The Corporeality of Mourning in Post-Soviet Women's Prose

Initiated in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, "Women in Black" [Zhenshchiny v Chernom] is a public movement that involves women dressing in black, strategically placing plaques and crosses across Russia to honour Ukrainian victims. This public expression of grief aims to disrupt the official narrative that the war in Ukraine is non-existent, a mere 'special

operation' (Merkur'eva 2022). Thus, these acts of mourning play a vital role in challenging the Russian state, its attempts to downplay its transgressions, by bringing victims and their stories to the forefront. My PhD project argues that contemporary Russian women's writing, in a similar way, uses mourning to disrupt Russia's official narratives about the Soviet past, and

that formal and generic experimentation in these texts articulate a set of counternarratives about the past and challenge the official culture of commemoration.