Leaving Novaîa Zemlîa: Narrative Strategies of the Resettlement of the Nenets

Abstract

The article examines narrative strategies in recollections related to the resettlement of the Nenets from Novaîa Zemlîa during the 1950s. The material consists of interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, newspaper articles, literature on the history of Novaîa Zemlîa, and an Internet discussion forum. The strategies are analyzed to be borne at the intersection of public and private discourses and varying relations to the so-called authorized discourse and the nuclear uncanny that those recollecting use and recreate in their reminiscences. The nuclear uncanny and the authorized discourse are used to separate the narrated event (the past) from the contemporary narrative event and to create connections between them.