No 1 (2023)

Russian history is overloaded with numerous tragedies and is certainly a traumatic one. The tragedies took place in various historical periods, were caused by very painful processes, and affected special groups of people. The case studies are represented by people forcefully moved to Germany during the Second World War, the deported Kalmyks, and the former inhabitants of the Valaam monastery. A North Caucasian memory of the Caucasian war as well as the Cossack memory are also discussed. The article introduces a special section of the journal’s issue on “Traumatic Memory” with contributions by E.-B.M. Guchinova, E.A. Zakharina and E.F. Krinko, Е.A. Melnikova, V.A. Tanaylova, V.А. Shnirelman.

The memory of the deportation of the Kalmyks as a traumatic event is not homogeneous. Women and men, expelled as teenagers or adults, or Kalmyk children born as “spetspereselency”, had different experiences of eviction and survival and remember these years in different ways. The oral stories I have collected show the memory of the community through personal narratives, revealing variety of personal strategies and resistance. In this publication, I would like to show, using the example of one interview, the features of social memory about the deportation of the Kalmyks and the specifics of the narrative about this “generation 1.5”. The main research task was to analyze the plots, images, assessments that form the narrative about the deportation of the Kalmyks from the “children of Siberia”. Other objectives of the publication: to find out how the language of trauma works in the narrative about the deportation of the Kalmyks, to show the possibilities of commentary as a scholarly genre. The article consists of three parts: an introduction, fragments of the text of a spontaneous interview and comments on them. The study used the method of discursive analysis and generational theory. The field material is presented in the form of a transcribed text of an interview recorded by the author in 2006. The discursive strategies of the narrative speak of its positive nature.

The article examines the memory of the Caucasian War in the space of social media (VKontakte, Telegram, etc.) and the possibilities of its use as a symbolic resource in the process of radicalisation of local Caucasian societies. The total number of subscribers to the communities, channels, and pages studied is around 300,000 people. The conceptual basis of the paper is the relational approach to the concept of radicalisation. In addition, I consider memory as one of the symbolic resources that determine the process of radicalisation of a particular community, and refer to researchers such as L.-E. Cederman, J. Goodwin, and M. Sageman. The article examines not just the memory of the Caucasian War represented in the field of social media, but the several national images of the Caucasian War that have emerged in this field.

The article analyzes the migration experiences of mothers who leave Central Asian countries to work in Russia. Based on interviews, the article examines situations where women are forced to leave their children in the care of relatives at home, as well as those where they are able to bring their children to Russia. I conclude that the main problem for living together with children is not only the low earnings of migrants and the inability to rent separate housing at the beginning of life in Russia. An important factor is the limited access to social institutions, such as kindergartens, or problems with enrolling a migrant child in school. When planning life in another country with a child, it is also important for a woman whether she will be able to take care of her child with her irregular work schedule and ensure a safe stay for her child in Russia.

“Ethnic migrants” can be understood as participants of a specific type of migration, which is characterized by institutional and material facilitation by the host country of the conditions of migration movement based solely on the ethnic origin of migrants. The ethnic origin declared by such migrants, as a rule, coincides with the ethnic origin of the titular nation located in the target country. The aim of this article is to depict the mode of implementation and methodological preconditions of one of the first attempts at ethnographic analysis of so-called ethnic migrants and to convey how the thematic and methodological directions of the aforementioned scientific approach led to theoretical innovations in German-speaking ethnology in the post-war period. As an example, studies of disappearing ethnographic phenomena conducted among Bessarabian migrants of German origin in the territory of the then Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia will be presented.

The article discusses the tourist commodification of archaeological sites in the Tobol Trans-Urals region (Tobol’skoe Zaural’e, Russia). The transformation of the region into a taskscape of professional archaeology associated with the urban centers of the Kurgan and Tyumen regions, as well as its tourist development, run by both the state and private business, involves the archaeological heritage of remote territories into the urban economy. This urban expansion is described here from the perspective of landscape negotiation, that is, the narratives and practices of rethinking the territories interpreted as a resource of the new type. This rethinking process involves all social groups claiming a place in the landscape, as well as the landscape itself, modified both in accordance with group ideas about the archaeological heritage (heritage regimes) and in accordance with the challenges generated by intergroup interaction. Based on fieldwork in the Kurgan region and in the south of the Tyumen region, we identify the main groups participating in negotiation on the promotion of the archaeological heritage, and also describe the practices of mutual modification of archaeological sites, which producing landscapes of negotiation.

The article examines the life of Cossacks-Doukhobors, who retreated from the Orthodox Church, in exile in the Arkhangelsk province in 1778-1802 and 1812-1818. I draw on a range of newly discovered archival materials to describe the experience of a group of exiles in the extreme conditions of the North of Russia, their attempt to create a religious community involving the local residents, and their tactics of behavior vis-a-vis state authorities of different levels. I explore the manifestations of the Doukhobor mentality as exhibited in the conditions of the exile and discuss the policies of the secular authorities towards the apostates.