The Cultural Trauma of Belarusian Poles in the Soviet Society: the Analysis of Family Narratives and Expert Discourse

The Master’s thesis is devoted to the problems of constituting the cultural trauma of the Belarusian Poles in the Soviet society, due to the radical societal transformations of modern times, which have changed the institutional foundations and way of life of the population in the Western Belarus. The focus of the study is the collective memory of the Belarusian Poles, historically mostly living in the Western Belarus. The specifics of socialization and the experience of living in the Polish Republic determined their perception of social changes initiated and implemented by the Soviet government after the inclusion in 1939 of the eastern part of the territory of the Polish state into the USSR, as forcible and socially traumatic. The theoretical basis of the study is the concepts of cultural trauma (P. Sztompka) and collective memory (M. Halbwachs, R. Eyerman and others), which allowed the conceptualization of radical social changes in the Western Belarus as factors of cultural trauma regarding to the Polish community. In order to conduct the explication and theoretical interpretation of the politico-ideological, socio-economic and sociocultural factors of the cultural trauma of the Belarusian Poles, in the Master’s thesis were examines family narratives of representatives of the studied ethnocultural group (18 interviews collected as part of the “Polacy na Wschodzie” project), as well as a current expert discourse (9 interviews with experts). The study revealed the traumatic interpretation of social changes among the Belarusian Poles (in the economic, politico-institutional, cultural and religious spheres), to explicate and describe traumatic symptoms attributable to this community (social crisis, artificial isolation and breaking of social ties, a sense of security instability and a change in social status), to characterize strategies for post-traumatic adaptation in the Soviet society. This study revealed that the phenomenon of cultural trauma of the Belarusian Poles in the Soviet society has different interpretations in the family narratives of the representatives of this community and in expert interviews. This is due to differences in the content and mechanisms of reflection of societal transformations among the direct participants in historical events (personal experience of directly experiencing traumatic events affecting them as representatives of a particular ethnocultural group is fundamental to them) and experts for whom past historical events and social processes are the object of research (accordingly, as a result - scientization, stereotypization and intertextuality of expert knowledge). In general, the study revealed an implicit continuum of certain traumatic meanings, articulated by both informants and experts, while the conceptually completed traumatic discourse is not formed, both in family narratives and in expert discourse.