‘Everyone Has One’s Own Siberia’: Two Female Narratives of the Kalmyk Deportation

Abstract

Introduction. The proposed publication consists of an introduction, texts of two biographical interviews and comments thereon. Both the conversations took place in Elista (2004, 2017) as part of the research project ‘Everyone Has One’s Own Siberia’ dedicated to the important period in the history of Kalmykia though not yet sufficiently explored by anthropologists and sociologists — the deportation of Kalmyks to Siberia (1943–1956) and related memories. Goals. The project seeks to show the daily survival practices of Kalmyks in Siberia. In the spontaneous biographical interviews focusing on the years of Kalmyk deportation, not only the facts cited are important — of which we would otherwise stay unaware but from the oral narratives — but also the introduced stories of inner life: feelings and thoughts of growing girls. Methods. The paper involves the use of textual analysis and the method of text deconstruction. Results. The transcribed texts show survival and adaptation strategies employed by the young generation of ‘special settlers’ in places of forced residence. For many Kalmyks of that generation, high school was a ‘glass ceiling’, a limitation in life choices. In the narrative of R. Ts. Azydova, we face a today unthinkable social package for KUTV students with children — this illustrates how the korenization policy for indigenous populations in the USSR worked, and provides insight into daily practices of pre-war Elista. The story of T. S. Kachanova especially clearly manifests the ‘language of trauma’, first of all, through the memory of the body, vocabulary of death and displays of laughter. The texts of the interviews shall be interesting to all researchers of Kalmyk deportation and the memory of that period.