A theater of silence?: Women, war and (un)true war stories in Ukraine
Soviet officials and artists actively crafted a master narrative of World War II, and theaters served as crucial sites for this cultural production, effectively forming a “military-entertainment complex.” One prominent example is the Theater of the Carpathian Military District in L´viv, one of the s...
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| Izdano u: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/chreecc, |
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| Glavni autor: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jezik: | Anglais |
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Cahiers d’histoire russe, est-européenne, caucasienne et centrasiatique
2026
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| Online pristup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sažetak: | Soviet officials and artists actively crafted a master narrative of World War II, and theaters served as crucial sites for this cultural production, effectively forming a “military-entertainment complex.” One prominent example is the Theater of the Carpathian Military District in L´viv, one of the seven professional theaters managed directly by the Soviet Armed Forces, which operated in L´viv from 1954 and played a significant role in dramatizing the war. The article examines how the theater’s representations of World War II grappled with the complexity of women’s wartime experiences through an analysis of two productions: the 1959 Barabanshchitsa [The Drummer Girl] by Afanasii Salynskyi and the 1985 Riadovye [The Privates] by Aleksei Dudarev. Internal discussions at the theater, reviews, and photographs suggest that artists created rich productions for audiences. Yet both productions, in different ways, failed to authentically capture the realities of women’s roles in the war, although both featured female characters. By investigating the portrayal of women within these works, and considering that portrayal in the local context in Soviet Ukraine, this study highlights the broader challenges of representing women’s experiences in war and offers a critical framework for analyzing theatrical representations in ongoing conflicts, including the current Russian-Ukrainian war. |
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