In Tenir sa langue (L'Olivier, 2022), her first novel awarded the Femina prize for high school students, Polina Panassenko recounted the fight of a young woman to find her first name, made French by the administration to "facilitate integration". His new novel, published on August 21 by Editions de l'Olivier, is also the story of a quest, that of the great-great-granddaughter of a man deported to the gulag who, like tens of thousands of others, never returned. À voix aloud appears in several selections for prize lists, including that of the Le Monde literary prize.
A 20-year-old young woman of Russian origin dreams of becoming an actress. She grew up in France between her father, a widower, and Nicole, a neighbor, a communist activist and Gauloises smoker who knew how to take over. To make her dream come true, the young girl chose the National Theater School in Moscow. She passed the tests and settled in Moscow, with her grandfather. In his school, the group rehearses Chekhov's Three Sisters, with methods from another age where the authoritarian teachers are mentors whom the students "adore" like icons.
Outside, demonstrations are being organized after the re-election of Vladimir Putin. At home, the young woman shares moments with her cousin Kostia, who does not live far away, and her daily life with her grandfather, a delicate being whose certain silences intrigue her.
From a few scraps dropped here and there by the old man who shows an unhealthy discretion, the young woman launches into a family investigation which will lead her in the footsteps of her grandfather's grandfather, who never returned from the gulag. "On a map, I looked for Magadan, Khabarovsk, Izvestkovy. I linked them together. I drew a line from Moscow. From this line, the feeling that a dead person is waiting somewhere for me to come and get him has never left me," she says.
“Victim of political repression”
With this new novel, Polina Panassenko probes the past, to better grasp the present, with the silences of a population still under the influence of a history marked by terror. “Fear is passed down from generation to generation,” confirms the heroine. To pick up the pieces of a story riddled with holes, the young woman begins an adventure strewn with impasses and resistance, from the archives of Moscow to the confines of eastern Russia. She follows in the footsteps of her ancestor, Rebizov born in 1872, arrested and deported in September 1937, died on December 5, 1938, because a Kulak (peasant), considered for this reason alone as an enemy of the people by the Stalinist regime.
With a lively and limpid pen, where there is a mixture of melancholy and irony, Polina Panassenko is once again interested in words, and names, in what they carry, and in what they hide. This time, the novelist focuses on those who are not spoken in a family marked by tragedy. A silence here sealed by the history of a country. The first part of the book, devoted to the young woman's stay at the Moscow theater school, sheds light on the roots in Russia of a patriarchal, authoritarian culture, with all-powerful tutelary figures, including in a cultural institution that we could hope to be emancipated.
From her journey, the heroine brings back words to her grandfather, which she can finally pronounce out loud: "victim of political repression", "rehabilitation". Not much more, but that's it. She has nothing to add about the place where he was murdered, "because today, where there was this camp, there is nothing", nor about his executioners, because since his death, "no one has had to answer for the arrest and death of Ivan Evdokimovitch". At most, she can promise him that a plaque with his grandfather's name and his story will be placed on "his last address" where he still lives. But “the commemorative plaque must not mention death”, the association in charge of the process announced in 2024. "This memory is not welcome. The Memorial association has been dissolved. The Gulag museum has been closed."
