The war diary, the most prominent genre at the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, reconfigures typical genre features, such as the focus on the self and the dynamic between the speaker and the addressee. It retains the dedication to contemporaneity and the chronological linearity of the narrative, which is presented as artless, private, and authentic, but prioritizes authenticity over other expectations. I examine the ways diarists position themselves as voices of the national collective, rely on the assumption of truthfulness, and construct the temporality of crisis and trauma. This study contributes to the development of a theoretical framework for analyzing writings that emerge from crisis and impact our understanding of the workings of genres, trauma, and narrative in the digital age.
Lyudmila Parts is Professor of Russian in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University (Montreal). She is the author of In Search of the True Russia. The Provinces in Contemporary Nationalist Discourse (2018); The Chekhovian Intertext: Dialogue with a Classic” (2008), and the editor of Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century (with Ingrid Kleespies, 2021) and The Russian 20th Century Short Story: A Critical Companion (2009). She has published articles on post-Soviet culture, genre theory, the short story, travelogue, and cultural representations of nationalism.