This study compares German memory of life in the German Democratic Republic with Russian memory of life in the Soviet Union, as represented and created within fictional and autobiographical narratives of childhood, published since the collapse of each regime. The chosen texts are, to varying degrees, fictionalized and/or autobiographical. A comparison between German and Russian narratives is particularly interesting because the socialist past is remembered very differently in each country’s public discourse and culture. An examination of narratives about childhood allows for a complex relationship between the post-socialist present and the socialist past to emerge. I study the texts and their reception, in conjunction with an analysis of the dominant ways of remembering the socialist past circulating within German and Russian society and culture. This allows the analysis to go beyond a straightforward comparison between the representations of the socialist past in the two groups of texts, to also explore how those representations are interpreted and received. It also demonstrates how the surrounding memory cultures appear to be producing quite different approaches to representing memories of broadly similar socialist childhood experiences. Chapter 1 explores the role of literary texts in revealing and shaping both individual and collective memory with a review of relevant research in the field of memory studies. Chapter 2 draws on existing scholarship on post-socialist memory in German and Russian society and culture in order to identify dominant trends in the way the socialist past has been remembered and represented in the two countries since 1990/1. The analysis in Chapters 3 and 4 reveals a more detailed picture of the complexities and ambiguities inherent in looking back at childhood under socialist rule through the example of the chosen texts, and in the ways they are received by critics and by readers (in reviews posted online). I demonstrate that, in line with the surrounding memory cultures, questions of how the socialist past should be remembered are a more central concern in the German texts and their reception than in the Russian texts and reception. I show, however, that the nature of the Soviet past is often portrayed indirectly in the Russian texts and I explore how critics and readers respond to these portrayals.

La 1e Guerre mondiale fut le catalyseur de mutations sociales et techniques, qui suscitent de nouveaux besoins d’administration, matérialisés par l’émergence d’un nouveau groupe social: celui des experts. Dans les États modernes allemands et polonais, un groupe particulier d’experts se détache, qui se spécialisent dans une thématique aux profondes racines culturelles : l’Est européen.Les changements de régime et de territoire entre 1918 et 1972 déstabilisent le cadre de référence des sociétés allemandes et polonaises, particulièrement entre 1939 et 1945. Cependant, l’historiographie des sciences de l’Est allemandes (Ostforschung) souligne les continuités personnelles, institutionnelles et conceptuelles fortes dans l’expertise de l’Est du « IIIe Reich » à l’Allemagne de l’Ouest. En Allemagne de l’Est et en Pologne, au contraire, le changement de régime après 1945 rend impossible toute continuité, mais la question de l’évolution de la pensée sur l’Est dans les cercles de l’expertise, qui eux se maintiennent, reste posée.En dépassant l’analyse de l’expertise en termes de subordination aux différents régimes politiques auxquels elle s’adresse, nous mettons en valeur les spécificités de l’expertise de l’Est. Elle se caractérise par un double ancrage dans l’imaginaire collectif et dans les pratiques scientifiques contemporaines, pour exprimer un but politique. Cet ancrage explique l’inertie dans les conceptions allemandes et polonaises de l’Est. L’approche comparatiste souligne tant la diversité des conceptions de l’Est, que les fonctions sociales comparables de l’Est, notamment celle d’ennemi et d’espace de projection nationale, passée et à venir / The First World War was the catalyst for social and technical changes, which gave rise to new administrative needs, materialized by the emergence of a new social group: that of the experts. In modern German and Polish states, a particular group of experts stands out, specializing in a theme with deep cultural roots: eastern Europe.The changes of regime and territory between 1918 and 1972 destabilize the frame of reference of the German and Polish societies, particularly between 1939 and 1945. However, the historiography of Eastern German sciences (Ostforschung) emphasizes the personal, institutional and conceptual continuity in the expertise of the East from the "Third Reich" to West Germany. In East Germany and Poland, on the contrary, the change of regime after 1945 renders any continuity impossible, but the question of the evolution of the thought on the East in the circles of the expertise, which maintained, remains asked.By going beyond the analysis of expertise in terms of subordination to the various political regimes to which it is addressed, we highlight the specificities of Eastern expertise. It is characterized by a double anchoring in the collective imagination and in contemporary scientific practices, to express a political goal. This anchorage explains the inertia in the German and Polish conceptions of the East. The comparatist approach emphasizes both the diversity of Eastern conceptions and the comparable social functions of the East, particularly that of the enemy and the space of national projection, past and future