Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on September 15, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.

Unlike the Russian Civil War or Second World War, the Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989) never acquired a stable, dominant narrative in Soviet or Russian culture. Even as the war was in progress, Soviet media revised its evaluation of key events and players to reflect the changing political tides through the 1980s. After the war ended, state leaders were distracted by the political turbulence of the 1990s, and the citizens—largely unaffected by the war on a personal level—were not particularly interested in assessing either the war’s successes or failures. This lack of definition left the descriptions and representations of the Soviet-Afghan War open to the influence of evolving political realities and agendas. This study examines the literary techniques and strategies that writers Svetlana Alexievich and Alexander Prokhanov have employed in articulating different narratives that responded to the shifting demands of the moment. With respect to the several revisions that Alexievich made to her documentary novel Zinky Boys from its initial publication in 1990 through its final version in 2007, I argue that the author’s position as anti-authoritarian and anti-war becomes increasingly rigid. Like many liberal-minded members of the intelligentsia after the fall of the Soviet Union, Alexievich had early hopes for a transition from totalitarianism to democracy in her native Belarus which would be disappointed. The poetics of her documentary prose, I argue, challenge the traditional identities and relationships of author, character, and reader by destabilizing the boundaries and allowing crossovers between roles. By engaging the reader in constructing the deeper meaning of the novel, Alexievich projects her reader into the full and active participation of a citizen building a new post-Soviet state. Prokhanov, situated on the opposite side of the political divide, also made substantial revisions to his novels about the Soviet-Afghan War. Prokhanov’s 1994 novel The Palace is remarkable for its change in message and tone from the narratives of his Soviet-era writing on Afghanistan: it openly questions the Soviet Politburo’s decision to invade, and includes surreal dreamlike sequences that, I argue, reflect his contemporaneous collaboration with Alexander Dugin, founding proponent of neo-Eurasianism. In Dream about Kabul—his 2001 “remake” of his own 1982 novel Tree in the Center of Kabul—Prokhanov’s alter-ego protagonist becomes an even more passive participant in the progression of the Soviet-Afghan War, compared to The Palace, as well as a powerless pawn in the political conspiracies involving the Russian Federation, Israel, and the United States. His reader is more like the obedient subject of a tsar than the politically engaged citizen of a democracy, as envisioned by Alexievich. In my study of the substantial revisions that Alexievich and Prokhanov made to their Soviet-Afghan War stories from the 1980s into the twenty-first century, I demonstrate how the literary representations of a military conflict in recent Soviet history reflect the increasing polarization of political and social realities facing authors and readers in the post-Soviet states of Russia and Belarus. The aesthetic decisions that Alexievich and Prokhanov made in revising their Soviet-Afghan War stories carry political and ethical implications. Thus, the relationship between implied author and implied reader in a literary text becomes a political statement about the relationship between the state and the citizen.

Syftet med denna studie är att genom en narratologisk analys av tre kapitel i Svetlana Aleksijevitjs dokumentärroman Tiden second hand: Slutet för den röda människan undersöka berättartekniken och det historiemedvetande som finns i kapitlen. Med utgångspunkt i detta diskuteras sedan hur romanen kan användas i gymnasieskolan för att stärka elevernas litterära kompetens och lärande i och genom skönlitteratur. Studien visar att berättartekniken, bland annat genom ett interpolerat berättande och anakronier, fyller en tydlig funktion i romanen bland annat sett till hur dessa berättartekniska delar förstärker innehållsliga aspekter i texten. Detta samspel mellan berättarteknik och innehåll gör att romanen torde lämpa sig väl för att i svenskundervisningen lära i skönlitteratur, på så vis att berättarteknikens funktion går att tydliggöra. Vad gäller historiemedvetandet skiljer sig detta åt mellan de olika berättarna, vittnena, i kapitlen. Två vittnen uttrycker hur dåtiden var bättre än vad nutiden är, medan det tredje vittnet upplever en rädsla för hur historien är på väg att upprepa sig. Att romanen presenterar en mångfald av människor och deras historiemedvetanden har i studien diskuterats som fördelaktigt med hänsyn till att det i ett didaktiskt sammanhang går att tydliggöra hur människors förhållande till historien är något subjektivt. Potentiellt kan därför eleverna utifrån romanen utveckla sitt eget historiemedvetande, och på så vis lära genom skönlitteratur. Detta lärande i och genom skönlitteratur som det finns möjlighet att realisera i Tiden second hand torde även möjliggöra en litteraturundervisning som kan skapa en bred litterär kompetens hos eleverna.

This dissertation delves into the portrayal of Sabbatai Zevi, the 17th-century Jewish messiah who converted to Islam, within 20th-century literary works. Specifically, it scrutinizes how this historical figure is woven into literature and delves into the significance of his portrayal in works written in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. Utilizing Fred Davis’s insights on nostalgia’s correlation with historical disruptions and Svetlana Boym’s notions of nostalgia for both the past and future, this study interprets Sabbatai Zevi’s melancholic demeanor and his followers’ disillusionment with his conversion as manifestations of a concept termed here as “melancholic nostalgia,” denoting feelings of irretrievable loss. Given that these literary pieces emerged during pivotal moments in 20th-century Jewish history, this dissertation asserts that Sabbatai Zevi’s literary representation serves as a poignant symbol of melancholic nostalgia, resonating with the profound shifts in modern Jewish narrative.

Memory and nostalgia work in complex, paradoxical ways in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and The Road, both haunting the main protagonists, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and the father, as well as bringing them to crucial realizations. These men give up the traditional hero role for the more meaningful and generative image of “carrying the fire,” which unites these two novels. Carrying the fire represents a memorial and nostalgic longing for home and family. Bell and the father attain this vision because of their obsession with the past, and because of their struggle with memory and nostalgia. Memory, for these characters, has both personal and collective dimensions. Nostalgia, likewise, has a dual function, following Svetlana Boym's definition of nostalgics as being capable of restorative and reflective longing for the past. Family, or Paul Ricœur’s theory of close relations, bridges the gap between the conflicts of memory and nostalgia, acting as the means by which they understand this vision of carrying the fire while also embodying it. Additionally, the duality of both memory and nostalgia drive Bell and the father to seek for a prophetic vision, for stability in the past to deal with the threats in the present, which appears in the narrative structures of each novel.