Grá Máthar

Publication Instance Details #2180

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	No	No	No	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	War Indigenous Rights (incl. culture & language) State Violence
War / Genocide Referenced	War: Second World War
Languages	Irish
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	The poem is based on true events surrounding the suicide of the some of the Cossack peoples, who were unwilling to be subsumed into Stalinist Russia after WW2. The poem is brutal in its descriptions of the suicide of a mother and her killing of her own children, rather than being part of Stalinist Russia. The Bolshevik regime had seen the process of Decossackization, attempting to suppress the culture of the Cossack people. The incident described in this poem happened when Cossacks, many of whom had fought for the Axis powers during World War II, were 'handed back' to Russia at the Yalta Conference. Many chose to die rather than submit.