Memoria traumatică în cazul deportărilor din RSS Moldovenească sau cum am ajuns să validăm memorii

This article explores the deportations from the Moldavian SSR (1940-1941 and 1944-1953) during Joseph Stalin’s rule. These policies were part of a program to eliminate social groups considered dangerous, which was implemented between 1920 and 1959. A specific feature of the deportations from the Moldavian SSR was the inability of deportees to publicly share their experiences of repression. Because of this taboo, scientific studies on deportations were possible only after the 1990s. Currently there are complex representations of these events: scientific, civic, and cultural accounts marked by individual and collective remembrance that reveal both resistance and ambivalence. The article addresses, from psychoanalytic and psychosocial perspectives, the impact of this official silence upon the deportees from the Moldavian SSR. It analyzes the patterns of communication at family and community level on the subject of deportations as well as the forms and meanings of silence. At the same time, theoretical and empirical arguments are used to clarify individual and community resistance to the validation of the memory of deportees from the Moldavian SSR.