Introduction

Soviet society in the 20th century experienced considerable social upheavals caused by rapid changes, which embraced different fields of social life and influenced the main values, beliefs, and rules of society. These upheavals had negative consequences. Such upheavals can be called traumatizing events, according to the terminology used by Piotr Sztompka (Sztompka 2005, 475). For a long time, many of these events, including their aspects and effects on society, were not analyzed by researchers, resulting in collective trauma not being reflected. This has harmed the collective identity of the nation. Therefore, the chapter aims to include in the scope of the study the “everyday” layer of routine life, forced labor, chronic hunger, and poverty, as well as crowded living conditions, in order to identify perceptions of the Second World War and its consequences in the postwar period. Because the experience of war is embodied in the historical memory of generations, it determines our attitude toward the future and our destiny. What is more, it helps us to understand who we are, where we are from, and where we are going (Alexander 2004, 10).

The concept of “trauma”, which is a medical concept, is widely used in new research. Traumatic experiences are also being analyzed in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history, and linguistics, and as a result a separate discipline, Trauma Studies, has been formed. As diverse as injuries can be, so unique can be the methods of working with them, approaches to their understanding and overcoming.