Letters as a New Approach to History: A Case Study of an Estonian Poet Ilmi Kolla (1933–1954)

Abstract

Private letters are valuable historical sources but they also pose complicated ethical questions for the researcher: the more close to the present day they are, the more problematic they may appear. In this paper I will deal with the question of doing research on letters in a specific—Stalinist—context and with ethical issues related to such research, taking as my case study the correspondence of the Estonian poet Ilmi Kolla (1933–1954). She was very talented but died young, as a result of tuberculosis. She left behind numerous unpublished poems and letters to her mother and friends. In addition to their literary value, her manuscripts and correspondence disclose the hidden face of Stalinism and the way it manipulated people. The letters also reveal the intimate aspects of Ilmi Kolla's private life, e.g. about her femininity and sexuality, which have been silenced to this date.

By focusing on Ilmi Kolla, I will discuss the use of private letters as a new way to write history. Particular attention will be paid to ethical problems involved in dealing with sensitive letter material. I will explore different options in using personal documents by asking what private letters reveal about the personal history of Ilmi Kolla and about the Stalinist era in Estonia.

Letters will provide a more multilayered idea of the Stalinist era, in comparison with the habitually black‐and‐white image of totalitarian oppression and victimization. Private letters may elucidate the role of an individual in the processes of history, which may vary depending on the status and social position of the person, as the case of Ilmi Kolla demonstrates. Although her life was overshadowed by Stalinist cultural politics, she also made use of some of its benefits. Research based on letters may thus illuminate the hidden functioning mechanisms of the Soviet society.

Notes

1. I would like to thank the anonymous referees and editor Kaisa Vehkalahti for their helpful comments on my article.

2. Ilmi Kolla in a letter to Lehti Metsaalt from Tallinn Kivimäe Lung Clinic, 10 October 1954. EKLA f 220, m 1:4.

3. There were rules in Soviet sanatoria which prohibited not only the use of alcohol, but also many other activities. The rules even regulated the relations between male and female patients—they had to maintain propriety in all their interactions (Käsper and Salm 2005: 162). Those patients who did not follow the rules were expelled from the sanatorium.

4. The “creative visit” was devised as a method for creative people to become acquainted with Soviet working life. Writers and young writers‐to‐be who belonged to the Writers' Union were sent to factories, collective farms, etc., to inform them of the life of the Soviet workers which they were to write about on their return.

5. For example, in a letter (24.05.1949) to Ilmi Kolla, the editor of the magazine Stalinist Youth suggested that Ilmi Kolla should write poems for the anniversary of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. Thus, the prescribed themes for poems were: the victories of Soviet youth in creating a communist society, in collective farms, in schools, in factories; the power of the Soviet system in all fields of activities; the role of the Bolshevik party in leading people toward communism, etc. Issuing such instructions was an ordinary journalistic practice in Stalinist years.

6. About the history and cultural practice of letter‐writing see Barton and Hall 2000; Gilroy and Verhoeven 2000; Earle 1999.

7. I have dealt more thoroughly with the representations of illness in Ilmi Kolla's letters and poems in an earlier article; see Annuk 2004.