‘Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten’: Cultural sustainability in ruptured landscapes in Estonia

ABSTRACT

The author considers landscape heritage from a cultural sustainability perspective in order to develop an understanding of genealogy, cultural politics, and practices of the World War II heritage construction in the Soviet Union. The primary research question was: What were the mechanisms of heritage construction from a mnemohistoric point of view, as conceptualised by Jan Assmann? With this in mind, a detailed investigation analysis of Soviet World War II memorials in Estonia was performed, taking into account examples of Soviet propaganda texts, visual representations, and war commemoration practices, as well as site visits to commemoration places. The analysis traces social change as landscapes of rupture. One outcome considered is cultural sustainability as a strategy for social cohesion in situations in which a landscape heritage discourse changes. The author concludes that multiethnic societies may see new opportunities to find common values in forgotten landscape heritage.

EDITORS:

• Hannes Palang, Kerstin Potthoff, Catriona Turner

KEYWORDS:

• cultural sustainability
• heritage
• landscape
• rupture

Acknowledgements

The research for and preparation of this paper was supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research’s target-financed project IUT3-2, Kultuurimuutused: tähendusloome teoreetilised väljad ja mehhanismid [Culturescapes in transformation: towards an integrated theory of meaning making].

Notes

1. A widely used metaphor for World War II (e.g. Rjabov 1985, 5), and the title of a popular Soviet time patriotic song Священная война (‘The Sacred War’, also widely known as the ‘Great Patriotic War’).

2. Nikita Krushchev was a Soviet Communist Party leader who, during the early 1950s to early 1960s, initiated economic reforms, allowed cultural contacts with some foreign states, and approved some freedom in the media in the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin’s death.

3. All quotations from no-English sources have been translated by the author (i.e. Helen Sooväli-Sepping) and by Saskia Lillepuu.

4. The status of ‘hero city’ was awarded to the 13 Soviet cities that had suffered most during the attacks by German troops in World War II.