"Présent passé, passé présent" : écriture et échos de l'histoire dans Requiem pour l'Est et La Vie d'un homme inconnu d'Andreï Makine

Abstract

The work of Andrei Makine consists of historical fractures including major events of the twentieth century and focuses on the communist period in Russian history in particular. This depicting of History revolves around characters that play the role of witnesses. The novels Requiem pour l'Est and La Vie d'un homme inconnu draw a large panorama of Russian past, tracing the fate of characters who had probably lived events such as the two World Wars, the advent of Communism with its terrors and the Decolonization wars, as well as the collapse of the Soviet bloc and so on. The message is clear: if the USSR ended in the "dustbin" and if we speak of Russia as a ghost, the people who had been part of this country and must have suffered because of it, they, in turn, must not fall into oblivion.

Keywords

• Andreï Makine
• communist Russia
• decolonization wars
• collapse of the Soviet block
• Russia
• history of Russia