Authors

Discussion

Trauma has come to be a pervasive concept to make sense of individual and societal experiences, as much in the Western world, as in post-Soviet Russia. Yet, the meaning attributed to trauma and the role of victimhood within, differs significantly In Russia, trauma discourse has become a key tool for assigning blame, particularly regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union. To render this classification politically useful, a large portion of society must identify as victims and agree on a common perpetrator. Based on biographical interviews with female shuttle traders (chelnoki), who lost or left their professions during the crises of the 1990s, I challenge this top-down portrayal of a traumatized society. These narratives provide insights into the continuities and ruptures in Russian social structures and highlight the importance of shame (styd) and pride (gordost’) in understanding social change. The negotiation of these emotions is influenced by the traders’ pre-1991 social status and affected their post-1991 pathways. Analyzing the narratives against the two main conceptualizations of trauma in the Russian context, “cultural trauma” and “trauma society”, I argue that the traumatogenic symptoms listed in those grand frameworks, do not necessarily reflect individual experiences or the post-factum processes of sense-making. My aim is to show that the sociological imposition of a victim and perpetrator narrative falls short when taking a closer look at subjective experiences and the narrations thereof. Instead, my analysis shows that shuttle traders reject the victim role by emphasising their active contribution to providing for their families, and the social reproduction of the country more broadly.