“C’era una volta un paese, ed era… la mia Patria”. Voci dai “margini”: Diari di guerra da Donec’k

Abstract

The recent escalation of the Ukrainian crisis revealed the need for redefining the national cultural borders of the region. The literary community plays an important role in processing the ongoing historical “catastrophe”, in an attempt to understand heterogeneous and polyphonic Ukrainian voices, and in order to comprehend the reasons which lay behind the current ideological polarizations. The “hybrid” position of the Russophone literary community in Ukraine reveals interesting features in order to analyse the composite pattern of the region. This article investigates the role and strategies adopted by these “in-between” cultural actors in face of recent events. Their fluid identities cross the rigid borders marked by political and historical narratives. Questioning the fixed constructs of national and cultural identity, they aim to give way to a new kind of “negotiation” between Ukrainian and Russian cultural systems. These “voices from the edges” have a collective value in order to convey a new sense of belonging to a coherent political and cultural community. The reading of Elena Stjažkina’s Diaries, translated into Italian by Valentina Rossi, give us the chance to interpret this Russian speaking writer’s path towards the birth of an alternative model of “national identity”.