Gender, Ethnicity, and Individual Resistance

Arpenik Aleksanyan's Diaries of Stalinist Deportations

in Girlhood Studies
Author:
Ella Rossman Researcher, University College London, UK ella.rossman.21@ucl.ac.uk

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https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8443-177X
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2024.170109
Keywords:
ethnicity; femininity; gender; Komsomol; Siberian Diary; Soviet girlhood culture; Soviet subjectivity
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Abstract

In this article, I explore Sibirskiy dnevnik (henceforth Siberian Diary) of Arpenik Aleksanyan, a Soviet student of Armenian origin who, together with her family, was exiled to Siberia in one of the late Stalinist deportations of ethnic minorities. Arpenik's diary provides a unique perspective on forced displacement and exile through the eyes of a young woman. I treat the diary both as an historical source revealing gendered experiences of forced displacement and as autobiographical writing that provides a glimpse into late Stalinist girlhood and young women's subjectivity. I provide a reading of Siberian Diary that reveals Arpenik's seemingly contradictory integration of Stalinist ideologies of the so-called new woman and nationalities as a foundation for self-construction as well as individual resistance to persecution.

Contributor Notes

Ella Rossman (ORCID: 0000-0001-8443-177X) is a PhD candidate at School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. Her doctoral research focuses on the socialization of women in post-war USSR, covering both the specifics of late Soviet girlhood culture and personal experiences of teenage girls and young women. She explores how young women in the USSR identified themselves and sought agency in the context of late Stalinism, the Thaw, the Stagnation period, and the transformative late 1980s. Email: ella.rossman.21@ucl.ac.uk

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Girlhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal

Cover Girlhood Studies
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
17
Keywords:
ethnicity; femininity; gender; Komsomol; Siberian Diary; Soviet girlhood culture; Soviet subjectivity
Print Publication Date:
01 Mar 2024
Online Publication Date:
01 Mar 2024
Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024

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