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BALTIC POSTCOLONIALISM On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics 6 Editor Leonidas Donskis, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, and Director of the Political Science and Diplomacy School at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania Editorial and Advisory Board Timo Airaksinen, University of Helsinki, Finland Egidijus Aleksandravicius, Lithuanian Emigration Institute; Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania Endre Bojtar, Central European University; Budapest, Hungary Kristian Gerner, University of Uppsala, Sweden John Hiden, University of Glasgow, UK Mikko Lagerspetz, Estonian Institute of Humanities, Estonia Andreas Lawaty, Nordost-Institut; Lüneburg, Germany Olli Loukola, University of Helsinki, Finland Alvydas Nikzentaitis, Lithuanian History Institute, Lithuania Rein Raud, University of Helsinki, Finland, and Estonian Institute of Humanities, Estonia Alfred Erich Senn, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania David Smith, University of Glasgow, UK Saulius Suziedelis, Millersville University, USA Joachim Tauber, Nordost-Institut; Lüneburg, Germany Tomas Venclova, Yale University, USA BALTIC POSTCOLONIALISM Edited by Violeta Kelertas Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006 ©Cover illustration: Stasys Eidrigevicius; Triangel of silence, 1991, pastel - pastel, ink, 420 x 295 mm The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1959-X ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006 Printed in the Netherlands TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Violeta Kelertas, Introduction: Baltic Postcolonialism 1 and its Critics Notes 9 David Chioni Moore, Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Towards a Global Postcolonial Critique 11 Notes 31 Karl E. Jirgens, Fusions of Discourse: Postcolonial/Postmodern Horizons in Baltic Culture 45 Notes 75 Vytautas Rubavičius, A Soviet Experience of Our Own: Comprehension and the Surrounding Silence 83 Notes 101 Piret Peiker, Postcolonial Change: Power, Peru and Estonian Literature 105 Notes 130 Andrejs Veisbergs, Nazi and Soviet Dysphemism and Euphemism in Latvian 139 Notes 160 Kārlis Račevskis, Toward a Postcolonial Perspective on the Baltic States 165 Notes 182 Jūra Avižienis, Learning to Curse in Russian: Mimicry in Siberian Exile 187 Notes 198 Maire Jaanus, Estonia’s Time and Monumental Time 203 Notes 227 Arūnas Sverdiolas, The Sieve and the Honeycomb: Features of Contemporary Lithuanian Cultural Time and Space 233 Notes 250 vi Baltic Postcolonialism Violeta Kelertas, Perceptions of the Self and the Other in Lithuanian Postcolonial Fiction 251 Notes 267 Tiina Kirss, Viivi Luik’s The Beauty of History:Aestheticized Violence and the Postcolonial in the Contemporary Estonian Novel 271 Notes 288 Dalia Cidzikaitė, Searching for National Allegories in Lithuanian Prose: Saulius Tomas Kondrotas’s “The Slow Birth of Nation” 291 Notes 305 Maire Jaanus, Estonia and Pain: Jaan Kross’s The Czar’s Madman 309 Notes 327 Inta Ezergailis,Postcolonial Subjectivity in Latvia: Some Signs in Literature 331 Notes 356 Karl E. Jirgens, Labyrinths of Meaning in Aleksandrs Pelēcis’ Siberia Book and Agate Nesaule’s WomaninAmber: A Postmodern/Postcolonial Reading 359 Notes 383 Tiina Kirss, Interstitial Histories: Ene Mihkelson’s Labor of Naming 387 Notes 405 Almantas Samalavičius, Lithuanian Prose and Decolonization: Rediscovery of the Body 409 Notes 427 Thomas Salumets, Conflicted Consciousness: Jaan Kaplinski and the Legacy of Intra-European Postcolonialism in Estonia 429 Notes 445 Violeta Kelertas, Foot-Loose and Fancy-Free: The Postcolonial Lithuanian Encounters Europe 451 Notes 459 Authors 461 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deep-felt thanks for help with the editing of these articles and preparation of the manuscript for publication go to Elizabeth Novickas, Dalia Cidzikaitė, and Aida Novickas Lerner. Many pleasurable hours were spent together discussing various pertinent questions as well as chasing down obscure references and points of grammar and punctuation. This group work provided much needed encouragement and support in the isolation of writing, but above all it improved the quality of the various texts. Thanks to Dzidra Rodins for deciphering some fine points of the Latvian language. Karl E. Jirgens was supportive throughout and provided balance, valuable insights, quite a bit of red ink and some, mostly black, humor. Thanks also to Darius Furmonavičius for comments and improvements on the Introduction. This page intentionally left blank Baltic Postcolonialism and its Critics Violeta Kelertas This book on Baltic postcolonialism features the groundbreaking effort of some 15 scholars. Yet, it is still unusual to see or hear the term “postcolonial” applied to the Baltic States. Thus, the title of this introduction plays on the ambiguity inherent in the word “critics.” Are such literary and cultural critics using postcolonial methodologies or are they criticizing the use of the concept itself when applied to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? I have both notions of criticism in mind precisely because applying colonialism and postcolonialism as epithets is still a matter of debate to some. Resistance to the application of these terms overlooks the facts that Russia and/or the Soviet Union were colonial empires—that Russia was a colonizer and that the Soviet Union was one as well. Soviet and post-Soviet self-descriptions have contended that both the U.S.S.R. and, later, Russia served as a liberator of workers of the world and a facilitator of emergence from other “real” colonial empires. Technically, for Marxist (later Marxist-Leninist) propaganda purposes, 20th century Russia recognizes only old “capitalist” empires like England, Germany, Spain, France, Holland, and Portugal as colonizers. It fails to acknowledge its own hegemonic, self-serving interests and actions. Yet, the U.S.S.R. was decidedly expansionist. It should be noted that since the Cold War ended, criticism of the former U.S.S.R. has been deflected, partly due to Russia’s tentative new alliances with the U.S.A. There are new evils in the world to contend with, including terrorism. Nonetheless, we should not forget the impact and importance of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which divided Europe into zones of influence, nor should we obliterate the consequences of the 1945 Yalta conference at which one half of Europe was granted to Joseph Stalin. Russia never acknowledged its goal of communist world domination. Instead, when speaking of foreign diplomacy it employed rhetorical terms to speak of the “brotherhood of nations;” among other euphemisms, as Andrejs Veisbergs catalogues in his article in this collection. The self-perceptions of the former U.S.S.R. and reluctance over the application of the terms “colonial” and “post-colonial” to Baltic and other post-Soviet nations raisesomeconcerns. For these reasons almost all the authors published here feel compelled to begin their analyses with discussions of the validity of postcolonial criticism applied to what some Washington bureaucrats like to call “the successor states of the former Soviet Union.” At the risk of some repetition, these discussions have all been included, because each has a different slant and argues his or her case with unique supporting 2 Violeta Kelertas materials. It is our common hope that this book will demonstrate the assured validity of this application and, will stimulate further discussion: not on whether postcolonialism fits the Baltic case, but how it applies in the wider context of post-Soviet nations. As some researchers have pointed out,1 the term “totalitarianism” in regard to the Soviet Union was much in favor in the 1950s and 1960s at the beginning of the cold war, especially after the publication of books by Zbigniew Brzezinski, among others. The Baltic émigré communities were composed of refugees who fled their homelands before the advancing Soviet army in 1944. These escapees fully expected to return to their homes soon after the war, but with the hostile conditions of annexation and occupation found that return was impossible. And so, they found themselves to be in what they interpreted as a prolonged exile. Yet, with time, these escapees realized that in reality no one had “exiled” them and instead, the term “political refugees” came into use. Perhaps these labels have their uses in military and political contexts. Most objectionable, however, in my estimation is the term “totalitarianism” as it has been applied to the conditions of annexation and occupation. Realizing that it has a noble history to which Hannah Arendt, for one, contributed, I feel that “totalitarianism” is a loaded term for the independence-minded Balts, who did have their own democratic governments before the Second World War and wished to reinstate them. The terror imposed on the Balts by the Soviets was unusually inhumane. Hence, “totalitarianism” obscures the severity of the occupation and undercuts the Balts’ drive for freedom and democracy. As a term, “totalitarianism” should apply only if one accepts that a regime turned authoritarian is the regime of one’s own state. The application of “totalitarianism” in reference to the Baltic has been misapplied to suggest that one accepts the terms and conditions of the occupying nation in spite of the forceful annexation. The label seems to imply that those occupied are merely dissatisfied with the form of government.