“Living the stories of your great-grandmother”: Making sense of Russia’s war in Ukraine through Polish intergenerational family storytelling

ABSTRACT

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Polish people were tasked with making sense of war in close proximity while supporting millions of Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Poland. In times of distress, such as war and refugee crises, intergenerational storytelling helps people make sense of their experience. Interviews with 28 Polish adults during the first five months of the war revealed that intergenerational family storytelling prompted them to: cope with war, connect with Ukraine, and help others. These narrative functions were informed by various levels of culture, as proposed by ecological systems theorizing. Findings expand communication narrative sense-making theory by accounting for sociohistorical influences in intergenerational family storytelling and highlighting how family storytelling can motivate action during crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Family storytelling
• ecological systems
• Polish families

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program and the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies for their support of this project. Thank you to our participants for sharing their profound and cherished family stories.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the last century, Poland endured significant destruction due to war. During World War II (WWII), Poland faced invasion from both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, leading to significant devastation and loss of life. About 17% of the Polish population was displaced or died during the war and the capitol city, Warsaw, was nearly entirely destroyed (Easton, 2019). The Soviets then established the Polish People’s Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL), an oppressive communist regime that was characterized by political purges, suppression of dissent, and censorship of media and culture, which lasted until 1989.

2 The interviewers did not collect demographics on sexual orientation for privacy purposes, since LGTBQ+ status is a sensitive topic in Poland. As of 2023, same-sex marriage is not legally recognized.

3 The Katyn massacre was “a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union … in April and May 1940” (Katyn Massacre, 2023).

4 The Chernobyl disaster was an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Northern Ukraine in April 1986.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Polish-American Fulbright Commission.