Elza-Bair Guchinova
Memories of the Forgotten: Anthropology of the Deportation Trauma of the
Kalmyks
With a Foreword by Caroline Humphrey
The ibidem Paperback Series
Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics & Society
http://www.ibidem-verlag.de/r1l.html
Edited by Dr Andreas Umland.
Published by ibidem, Stuttgart
Abstract in English for www.buchhandel.de
This study deals with the anthropology of the deportation trauma as
experienced by the Kalmyks (1943-1956) and how it affects national
identification. It shows the stigmatisation of Kalmyk identity in the years
of deportation and response of the ethnic group to deprivation. The ever
changing discourse of the Kalmyk issue, and political use of the trauma also
receive attention.
The study is innovative in Russian anthropology as it is the first
anthropological study of the Kalmyk deportation as well as of the
consequences of the trauma, and as it provides comparative insight by making
use of similar experience of deprivation of other ethnic groups. The
monograph contains a valuable corps of sources, especially oral, including
analyses of folk songs and oral narratives. The novelty of the study also
lies in that it applies gender methodology to the analysis of adaptation of
men and women to extreme conditions of life and considers gender-specific
differences in mechanisms of memory, recollection and oral narration. The
monograph closes a gap in the study of collective and individual strategies
of survival in conditions of deportation in Siberia and Central Asia. It
demonstrates the existence of stigmatised ethnicity in the USSR.
Among the conclusions the author arrives are that the Buddhist tradition
played an important role in the way historic trauma was perceived by the
Kalmyks, and that there was a factor of phenotypic difference leading
Kalmyks in extreme conditions to strive to “dissolve” in the social
environment using every chance to prove loyalty to the state. This left
little chance for specific Kalmyk cultural features to resurge outside the
home sphere. There is evidence that the trauma is something most Kalmyks
have overcome. Its still deliberate accentuation appears to be pragmatically
aimed into the future.
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The ibidem Paperback Series
Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics & Society
http://www.ibidem-verlag.de/r1l.html
Edited by Dr Andreas Umland.
Published by ibidem, Stuttgart
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Andreas Umland, [log in to unmask]
Christian Schön, [log in to unmask]
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