The memory of Chernobyl in witness literature and fiction from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia 1986-2011

26th April 2016 will be the 30th anniversary of the world’s largest ever nuclear disaster in Chernobyl (1986). On the basis of films and literary works, this project investigates how the memory processes, following the nuclear disaster in the three East Slavic countries Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, have changed over time, not least in connection with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The project studies the memory of the Chernobyl disaster in the witness literature and fiction published in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia over the 25-year period from 1986 to 2011. The aim of the project is to investigate how memory processes after the nuclear disaster in the literature of the three East Slavic countries have changed over this period, in particular in connection with the break-up of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Recurring motifs, myths, rumours, similes, symbols, metaphors, expressions of emotion and traumatic memories are mapped and studied, with a starting point in the question of the role of the individual in Soviet and post-Soviet times. In a comparative study, the differences and similarities between the memory discourses in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are examined.