Published: 2026-06-30

Trauma in Far Siberia

Nina Laby

(Characters of the novel "Zuleykha Opens Her Eyes" by Guzel Yakhina)

Abstract

This article focuses on the analysis of the main characters in Guzel Yakhina's novel Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes—Zuleikha and Ignatov and their inner transformation. This transformation was influenced by numerous traumatic events (exile, repression, and domestic violence), their relationship with each other, and, in Zuleikha's case, her relationship with her son. The characters struggle with various symptoms of trauma and PTSD, such as persistent dreams and memory loss, described in the literature on this phenomenon. The article also discusses the process of combating and processing trauma using the mechanisms described by historian Dominick LaCapra. Additionally, it addresses the issue of the Soviet regime and how quickly it was able to eliminate people who were no longer useful, even if they had previously faithfully served the system.

Download files

Citation rules

Laby, N. (2026). Trauma in Far Siberia: (Characters of the novel "Zuleykha Opens Her Eyes" by Guzel Yakhina). Przegląd Rusycystyczny [Russian Studies Review], 194(2 (194), 224–241. https://doi.org/10.31261/pr.22984

Cited by / Share

Licence

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.

1. License

The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

2. Author’s Warranties

The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.

If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".

ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).

3. User Rights

Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

4. Co-Authorship

If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.

I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.

Domyślna okładka

Vol. 194 No. 2 (194) (2026)
Published: 2026-06-30


ISSN: 0137-298X
Ikona DOI 10.31261/pr

Publisher
Polskie Towarzystwo Rusycystyczne oraz Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego

Licence CC Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This website uses cookies for proper operation, in order to use the portal fully you must accept cookies.