DYSKURS POSTKOLONIALNY W POWIEŚCI DZIECI WOŁGI GUZEL JACHINY
POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE IN GUZEL YAKHINA’S NOVEL AVOLGA TALE

Summary/Abstract: In this article, Paulina Wójcikowska-Wantuch analyzes the presence of postcolo-nial discourse in AVolga Tale, a novel by Guzel Yakhina, a Russian author of Tatar origin, whose fiction is concerned with themes of history and identity. Yakhina focuses on the tragic events of the Soviet period shown from the perspective of a single person and her fictions represent the post-memory trend in literature. She stresses the cultural and linguistic distinctness of the German minority, which ul-timately fell victim to Stalin’s imperialistic policy. Yakhina exposes the destructive mechanisms of the imperial power, but refrains from unambiguous assessments of historical reality. She focuses on the problem of responsibility for one’s neighbors, emphasizing the importance of the characters’ individual choices. In the light of the ethical issues raised in the novel, the problem of national identity is of second-ary importance. In connection with the above, AVolga Tale and also other novels by Yakhina elude any unambiguous assignment to postcolonial literature.

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