The aforementioned title of the documentary volume on the blockade of Leningrad during the World War II emphasises the imperative to remember the events that were recorded in the memory of the entire nation. It also raises questions about the justification for the non-forgetting order. The posed research questions are meant to lead to the identification of key elements of the narrative – the emotions that are triggered by referring to specific historical facts. The drawn conclusions can be a starting point for reflection on the effects of remembering – not remembering traumatic events in the life of a community: ethnic, national, religious etc. They can also provide theoretical premisses for the research on the functioning of memory about a tragedy as an influence tool in the relationship between the authorities and society.

Over the years, the subject of the post-war displacement of Germans was treated in terms of “historical justice”, especially in the official rhetoric of the communist propaganda. Now it has become the subject of multidimensional redefinition and reevaluation in the literary discourses. Writers of the middle and younger generation (Radka Denemarková, Jaroslav Rudiš, Kateřina Tučková, Jakuba Katalpa), by enlivening the debate on the fate of German inhabitants of Czechoslovakia, strive to restore “difficult memory” and to expose the processes of repression and forgetting about own guilt resulting from expulsion of the 24 Anna Gawarecka former neighbours, apparently only due to the legitimacy of assigning collective responsibility to alleged supporters of Nazi crimes.

In the independent Macedonian state few Slavic authors tried to determine comprehensively their attitude towards ethnocultural traditions and historical mythology of Albanians. The coherence of the components of their culture after 2001 was more directly questioned, when in an atmosphere of ethnic tensions the Albanian ethnogenetic complex began to be described in terms of falsification and camouflage of foreign elements. The examples show that the issues of indigenousness, language or the originality of the national program appear in this context as the evidence of the unnatural creation of the homogeneous identity in a neighboring community.

The paper analyses semiotic processes taking place under the institutional pressure and resulting in the fact that a particular social and cultural community remembers and forgets in accordance with the dictates of the current regime, which means that the collective mnemonic is sometimes even brutally governed by political and ideological centres of authority that generally possess the greatest amount of semiotic power. Therefore the Yugoslav state administration used to be oriented towards forgetting Goli otok, where it relied precisely on the system institutions, particularly on the activities of its intelligence service called UDBA, which handled the camp of Goli otok and imposed a ban on its thematisation. The disappearance from the public discourse was supposed to result in the process of forgetting, while institutional violence and developed social phobia were to silence the witnesses forever. Thus the paper searches for the manifestations of the darkest of Yugoslav taboos, which relates to the greatest amount of institutional violence and repression aiming at forgetting of the trauma of Goli otok. Even though literature is the least controlled discourse, this topic started to be depicted in writing years after the termination of the camp, which incarcerated c. 15000 people from 1949 to 1956. Searching for the forbidden themes of Goli otok, the author analyzes the narrative texts of Dragoslav Mihailović (Kad su cvetale tikve 1968 and Goli otok 1990) and Mirko Kovač (Rane Luke Meštrevića 1971).

The article presents the case study of the Soviet Army monuments in Bulgaria as a source of irreconcilable social division. A brief overview of the history of these monu ments and the discussions on the possibility of their dismantling allow to conclude that (1) in the third decade of the 21st century the monuments’ function as lieux de mémoire remains impossible due to their divisive nature; (2) the arguments for and against the monuments expressed in the 1990s remain unchanged; (3) the concentration of public attention on the Sofia memorial leads to the neglection of other similar monuments in the country; (4) The Law on Declaring the Criminal Nature of the Communist Regime in Bulgaria (2000) and other state acts do not affect the existence of these monuments, but only reinforce the ambivalent signals that the southern European state sends to its international partners. The author’s final conclusion is that the monuments of the Soviet Army today are not so much an incentive to comprehend collective traumas, but an impetus for analysing Bulgarian Russophilia.

The strategy of oblivion or omission of significant events and public figures has constituted differentia specifica of the processes occurring in Serbo-Montenegrin cultural sphere during the last twenty years. The article discusses, among other things, the most striking example of this strategy as exemplified by the symbolic figure – Saint Sava. The politicised efforts around oblivion/omission vs. fabulation of some untrue events from the saint’s life, undertaken by both Serb and Montenegrin intellectuals, result in a number of manipulative actions in the factual sphere and fit into consciously projected cultural politics of both nations.

The article presents the contents of Bohuš Nosák-Nezabudov’s travel journal, From Unknown Land to Ľ. The author describes his impressions of the trip to Zakarpattia Ruthenia. The double perspective in seeing this land and its inhabitants (the idyllic space collides here with the space of degraded idyll) corresponds to the duality of the traveling subject himself, who is torn between adopting an attitude of a sensitive observer who shapes the legend of Russia as a forgotten and unknown land, or an emissary who came there with a certain ideological approach and awakening enthusiasm.

From the 1990s onwards, in Serbian children’s literature, there has been an increased interest in historical figures and events of the Serbian Middle Ages. In the extensive collection of books and picture books for children in which medieval history is themed, and whose authors are Svetlana Velmar Janković, Slobodan Stanišić, Milovan Vitezović and others, certain – almost always the same – historical figures (Stefan Nemanja, Saint Sava, Tsar Dusan) stand out, while some others are completely forgotten. The paper discusses these facts in an ideological context: a return to medieval history and culture in children’s literature takes place through the memory of the “bright age” of Serbian history.

The paper provides an analytical account of the fate of selected Croatian literary critics/writers (V. Nikolić, A. Bonifačić, A. Barac...) who wrote reviews and essays in the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945). After the end of the Second World War, communist Yugoslavia was founded and the publication was banned, and Croatian literature written in the NDH fell into oblivion. On the other hand, after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 and the civil war in Croatia, there is a rehabilitation of certain topics, writers and their works that were banned and faced the risk of oblivion during the socialist political system. The fundamental basis of this work is to try to answer the question: how the ideology and political dictatorship of one period can influence the reception of literary and cultural values created during a different ideological and political system.

The article presents the analysis of a play by a Russian director, Anastasya Patlay, Memoria, devoted to the victims of Stalinist crimes and the Memorial Society documenting their fate. The analysis was carried out in the context of the theory of culture by Vyacheslav Ivanov and Friedrich Nietzsche.

The diary of Russia’s first Nobel Prize winner in literature, Ivan Bunin, describing the events of 1918-1919 in Moscow and Odessa, served as a starting point for reflection on the revolution, the genesis of which is seen in the rebellion of the biblical Cain, as the original title Окаянные дни suggests. In both works – this diary, written in the spur of the moment, and in the short story The Goddess of Reason written in exile, the author used episodes from the Great French Revolution, stating the universalism of the mechanisms by which every revolution in ruled. The article also refers to the works of French historians Georges Lenotre and Reynald Secher, as well as the historiosophical sketch of Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev. Based on the analysed research material, a thesis about the ontological contradiction between a revolution and Christianity was put forward. The former propagates the cult of Reason and calls for rebellion which consequently leads to the civilization of death. Christianity confesses the Risen Christ, proclaims the universal Resurrection of the dead and is an absolute affirmation of life.

The paper attempts to view the thought and works of Father Seraphim Rose (1934- 1982), an American convert who became one of the most notable Orthodox theologians of the late 20th c., in the light of his impact on the current condition of the Orthodox Church both in Russia and abroad, focusing on the issue of aerial toll houses (telonia), which he saw as a vital part of patristic eschatology preserved in the pre-schismatic writings of the Church Fathers.

The fate of the German minority living in the Slavic countries before World War II has become the subject of numerous novels in recent years, not only those whose authors witnessed dramatic events that took place after the end of the war, but also young writers who only learned about the fate of marginalized groups after 1989. Thanks to literature, images of post-war history which until then had been a „blank spot”, started to circulate. The German inhabitants of Brno (Tučková) or Osijek (Šojat-Kuči) were for many years wiped from official memory, erased from historical studies, doomed to social exclusion, loss of their own language and identity. Interestingly, oblivion and erasure also encompass the city space where the characters of the analyzed novels once lived. Selected literary texts make it possible to trace how the image of memory is constructed and how it is manipulated.

The article presented here is a direct reference to Sergei Lebedev’s book The Limit of Forgetting, in which the author acts simultaneously as narrator and main character. The novel cannot be analysed except by deciphering the symbols accumulated in it. One of the layers of the work concerns the spiritual development of the protagonist, the impetus for which is the appearance of a demonic Second Grandfather in his childhood. Desiring to solve the mystery of the latter, the narrator reaches the world of Stalinist camps. The buildings left behind were destroyed, the perpetrators have not been brought to justice, people are more comfortable to forget about them. The protagonist, wanting to recreate the legacy of his ancestors, becomes a kind of collector: he collects objects from the past, collects memories of participants in tragic events, their diaries... In this way, the past overlaps with the present and is projected into the future. In order to cross the boundary of oblivion, it is necessary to overcome fear and conformity, learn responsibility and, using cultural memory, reach the Truth.

The aim of the article is to discuss the forgotten motif of a Dalmatian wet nurse in the artistic prose of three writers: Milan Begović, Vladan Desnica and Enzo Bettiza, and attempt to situate it in the context of disputes over Dalmatia. The literary update on the motif is in line with the modeling strategies of Dalmatian hinterland referring to the vision of “noble savages” (the Morlacchis/Vlajs). They can serve in bringing about the colonisation policy (as was done in the 18th century by the Republic of Venice) as well as in defining complex relationships in this Croatian-Serbian-Italian borderlands.

The article presents one of the publishing projects important in the context of Slovak literary studies in recent years, the anthology Sunken Souls. From Works by Slovak Female Poets in the First Half of the 20th Century (2017), edited by Andrea Bokníková. The book recalls the works of twelve women poets who were present in the literary life of the first decades of the 20th century, then gave up their literary activity for various reasons, and memory of them was gradually blurred. The published texts could be a starting point for reflection on the possibility of reinterpreting the history of Slovak literature and making its description more dynamic, e.g. thanks to the reconstruction of the line of women’s writing, often ignored or schematically presented in historical literary studies. This kind of project would correspond with the current search for new ways of conceptualising the literary past.

In the background of the novel Na Mokhnatoi Spine is one of the key events for the outbreak of World War II: the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact. Viacheslav Rybakov, by interweaving true history with fictional threads, the past with the present, created a work not so much in the genre of “alternative history” as a highly allusive text. By referring to issues that, either for ideological reasons or in the plan of historical policy, were first ignored in silence and, consequently, forgotten, Rybakov proves the importance of unadulterated memory. The author of the novel puts forward the thesis that only a message consistent with historical reality allows to draw adequate conclusions from history. Otherwise, an individual keeps repeating past patterns and commits the same disastrous deeds, the memory of which was meant to be obliterated or distorted. This is evidenced by references to the temporal level of the novel closer to the reader.

Losing memory is a kind of axis of the latest novel by a Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov. The article attempts to trace the forms of oblivion and forgetting process that appear in Time Shelter. The point of reference for the considerations is the characters’ attitude to time and history. At the same time, the study is an attempt to read the implied forms of oblivion which seem to be connected with the opposite process – remembering.

The article deals with the literary struggle with oblivion. The author analyses works of two Croatian authors – Eva Grlić’s (Sjećanja 1998) who came from the cosmopolitan family of Hungarian Jews, active in the Tito’s underground army and imprisoned on the Naked Island, and Jela Godlar’s (Limenke and ciklame 1992) who had connections with the seaside town Šibenik, but having complex Central European roots. These texts stand out from the Croatian writing of the 1990s due to their focus on the events of the Second World War and the period directly proceeding its end. The authors’ intention was to “save from oblivion” a generational experience before the primacy of the collective consciousness will be given to narratives about the next – post-Yugoslav – war. The works are a psychological and aesthetic expression of fear of oblivion understood as the final blurring of traces (narrative testimonies) of existence in a such important period of modern history.

This paper approaches the theme of oblivion through the problem of unknown authorship in Serbian literature of the 18th century. Along with poetry published by known authors, printed publications or manuscripts preserve an extensive corpus of poems recorded and published by anonymous authors. Majority of such poems belongs to the corpus of socalled civic poetry – a special typological whole. For some poetic records, it is not possible to state with certainty who the author is. However, there are some assumptions based primarily on verses in Hristifor Žefarović’s Stematography (1741) and also on the emblematic collection, Itika Jeropolitika (1774), where emblems are accompanied by some anonymous verses. By proposing the typology of anonymous poetry, our goal is to define the problem and to determine possible poetic characteristics.

The writer Noémi Kiss shows us around such regions, neighborhoods and cities that were once widely known, played an important role in the history of our part of Europe and which nowadays are somewhat forgotten or far away (literally and metaphorically) to an average European person, sometimes even seem exotic. In my paper I would like to show  the image of these places, cultures and inhabitants, as it is depicted in the work of Kiss. I will also try to find the answer to the question why these places could have been forgotten.

This paper presents the most important information about the mysterious Zagreb phase of Irina Aleksander-Kunjina’s biography, her role in Croatian interwar literature, and her relations with vital figures of the Croatian literary scene of that time. An overview of her literary contributions in Croatian literary journals will also be presented. Apart from the evaluation of her role in the interwar literary scene, the aim of this paper is to shed light on her writing in Croatian and the reception of her activity and works in Croatian literary milieu. Although she did receive attention among the literary public, this was more due to her public persona than her literary work. Furthermore, this paper aims to offer an summary of her position in Croatian literary history in the first half of the 20th century and her importance in the history of Croatian-Slavic literary relations.

The phenomenon of generational novel is an important element of contemporary Russian literature. Such texts are usually written from the perspective of children or grandchildren who are interested in their genealogy. The issues tackled by these novels fit into the broader context of post-memory studies, a field which includes also the sphere of generational trauma. The article analyses Sergei Lebedev’s debut Oblivion (2010), an autofiction novel in which the protagonist follows the traces of his ancestor. In the individual dimension, a travel to Siberia allows him to free himself from the unwanted heritage of communist past. Oblivion can be a representative of literature that offers a chance to deal with the experiences of past generations as an alternative to the official politics of history, unofficially called pervaya pamyat’ (“first memory”).

In his article, the author first characterises the basic differences between Czech Ashkenazic and Modern Hebrew pronunciation in the context of Jewish Czech, its development and the process of its vanishing in the 20th and 21st centuries. Next, in the case study on Jewish ethnolectal lexical features of a particular respondent, Petr Brod (born 1951), on whom a linguistic study was conducted, the author presents a specific Jewish idiolectal portrait.

Danuta Mostwin is known in the academic and literary world for promoting her original concept of third value, i.e. the ideal model of the migrant’s identity. One of the obstacles on the way to reach this equilibrium is the temptation to reject the migrant’s heritage and the original values embraced in one’s homeland, depicted by Mostwin in Father Peter’s Shadow, and to let them fade into oblivion. By creating protagonists who reflect the life stories of her patients, Mostwin warns against this hazard, which in extreme cases leads to complete personality disintegration, depression and other mental illnesses. The author of the article tries to illustrate the consequences arising from the individual’s consent to oblivion, using as an example Mostwin’s characters from the novel You and I on the Other Side of the Water.