Issues

This article examines Lydia Chukovskaya’s unfinished memoir “Procherk” (lit. “dash” or “blank entry”) within the field of memory studies. The theoretical framework draws on the concepts of Maurice Halbwachs and Aleida Assmann, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s “Poetics of Titles,” and Alexey Yurchak’s notion of “authoritative discourse.” Across Chukovskaya’s literary works, correspondence, and diaries, one can trace a sustained reflection on the social and cultural processes of the 1930s–1980s, particularly the destruction of knowledge and lived experience related to Stalinist terror. Within official political memory, shaped by institutions through authoritative discourse, the causes of mass deaths were systematically replaced by a void. This void was filled either with deliberately falsified or with vague and evasive accounts (the “dashes”). The study analyzes the mechanisms underlying the formation of such political memory and their representation in Chukovskaya’s writings. By situating “Procherk” within the context of its creation and title, the article demonstrates the role of literature as a carrier and medium of alternative cultural memory. It argues that Chukovskaya regarded the affective power of high-level literary style and the transformation of a document into art as the primary means of resisting falsehood and oblivion. “Procherk,” despite its unfinished state and the author’s own skepticism toward the text, is an example of a carrier and medium of cultural memory. Chukovskaya’s book transcends the genre of conventional memoir, emerging both as an act of memorial resistance and as a testimony to that struggle.