic issues. Historians describe women’s experiences by combining: 1) the functions that women performed in the army (scouts, typists, couriers, nurses, suppliers, and, rarely, riflemen); 2) changes in the concept of femininity, including the rejection of motherhood, loss of children, separation from family or beloved men, and forced relationships; 3) the instrumentalization of fear initiated by the Soviet secret services. The analyzed women’s novels have different strategies for representing women’s experiences. “Lemkivshchyna in Fire” emphasizes the contribution of women to the struggle but avoids depicting a specifically female experience. “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” highlights the distinctive experience of war caused by biological (but not social) factors and doesn’t account for women’s participation in the struggle. “Because It Hurts” captures a wide range of women’s experiences but avoids interpreting and evaluating them. Thus, these novels make women’s experiences during armed conflicts visible but do not convey their fullness and complexity. At the same time, all three works aim to deny the Soviet narrative of the ‘betrayal’ of women from the underground movement: the portrayed characters are steadfastly committed to the goals of the struggle and refuse to cooperate with the enemy. Therefore, these novels are significant in the context of the decolonization process.

Yezhov’s infiltration model and the Russian Federation’s seizure of Crimea

The author analysed the scale of betrayal among the officers and officials of the Ukrainian state during the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014. The main research problem was an attempt to explain the anomaly in the activities of the special services in the form of recruiting 1,400 officers of the Ukrainian SBU to the Russian FSB. In an attempt to explain this phenomenon in the practice of secret services, the author used the theory of offensive intelligence and counter-intelligence created and developed in the USSR from the early 1920s, as well as the findings of cognitive psychology regarding the phenomenon of projection as the main mechanism for explaining the behavior of other people. Thanks to the synthesis of psychology and the analysis of the theoretical achievements of the Soviet secret services, the author put forward a hypothesis about the mass recruitment of the SBU officers in the Crimea long before the annexation. According to the author, the main mechanisms of mass recruitment of agents in order to control the opponent’s organisation were broadly understood corruption and cronyism characteristic to the post-Soviet area.

Model infiltracji Jeżowa a zajęcie Krymu przez Federację Rosyjską

The author analysed the scale of betrayal among the officers and officials of the Ukrainian state during the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014. The main research problem was an attempt to explain the anomaly in the activities of the special services in the form of recruiting 1,400 officers of the Ukrainian SBU to the Russian FSB. In an attempt to explain this phenomenon in the practice of secret services, the author used the theory of offensive intelligence and counter-intelligence created and developed in the USSR from the early 1920s, as well as the findings of cognitive psychology regarding the phenomenon of projection as the main mechanism for explaining the behavior of other people. Thanks to the synthesis of psychology and the analysis of the theoretical achievements of the Soviet secret services, the author put forward a hypothesis about the mass recruitment of the SBU officers in the Crimea long before the annexation. According to the author, the main mechanisms of mass recruitment of agents in order to control the opponent’s organisation were broadly understood corruption and cronyism characteristic to the post-Soviet area.

Oleksandr Dovzhenko and the Soviet Secret Police


 
 
 The article reviews the specifics of the surveillance process of the Ukrainian film director Oleksandr Dovzhenko organized by the Soviet secret police. The main focus is on agents’ reports about the director’s work on the films Earth, Ivan, Shchors, and the screenplay for Ukraine in Flames. The article reveals that Dovzhenko was under permanent secret police surveillance, starting from the end of the 1920s until the end of his life in 1956. This surveillance was well organized; it was large-scale and complex in its nature and covered not only his professional but his private life as well. The purpose of the surveillance was to collect and analyze compromising, i.e., anti-Soviet information against the film director and, if necessary, to open a criminal case against him, and make an arrest.
 
 

Anton Makarenko and the Pitești Phenomenon

Can any connection be justly postulated between re-education according to the views of Anton Makarenko (1888–1939), a Soviet and Ukrainian educational theorist, and the “re-education” of political detainees in the Pitești prison in Romania (1949–1952)? How did Makarenko come to be regarded as the “father of Pitești re-education”, as well as a “criminal Bolshevik educator”? His major work, the famous Pedagogical Poem, was published in 1933 in the uSSR, and the first translations of Anton Makarenko’s writings into Romanian were published in 1949 and 1950, while “re-education” was in full swing, and we do not doubt either the recollections of the survivors, or the fact that Makarenko’s work was recommended for reading in several prisons. The present study compares Makarenko’s work, more precisely the particulars of “re-education” according to him, with the main elements of the truly criminal experiment at Pitești. To ascertain the truth, we follow the biography of the educator, his complex relationship with the Soviet secret services, and the main aspects of the re-education process apud Makarenko. Although there are certain common elements between the two types of “re-education”, the Soviet educator does not bear the blame for the atrocities of Pitești prison.

Operational Groups of the NKGB and a Reconstruction of the Soviet Security Apparatus in Axis Occupied Ukraine, 1943–44

This article elucidates the reconstruction of the Soviet security apparatus during World War II in what today is western Ukraine. In late 1943 to early 1944, six operational groups of the People’s Commissariat of State Security of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic headed to the Axis occupied territories with orders to re-establish contacts with Soviet secret agents and create a support infrastructure for the deployment of other operational groups, special purposes units, and individual agents, as well as to infiltrate organizations of Polish and Ukrainian nationalists. The essay examines Soviet special operations within the context of state efforts to project power into the Axis occupied territories. It sheds light on the objectives of Soviet security agencies and on the activities of individual units in the field.

To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks

As he did in The Black Russian, his 2013 biography of Frederick Bruce Thomas, the son of formerly enslaved Mississippians who became a millionaire nightclub owner in pre-1917 Moscow, Alexandrov combines brilliant research and brisk storytelling to tell the story of Boris Savinkov (1879–1925), a notorious Russian terrorist of the first quarter of the twentieth century. While today only specialists in modern Russian history and literature are likely to recognize Savinkov's name, in his day he was an international celebrity, feted in the pages of leading European and American newspapers for a lifetime of resistance to both tsarist and Bolshevik tyranny. Although praise for a man who organized the assassination of government ministers and members of the Romanov family may seem perverse to contemporary American readers, especially those who have come of age since 9/11, being reminded that “the past is a foreign country” is always a useful exercise.In fast moving and lively prose, Alexandrov tells the fascinating story of Savinkov's long and complicated journey from a privileged, cultured, and politically progressive upper-middle-class Russian family to the most-wanted list of the Okhrana and the Cheka, the tsarist and Soviet secret police, up to his mysterious death. Because Savinkov was not only a revolutionary but a writer who told and retold his life story in novels and memoirs, his biographer must be equal parts historian, literary critic, and psychologist. It is difficult to imagine a better guide to the multiple complexities of Savinkov's life, times, and works than Alexandrov, B. E. Bensinger Professor Emeritus of Slavic Literatures at Yale. Combining deep historical knowledge, fresh critical insights, and penetrating psychological observations, Alexandrov shows Savinkov's dramatic life story taking shape against the backdrop of a cataclysmic quarter-century of Russian history that included multiple revolutions and wars.Certainly, the most difficult aspect of writing the biography of a terrorist like Savinkov is to imagine how sophisticated people might reasonably conclude that the targeted assassination of political figures could be both politically necessary and ethically acceptable. And while it is inevitable that some will see any attempt to understand political violence in a particular time and place as justifying terrorism always and anywhere, honest biographers have no choice but to try to explain why their subjects made the choices they did. In this context, Alexandrov's judicious treatment of Savinkov's argument that, given the political realities of tsarist Russia, violence could be a moral response to evil is especially valuable. The paradox of Savinkov and the other “moral terrorists” discussed in To Break Russia's Chains is that they justified targeted violence against prominent politicians and influential bureaucrats without rejecting the fifth commandment. According to their reasoning, assassination could be a moral act if the victim was responsible for brutal and unjust policies and if the perpetrator accepted punishment for what was, without question, a sin. Given the reality of tsarist arbitrary rule, the absence of any legal avenues to protest unjust policies, and the terrorists’ belief that inaction meant complicity in a criminal regime, their conclusion that violence and inevitable punishment was the only moral choice is neither incomprehensible nor illogical. Whatever one thinks of Savinkov's personality and methods, and despite his ultimate failure to achieve his goal, there is something undeniably heroic in his devoting his entire adult life to the struggle against the forces of political tyranny in his homeland. Today, when fantasies of redemptive violence have become a staple of the daily news cycle, Savinkov's story is particularly relevant.

Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors: The Duvakin Interviews, 1967–1974 By Slav N.Gratchev, MargaritaMarinova, IrinaEvdokimova. Translated by Slav N. Gratchev and Margarita Marinova. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021, xii + 234 pp. $80.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4874‐2725‐9

Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors: The Duvakin Interviews, 1967–1974 By Slav N.Gratchev, MargaritaMarinova, IrinaEvdokimova. Translated by Slav N. Gratchev and Margarita Marinova. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021, xii + 234 pp. $80.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4874‐2725‐9

The Chinese Population of Transbaikalia under the Conditions of the Stalinist System in the 1930s

The article is devoted to the history of the Chinese population in the East Siberian border region with China, Transbaikal, in the 1930s. The particular position of this border region determined the specific formation of this Chinese population. The transfer of the Transbaikal region from the Far Eastern region back to the administrative unit of Siberia in the 1930s strengthened the Siberian regional features of the development of the Chinese community, and meant that the Far Eastern nationality policy was not applied to this community. The development of this community was influenced by the fact that in the 1930s, the state border with Manchuria was completely closed. The Manchukuo state, along with the Republic of China, had its official representatives in Chita. In the early 1930s the size of the Chinese population in Transbaikal reached a maximum, and in the Chita region its share in relation to the total population was equal to that in the Far Eastern regions. In the 1930s the working and living conditions of the majority of Chinese workers were difficult: they faced discrimination and were poorly adapted to the socio-political realities of Stalin's system. Initially the Bolsheviks carried out an active policy towards the Chinese that was aimed at their ideological and political re-education and the improving of their living and working conditions. In the second half of the 1930s, however, this policy changed, and political education and the development of a Soviet Chinese culture were no longer prominent. The Chinese began to be perceived as a national community disloyal to the Soviet regime, as real or potential agents of Japan and Kuomintang China. In 1936 began the exposure of Chinese spies, and in 1937-1939 the Soviet Chinese were fully subjected to the tyranny of the Soviet secret services and punitive agencies, and suffered greatly from political repression. By the late 1930s the number of Chinese in Transbaikal had decreased by almost a third; however, the situation was different from that in the border regions of the Far East in so far as there was no mass eviction of Chinese from the Transbaikal area.

Заперечення Голодомору: методи та наративи

Hiding of the mass extermination, denying the very fact of extermination are essential components of the crime of genocide. The article analyzes the stages of denial of the Holodomor, highlights the models of this denial, as well as the evolution of the main narratives that opponents of the genocidal qualification of the Holodomor are trying to spread. The Soviet Union consistently denied the Holodomor 1932–1933 and actively opposed the dissemination of information about it. The communist regime’s denial of reality was so widespread and pervasive, that even in 1930th in official documents of state and party authorities marked “for official use” and in some cases even “top secret”, the word “famine” was hardly used. Soviet authorities called the catastrophic famine “food shortages” caused by crop failures. Simultaneously with the blocking of information about the Holodomor, the communist regime resorted to a counter-propaganda operation, which consisted in refuting those reports of starvation and deaths, which, despite all the efforts of the Soviet secret services, infiltrated the West. In the USSR communist authorities used tactics that could be described as “aggressive erasure” to deny the Holodomor. This campaign was a combination of destruction of documentary evidence of a crime with the active intimidation of witnesses, who were unequivocally made aware that they must forget everything they saw. Authorities used repression against those who tried to preserve the memory about the Holodomor. In the late 1980s the soviet communists had to admit that the famine of 1932–1933 did occur in Ukraine, but as an official explanation for those events was proposed a version that absolved the Kremlin of responsibility for the multimillion casualties of the Holodomor. Soviet propaganda claimed that the causes of the famine were: objective difficulties in the period of agricultural transformation, organizational weakness of the newly established collective farms, lack of experienced personnel and agricultural machinery, sabotage by the kulaks etc. The main negative role was allegedly played by the disorganization of agricultural production, which, in turn, was caused by the abandonment of “the Lenin plan of cooperation” of farmers, and the accelerated pace of collectivization. At the same time, the propaganda called the accelerated pace of collectivization a forced step by the Soviet government, which felt threatened by the external invasion of the imperialist states and therefore had to prepare country for war at a rapid pace. At the same time, soviet propaganda continued to deny fact that the famine was anti-Ukrainian. The communist regime claimed that the famine affected the entire territory of the USSR, ad had no local specifics in Ukraine and others regions of the country with densely Ukrainian population (especially the Kuban). Calling the famine a “common tragedy of the entire Soviet Union” authorities insisted that its intensity throughout the USSR seemed to be the same everywhere. Denial of the Holodomor did not stop after the collapse of the USSR. At the beginning of the XXI century struggle against the recognition of the Holodomor as an act of genocide has become one of the priorities of the policy of memory in the Russian Federation. The main narratives of denying the Holodomor today are the allegations that the famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine was not intentional, was not related to the anti-Ukrainian policy of the Bolsheviks, did not have fatal demographic and social consequences. A characteristic feature of the denial of the Holodomor in Russia in the second half of the 2000s was its twofold nature: along with the moderate denial of an academic nature there was an aggressive propaganda narrative of polemical and journalistic denial, the main purpose of which was anti-Ukrainian mobilization of Russian society.

Soviet Heritage(scape) in Sillamäe: Documenting the Potential in an Emerging Tourism Destination

In 2014, the National Heritage Board of Estonia began the procedure for declaring the town centre of the former Soviet secret uranium town of Sillamäe in Northeast Estonia a heritage conservation area. The process is expected to be finalised in 2023, making it the first area where Soviet architecture would be under protection in Estonia. By approaching the town theoretically and methodologically as a heritagescape where components of tangible landscape are used to create a distinct place of the past, looking at how the town’s official development policy relates to the existing representations of the past in the town’s memory institutions, and interviewing local stakeholders, this article provides a broader and more nuanced understanding of Sillamäe and its tourism potential. Sillamäe as heritagescape offers tourists the chance to experience a curated version of the Soviet era and contemplate on the legacy of nuclear industry, while remaining in the safety of a resort town in the periphery of the European Union.

Storming in agent recruitment: Evidence from declassified Soviet secret service files

Using recently declassified data from 1961-1990, we find that the recruitment of secret service (KGB) agents in Latvia, then part of the Soviet Union, evolved in cycles with mid-year and year-end surges. These persistent activity surges, also known as storming, occurred at the end of required reporting periods and resemble the behavior in the rest of the planned Soviet economy. Our findings demonstrate that storming characterized more than just the production of goods - it was also present in one of the most important state security agencies. We also find that storming in recruitment was more likely in strategically less important areas and among the less educated individuals.

Between Moscow, Warsaw and the Holy See: The Case of Father Andrzej Fedukowicz Amidst the Early Soviet Anti-Catholic Campaign

This article offers a micro-history of Soviet anti-religious actions during the mid-1920s through a reconstruction of the investigation of Father Andrzej Fedukowicz and his forced collaboration with the Soviet secret services. In November 1924, Fedukowicz was forced to sign a letter to Pope Pius XI and a year later committed suicide to avoid the humiliation caused by his actions. This article reveals how elaborate the Soviet secret services’ techniques for dealing with uncontrolled religious allegiances had become during the seemingly religiously tolerant NEP era which replaced the overly repressive measures of the Civil War period. It aims to challenge the conventional impression of powerful and effective Soviet secret services. Detailed analysis of the process of fabrication used by the secret services shows how often the rudimentary methods of the secret police could easily threaten the success of the entire operation. In this regard, the limited results the secret services had achieved by relying on individual assets led to toughening of mass repression and a more aggressive anti-religious campaign after 1929.

Радянські спецслужби vs японської дипломатії (на матеріалах японського консульства в Одесі в міжвоєнний період)

The article is devoted to the activities of the Japanese consulate in Odesa during 1926–1937, which since its opening has been under the “watchful eye” of the Soviet secret services. Throughout the period of the consulate’s existence in the city, it was closely monitored externally and internally, both for its work and for the contacts of consular staff in the city and abroad. The Odesa branch of the DPU established a network of internal agencies that worked directly at the consulate. The consulate was “served” by 11 secret staff, who provided daily relevant information on the activities of the consulate and its staff. The main reasons for such actions were the absence of Japanese citizens in Odesa and the lack of trade and economic relations through the port of Odesa. The Soviet secret services concluded that the opening of the consulate was aimed exclusively at espionage in the USSR. This inference was reinforced by the active study by Japanese employees of the political, economic, cultural, and military situation not only in the consular district but also in other cities of the USSR and the USSR in general, especially the Caucasus. This was facilitated by the constant travels of the Japanese consul in the cities of the USSR. Each employee of the Japanese consulate in Odesa was given a case-form, where the defendant received a nickname, intelligence materials about his activities, personal characteristics and a list of contacts with local citizens were collected, which then fell under the “development” of DPU special agents. The article reveals the process of recruiting “important” representatives of the consulate by Soviet special services. As a result, the translator S. Feldman, the courier-security guard of the Japanese consulate in Odesa M. Tsibulko, the technical secretary Livshits, the typist I. Zagorskaya and others were taken into “agency development”. Recruiters from the DPU’s counterintelligence department took a personal approach to each of them.

Accession of Southern Bessarabia to the Ukrainian SSR in the Documents of the Soviet Secret Services

Accession of Southern Bessarabia to the Ukrainian SSR in the Documents of the Soviet Secret Services

Amphibious Magical Realism? The Shape of Water as Cinematic Trauma Narrative

Amphibious Magical Realism? <i>The Shape of Water</i> as Cinematic Trauma Narrative