Documents as Portals of Justice: Children’s Literature Confronting World War II and Soviet Era in Estonian and Russian Narratives

• In Event: Multiple Perspectives on War Memory in East European Children’s Literature: Victimhood, Justice, Peace

Abstract

This presentation examines children's literature that engages with historical mysteries from the 1940s and early 1950s, either through contemporary child protagonists investigating the past or through young readers' reception of historical narratives. The analysis focuses on two distinct literary traditions. First, it explores Estonian literature of the 2000s and 2010s through Sass Henno’s “Mereroovlimang” (“Pirate Game,” 2005) and Leelo Tungal’s trilogy “Seltsimees Laps” (“Comrade Kid,” 2008-2018), with particular attention to the significance of preserved documents from the Estonian republican period and early Soviet era. In these works, the 1940s are characterized not primarily by World War II, but by the Soviet occupation and the tension between republican heritage and Soviet reality. The study then turns to three Russian texts where discovered archives and documents unlock World War II mysteries: Eduard Verkin's “Cloud Regiment” (2012), Natalia Volkova’s “Multicolored Snow” (2018), and Maria Boteva’s “Garden Named t.s.” (2018). While these Russian works focus more explicitly on wartime narratives than their Estonian counterparts, both literary traditions demonstrate how engagement with historical documents and the cultivation of empathy for historical figures can serve to posthumously restore truth and justice. This paper argues that these works collectively represent a response to the “documentary turn” in contemporary literature and art.

Author

• Maria Mayofis, Amherst College