PERCEPTIONS OF CHILDHOOD AND SOCIETY IN THE WORK "GIRLS" BY LIUDMILA ULITSKAYA

Abstract

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world's attention turned to the eastern territory of the planet, bringing forth a series of political, economic, social, and cultural questions surrounding the two countries. Alongside this event, the significant and pervasive presence of Russian Language, Literature, and Culture through artistic texts and academic writings sparked a great interest in Slavic studies in Brazil. Thus, this present work aims to investigate the perceptions of childhood and society present in the work "Girls" by Liudmila Ulitskaia (translated by Irineu Perpétuo and published by Editora 34 in 2021). Reflections on childhood and its sociocultural relationships provide a stage for discussions in both the field of pedagogical studies and literary studies. Therefore, we believe that this issue is expressed in Russian Literature due to the fact that the subject matter presents a diversity of historical, cultural, and social implications. As a methodological assumption, we will seek to analyze through excerpts from the work how this relationship between childhood and society is manifested through the everyday narratives lived in 1950s Russia as described by Ulitskaia. To substantiate our study, we base our work on the writings of scholars such as Abramowicz (2003/2011), Ariès (2012), Belloni (2009), Corsino (2005), Hora (2021), Kramer (2003), Muller (2023), Nascimento (2011), Pinto (1997), Sarmento (2007), Ulitskaia (2021), Vygotsky (2021), among others. Thus, we understand that presenting the sense of childhood perception from the perspective of literature contributes to the understanding of the sociocultural processes of Russia, considering that in the case of Ulitskaia's work, the narrated facts often constitute traces of the author's metamemory.