Camp female prose (based on «Memories» by Nadiia Surovtsova)

Abstract

The beginning of the 20th century became the time of the Executed Renaissance for Ukraine. The Soviet totalitarian system sought to subjugate Ukrainian writers with prisons, camps and mass executions. We have a number of testimonies: archival materials of investigative cases, memoirs, epistolaries, camp prose. First of all, it is often a matter of men’s reception of prison and camp experience, men’s literature of fact (nonfiction). Women’s testimonies continue to be a marginal phenomenon. It determines the need to actualize in Ukrainian literature the female camp experience manifested textually. The scientific understanding of documentary studies was carried out by a number of Ukrainian literary experts. These are the works of Oleksandr Halych, Nadiia Koloshuk, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Oleh Rarytskyi and others. Women’s camp experience as a text entered the circle of scientific interest only sporadically (texts by Oksana Zabuzhko, Nadiia Koloshuk, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Liudmyla Tarnashynska). Nadiia Surovtsova reflects on her camp experience both in prose and poetic words. Her «Memoirs» is a unique sample of women’s nonfiction literature mentioning the path of a young woman to «Golgotha» (prisons, camps). The author focuses not only on her own feelings and thoughts but also on everyday life, people who were close to her and their stories. The book is structured according to the shades of the narrator’s life. She defines two periods that reveal the time «before» and «after»: «Chronicle of short-lived happiness» and «On the other side». It is in the second part we find ourselves together with Nadiia Surovtsova for the first time in Lubianka. In the following chapters of «Memoirs» we get to the «famous Butyrka» and then together with the author we walk the path of suffering «Arkhanhelsk – Golgotha» being full of terrible conditions, poor nutrition, hard work and also the ability to enjoy life and see beauty of  nature under such circumstances. The author also talks about the imprisoned female body. We are not talking about maximum frankness but we find naturalistic episodes sporadically (a bloody female body after interrogation, bleeding that becomes unbearable in the absence of water). The path to Golgotha for Nadiia Surovtsova is also a continuous hardening of her own character. She states that she wants to «drink the cup to the bottom» and therefore always chooses new challenges for herself.