Leaving the House of Memory: Post-Soviet Traces of Deportation Memory
Mosaic, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 149-164, 2012
17 Pages Posted: 8 Apr 2012 Last revised: 23 Sep 2012
Date Written: 2012
Abstract
Drawing on Pierre Nora’s contribution to memory studies, this essay examines the mediation of history by deportation memory. It focuses on the ethnographic and textual traces of the 1944 deportation of the Chechen and Ingush from their homelands to Central Asia. Georgian and Russian literary texts are placed in dialogue with ethnography to illuminate the recent historical experience of two Muslims peoples of the Caucasus: the Chechens, who were deported, and the Hunzib, who remained behind.
Keywords: memory, literature, trauma, genocide, Chechen, Daghestan, Ingush, Caucasus
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