Narrating Surroundings and Suppression: The Role of School in Soviet Childhood Memories

Abstract

The article explores how people born in Estonia in the 1970s contextualize their memories about their Soviet childhood in the context of school. Focusing on small group of people who grew up in the Soviet Estonia, we argue that in biographical narratives, school is treated as the representative of the Soviet regime. Nostalgic reminiscences from childhood embrace both commitment and resistance to the regime. The hegemonic framework of repression discourse is often flexibly stretched, embracing sometimes ironic stories of disobedience as resistance or commitment as play. Rather than opposing the official discourse, they create playful side-meanings about the era.

Notes

¹The periodization can vary from the 1960s to the late 1980s, which marks the start of a transition period (Lauristin & Vihalemm, 2009).

²Estonia was forcefully incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. The establishment of Soviet rule led to deportations in 1941 and 1949 and other repressions during the Stalinist regime.

³As the Soviet state was a secular one, celebrating Christian holidays or going to church was considered inappropriate and could cause problems.

⁴Julianne Fürst discusses what she calls the postwar generation, those who were young after World War II. In Russia, the regime had been in power for decades, so social conditions were somewhat different from those in Estonia. However, similar dispositions developed in Estonia in 1970s and lasted until the collapse of the regime.

⁵Abbreviation of party organizer, the person responsible for leading the Party organization’s activities in institutions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raili Nugin

Raili Nugin is a researcher at Tallinn University. She defended her Ph.D. in 2011, exploring the coming of age of the 1970s cohort in Estonia. Her main fields of research are transition to adulthood, construction of generations, and rural youth. She has published in several journals on these topics including Young, Journal of Youth Studies, and Journal of Rural Studies. Her book The 1970s: Portrait of a Generation at the Doorstep came out in 2015 (Tartu University Press) and her edited volume on generations was published this year (Tartu University Press, 2016).

Kirsti Jõesalu

Kirsti Jõesalu is a researcher at the University of Tartu. She is currently finalizing her Ph.D. thesis on remembering “mature socialism.” Her main fields of research are cultural and political memory of socialism, study of socialist everyday life, and oral history. She has published in several journals on remembering socialism including Europe−Asia Studies, Asia Europe Journal, and Journal of Baltic Studies and edited a volume of articles on life stories (Tallinn University Press, forthcoming).