«WAR AFTER THE WAR», OR VOLYN IN THE LITERARY VERSION OF MEMORY (BASED ON A. KOKOTYUKHA’S NOVELS «THE RED» AND «BLACK FOREST»)

Abstract

Andriy Kokotiucha’s novels, which are suggested to the discussion, represent an effort of new reading of the past life in the context of memory studies. We can see that the interest to the rethinking of history in the humanistic science has increased during the last time. It is not difficult to explain such fact, using the most contemporary cultural and social process as the main reason and background of it. First of all, the beginning of new century was the regular time of rethinking of the values, one of which of course is human’s vision of their past life. Secondly, we have to say about exigency of total reconstruction of soviet myths which still doing in Ukrainian social consciousness and cultural cannons. Thirdly, and it was the most important, Ukraine needed the true knowledge about its own history during the totalitarian occupation (here we mostly mean the soviet totalitarianism). That’s why such kind of topics, which included the problematic of historical experience of the nation became widespread in the contemporary literature, that was and still to be the most efficient in the process of finding of national memory.
National-Liberation struggle,e which was one of the important events in anti-colonial Ukrainian fighting for freedom, the author of the article analyses as the “event of memory”. The main locus – Volyn’ – is represented as a “space of memory”. Literary version of UPA’s activity on Volyn’s territory in the Kokotiucha’s novels is one of the artistic efforts to reconstruct soviet myths of the Second World War.