SUMMARY:

By analyzing the activity of the Altai Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, the article explores how people deal with the political trauma caused by the Chechen and Afghan wars in a situation of public ambiguity about the policies that led to these casualties. The author examines why the Committee’s response to the losses produced by state-organized violence is framed almost exclusively in terms of family relations, biographical facts, and personalized emotional events. In this case, the domestication and materialization of loss function first of all as a means of self-organization, capable of shaping otherwise amorphous groups. The lack of civic discourse, the article suggests, is often mitigated by powerful and emotionally charged rituals of remembrance and commemoration.