“ ‘Who knows, will I ever see you again,’ said the one-eyed duck.” Reflections on a Soviet Childhood in Leelo Tungal's Life Writing

The article focuses on the representation of childhood trauma in Seltsimees laps (Comrade Child 2008) and Samet ja saepuru (Velvet and Sawdust 2009), a childhood autobiography of a well-known Estonian children's author Leelo Tungal. These works offer a multilayered insight into sociopolitical and historical climate of the Soviet 1950s in Estonia from a young child's perspective who, as a result of the Stalinist repressions, has to spend the prime years of her childhood without her mother. Tungal creates an idyllic childhood scene that is interlaced with the traumatic story of a young child having to face a confusing world wrought with tension and insecurity. This article provides an analysis of Tungal's intricate textual strategies for tackling the traumatic impact of her childhood experience. This experience is mediated in her life writings through a portrayal of emblematic aspects of the era and the creation, in Lauren Berlant's terms, of an intimate public centered on a horizon of expectations about happy childhood.