Totalitarianism and Ukrainian Literature: Traumatic Memory and Revelation of the Past

Abstract

The article highlights the topic of totalitarianism in Ukrainian literature, in particular, shows the traumatic memory and exposure of the past, which is interpreted differently by writers of different generations. Particular attention is paid to the causes of totalitarianism in Europe after the World War I and its impact on modern post-totalitarian cultures. Such cultures include primarily Ukrainian. Numerous social protests, revolutions, the war in Donbass are not so much the consequences of geopolitical conflicts as permanent attempts to return to the Ukrainian identity, to express national traumas, to identify cultural and human losses, which did not happen immediately after the collapse of the USSR. The problem of totalitarianism is also key in determining the specifics of its modern literary interpretation, because most works of art, which to varying degrees appeal to the reconstruction of the past, for the first time clearly verbalize those relevant topics that are still inconvenient and provoke misunderstandings among Ukrainians themselves. Today Ukrainian literature demonstrates a double stance against the totalitarian past. First, we read in it a steady protest against the socialist-realist heritage, embodied in the long search for inherent forms of artistic self-expression; secondly, modern Ukrainian literature resorted to a total revision of the consequences of cultural stagnation provoked by the experience of many years of totalitarian terror. The article reveals the connections between this regime and the art of speech, in particular the birth of the pseudo-artistic literary trend of the time - social realism. The author analyzes the peculiarities of the use of literature as a tool of propaganda. In addition, one of the main problems of modern research is the modern ways of artistic rethinking and the process of elaboration of totalitarian experience. In particular, it is about the cultural trauma of oppressed peoples in the Soviet period, which is related to human rights and freedoms, concentration camps, desecration of the myth of victory in World War II, denial of God, etc., which affects the behavior of modern societies and often provokes unpredictable in European politics.