Katharine Hodgson

The Other Veterans: Soviet Women’s Poetry of World War 2

Women have tended to be peripheral characters in war literature. The archetypal image of Penelope as the faithful wife waiting for the return of Odysseus from the Trojan War has been powerful and enduring. But in the twentieth century women have been involved in warfare as never before. Nowhere else has this been so apparent as in the Soviet Union during World War 2, which offered Soviet women, like those in other countries, a chance to do men’s jobs, take on positions of real authority, and to carry out vital war work. Many young women volunteered for military service, adamant that they wanted to go to the front and actually shoot the enemy, instead of remaining in traditionally feminine occupations such as nursing. The prospect of genuine equality, including an equal share of danger and of responsibility, seemed to draw closer as women fought alongside men, although women often had to work hard to convince their male colleagues that they were just as skillful and courageous.1

Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry

This is the authors accepted version of a chapter published in Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon, available via the DOI in this recordAuthors version of chapter from Open Access Book.The final published version is available from Open Book Publishers via the DOI in this record.

1. Introduction: Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry and the Post-Soviet Reader: Reinventing the Canon

This is the authors accepted version of a chapter published in Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon, available via the DOI in this recordAuthors version of chapter from Open Access Book.The final published version is available from Open Book Publishers via the DOI in this record.

Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry : Reinventing the Canon

This is the authors accepted version of a chapter published in Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon, available via the DOI in this recordAuthors version of chapter from Open Access Book.The final published version is available from Open Book Publishers via the DOI in this record.

Telling Tales: Genre and Narrative in Post-Soviet Poetry

Abstract The post-Soviet revival of a group of related genres of narrative poetry is explored, focusing on the work of two poets: Mariia Stepanova, with her connections to the ballad tradition and the uncanny, and Boris Khersonskii, whose cycles and collections document the lost world of Jewish life in southern Russia. There is an exploration of the ways in which narrative poetry, which had been closely associated with official Soviet culture, has now been revitalized by the adoption of elements drawn both from the traditional epic, such as the objective, impersonal narrative voice, and from popular culture, including horror stories and urban myth.

“I am to be Read Not from Left to Right, but in Jewish: From Right to Left:” the poetics of Boris Slutsky

oped in those chapters does not explainwhy positionswere struck as theywere in the Australian casestudy. Celermajer makes reference to non-explicit resonances of religious images, yet there is very little evidence that those non-indigenous Australian people (many of whom presumably had a JudeoChristian cultural background) who supported an apology to the Aboriginal people or those who opposed it drew upon these traditions, so the explanatory value of them is limited. Celermajer argues that positions adopted in the debate coincide with the tropes of apology traced from religion by the author but this is followed by the sentence: “One might even conjecture that this religious ritual provided the background template out of which this contemporary idea sprung, albeit without attribution or knowledge of its providence [sic]” (213; provenance?). Precisely so, this is conjecture because very little hard evidence is offered for the linkage between the religious tropes and the language or actions of the protagonists within the Australian apology debate. Second, it is possible to make a normative defence of apology and to argue for the legitimacy of forms of collective responsibility or trans-generational responsibility without recourse to religious traditions or theological concepts at all. Celermajer recognises this herself because, having explored the religious dimension at length, the concluding chapters construct arguments aimed at secularists who would reject or feel uneasy with a conceptual framework derived from religion. What appears to be underdeveloped in the book is a discussion of those traditions which critique the narrow liberal conceptualisations which Celermajer finds inadequate. Among these would be, what is loosely termed, the communitarian tradition including the work of MacIntyre and Taylor. (Additionally, given her defence of transgenerational responsibility and consideration of the Australian apology it is surprising the work of Janna Thompson is not referenced). This is connected to what I think is Celermajer’s underestimation of the strength and range of critiques of liberalism’s inadequacies in conceptualising responsibility, guilt, etc., since she writes as though liberalism remains the dominant ideological framework. The apology is often a practical or political recognition that people’s self-worth and identity are constituted in a way that liberalism fails to capture; liberalism’s lacunae in this is critiqued by various schools and traditions including the “politics of recognition,” “multi-culturalism” and communitarian thought. Relatedly, those who are members of communities, nations and states which have transgressed cannot dissociate themselves from the actions of their community. In conclusion, this is a stimulating book which makes interesting connections between theological traditions and political practice. However, these traditions seem ultimately unnecessary in grounding a defence of the apology which can be done in secular terms and are unconvincing in explaining apology’s emergence.