Repression in the Literature of Turkic World

Abstract

During the reign of Stalin tyranny millions of people have been detained on charges of anti-government propaganda in the literature, and hundreds of thousands of people have been shot or sent to work camps immediately before World War II. The effect of the fear created by the state lasted for decades, and people lived in fear of being arrested or shot at any moment. Even after many years of fear, it has been a source of literature, and the practices of the period have been written in many different ways. They are not only literary works but also historical documents. However, various scientific studies have been carried out in order to reveal the realities of time. In this article, the poems of Bahtiyar Vahabzade, which are mentioned in Turkish world literature as prose-type texts, are discussed with the memories and evaluations compiled from "Karanlıkta Fısıldaşanlar Stalin Rusyasında Özel Yaşam" of Orlando Figes. In addition, "Gulag Takım Adaları" of Aleksander Soljenitsin, Vasili Grossman's "Her Şey Geçip Gider", "Gün Ortasında Karanlık" of Arthur Koestler, Svetlana Alekseviç's "Kadın Yok Savaşın Yüzünde" and Eugenia Ginzburg's "Anafora Doğru ve Anaforun İçinde" books were included in the study. In this way, the autobiographical stories of those who were witnesses of the period, who miraculously survived from the deadly conditions revealed by Repressiya, reflected in the literature of these stories and scientific sources, were evaluated together.