ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the remediation of the repressed memory of Soviet Terror in contemporary prose about the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in the Donbas region in 2014. The theoretical framework of memory, trauma, and resilience studies is implemented to analyze Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s novel, Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love (2019) about the aftermath of war in Eastern Ukraine. The main character Haba Habinsky, an internally displaced person, discovers the horrible past of his grandfather Oleksiy, who witnessed the execution of his parents by the Bolsheviks. However, the line between reality and fiction appears to be too subtle. In terms of “multidirectional memory,” contemporary war enables the remembrance of Soviet Terror. The storytelling process is perceived as an attempt to bring fragmented pieces back together in order to achieve coherence. The supernatural motifs in the novel are analyzed as implications of “magical historicism.” Interrelating the stories of past and present violence, Volodymyr Rafeyenko paradoxically points out that individual and historical traumas can foster meaning-making, empathy, and resilience.
