Balina, Faculty Advisor, Marina

Kleinman, Rosa

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Illinois Wesleyan UniversityDigital Commons @ IWUJohn Wesley Powell Student ResearchConference 2011, 22nd Annual JWP ConferenceApr 9th, 10:00 AM - 11:00 AMNarratives of Fear and Shame: Jewish Childhood inSoviet and Post-Soviet Life WritingRosa KleinmanIllinois Wesleyan UniversityMarina Balina, Faculty AdvisorIllinois Wesleyan UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprcPart of the Modern Literature CommonsThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by The Ames Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Center for Curricular and FacultyDevelopment, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the President. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Commons @ IWU bythe faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@iwu.edu.©Copyright is owned by the author of this document.Rosa Kleinman and Marina Balina, Faculty Advisor, "Narratives of Fear and Shame: Jewish Childhood in Soviet and Post-Soviet Life Writing" (April 9, 2011). John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference. Paper 3.http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprc/2011/oralpres6/3THE JOHN WESLEY POWELL STUDENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE APRIL 2011 Oral Presentation 06.3 NARRATIVES OF FEAR AND SHAME: JEWISH CHILDHOOD IN SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET LIFE WRITING Rosa Kleinman and Marina Balina* Modern and Classical Languages and Literature Department, Illinois Wesleyan University This presentation will examine the childhood recollections of Russian/Soviet-Jewish authors Samuil Marshak and Dina Rubina. When Marshak recollected his pre-revolutionary childhood experience in his 1961 narrative, he was forced to write his memoirs from the Soviet vantage point, emulating the anti-childhood model of poverty, neglect, and unhappiness established in Maxim Gorky's childhood reminiscences. Marshak's task of writing about his childhood in happy terms was further complicated by the fact that he was Jewish. Anti-semitism, though officially condemned by the Soviet government, was still strong in the 1960s when Marshak wrote his memoir. His solution was to omit large sections of his narrative related to his Jewish experience, leaving conspicuous gaps for the compassionate reader to fill in. In contrast to Marshak, Dina Rubina wrote about her Jewish experience in the 1990s, purposely positioning her Jewishness at the center of her Soviet childhood recollections. Writing about her Soviet experience in post-Soviet times, however, allowed Rubina the freedom to reveal the necessary details of her childhood without forcing them through the anti-childhood filter. These different narrative approaches provide a complicated identity map which reveals the continued complexity and sensitivity of Russian-Jewish quest for self-identity. 

Narratives of Fear and Shame: Jewish Childhood in Soviet and Post-Soviet Life Writing

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Narratives of Fear and Shame: Jewish Childhood in Soviet and Post-Soviet Life Writing

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