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• Intimacy or exposure: Ukrainian artists and the camp wound in relations with Russia

  Kinga Anna Gajda

  Michał Kuryłowicz

  Views:

  308

  The aim of the paper is to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of cultural testimonies of the unique wound left by the camps in Ukrainian–Russian relations. Gulag literature, explored for decades in philology, is perceived mainly through the prism of the heritage of totalitarian systems and creative attitudes in the face of suffering, as extreme physical and mental experience. The aim of the paper is to analyze the works of Ukrainian artists of recent decades created as a result of imprisonment. Their literary and film creations make up the image of a wound inflicted in the name of achieving imperial goals while imprisoned in a camp. The juxtaposition of their diverse artistic reactions to the suffering of testimonies help to highlight the power with which the unsettled, forgotten, silenced, and now and unexpectedly updated wound of the camp past is reflected in today's attitudes of Ukrainians towards Russians.

• Coping with Trauma: Minority Art Practices in the Context of the New Sensuality of Metamodernism

  7 p.

  Andrei Chukurov

  Views:

  343

  The information age has provided new opportunities for the institutionalization and functioning of various subcultural movements including those uniting people by offering them an alternative mental state. The proposed material is analyzed as an example of these associations. The article provides a brief analysis of the historical dynamics of the study of minority art practices and of their role and significance at present. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of Art Brut. Today minority art practices find their new meaning also in the context of the new sensuality of metamodernism, which is based on co-creation. We believe that the
  discourse of outsider art fosters a tolerant consciousness, raising issues of stigma, norm, deviation and internal liberation.

• Camp prose: On the semantics and conceptual framework of the term

  Francesco Varlaro

  Aleksej Kozlov

  Views:

  158

  The paper analyzes camp prose as a unique literary phenomenon in 20th century Russian literature, shaped under the extreme conditions of Stalinists labor camps and repressions. The study looks into the effects of imprisonment on the linguistic personalities of both professional writers, such as V. Shalamov and A. Solzhenitsyn, and non-writers like E. Ginzburg and E. Kersnovskaya. The writings of these authors provide key points for analyzing the psychological, social, and individual transformations the authors experienced during incarceration. The use of metaphorical language in shaping their works is a major area of study. The authors succeed in delineating the unspeakable horrors of camp life by using metaphors as both stylistic elements and tools for reinterpretation. The study analyzes how these metaphors reflect the broader themes of dehumanization, endurance, and moral resilience. In addition, the analysis illustrates that camp prose goes beyond documentary testimony, becoming a means of linguistic resistance and creative survival. By exploring the lexical choices and narrative structures of these texts, the present study discusses methods in which authors build a new literary language and process in and of expressing trauma and memory. In doing this, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the interaction between personal experience, linguistic expression, and historical representation in Russian literature.

• The transformation of the camp theme in Sergei Lebedev’s novel “Oblivion”

  Zsuzsanna Kalafatics

  Views:

  128

  Sergei Lebedev’s novel Oblivion offers an original reworking of the tradition of Russian camp prose. Its central themes are the legacy of Stalinist terror, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and the necessity of a conscious resistance to their consequences. This paper explores how Lebedev, drawing on the concept of post-memory, intertwines personal family history with questions of collective memory, highlighting the destructive effects of silencing the past and the absence of accountability for historical crimes. At the core of this interpretation is an analysis of the narrator’s journey through space, time, and self-discovery, structured around the mythological motif of descent (katabasis). The funeral ritual plays a key role in the novel’s initiation structure: the symbolic burial and mourning of victims who vanished without a trace becomes an act of memory restoration, offering the possibility of reconciliation and a new beginning. Lebedev critically engages with contemporary Russian memory politics, stressing the moral imperative to uncover and give voice to the traumatic past.