The Role of the Soviet Past in Post-Soviet Memory Politics through Examples of Speeches from Estonian Presidents

Abstract

This article analyses the dynamics of memory politics in post-Soviet Estonia from the 1990s to the present day. It focuses on speeches by Estonian presidents, which are treated as a specific type of commemorative activity and studied in relation to other social memories. The analysis seeks to link the meaning conveyed in the speeches to the presidents’ personal experiences during the Soviet period. The article shows that in these speeches, the primary discourse used with regard to Soviet times was that of ‘rupture’ as well as the related discourse of ‘resistance’.

The preparation of the article was supported by the Estonian Science Foundation Grant No. 8190 and by the European Union through its European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence of Cultural Theory). I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments. I would also like to thank Ene Kõresaar for her useful comments and the Europe-Asia Studies editorial team for its work.

Notes

The preparation of the article was supported by the Estonian Science Foundation Grant No. 8190 and by the European Union through its European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence of Cultural Theory). I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments. I would also like to thank Ene Kõresaar for her useful comments and the Europe-Asia Studies editorial team for its work.

If not stated otherwise, the text of the speeches by Toomas Hendrik Ilves quoted in this article are taken from the website of the President of the Republic, available at: http://www.president.ee/et/ametitegevus/koned/index.html, accessed 14 January 2011.

²Similar memory institutes have also been created under different names in other former socialist countries, such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania. The memory institute established in Estonia in 2008 was renamed from the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, which had been active since 1998. While the abovementioned commission investigated crimes committed in Estonia during World War II, the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory strives to determine ‘the impact of Soviet rule on the human rights of the people of Estonia’ ( http://www.mnemosyne.ee/lang/en-us, accessed 14 April 2012), primarily on the basis of archival sources. There is also a continuity of staff between the two institutes. The results of its investigations have been published in a sizeable volume (Hiio et al . 2006). See also http://www.historycommission.ee/ and http://www.mnemosyne.ee/, both sites last accessed 14 April 2012.

³At this point, a thorough cross-ethnic comparison cannot be made due to the fact that the mnemonic practices of the different ethnic groups remain relatively different. As a result, there is a lack of comparable sources. Analyses of the small number of Russian-language life stories available from the 1990s have revealed that Estonian and Russian autobiographers had different views of the various periods of the twentieth century (Jaago 2004), but the number of sources is too small to determine any broader dynamics.

⁴Political scientist Tõnis Saarts, Postimees, 8 December 2012, available at: http://www.postimees.ee/?id=354098, accessed 14 April 2012.

⁵From interviews conducted with two public servants at the Office of the President of the Republic, both of whom have worked with all three presidents. Also, both of the public servants have been responsible for dealing with letters sent by members of the public. I interviewed Lea, a female public servant (born 1959), who has worked in the office since 1995; and Erki, a male public servant (born 1974), who has worked there since 1998, on 6 November 2008, in the Office of the President, Tallinn.

⁶In 2008, 72% of citizens trusted the president according to public opinion polls (the corresponding percentage in the case of the Estonian speaking population was 87%). In June 2002, 79% of the population trusted President Rüütel (see http://www.turu-uuringute.ee/, accessed 2 September 2009). In 1999, 73% of the population trusted President Meri (Kook 2000, p. 83).

⁷See also OstEuropa. Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsfragen des Ostens, 2008, 58, 6.

⁸For the interpretation of the past according to the Russian immigrant community, see Smith (2008, p. 420).

⁹On the ‘construction’ of Estonian history, see Tamm (2008).

¹⁰The Russian sociologist Oleg Kharkhordin describes the 1960s–1980s as the period of ‘mature Soviet society’ (Kharkhordin 1999, p. 279). According to Kharkhordin, during this time many alternative, more or less autonomous, spheres of life sprouted beneath the monolithic surface. On the one hand, official terminology took root in people’s cognition of life, while on the other hand, there developed spaces of discourse that were inconceivable in the institutional sphere (1999, p. 280).

¹¹23 June is a date when the midsummer festival of the folk calendar and the official public holiday coincide. In recent years, Victory Day has also gradually garnered more attention in the field of memory politics. The importance of 20 August is also increasing, whereas during the 1990s the holiday was disregarded from the standpoint of commemoration activities. The institution of the president first celebrated 20 August during Rüütel’s presidency and Ilves has continued this tradition.

¹²During 2004–2009, the president’s Independence Day speech has been watched by an average of 228,000 viewers, constituting approximately 18% of the entire population and 25% of the ethnic Estonian part of the population (TNS EMOR, available at: http://www.emor.ee/, accessed 16 October 2009).

¹³Official website of Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the current president, available at: http://www.president.ee/et/; official website of President Arnold Rüütel, available at: http://vp2001-2006.vpk.ee/et/; official website of President Lennart Meri, available at: http://vp1992-2001.vpk.ee/, all sites accessed 14 April 2012.

¹⁴Bakhtin’s concept of dialogicality has also been used, for example, by James Wertsch in his research on remembering (2002).

¹⁵The continuity is especially clear in the case of Meri and Ilves. After Meri left office, most of the staff changed, but according to some officials, Lennart Meri asked the public servants of the Office of the President not to leave in order to ensure a degree of continuity (personal communication with male public servant, August 2009, Tallinn).

¹⁶Several examples of Lennart Meri’s speech-writing process and his tendency to change the original texts have been provided in memoirs as well in as popular literature on Meri (Vahter & Erelt 1999; Vahter 2009).

¹⁷Although Jeffrey Olick’s research does not focus specifically on the attitude expressed in German presidents’ speeches towards World War II and the presidents’ life histories, we can see a link between the participation/non-participation of a president in World War II and his attitude towards Germany’s Nazi past and towards World War II as defeat/liberation. The life histories of German presidents are available at: http://www.bundespraesident.de/, accessed 14 April 2012.

¹⁸Examples of a similar view of their homeland being held by people living in exile, especially second generation emigrants, can be found among Karelians (Fingerroos 2006) as well as Ingrians (Reinvelt 2002) and Latvians (Skultans 1998).

¹⁹The occupation was addressed in 20 speeches in 1994 and in 23 speeches in 1995. In 2000 the issue was addressed in 27 speeches and in 25 speeches in 2001.

²⁰The creation of practices and strategies for coping with the system is also spoken of in the autobiographical narratives collected during the 1990s. Thus, Meri employs the same discourse that appears in the life stories.

²²However, in a speech given a few months later at the opening of a permanent exhibition at the Estonian National Museum, Meri advises the Estonian people to abandon the myth of ’700 years of slavery’. Meri also becomes one of the people who returned the Baltic German legacy to the Estonian cultural memory (Meri 2005, p. 390).

²¹The image of ‘700 years of darkness of slavery’ (Undusk 1997) has been used since the second half of the nineteenth century to characterise the position of Estonians in their own land ever since the thirteenth century and to emphasise the contrast between Estonians and Baltic Germans. See also Undusk (1997) and Tamm (2008).

²³Male, born 1925, cited in Kõresaar (2005b, p. 160); for a more in-depth treatment of the discourse of ‘the prolonged rupture’ in relation to remembering the Soviet period in the Estonian life-writing tradition, see Kõresaar (2005b, pp. 153–96).

²⁴Speech of 24 February 1994, see Meri (2005, pp. 377–78).

²⁵Literary scholar Eneken Laanes finds that the narrative of betrayal in the works of Kross is connected to the traumatic memory of victimhood. She writes, ’The Western world is blamed not only due to the author’s disappointment in history not taking the course the people had hoped for, but also due to the traumatic memory of victimhood which does not want to show its real face … . It is psychologically difficult to remember experiences of humiliation and loss of dignity. Instead, we are tempted to reshape the memories in ways that would allow us to reassert our control over the situation, to restore our ability to act and our sense of dignity. I believe that through this accusation, Sirkel and Paerand [characters in Kross’ Treading Air] are indirectly seeking the recognition of their suffering’ (Laanes 2009, p. 78).

²⁶See also in this context Özyürek (2006). Some researchers in the field of cultural studies differentiate between restorative and reflexive nostalgia (Boym 2001; Wilson 2005). The former is defined as nostalgia that recalls memories of a patriotic past and shapes a future based on those memories. This type of nostalgia is used to ideologise and mystify the past on a national and/or social level (legitimising current projects through past examples). Reflexive nostalgia, on the other hand, is a more general longing for a past time. For more on nostalgia in the life stories of Estonians, see Kõresaar (2008). For information on the Soviet nostalgia of younger generations in Estonia, see Grünberg (2009).

²⁷For information on the importance of legal restorationism in creating the identity of the state in Estonian politics, see Pettai (2007). For information on the generation of the 1920s as the carrier of this identity, see Kõresaar (2005b, ch. 2).

²⁸‘The attitude that the work experience and skills acquired under the Soviet system are useless is a subject often contested by personal memories, i.e. life stories written during the same time or somewhat later’ (Kõresaar 2004b).

²⁹Russian times—a colloquial name for the Soviet period. Life stories mention the ‘Russian government’, rather than the Soviet government. In terms of the longer tradition, the Russian times also include the period of the Russian Empire. Sources indicate that President Meri always preferred to use the phrase ‘Russian times’ in private conversations (interview with male public servant in the Office of the President, Tallinn, 6 November 2008). Since the turn of the twenty-first century, an untranslatable slang term nõuka (instead of the official ‘nõukogude’/Soviet) has been used for phenomena associated with the Soviet past. The slang term has a nostalgic connotation and is used primarily by the younger generations.

³⁰It is symbolic that the cornflower is Estonia’s official national flower. This means that the broken cornflower can be seen as a symbol of the nation’s interrupted development.

³¹In 1997, Estonia had received an invitation to attend accession talks with the EU. In 1999, Estonia’s relationship with NATO developed further after its invitation to join MAP (Membership Action Plan). Dealing with past crimes and the country’s past under the Nazi regime was considered a moral prerequisite for becoming a member of these organisations. This process was actively engaged in by the staff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center as well as the US Ambassador to Estonia (see the persuasive article by ambassador Joseph de Thomas published in Eesti Päevaleht on 28 May 2002). For more on the issue of the Holocaust in Estonia see Weiss-Wendt (2008).

³²For more on the ‘introduction’ of the subject of the Holocaust to Estonia, see Brüggemann (2006, pp. 40–45) and Wulf (2007, pp. 227–31).

³³The President of the Republic Election Act adopted in 1996 stipulates that if no candidate receives two-thirds of the votes in the Riigikogu, an electoral body shall be convened for the election of the president. The electoral body is comprised of members of the Riigikogu and representatives of local governments.

³⁴On 20–21 April 2001, 26 social scientists came out with an appeal to the Estonian public, entitled Two Estonias. Some tried to marginalise the document and to depict the social scientists as being nostalgic about the Soviet period (Mutt 2001). Others simply interpreted the appeal as an attempt by the social scientists to draw attention to their cause and to gain more funding (Lauristin 2001).

³⁵During the discussion that followed, archival documents were produced proving that Rüütel had become a member of the Komsomol in 1946.

³⁶A high state award, the Order of the National Coat of Arms, 2nd class, was awarded to several officials of ECP district committees and party secretaries for the official reason of ’contributing to the building of the Republic of Estonia’ (e.g. Allmann, Närska, Mänd).

³⁷Ilves presents the specific example of a protest initiated by Estonians in 1980, known as ’The letter of 40’, and the persecution of the participants and their family members by the KGB. Although Ilves does not make specific references, the examples in his speeches are primarily based on the experiences of one of the signatories, Andres Tarand, and his family.

³⁸So far, very little attention has been devoted in the presidents’ speeches to living in exile. It is natural for a president born in exile to refer to this experience.

³⁹Conference of the State Archives, Two Beginnings: 15 Years of Independent Republic of Estonia, 23 November 2007 (Ilves 2011, pp. 36–41).

⁴¹Interview with the Finnish magazine Seura, ‘Return of the Exiled Boy’, 3 July 2008, available at: http://www.president.ee/et/meediakajastus/intervjuud/, accessed 16 January 2011.

⁴⁰In 1984, Ilves began his career at Radio Free Europe in Munich. The entry ban is directly connected to this development.

⁴²In an interview with Der Spiegel on 25 June 2007 he explains, ‘I would have given the monument a new meaning. Berlin has the Neue Wache (New Watchhouse), which was originally built as the royal guardhouse. In 1931 it became a memorial to those killed in World War I, and under Hitler it was called a memorial of the German Reich. In East Germany it was a memorial to victims of fascism, and in 1993 (former German Chancellor Helmut) Kohl made it into a memorial to the victims of war and violence. In short, its meaning changed’ (available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,490811,00.html, accessed 16 January 2011.

⁴³ Tõrjutud mälestused (Memories Denied) is a documentary film about the repression of the director Imbi Paju’s mother and her twin sister by the Soviet regime. The film was released in 2005 and a book of the same name was published in 2007.

⁴⁴In the book Kohanemine ja vastupanu (Adaptation and Resistance), the authors, historians Toomas Karjahärm and Väino Sirk (2007), study the life of intellectuals in Estonia between 1940 and 1987. In their earlier works, the authors have provided an overview of the development of Estonian intellectuals from the nineteenth century. Adaptation and Resistance views the entire cultural and educational life of the Estonian SSR through the two categories named in its title.

⁴⁵Pennebaker (1993) as cited in Igartua and Paez (1999).