Demchenko Tamara, Ivanytska Svitlana

The Soviet experience in the memoir-documentary prose of Anatol Halan (Kalinovsky): Reading through the lens of generational and temporal communications

Section: Theory and methodology of modern biography

Abstract: The purpose of the article is to analyze and interpret the legacy of the half-forgotten talented journalist and writer Anatol Kalinovsky (Halan) (1901-1987) in the context of the theory of communicative memory. Ihor Kachurovsky counted Halan among the most readable novelists of the Ukrainian emigration. The authors are guided by the idea that fiction has a special importance in modern research practices as a source of information about everyday life, they use methods of psychological reconstruction and "usage" into the inner world of the texts author. The research toolkit of the "generational theory" is also involved, in particular, the thesis that every twenty or thirty years people turn to the past in order to reconstruct it, paying special attention to "traumatic" moments. These "generational shifts" organize the formation of collective memory in time, connect group memory with it, and it itself with public memory. The focus of attention is on the collection of short stories "Uninvented" (1967) and other works, which analyze the image of Homo sovieticus taken in various guises and historically faithfully reproduce the typical phenomena of Soviet everyday life of the interwar period. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the authors emphasize that the main object of spiritual, intellectual and cultural interests for the writer was Ukraine and the fate of its people. The versatility and thematic variety of Anatol Halan’s work is noted, where sharp satire, humorous sketches, stories from his own life are combined with essays about individual people, about the life of displaced persons in Germany, Ukrainian emigrants in America, and careful study and analysis of the Soviet reality always dominate. The conclusion about Anatol Halan’s work as an authentic source of knowledge about life in the USSR is substantiated. Based on the analysis of Anatol Halan’s literary texts, it is concluded that the writer considered freedom and democracy as an alternative to the totalitarian system, and considered the national state to be the best form of existence for Ukrainians. A wish was expressed regarding the urgent need to publish a selection from the literary heritage of this writer.

Keywords: Anatol Halan (Kalinovsky), Ihor Kachurovsky, Dmytro Nitchenko, Homo sovieticus, Soviet everyday life, historical and documentary prose, generational memory.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.23.100     Citation

• Demchenko Tamara (Member of National Union of Local Historians of Ukraine, Ukraine, Chernihiv, kafistukr@ukr.net) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1677-1013
• Ivanytska Svitlana (College Khortytsia National Training and Rehabilitation Academy , Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia, isvetlana@hotmail.com) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1677-1013

Cite:
Demchenko Tamara (2022). The Soviet experience in the memoir-documentary prose of Anatol Halan (Kalinovsky): Reading through the lens of generational and temporal communications. Biographistica Ukrainica, (23) 100-121. (In Ukrainan). https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.23.100

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