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Complete Dissertation VU Research Portal Guardians of living history: The persistence of the past in post-Soviet Estonia Melchior, I.L.J. 2015 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Melchior, I. L. J. (2015). Guardians of living history: The persistence of the past in post-Soviet Estonia. http://www.ubvu.vu.nl/dissertations/temp/temp48.pdf?CFID=15285&CFTOKEN=6cfabc7c78b826e1-1C1B66E8- D602-9087-D30DA105767AA8EE General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 Guardians of living history: The persistence of the past in post-Soviet Estonia Cover: designed by Jeroen Moes Cover photographs: made by Inge Melchior and Jeroen Moes. Main cover photograph: Juss waters the land of his greatgrandfather, 2010. Printed by: CPI – Koninklijke Wöhrmann © Inge Melchior 2015 All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without a prior written permission of the author. VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT Guardians of living history: The persistence of the past in post-Soviet Estonia ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. F.A. van der Duyn Schouten, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen op maandag 19 oktober 2015 om 11.45 uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Inge Leonarda Johanna Melchior geboren te Maastricht promotor: prof.dr. P. Nyíri copromotoren: dr. F. Colombijn dr. D.G. Hondius reading committee: prof.dr. Nanci D. Adler dr. Ene Kõresaar dr. Eva Kovacs prof.dr. Rob van der Laarse prof.dr. Herman Roodenburg prof.dr. James V. Wertsch For Jeroen, my companion in life CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 15 PREFACE 19 INTRODUCTION: INSECURITY, STORYTELLING AND ESTONIA’S RECENT PAST 21 Setting the scene 25 The War of Monuments and its aftermath 27 Positioning this research: An anthropology of post-Soviet remembering 34 Estonia as part of the post-Socialist world 36 The research setting 39 Getting acquainted with my informants 40 Gathering the data: research methods and decisions 44 Anthropological reflection 46 Surveys 48 Structure of the thesis 49 CHAPTER 1: BORN FROM THE LAND: PRESERVING ROOTS AND CULTURAL TRADITIONS 51 Belonging, roots and the national home 52 The historical ties of a people, its land and folklore 56 Before 1860: ‘People of the land’ – maarahvas, class identification 56 1860 – 1918: From maarahvas to an ethnic group 58 1918 – 1939: ‘Estonian time’, from an ethnic group to a nation-state 61 1939 – 1991: WWII and ‘Russian time’, the loss of land 64 1987 – early 1990s: the Singing Revolution and the ‘natural order’ 66 Romanticising home 70 Natural ties to the family’s land 72 To care about place 75 Truly Estonian 77 Ethnicised times 80 Concluding remarks 82 CHAPTER 2: A COLLECTIVE STORY OF SOVIET REPRESSION 83 From individual to collective stories 84 Historical antecedents to the Soviet repressions of the 1940s 88 Silence, safe spaces and the representation by others 91 “Double consciousness” and silence in the Soviet era 92 The end of an era of silence 94 The wish to be voiced by one’s compatriots 97 ‘Privilege’ of the experienced? 101 Defining ‘the experienced’ 103 Concluding remarks 104 CHAPTER 3: REWRITING HISTORY: RESTORING THE SOCIAL ORDER 107 Collective stories of the past 108 History writing 110 History and memory politics 111 Cultural productions of the past 113 1860s–1930s: The creation of a collective story of the Estonian nation 114 The National Awakening: Estophile intellectuals in the age of Romanticism 114 The foundation of the Republic of Estonia: Spreading the story through state formation 115 Post-WWII–early 1990s: Official and unofficial memory work under Soviet oppression 116 1980s: Memory work in times of dawn 119 1986-1988: The wish for autonomy in dissident and intellectual circles 119 1988-1990: Gaining legitimacy within the ‘second society’ 121 Political participation in the ‘first society’ 123 1990-1991: Discussion among the new political elite 125 The legal victory of restorationism 127 Early 1990s: Memory politics, historiography, cultural memory and family stories as one 130 The Republic of Historians 133 Late 1990s–2004: The comeback of counter-stories 137 Since 2004: Post-accession ‘democratic backsliding’ 141 Concluding remarks 144 CHAPTER 4: POSTMEMORY: THE INHERITED OBLIGATION TO SECURE THE FUTURE 147 Postmemory, solidarity and moral obligation 149 Estonia’s ‘Singing Revolution’ and ‘belated postmemory’ 152 Generation 1940-1955 153 Generation 1955-1970 154 Generation 1970s 157 Generation 1980s 160 Moral obligations in Estonian society at large 162 “The continuation of Estonia depends on every one of us” 165 Increased insecurity: “fed by fear with their mother’s milk” 170 Between moral obligations and individual freedom 173 Concluding remarks 176 CHAPTER 5: COMMITTED TO THE PAST: MEMORY ACTIVISTS IN SEARCH OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE 179 Everyday obsessions with the past 181 Three memory activists 189 Memory activism as a social movement 193 “The sword of Damocles”: contemporary insecurities 196 Localising Tartu’s memory activists 200 Roots of anti-Soviet dissidence, human rights activism and friendship 202 Becoming a Tartu memory activist 209 Friendship between generations of fighters for justice and order 214 Support for the memory activists in the wider society 215 Concluding remarks 221 CHAPTER 6: ON THE MARGINS OF HISTORY: GOOD OLD SOVIET TIMES 223 Economic development, pleasure and egalitarianism in the ESSR 225 Economic growth 226 Culture, leisure and pleasure 226 Egalitarianism and social mobility 228 Adaptation 229 ‘Normal’ Soviet life in the post-Soviet public realm 230 Cultural figures and intellectuals talking about normal Soviet life 231 The political threat of nostalgia 232 The strength of the rupture narrative 235 Positive Soviet evaluations in Estonian society at large 237 Estonians with positive Soviet stories 246 “At that time it was just normal” 247 Feeling excluded from the mnemonic community 250 Political lies, rural truths 252 Authentic memories, a better Estonian 255 Concluding remarks 260 CHAPTER 7: WWII ON THE PERIPHERY OF EUROPE: A CONTESTED CHAPTER 263 Remembering WWII 265 WWII in Soviet historiography 266 WWII in Estonian post-Soviet historiography 268 WWII remembrance as part of the European family 269 The perceived superiority of Western European memories of WWII 275 The perceived ambiguity and inferiority of Estonian WWII memories 277 Estonian families on both sides of the war 277 Ambiguous story lines 278 Lack of a clear political stance 280 Emotions of insecurity: torn between the past and the future 283 Are we fully Europeans? 284 European citizens with Estonian duties 287 Concluding remarks 290 CONCLUSION: GUARDIANS OF LIVING HISTORY 293 The vulnerability of story telling 293 A living national (hi)story 295 Guardians of the past 296 Individual and collective acts of preservation 299 The paradox of closure 301 APPENDIX 305 REFERENCES 308 SUMMARY 325 SAMENVATTING 327 KOKKUVÕTE 330 | 13 Note to the reader As a visual contribution to this thesis, I made a documentary named ‘The Smell of Freedom’ (Vabaduse Tuul) in the summer of 2012, while attending the annual reunion and commemoration of Estonian SS- veterans. In it, I have attempted to show their non-contested status in Estonian society and the historical friendship between these men. The documentary is not yet widely available, but I would like to give you – the reader of my thesis – the opportunity to watch it, as it will provide images, colour and sound to the thesis (especially to Chapter 7). Please do not distribute the link to the film without my permission. You can watch it here: http://youtu.be/gBgd2osQqIQ\ | 14 Abbreviations ECP = Estonian Communist Party = EKP = Eestimaa Kommunistlik Partei ENSV = Eesti Nõukogude Sotsialistlik Vabariik = ESSR ERSP = Eesti Rahvusliku Sõltumatuse Partei = Estonian National Independence Party (ENIP) ESSR = Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, existed from 1940 – 1941 and 1944 – 1991 EU = European Union GULAG = the acronym of Russian for ‘Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps’ KGB = Кoмитет государственной безопасности = Committee State Security MRP-AEG = the Estonian Group for the Disclosure of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Muinsuskaitseselts = (Estonian) Heritage Society NKVD = Народный комиссариат внутренних дел = Siseasjade Rahvakomissariaat = People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs Nomenklatura = People who held key positions in the former Soviet Union Rahvarinne = Popular Front (of Estonia) WWII = World War Two | 15 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those who have made this inspiring PhD journey possible. My informants, academic colleagues and friends did not only provide me with food for a theoretically sound thesis, but also taught me major life lessons along the way. Dear informants, dear interlocutors, dear Estonian friends. There are so many dear people I have met in Estonia. Although I cannot name you all here, I am sincerely thankful to all of you. Every one of you has contributed to this project and enriched my life.
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