GENDER REGIMES OF MEMORY AND WOMEN’S EXPERIENCEIN POST-TOTALITARIAN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26661/zhv-2025-11-63-14

Keywords:

Central and Eastern Europe, post-totalitarian societies, women’s experience, gender regimes of memory, cultural memory

Abstract

The article provides a comparative analysis of the processes of formation and transformation of women’s images in the cultural memory of post-totalitarian states of Central and Eastern Europe, namely Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, and Moldova. Cultural memory is conceptualized as a key socio-cultural mechanism for interpreting a traumatic past and shaping collective identity, within which dominant representations of historical responsibility, heroism, and victimhood are constructed. It is demonstrated that for a long period the gender dimension of these processes remained marginal in dominant historical narratives, while women’s experiences were largely reduced to symbolic or auxiliary roles.

References

Adamska, A. (2006). Dziewczyny z AK – Wielkopolanki, Poland https://www.gniezno-bpmg.sowa.pl/index.php?KatID=0&typ=record&001=GNIEZ%20M15000018

Aheieva, V. P. (2008). Zhinochyi prostir: Feministychnyi dyskurs ukrainskoho modernizmu [Women’s space: Feminist discourse of Ukrainian modernism]. Kyiv: Fakt. 360

Aheieva, V. P. (2002). Zhinochyi prostir [Women’s space]. Mahisterium. Literaturoznavchi studii, 8, 3–10.

Bender, S. (2012, April 1). Life stories as testament and memorial: The short life of the Neqama Battalion, an independent

Jewish partisan unit operating during the Second World War in the Narocz forest, Belarus. East European Jewish Affairs.

Grzebalska, W. (2013). Płeć powstania warszawskiego [The Gender of the Warsaw Uprising]. IBL PAN & Narodowe Centrum Kultury. ISBN 978-83-61552-77-2. 133 с.

Cambose, A. (2021). „Răsfulgerații»: Istoria oficială și contraistoriile ei. Memorialistica, istoria orală, reportajul de actualitate și media online, surse concurente ale unei arhive în curs de constituire (II). Anuarul Institutului de Istorie «A.D. Xenopol» – Iași, LVIII(58), 485–520. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1090381

Desperak, I. (2013). Płeć zmiany. Zjawisko transformacji w Polsce z perspektywy gender. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. https://dspace.uni.lodz.pl/handle/11089/35345

Dobre, C.-F. (2018). Women’s everyday life in communist Romania: Case studies. Retrieved from. https://litere.ro/doc/anale/2018/dobre.pdf

Fuksová, K. (2019). Memory of Stalinist deportations in Moldova: An analysis of Chisinau memoryscape (Master’s thesis).

University of Tartu, Estonia. https://dspace.ut.ee/server/api/core/bitstreams/c0b65fce-d39c-4722-8392-fd5d48c933ad/content

Haliliuc, A. (2013). Who is a victim of communism? Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern

European Women’s and Gender History, 7(1). Berghahn Journals. https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/aspasia/7/1/asp070107.xml

Hentosh, L., & Kis, O. (Eds.). (2003). Hendernyi pidkhid: Istoriia, kultura, suspilstvo [Gender approach: History, culture, society]. Lviv: VNTL-Klasyka.

Kis, O. (2012). Zhinka v tradytsiinii ukrainskii kulturi (druha polovyna XIX – pochatok XX st.) [Women in traditional Ukrainian culture (second half of the 19th – early 20th century)]. Lviv: Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. 287 с.

Kis, O. (Ed.). (2025). Zhinochi istorii liderstva v Ukraini: kinets XIX – persha polovyna XX stolittia [Women’s leadership stories in Ukraine: Late 19th – first half of the 20th century]. Kyiv: FOP Stepurina S. V.

Lopata, M., Mastyka, A., & Tarita, M. (2013). The deportations from the neighbouring: Chernivtsy region (Ukraine) in 1944–1953 and from the Bricheny, Oknitsa and Edinets regions (Moldova) in 1949–1951. Chisinau: 170 http://promemoria.md/files/4113/7103/6496/The_Deportations_from_neighbouring_Chernivtsy_region__first_pages.pdf

Laxfield Literary Associates. (n.d.). Yuliia Iliukha. Retrieved from https://laxfieldliterary.com/yuliia-iliukha-2/

Leiserowitz, R. (2021). Women in the Multiple Field of Tension: Everyday Wartime Life in East Prussia. Acta Historica

Universitatis Klaipedensis, 42, 205–218. https://doi.org/10.15181/ahuk.v42i0.2298

Malinauskaite, G. (2021). The Klaipeda War Crimes Trial in 1964: Testimonies and Socio-Psychological Portraits of the

Defendants’ Wives. Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis, 42, 263–286. https://doi.org/10.15181/AHUK.V42I0.2301

Massino, J. (2008). Gender as survival: Women’s experiences of deportation from Romania to the Soviet Union, 1945–1950.

Nationalities Papers, 36(3), 405–431. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00905990701848366

Mironescu, D., Corcinschi, N. The Memoir Discourse in the Republic of Moldova as an Expression of Post-Soviet Decolonization.

Hermeneia, Nr. 35/2025, 194–208. https://hermeneia.ro/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Hermeneia-35_2025_PDF_full.pdf

Mitroiu, S., & Grădinaru, C. (2024). The autobiographical archive in post-communist Romania: «True» heroes and collective victimization. Memory Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980221126605

Mrozik, A. (2022). Architektki PRL-u. Komunistki, literatura i emancypacja kobiet w powojennej Polsce. Instytut Badań

Literackich PAN. https://rcin.org.pl/Content/237814/WA248_274038_II-94964_mrozik_o.pdf

Ostrowska, J. (2021). Oni. Homoseksualiści w czasie II wojny światowej. Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej. 368 pp.

National Institute for Strategic Studies. (2025). Henderna rivnist u Zbroinykh Sylakh Ukrainy pislia povnomasshtabnoho vtorhnennia RF v Ukrainu [Gender equality in the Armed Forces of Ukraine after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation

into Ukraine]. URL: https://niss.gov.ua/news/komentari-ekspertiv/henderna-rivnist-u-zsu-pislya-povnomasshtabnohovtorhnennya-rf-v-ukrayinu (дата звернення: 13.12.2025).

Otkovych, K. (2010). Iliuziia svobody: Obraz zhinky vid tradytsionalizmu do modernizmu [The illusion of freedom: The image of women from traditionalism to modernism]. Kyiv: Karbon. 210 https://chtyvo.org.ua/authors/Otkovych_Kateryna/Iliuziia_svobody_Obraz_zhinky_vid_tradytsionalizmu_do_modernizmu/

Ostrowską J. (2018). Przemilczane. Seksualna praca przymusowa w czasie II wojny światowej 2018 480с.

Petrescu, C. (2014). A Genderless Protest: Women Confronting Romanian Communism. Annals of the University of +Bucharest / Political science series, 16(2), 79–101. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-411792

Petraityte-Briediene, A. (2021). The Ac tivities of Juzefa Rauktyte-Daužvard iene, a Future Honorary-Consul of Lithuania in Chicago, during the Second World War. Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis, 42, 219–239. https://doi.org/10.15181/ahuk.v42i0.2299

Petrauskiene, A. (2021). Women in the Lithuanian Partisan War: Between Formal Regulation and Practice. Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis, 42, 241–261. https://doi.org/10.15181/ahuk.v42i0.2300

Reinsone, S. (2016). Forbidden and sublime forest landscapes: narrated experiences of Latvian national partisan women after World War II. Cold War History, 16(4), 395–416. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2014.986108

Suveica, S. (2017) «From Heroisation to Competing Victimhoods. History Writing on the Second World War in Moldova» Comparative Southeast European Studies, vol. 65, no. 2, 2017, pp. 388–411. https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2017-0023 https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/soeu-2017-0023/html

Teampău, P. (2014). A modest soldier in the great army of communists: Visual representations of women in Ceaușescu’s

Romania. Contemporary Southeastern Europe, 1(1), 46–63. https://contemporarysee.org/allfiles/documents/file-155-amodest-soldier-in-the-great-army-of-communists-visual-representations-of-women-in-ceauescus-romania.pdf

Sznaider, N. (2013). European Memory: Between Jewish and Cosmopolitan. In: Blacker, U., Etkind, A., Fedor, J. (eds)

Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137322067_4 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304866413_European_

Memory_Between_Jewish_and_Cosmopolitan

Tornquist-Plewa, B. (2016). Cosmopolitan Memory, European Memory and Local Memories in East Central Europe.

Australian Humanities Review. pp. 136–154 https://australianhumanitiesreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AHR-

59_Plewa-Tornquist.pdf

Tsyganenko, L. (2024). Repressions against the Ukrainian population Southern Bessarabia (1940–1953): Tragedy,

memorialisation, commemoration. Naukovyi visnyk Izmailskoho derzhavnoho humanitarnoho universytetu. Seriia: Istorichni

nauky, 67, 230–240.

https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1395019

Vichkitova, A. (2024) «MEMORY OF THE SOVIET PERIOD IN MOLDOVA: INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL TRAUMA AND CONTEMPORARY

POLITICS». Economy and Sociology, no. 1, June 2024, pp. 24–36, doi:10.36004/nier.es.2024.1-03. https://economysociology.

ince.md/index.php/Economy_and_Sociology/article/view/179/198

Utracka, K. (2023). Kobiety Powstania. Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego / 1944.pl. https://www.1944.pl/artykul/

kobiety-powstania,5408.html

Zabuzhko, O. S. (2007). Notre Dame d’Ukraine: Ukrainka v konflikti mifolohii [Notre Dame d’Ukraine: A Ukrainian woman

in the conflict of mythologies] (2nd rev. ed.). Kyiv: Fakt. 638 c.

Published

2025-12-01

How to Cite

GENDER REGIMES OF MEMORY AND WOMEN’S EXPERIENCEIN POST-TOTALITARIAN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE. (2025). Zaporizhzhia Historical Review, 11(63), 131-140. https://doi.org/10.26661/zhv-2025-11-63-14