9
Li Bennich-Björkman
By analysing the dominant way of governance that developed in Estonia between the 1960s and early 1980s in terms of the triangular relationship between Moscow, the local Party-state, and the intelligentsia, it becomes clear that it does not make much sense to sharply distinguish between the perestroika period and the earlier Soviet eras of the thaw and stagnation. Instead, a certain pragmatic continuity, interrupted by occasional processes of emerging tension between Moscow and the nomenklatura, and the nomenklatura and local elites, better captures the essence of Estonian developments during the post-Stalinist decades that preceded the institutional transformations of the 1980s and 1990s. Liberalization was an ongoing process from the 1960s.
The previous picture in the literature on patterns of governance in Estonia during the Soviet occupation, and the Estonian Communist Party’s (ECP) relationship with the intelligentsia, differs. Romuald Misiunas and Rein Taagepera (Misiumas and Taagepera,1993, p. 149), in a joint study published a few years after independence, drew the conclusion that the ECP remained a ‘foreign element in the Estonian social body’. In a similar vein, Taagepera, writing on his own, depicted the ECPs leadership as dominated by Russian interests, implying a profound distance between Estonians and the Communist Party-state that had remained intact over the years (Taagepera, 1993, p. 94). Rein Ruutsoo (2002) and Aili Aarelaid-Tart (2003), who both published studies around a decade later and belong to a group of Estonian-based scholars who experienced Soviet Estonia themselves, came to significantly different understandings, underlining instead how relations between the Party-state and the intelligentsia grew close over time as ‘Estonian-ness’ within the governing apparatus increased. Embedded in these diverging assessments one can sense a struggle between émigré and local scholars over any idealization of the Estonian experience of Soviet occupation. Whereas a black-and-white view of Estonian identity as inherently hostile to everything Communist or socialist was nurtured in émigré communities during the Cold War, Estonians in the homeland were living with the ambiguity of realities from existing conditions.
Setting the stage
The Soviet Union occupied Estonia in June 1940. After a year, ending in brutal deportations of major parts of the country’s intelligentsia, political leaders, and ordinary families in June 1941, a three-year long German occupation followed (Statiev, 2005). In autumn 1944, the Red Army pushed back into the German-occupied Baltic territories, and Estonia fell under Soviet power for the next 47 years. Tens of thousands fled to the West in the late summer and early autumn of 1944, thereby creating a large Western-based émigré community with settlements in Canada, the United States, Sweden, Australia, and Britain. Sovietization transformed Estonia in the first decade of occupation into a republic with a heavy inflow of Russian labour to feed the growth in heavy industry, much like in neighbouring Latvia. Forced collectivization simultaneously affected the countryside, which during the First Republic (1918–1940) had been dominated by small-scale, self-owning farmers after radical land reforms took place in 1919–1920.
During the late 1940s, a guerrilla movement operated from the woods, sheltered by the rural population (Laar, 1992). Metsavennad, the Forest Brothers, continued an armed struggle against the Soviet occupier, with counterparts existing in the two other Baltic republics, Latvia and Lithuania – Lithuania being home to the most numerous organization. Armed resistance slowly withered, however, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as hopes vanished for any liberation or rescue from the West. Rumours of a Third World War or of a Western invasion aimed at liberating the occupied territories circulated frequently not only in the Estonian resistance but also in Latvia, Lithuania, and among the armed resistance in Western Ukraine immediately after the end of World War II. While partly wishful thinking in a desperate situation, recent research has confirmed that British and American security services actively maintained such hopes through rumours and disinformation in the Soviet occupied territories (Burds, 2001; Ruutsoo, 2002, p. 123).
The initially strong social resistance to Sovietization led to a second wave of disastrous deportations carried out by the Soviet authorities to enforce collectivization among farmers in November 1949. This time the main target was not the intelligentsia and the political elite, who already had been severely decimated by the deportations in 1941 and by the flight of 1944, but ordinary farmers and their families (Strods and Kott, 2002; Statiev, 2005). In order to pave the way for the planned restructuring by the Soviets at the macro-level, resistance at the micro-level had to be crushed. Rural inhabitants not only resisted collectivization but also supported the Forest Brothers. By deporting key individuals and entire families, the idea was to target support networks and the ‘social infrastructure’ that was of such importance in maintaining the resistance.
The Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union was in full swing by 1948 (Burds, 2001). Estonia was now captured, lying behind the Iron Curtain, and ruled by a Soviet power determined to turn ‘Estonians into Soviets’. Moscow continued that endeavour by severely purging the ECP in 1950–1951.
The purge
The ECP was the republican target of the earliest post-war purge in the Soviet republics. It took place well before the death of Josef Stalin in 1953, in contrast to most others that were set in motion in 1959–1960 (see Chapter 1), or as in Ukraine not until the early 1970s (see Chapter 7). The purge also targeted Estonian cultural life, and in July 1949 prominent cultural personalities from the magazine Looming (Creativity) were forced to condemn others or apologize for themselves (Taagepera, 1993, p. 85). The ECP had, according to Moscow, developed too much of an Estonian inclination. Since what the Soviet leaders particularly feared was ‘national communism’ (communism interpreted through a national lens and with the interests of a particular nationality playing a role), Moscow paid close attention to what went on in one of its most recent conquests. Well aware of the strong anti-communist sentiment in Estonia and the widespread dislike of the Soviet occupation, it is highly likely that as early as the end of the 1940s Moscow considered it necessary to intervene to ensure that the nomenklatura and Party leadership were to remain loyal to Moscow (Misiunas and Taagepera, 1993; Aarelaid-Tart, 2003). The purge in 1950 shows that the central power had not succeeded in securing such loyalty, and thereby decided to take a hard line.1 The purge was a profound blow to the national communists of Estonia, who had tried to govern by also taking into consideration the Estonian people and their interests. In retrospect, however, the Estonian purge occurred so relatively early that there was ample time for the local Party and society to regenerate a form of national communism again, before a second strike from Moscow hit the ECP in 1978.
The purge affected Party structures in Tallinn; it included leading academics and scholars at Tartu University and affected local authorities in smaller towns as well. Ministers and leading Communists such as Lembit Lüüs, Hendrik Allik, Arnold Veimer, Villem Kuusik, and Aleksander Kelberg were targeted, and hundreds were deported (Huber 1992; Misiunas and Taagepera, 1993). Nikolai Karotamm was the Party’s first secretary between 1944 and 1950, while Boris Kumm, Johannes Vares, and Arnold Veimer were other leading Estonians in the ECP during the 1940s (Raun, 1991, pp. 170–171). Accusations against Karotamm underlined his alleged ‘bourgeois nationalism’, a terrible sin in the Soviet context, still held in Stalin’s grip. Karotamm lost his position but escaped imprisonment and afterwards received a post as a researcher in Moscow (Taagepera, 1993, p. 85). According to the Central Committee (CC) in Moscow which carried out the purge in Estonia, an avalanche of mistakes had marred the ECP. National communism had blossomed. The perceived threat of a lack of loyalty and Estonia taking its own path led to the ECP starting to transform into a Russian- or Russian-Estonian-dominated structure after the purge in 1950 (Raun, 1991, p. 171).
The Moscow purge profoundly shook the ECP (Taagepeera, 1993, p. 86). It damaged the Estonian intelligentsia, and around 3,000 were deported or dismissed (Aarelaid-Tart, 2006, p. 169). The purge efficiently cleansed the Party of the national communists of the early Soviet years, often replacing them with representatives locally dubbed as ‘Yestonians’, Russian-born or Russian-raised Estonians who barely spoke Estonian or did so with a strong Russian accent. Initially, the ‘Yestonians’ (and others in the Party leadership and the nomenklatura) were loyal to Moscow, designating any nationalist inclinations as ‘bourgeois chauvinism’. The First Secretary Nikolai Karotamm’s successor was the ‘Yestonian’ Ivan Käbin. Raised in Russia, but Estonian by birth, at the Party Congress held in conjunction with the purge, Käbin officially ‘distanced himself from what remained of “bourgeois nationalism” in Estonia, and everything that could be associated with independence’ (Raun, 1991, p. 172; see Pennar 1978, p. 117). Declaring his loyalty to Moscow, Ivan Käbin started out as the Centre’s trusted hand in what the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) regarded as the troublesome and nationalistic Estonian republic. Käbin’s rise to power certainly slowed down the Estonian-orientation of the ECP; a new, Russian, Second Secretary was installed and in the Bureau and the Secretariat, the two top organs of the Party Russian-Estonians and Russians now completely dominated (Raun, 1991, p. 172).
The Estonian Party-state: developing practice
The purge, if it had to come, at least came early. For almost 30 years, until the second, ‘quasi-purge’ of 1978, which rather than cleansing people from Party structures did not allow the anticipated ‘troublemakers’ to rise to power, the ECP had the opportunity to recover, and to develop relations with both Moscow and the domestic intelligentsia that most of the time allowed for ‘peaceful co-existence’. Some of those cleansed by the purge also eventually returned after Stalin’s death to leading positions, among them Hendrik Allik and Arnold Veimer.
What began as a loss for Estonian-inclined national communism developed over time into a political practice that for many years safeguarded some ‘room for manoeuvre’ for the Estonian intelligentsia, while at the same time recognizing Moscow’s interests. How was that possible? First Secretary Ivan Käbin proved to be a key person in solving that equation. Hence, when the Party’s leading cadres were dispersed by the purge, Moscow placed in the highest post a man who developed a ‘sensitivity’ for how to interpret the Centre’s subtle and not so subtle signals; something the triangular relationship relied upon. A diplomatically oriented pragmatist, Käbin gained respect in Moscow but also in Tallinn and Tartu. An early example of Käbin’s skill was Moscow’s attempt to reform second language teaching in all republics in the late 1950s. The ECP manoeuvred during that process and showed an interesting willingness for ‘reason and compromise’, which ultimately allowed the Estonians a freer hand than the aggressive Latvian approach, which backfired (Smith, 2003; see Chapter 2).
Käbin and others successively integrated into Estonian society and came to share the outlook of many of the local intelligentsia. As time passed, Ivan became ‘Johannes’, thus ‘Estonianizing’ his first name, and he developed into the role of being a protector of Estonian national interests, while carefully manoeuvring so as not to challenge Moscow’s vital interests (Pennar, 1978; Smith, 2013, pp. 240–241).
Johannes Käbin was First Secretary of the ECP for 28 years, from 1950 to 1978. His tenure ensured an important stability in Estonian political practice. He acted as a mediator between the local Party-state and the central leadership in Moscow. In this, he was reminiscent of Lithuania’s First Secretary Antanas Sniečkus, who remained in his post for over three decades (see Chapter 6). Other Estonian dignitaries also held positions for a very long time, for example, the Chairman of the Estonian SSR Council of Ministers Valter Klauson (1961–1984). The death of Chairman of the Estonian Supreme Soviet Artur Vader (1970–1978) in 1978 created an opportunity for a changing of the guard that proved to be less favourable to Estonia’s pragmatic climate.
By the early 1960s, a decade had passed since the 1950 purge and at least five or six years since Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress in 1956, which put a surprising end to the Stalin era. In Estonia, acceptance of the ruling Communist Party and its authority under Johannes Käbin’s leadership had slowly increased (Niitsoo, 1997). The CPSU in Moscow, in a report on the Estonian situation in 1961 also noticed this:
Under the influence of the successes of socialist construction and as a result of the political work of the party organizations, great changes in the consciousness of the intelligentsia have happened and it actively participates in communist construction. During the last years, the number of engineering and technical specialists, agricultural specialists, teachers and other specialists and their participation in the social and political life of factories, the collective farms and state farms, has been substantially increased.2
By the mid 1960s, Estonians comprised a narrow majority within the Party structures with little over 50% for the first time, and for cabinet ministers and their deputies, the figure reached upwards of 90% (Pennar, 1978, p. 117). The ECP thus became increasingly Estonian-dominated and with that followed an Estonian-inclination (Aarelaid-Tart, 2003; see Ruutsoo, 2002). Among the intelligentsia, the 1960s were characterized by an adaptation to improved circumstances, with a local Communist Party that harboured growing respect and understanding of its needs and value. Subsequently, expectations grew that the ECP would, to a greater extent than was then the case, sustain dynamism, flexibility, and cultural freedom. Certainly, there were formal rules and regulations but the informal ‘grey zone’ between the authorities and the intelligentsia, a negotiated space of activities and individuality, which was integral to understanding the practice, developed. A significant part of the relationship between the ECP and the intelligentsia circled around tacitly ‘regulating’ that space, making it predictable, and establishing its rules of conduct.
From the end of the 1960s and until 1978, when Johannes Käbin resigned, Estonian-minded communists came to dominate important positions of power. These high-ranking communists became skilled in managing two different value systems and two distinct cultures, that of Moscow and of Estonia, constantly interpreting signals from both. Several studied at universities in Moscow or Leningrad but then returned to Estonia. In this way, like the ‘Yestonians’ of the earlier generation, they mastered both the culture of the Soviet intellectual elite while retaining their Estonian culture foundations. Most were socialized in the Party’s youth organization, the Komsomol, to become ‘pure’ Communists without any national feelings. Yet, at the same time, they strived for an ‘Estonian way’ within the communist framework, in order to serve the society of which they were part: ‘What they achieved was, among other things, an education system in the Estonian language at all levels, support for nationally oriented organizations, the establishment of relative openness in the activities of the creative intelligentsia, and the development of the kolkhoz system into a prosperous agricultural industry’ (Aarelaid-Tart, 2006, p. 182).
The consensus-oriented relationship – the co-existence – between the Party-state and the intelligentsia flourished as a new generation of Estonian-born Communists advanced to the top positions. These were often talented persons, who strove to make an impact, which during the Soviet occupation was limited to acting within the framework of the Party. A career that most often began within Komsomol. The foremost of them was the charismatic Vaino Väljas. In 1970, Väljas became an ECP CC Secretary, with responsibility for ideological schooling.
The ECP’s relations with the intelligentsia under Johannes Käbin’s long rule must be described as generally consensual, driven by a Communist Party with a relatively pragmatic approach. Elements of dogmatism were present in the 1950s and in a milder form from 1978 until the start of perestroika seven years later. For most of the post-Stalin decades, pragmatism however, outflanked moves toward inflexibility. The ECP, for example, far from condemned all expressions of nationalism, even after the Prague Spring. As long as it did not lead to political opposition and ‘active dissent’, which was a concern, then the Party tolerated such expressions (Parming, 1978).
In 1978, when Käbin, by virtue of his age – he was then 70 years old – transferred from the post of First Secretary to the honorary post of Chairman of the Presidium of Estonia’s Supreme Soviet, Karl Vaino, another Russian-Estonian, was appointed as his successor by Moscow (Taagepera, 1993, p. 100). Vaino was loyal to Centre but did not have Käbin’s ability and authority as a mediator to protect and promote Estonian identity. Chosen by Moscow before the more talented Väljas, this was interpreted as a distinct signal of the Centre tightening its grip over the Estonian republic. Therefore, the year 1978 was one of real change within the Estonian Party-state; aspects of dogmatism increased, perhaps also of opportunism, in the echelons of the leadership. Several national communists were ousted. For them, 1978 was the ‘gloomiest year of their lives’ (Aarelaid-Tart, 2006, pp. 182–183). If the growing dogmatism had continued for a longer time, it is possible that relations between the state and the intelligentsia in the Estonian SSR would have deteriorated significantly towards polarization or even antagonism. Yet, this was merely an interlude of seven years, before the seismic ‘earthquake’ of Mikhail Gorbachev’s appointment as General Secretary and the start of a perestroika. Hence, Karl Vaino became nothing more than a late parenthesis in an otherwise overall trajectory of pragmatic Estonian development.
The Estonian intelligentsia
In Estonia, at least from the 1960s onwards the intelligentsia was bifurcated: there was the nationalist-humanist part, consisting of historians, linguists, writers, poets, architects, and journalists, and the technical-economic part with professionals and scholars of management, economists, psychologists, and computer scientists. Whereas the former mostly maintained a separate but pragmatic, relationship with the nomenklatura, the latter by necessity was an integral part of the local Party structure, however, given considerable freedom and an institutional infra-structure that put its mark on Estonian governance.
Nationalist-humanist circles
By 1975, in the middle of the Brezhnev era, the Soviet occupation had been in existence for 31 years. A societal snapshot tells us that the memories of a free Estonia were beginning to fade, even as the older generations did their best to keep them alive. It was in the family space that the memories of another time were preserved most efficiently and quietly ‘nourished’ the young. The home was the place where one could let go of the vigilance that came with widespread surveillance and reporting practices. There would still be books, photographs, ornaments, and canvases that bore physical witness to another time when Estonia was a free country in the process of creating a future for itself. Due to the serious shortage of apartments, several generations often lived together not only in the countryside but also in the city. For many, contact with the older generation was thus often daily, and interwar Estonia did not ‘die’ but rather was becoming ‘impatient’.
As in many other parts of the Soviet Union, the shortage of goods was routinely severe and the shelves of shops were empty. It created a queuing society, and a society where reciprocal services through social contacts became the essential ‘lubricant’ needed to make everyday life work, known as blat (influence). Alena Ledeneva (1998) writes about blat as synonymous with contact capital, a vital social network that had to be constantly upheld, not primarily for socializing but in order to be able to access services and goods. It was a system that demanded extensive time, required energy, social agility, and dexterity. Everyday life was thus demanding, insecure, and filled with chores to create a reasonable standard of living. In rural areas, collective farming (kolkhozes) had been functioning for several decades, and the smallholder economy and the values that upheld it during Estonia’s first republic felt far away (Bennich-Björkman, 2007).
It was in this year, 1975, in the midst of what has been labelled the era of ‘stagnation’ that the TV journalist Kriistina (Tiina) Mägi started the Kodulinn (Hometown) heritage movement in Tallinn because of her love for the Old Town and as a way to help preserve and restore its buildings, cemeteries, and streets. The idea of the Hometown movement – borrowed in turn from Moscow and Ukraine – spread over Estonia over the following ten years: to the university town Tartu, and later, when the winds of change started to blow to the entirety of Estonia in what became the nationwide Heritage Society. Therefore, when Tiina Mägi advertised on Estonian television for young people to come and work on preserving their city on Saturdays and Sundays, it marked the beginning of a new era, although no one knew it at the time.
‘Hometown’ was organized under the auspices of the local Komsomol. ‘We did not deal with any dissidence’ as Mägi puts it.3 This was the usual arrangement. In the 1970s, many in the pragmatist part of the intelligentsia used the official structures, most often the Komsomol, to establish forums for what they called self-education, meetings, and discussions. One of the high-school students participating in Hometown almost from the beginning was Mart Laar. He brought the idea of Kodulinn with him when he started to study history at Tartu University a few years later in 1978. Participating in Kodulinn transformed his interest not only in the history of Tallinn itself but in that of the whole of Estonia, he later recounted.4
Noor Tartu (Young Tartu) started by using Hometown as inspiration, founded by three students of the ‘legendary’ history class of 1978: Mart Laar, Lauri Vahtre, and Heiki Valk.5 The history class of ’78 turned out to be a special cohort: they did everything together and when spread over Estonia as history teachers after graduating in 1983, they ‘could not live without each other’.6 Their professor, Sulev Vahtre (Lauri’s father), recalled the 1970s and the years of the class of ’78 at the Historical Faculty as particularly active, even compared to the lively 1960s (Laar, Ott, and Endre, 1996, p. 314). Noor Tartu started as one of their projects (Laar, 2002, p. 22).7
At the Faculty of History and the Faculty of Journalism in Tartu, a spirit of independence prevailed in those days. Tartu was far away from political power in Tallinn and had a liberal-minded and oppositional legacy. The professors in history, Helmut Piirimäe, Sulev Vahtre, and Herbert Liigi were ‘free-thinkers’, which, did not, however, mean dissident. Unusually for the time, they had not joined the ECP but had managed to keep their prominent positions in the university. ‘In some way they managed to talk about that which was of importance’, remembered Madis Kanastik, who was a student in the late 1970s.8 In journalism, it was another prominent personality, Marju Lauristin, who taught the students. She was a charismatic and open-minded intellectual who – in contrast to the historians – was a Party member.9
The students in Noor Tartu met to work at old cemeteries as in Tallinn, particularly the old Puhjase kalmistu in Tartu. Gravestones of previously well-known and respected Estonians were attended to and cleaned up. This was indisputable community service that hardly could be contested by the authorities; its simultaneous and indirect contribution to the reconquest of Estonian history was more politically controversial (Laar, 2015; author interview Laar, 2002; 2004). Noor Tartu was quickly divided over how political it should become. One constellation, more idealistic in nature, pushed for more debates and role plays in the form of historical trials in the cellar of Ulikooli 1, which the Tartu town museum provided to the group. Another advocated the more pragmatic way of keeping a low profile. Laar belonged to the latter group.
Hence, Mart Laar brought the ideas of ‘Hometown’ with him to Tartu, and he implemented them there together with a group of like-minded students. When Noor Tartu started in 1978, the predominant pragmatism of the triangular relationship that had prevailed in Estonia between Moscow, the local Party, and the intelligentsia had already started to deteriorate because of the ‘quasi-purge’ of the leadership in 1978 and the dogmatic turn began. As a result, the KGB invited Laar and Vahtre for ‘conversations’ during the second year of Noor Tartu’s existence, thereby indicating that the negotiated space which the group inhabited was dangerously stretched. Noor Tartu was moving in an informal grey-zone where the rules of the game were changing. Under the new leadership of the Moscow-loyal Karl Vaino, the pragmatic practice was redefined in a less consensual direction. The KGB finally closed the group down in 1983. Many from this organization later were part of the nationwide establishment of the Eesti Muinaskaiste Liit (Estonian Heritage Society) in 1987 during perestroika.
The members of another social circle of certain importance, Klub Tõru, likewise were later active in the founding of Eesti Muinaskaiste Liit. ‘Tõru’ means acorn in Estonian. When an acorn is planted in the ground, it grows slowly and expands its roots to finally rise into an impressive oak. For over twelve years, from 1974, this club provided a more or less safe place for intellectuals who wanted to discuss crucial topics of the day, educate themselves, and preserve Estonian culture and history. Twenty meetings each year, where possible by the fireside in what was seen as a British tradition, formed an enduring platform of self-education within the Estonian intelligentsia. ‘The time in Tõru led us to see more nuances in history and life, not everything in black and white’, recalled one member.10 One of the leading figures was linguist Trivimi Velliste. In the 1980s, during perestroika, he led the republic-wide Heritage Society movement. Velliste was the initiator of Tõru, with two friends, Toivo Palm and Olev Remsu (from the Komsomol Committee in Tartu). The Club was never infiltrated. ‘We were very careful, we could not do anything that could be interpreted as open protest’.11 Once again, the negotiated space for action was recognized and respected – seemingly by both sides.
A veritable sub-society of clubs, groups, and small associations emerged in post-Stalinist Estonia from the late 1950s onwards during the Khrushchev Thaw and when the ECP started to form its own line of action, which lasted into the 1980s. The prominent examples from the 1970s of Tõru, ‘Hometown’, and Noor Tartu, were thus following in the footsteps of previous clubs, societies, and associations. Tartu University, 200 kilometres southeast of the capital Tallinn, came to play a central role in the formation of these clubs and societies, in their various forms engaging individuals often educated in history, linguistics, biology, or journalism, as the case of Noor Tartu shows. This classic university was grounded in centuries-old traditions, founded in 1632 by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus II and long the centre of learning in the entire Baltic region. Baltic-Germans, Russians, Lithuanians, Jews, and eventually Estonians themselves studied there – the latter once their subordinated position as serfs in Tsarist Russia was abolished.
Anti-Soviet manifestations
Tartu embodied an important and enduring spirit of open-mindedness, opposition, and liberalism, being the intellectual centre in contrast to the political power hub of Tallinn, and physically separated from it. A few of the groups that formed, for example, the Estonian Democratic Movement and the Estonian National Front, articulated outright opposition to Communism, focused on Estonian independence, and approached the United Nations with these demands (Alexeiv, 1983, p. 35; Taagepera, 1993, p. 102). It was in Tartu that an underground operation took up the fallen mantle of the Forest Brothers. The organization Sini-must-valge, (Blue-black-white), which refers to the colours of the independent Estonian flag, included, among others, the Estonian dissident Enn Tarto (Laar, 1992, pp. 223–224).
Individual dissidents also took strong positions against human rights abuses; Mart Niklus and Jüri Kukk were two of the most prominent dissidents during the 1970s and into the 1980s (Huber 1992; Taagepera, 1993, pp. 102–103). Enn Tarto, Lagle Parek, and Tunne Kelam were others, imprisoned for their opposition activities.12 Opposition was not, however, the rule. Rather, nationalist-humanist circles in Estonia either withdrew from Soviet Estonian society, or engaged in non-Soviet (rather than explicitly anti-Soviet) activities.
‘Shadow Estonia’
The idealist strand ‘Shadow Estonia’ eschewed any participation in Soviet society; withdrawing into a closed reality. ‘Shadow Estonia’ refused to confirm even the existence of Soviet power; the outside world was ignored, and in that mental environment, one lived with one’s own culture, films, and topics of conversation. The people involved practiced existential resistance, forbidden reading, discussion, and satirical joking about the Party, and while the KGB was aware of ‘Shadow Estonia’, they did not consider them to be any real threat. ‘Shadow Estonia’ thus represented an idealistic, eventually openly oppositional group, which revolved around certain families, a prominent one being the Tarand family (with brothers Indrek and Andres) (Muuli, 2013, p. 33). This current of nationalist-humanists found themselves in close proximity to well-known aforementioned Estonian dissidents such as Tunne Kelam, Enn Tarto, and Lagle Parek.
Non-Soviet manifestations
The pragmatist strand of the nationalist-humanists was the ‘Soviet Estonia’ sphere. ‘Problem-solving’ and managing the existing situation, not lofty principles, was the driving force for those engaged (Muuli, 2013, p. 33). The Rahvusvaheliste Suhete Ring (Society for International Relations) started in 1963 at Tartu University.13 Another club, Byte, met in the house of the Writers’ Union in Tartu in the 1960s, started by the sociologist Ülo Vooklaid. Bentus was also active during the 1960s at the university, where Toomas Suitt and Sirje Endre were leading figures. Comprising mostly biologists, it was still considered politically conscious because of the topics discussed. Suitt was simultaneously the First Secretary of the local Komsomol and Endre was high up in the ECP, clearly illustrating the porous nature of the boundaries between the Party-state and the intelligentsia (in this case the students). ‘It was a very political club, it really was. It is why I say that there is no black and white’, as one of the participants recalled in an interview with the author.14
The late 1960s in the West was an era of student rebellion and left-wing activism. While that was true in France, Germany, and Sweden, it was certainly also the case in Central and Eastern Europe. The student movement affected not least Estonia. At Tartu University, teachers and students met in an environment that was at the same time monitored and supported by the local Komsomol organization. The Komsomol Committee at Tartu University had established its own version of ‘socialism with a human face’, which came to be known as the ‘Komsomol position’ in Estonia. The background to this was the 1960s spirit around Europe and developments in Czechoslovakia but also the growing acceptance of the rule of the Marxist-Leninist Party-state in Estonia. The Komsomol was at its strongest at the university in 1967–1968, with leading figures such as Sirje Endre, Jaak Allik, Peter Vihalemm, Laur Karu, Märt Kubo, and Siim Kallas; several of them came to play leading roles in Estonia’s political and intellectual life during perestroika and the transition. Siim Kallas, for example, was Prime Minister (2002–2003), Minister of Finance (1999–2002), and served as Estonia’s EU Commissioner for ten years (2004–2014). Other prominent members in the Tartu University Komsomol Committee were Trivimi Velliste, later Foreign Minister (1992–1994), and presently Members of Parliament, Hardo Aasmäe, Ülo Kaevats, Olev Remsu, Igor Gräzin, and Jaak Tamm (Niitsoo, 1997; Muuli, 2013). Sirje Endre, one of the leaders, referred to how the Komsomol Committee really wanted to change the country (Laar, Ott, and Endre, 1996, p. 59; Muuli, 2013, p. 26)
The ‘Komsomol position’ implied working from within the system to create ‘socialism with a human face’ rather than oppose it, similar to the message expressed during the contemporary Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. The struggle was partly pragmatic but partly idealistic, and in most cases sincere; the young Komsomol members were not opportunistic careerists but rather communist idealists with a pragmatic streak (Muuli, 2013). Their ‘spiritual father’ was Rem Blum, Professor of Philosophy (Laar, Ott, and Endre, 1996).
The Tartu University Komsomol Committee consisted of two branches. One was more politically oriented, and included among others Karl Adamson, Mikk Titma, and Jaak Allik. It had connections to another profiled Komsomol organization, the Estonian Students Construction Squad (Eesti Üliõpilaste Ehitusmalev, EÜE). The EÜE occupied a quite exceptional part of student life, unintentionally creating an efficient infrastructure for far-reaching social networking under the almighty umbrella of the Komsomol. From 1966 and until 1992, the construction squad used symbols such as their own flag, published a newsletter, organized building and repair work on kolkhozes during the summer holidays when students assisted the collective farms, often as an entire class or programme. Thereby the EÜE honoured the utopian Marxist-Leninist vision of connecting intellectuals with the grassroots of society, in this case the farmers. Students in this way lived close together in farmsteads and villages in the summertime, and aside from work this opened up great opportunities for continuous discussion (they were after all students!), and for friendships and romances to be formed. The summer months of building work were an excellent arena for social networking with great implications for the future (Pruuli, 2013; Taru, Pilve, and Kaasik, 2014). The most famous EÜE, was the Euromais of 1982, commemorated by one of its participants, Tiit Pruuli (2013), in which Mart Laar and Lauri Vahtre also took part.
The other branch of the University Komsomol, the cultural one, had a more humanist inclination, and focused on making Estonian culture and history visible. In this way, its profile was more oriented to national identity. Their activities would continue into the 1970s and 1980s in various organized forms inspired by these efforts, and eventually culminated in the Estonian Heritage Society, established in 1987. Marju Lauristin, Peeter Vihalemm, Sirje Endre, and Trivime Velliste were prominent members, who later all came to play leading roles in the Estonian democratic liberalization of the late 1980s (Pruuli, 2013).
The ‘Komsomol position’ became a strategy for seeking change but it lost most of its credibility through the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (Aarelaid-Tart, 2003, p. 73). The brutal suppression of the Czechoslovak intelligentsia and students profoundly shocked both Western and Eastern Europe – in Western Europe it led to some Communist fellow travellers re-considering their allegiance; in the East it crushed the fragile optimism that shaped most of the 1960s. Nevertheless, the Tartu University Komsomol Committee was a fertile breeding ground for a generation of intellectuals who came to shape Estonia’s path to renewed pluralism. Jaak Allik points out that a third of the ministers in Mart Laar’s first government (1992–1994) had a background in the Komsomol Committee (Laar, Ott, and Endre, 1996).
Turning now to the other strand within the nationalist-humanist intelligentsia – for the creative professionals, the Kuku Klubi in central Tallinn offered a continuous meeting place throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Writers, poets, musicians, architects, and painters assembled to drink and eat but foremost to socialize and chat. It had already opened in the late 1930s, and, thereby, spanning the entire Soviet occupation, this was a place of relaxation, where infiltration by the KGB, a given constant in Soviet Estonia, was not really considered a threat. The architect Ignar Fjuk remembers: ‘There was some freedom for cultural people, to have their lives’, indicating the pragmatic atmosphere and the negotiated space. He frequented the Kuku Klubi with friends in the 1970s, his studio in Tallinn’s Old Town being far too small to meet. The Kuku ‘was like a Facebook’ for the creative circles in Tallinn, in Fjuk’s words.15
Ignar Fjuk together with colleagues formed the Tallinn School of Architecture. These architects articulated a vision of a more humane, beautiful, and aesthetic urban environment, fit for individuals not only the masses, and offering beauty for the soul. In 1979, they organized a ‘Small-town seminar’, and the year after, in 1980, a ‘Tallinn seminar’. In both these seminars, the architects positioned themselves against the way city planning was carried out but not from an anti-Soviet perspective. Even so, after speaking on Estonian television, Fjuk lost his job and was out of work for a year. This would not have happened earlier but the negotiated space became less predictable as relations worsened between the Party and the intelligentsia, making it harder to adjust actions to predefined informal rules.
The Creative Unions were the home of the artistic professionals. These organizations regulated the working market, and being a non-member meant being on your own, not being able to work or publish in official contexts (only through samizdat [illegal self-publishing]). The situation was the same in all republics. Later, during perestroika, the Creative Unions in Estonia formed the Cultural Council to push forward the rapidly increasing liberalization. Fjuk and his friends, the writers and poets Jaak Jooerut and Paul-Erik Rummo, were among those who played prominent roles in that process.16
In sum, after the high hopes and expectations of the 1960s at Tartu University and the role of the Komsomol as part of an idealistic ambition for change, the late 1970s and early 1980s were somewhat grimmer and less frivolous for the intelligentsia and students. Specifically, this was connected to the change of leadership in the ECP in 1978, when relations between the Party-state and the intelligentsia became frostier. Moscow appointed the less-prominent Karl Vaino who spoke poor Estonian, contrary to expectations for the promotion of the more brilliant Vaino Väljas. ‘There were rumours that such an appointment had been considered for quite some time because Moscow was dissatisfied with nationalism in the republic. The question is what type of nationalism was that’, writes Saulius Grybkauskas (2018, p. 458). The answer is that it was not nationalism as such, which overwhelmingly was of a non-Soviet and not anti-Soviet kind but the pragmatic practice that Moscow wanted to curb. Nevertheless, the negotiated space for creative freedom was never fully closed.
The economic-technological intelligentsia
While a nationalist-humanist intelligentsia existed in various shapes and sizes in all Soviet republics, an economic-technological faction was as far as I know a unique Estonian feature. The former drew its intellectual energy from the nationalist and humanist traditions of Tartu University, the latter from the more entrepreneurial capital Tallinn. Closely intertwined with the ECP, it pushed Estonia in the direction of advanced economic management and leadership reforms as well as computerization during the post-Stalin decades that made the small republic into a leading economic experimenter within the entire Soviet Union. None of the initiatives or activities were politically oppositional. They were carried out within the framework of a continued Soviet order, under the official auspices of the Party-state. Yet, embedded in the theoretical ideas and the practice that followed lay profound challenges to the Soviet planned economy.
From the mid 1960s, the ECP began to support tendencies towards economic innovation, mainly in the management of enterprises, which became of great importance for Estonia’s relative economic prosperity during the rest of the Soviet era. It also affected subsequent market economic development. The Estonian SSR became the headquarters of Soviet experimental activity in economic management and governance until the end of the 1980s, when the transition to a market economy was already in full swing.
The management philosophy introduced rested partly on principles of a market economy, so that the profits could be reinvested and transformed into higher salaries or other benefits (Misiunas and Taagepera, 1993). In the early 1970s, almost all companies in Estonia were organized in this way (Järvesoo, 1978). One person – Raoul Üksvärav – one university – Tallinna Polütehniline Instituut (Tallinn Polytechnic, TPI) – and one agency attached to the Estonian Ministry of Consumer and Light industry – Mainor – played leading roles in that development.
Raoul Üksvärav had successfully completed his studies at TPI in 1952. He then majored in economics and received a doctorate in 1967. During his doctoral studies at TPI, he spent time as an exchange student at the University of California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a unique opportunity during the Cold War. Two of the leading universities not only in the United States but in the world opened their doors to this Soviet post-graduate student in 1963. When he returned to Estonia in 1964, he was equipped with ideas on how to select and train enterprise managers and initiated an advice service on management and training programmes. This was a time when Moscow under the leadership of Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin, introduced economic reforms in the entire Soviet Union. Demands for the modernization of the command economy grew from the intelligentsia and the developing middle class as the state grew more urbanized and better educated. Kosygin advocated the evaluation of an enterprise not according to its output but with respect to its sales. A kind of market economics consideration of profit was finding its way into the highest echelons of the Soviet leadership (Suny, 1998, p. 426). Within this climate, Üksvärav’s ideas on enterprise management found fertile ground. In 1966, Üksvärav organized the first All-Union conference on management and organization.
The ECP made sure to take advantage of Üksvärav’s talent, knowledge, and drive by creating a professorship with a focus on management at TPI. In that way, TPI came to correspond in the economic context to what Tartu University meant to humanist studies. Since TPI was in Tallinn, where the political power was situated, economics and politics became intertwined, whereas the humanist and cultural intellectuals were geographically separated in Tartu. A Chair in Administration and Financial Planning (Majanduse juhtimise ja planeerimise kateeder) was set up in 1969 and was held by Üksvärav for 20 years until 1989. At the University of Tartu, the ECP simultaneously set up a study environment in tootmispsühholoogia (the psychology of production) under the leadership of Uno Siiman. Inspired by the same kind of interest in financial management and administration as the professorship at TPI, small Estonia was now equipped with two academic environments that taught management (Muuli, 2013).
Mainor became the practical output of these academic efforts. A unique agency in the Soviet context, it was a consulting firm but tied to the Ministry for Consumer and Light Industry (Estonia’s special economic niche). In Mainor, the idea of a self-sufficiency experiment in Estonia’s light industry developed, and the then-Minister of Light Industry, Jüri Kraft, pushed through the proposal with the central government in Moscow. The experiment was very successful. Textiles and clothing, shoes, and leather goods based on craftsmanship, were important elements (Järvesoo, 1978).
Mainor constituted an important environment for economic innovation within the Estonian Party-state. It grew to become a magnet and a ‘nursery’ for well-educated and talented economists, and by the 1980s an economic-technological intelligentsia had formed with its roots in TPI, partly from production psychology in Tartu and some from Mainor. Led by Ülo Pärnits and his deputy Jaak Leimann, also a graduate from TPI, Mainor conducted in-house training of top managers. Hence, the agency attracted people with ambition for innovation and thereby contributed to attempting to renew the Estonian economy in pragmatic accordance with the Party-state (Järvesoo, 1978). Mainor’s roots can be traced back to the ECP’s pragmatic development since the 1950s under Johannes Käbin and the Estonian-minded Communists’ entry into the inner core of the Party-state.
Emerging pluralism
In Estonia, perestroika did not represent a break with the past. In all other republics, it is fair to say that the late 1980s were a game-changer. In Estonia, perestroika instead marked the continuation of a liberalization that in fact had been ongoing since the 1960s, with a mildly repressive interlude occurring between 1978 and 1985. This interlude, however, was too brief to have a major impact, despite instigating a climate of less predictability and increasing polarization between Moscow, the Party-state, and the intelligentsia. When perestroika began in Estonia, both the state and the intelligentsia, in its economic-technological and nationalist-humanist forms, carried with them a political practice of pragmatism, intermingled with idealism but rarely sheer instrumentalism or orthodoxy. The exception was a limited part of the intelligentsia, ‘Shadow Estonia’, who denied the existence of the Party-state and Soviet rule and created an alternative reality.
The last years of the 1980s, when the Estonian Party-state and the intelligentsia started to position themselves into what soon developed into a multi-party system, laid bare a taste for diversity and an organizational capacity among the elites. A number of parallel, sometimes rival, social movements and circles saw the day of light, basing themselves in the Party-state and in elite society. The Estonian Rahvarinne (Popular Front) was founded in April 1988 as an expression of the great wave of liberalization – perestroika – that swept the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1980s. An initiative by reform communists, from inside the Party-state mostly, was led by Edgar Savisaar who had a background in the Party leadership. The Popular Front broadened to include also more liberal forces as it gained ground. It never became, however, an umbrella organization like, for example, the Lithuanian Popular Front Sajudis, or the Tautas Fronte in Latvia. The reform communists, whose ‘constitutional’ faction took the step to organize the Estonian Popular Front in 1988, also comprised the economic intelligentsia that had formed in and around Mainor. By 1987, these leading economists were writing and making public a plan for an economically self-governed Estonia, called IME. Their organizational home became, a year later, the Popular Front.
On the nationalist-humanist side, there were two streams of organization. The nationalist-humanist current in 1987 formed the Heritage Society, bringing together a nationwide network of local heritage associations into a grassroots movement. This was a circle knitting together several individual ones, with roots going back at least to the late 1960s and 1970s. The core consisted of pragmatic Khrushchev-era intelligentsia and a younger Brezhnev-generation of mostly history and journalist students from Tartu University who radicalized into idealism and anti-Soviet resentment in the early 1980s during the times of regime polarization but started out as non-Soviet individualists. They had mostly engaged in non-Soviet activities, an existential resistance, rather than political. In 1989, this ‘circle’ initiated the Estonian Citizens’ Committees, in an attempt to constitutionally reconnect to the Estonian First Republic. The Citizens’ Movement began to register all those who had been Estonian citizens before the first Soviet occupation in 1940 and their offspring, thereby establishing the preconditions for a parallel, ‘shadow’ governing structure in what became the Citizens’ Congress of Estonia. The electorate for that legislative body was only those registered by the Citizens’ Committees.
Open opponents and dissidents instead found an organizational home in Eesti Rahvusliku Sõltumatuse Partei (the Estonian People’s Independence Party), established in 1988. This party, in contrast to the Heritage Society, brought together opponents of the Soviet system and joined together idealists and radicals. Some of these anti-Soviet opponents had been imprisoned and had spent years in the Gulag camp system or in psychiatric clinics. Here, some of those who had self-identified as part of ‘Shadow Estonia’ also engaged. The Estonian People’s Independence Party was the most idealistic force in Estonian public life, in contrast to the particularly pragmatic Popular Front but also in comparison with many of the nationalist-humanists. Therefore, in 1988 Estonia had an organizational landscape covering groupings related to the Party-state (economists and constitutionalists), those who carried further a pragmatic, non-Soviet legacy (the nationalist-humanists), and, finally, those who embraced opposition and anti-Soviet resistance (the opponents and dissidents).
Just a few years later, in 1990, a multitude of small political parties had mushroomed, many of them with Christian roots, and a number of civil associations. In March 1990, elections (still taking place within the Soviet Union) to the Estonian Supreme Soviet – renamed the Supreme Council as part of the de-Sovietization process – made the Popular Front into the dominant force within that legislative and governing body. In practice, two bodies, the Supreme Council and the Citizens’ Congress, worked more or less side by side, also with some personnel overlap. Reforms to transform the state structures and the economic system towards a market economy were prioritized, and a basic consensual approach prevailed.
When Estonia shifted from one-party rule and a planned economy to multi-party pluralism and capitalism, it did so against the background of a Soviet legacy that differed from all the other republics, including the Baltic ones. Estonia held its first elections as an independent country in September 1992. These elections were democratic, and they brought to power a coalition of economically liberal but socially conservative Christian nationalists and moderate social democrats, the prime minister being the young historian Mart Laar, only 32 years old at the time, who appeared earlier in this chapter as the founder of Noor Tartu. Quickly, the government launched radical reforms targeting the smothering central state bureaucracy, while at the same time continuing with the privatization of property and macro-economic restructuring policies inherited from the government that bridged the Communist and democratic systems between March 1990 and September 1992. Most of those who dominated the political scene in Estonia during these important, formative years of institutional change knew each other either through the Party-state structures or through social networks that in many instances went back decades. Social circles and clubs that overlapped, intertwined, and sometimes challenged each other constituted an integral part of the republic’s cognitive and creative life. Hence, unintentionally, the post-Stalin decades contributed to preparing the Estonian intelligentsia and the Estonian Party-state for the cooperative yet competitive relations that constitute democratic party-politics.
Conclusions
This chapter has shown how governance patterns developed in Estonia during the post-Stalin decades embodied overall consensual relations, relations based on mutual co-existence, between the local Party-state and major parts of the intelligentsia. Pragmatists on both sides set the tone. The Moscow-loyal nomenklatura and leadership, installed by the purge in 1950–1951, successively transformed into an Estonian-inclined apparatus that shielded the mostly non-Soviet way of life of the nationalist-humanist intelligentsia and symbiotically intertwined with their technocratic-economic counterparts. An idealist strand of the intelligentsia, ‘Shadow Estonia’, remained withdrawn from the Soviet Estonian context, and later, during perestroika, established its own social infrastructure and political party, thereby retaining its distance from the national pragmatists. Idealism was not, however, a dominant practice within the Estonian intelligentsia, neither among the nationalist-humanists nor the technical-economists.
The geographical division between political and intellectual power played a role in Soviet Estonia, located in Tallinn and Tartu respectively. Most of the nationalist-humanist intelligentsia, including the idealist ‘Shadow Estonia’, resided or were educated at Tartu University, mostly in its historical and journalism faculties. Through its physical distance from the political power hub of Tallinn, Tartu was able to uphold the relatively liberal spirit historically ascribed to it and its university, in cooperation with the local university Komsomol preserving a club society that was also reflected in Tallinn. The technical-economic intelligentsia, however, existed in close, not to say symbiotic proximity to political power in Tallinn, its major education institution being TPI, and its institutional bases, the Ministry of Consumer and Light Industry and Mainor. It attracted intellectual and entrepreneurial talent, who in their socializing combined theoretical knowledge with practice, and did so as an integral part of the Party-state structures.
Governance patterns emerged based on tacit negotiations over what lines not to cross, which became predictably stable because of the long 28-year reign of First Secretary Johannes Käbin. While being able to uphold pragmatism and a peaceful co-existence between the state and the local elite at home, the ECP for most of this period simultaneously maintained relations with the Centre in Moscow that were respectful but in the final years before perestroika became strained. The ‘triangular relationship’ of pragmatic co-existence between the local Party-state, the Centre, and the local intelligentsia, thus went through problematic changes in 1978. As Moscow once more (the first time being through the purge in 1950–1951) tried to dismantle Estonian national communism, at least some of the pragmatists were removed from power in favour of those more inclined to dogmatism and demonstrable loyalty to the Centre. This change in the political climate certainly affected the intelligentsia’s freedom and created less predictability in the negotiated boundaries of action but proved to be too short-lived to cause any more profound damage. Therefore, the Estonian Party-state and intelligentsia entered the perestroika era in 1986 carrying with them a long-nurtured preparedness for pragmatism.
Notes
1 In January 1949, the Leningrad Affair took place, which incriminated the Communist Party of Leningrad, geographically not so far from Estonia (Leningrad being former St. Petersburg in Western Russia). The Leningrad Affair was, however, part of a power struggle between the two Russian centres Moscow and Leningrad, an intra-Russian affair (Taagepera, 1993, p. 86). The purge of the Estonian Communist Party and the intelligentsia was probably born out of Moscow’s fear of national communism and a desire to strike hard against one of the most nationalist republics, but could also, as Taagepera (1993) points out have been triggered by Karotamm’s attitude to collectivization.
2 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, hereafter RGANI), Meeting of CPSU CC Secretariat, materials for Protocol No.181 (1c–16c) 18 April 1961. fond 4, opis 16, delo 990. Translated from Russian by Sergiy Kurbatov.
3 Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Tiina Mägi, Founder Kodulinn (Hometown), in Tallinn, 3 September 2004.
4 Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Mart Laar, Founder Noor Tartu, Prime Minister of Estonia (1992–1994), in Tallinn, 2 May 2001 and 30 September 2004.
5 Interview with Mart Laar in Tallinn, 2 May 2001 and 30 September 2004; Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Lauri Vahtre, Founder of Noor Tartu, in Tallinn, 29 January 2004; Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Heiki Valk, Founder of Noor Tartu, in Tartu, 19 February 2004.
6 Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Kärt Jänes-Kapp, participant of Noor Tartu, in Tallinn, 22 February 2014; Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Mart Kalm, participant of Noor Tartu, in Tallinn, 27 September 2004; Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Madis Kanastik, participant of Noor Tartu, in Tartu, 19 February 2004; Interview with Lauri Vahtre in Tallinn, 29 January 2004.
7 Noor Tartu deliberately alluded to the Estonian nationalist movement of the late nineteenth century, and the association Noor Eesti (Young Estonia).
8 Interview with Madis Kanastik, participant of Noor Tartu, in Tartu, 19 February 2004.
9 Lauristin’s father had been a prominent Estonian Communist, Johannes Lauristin, one of the ‘June Communists’ who came to power in 1940.
10 Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Toivo Palm, Tõru Klubi, Tartu University Komsomol, in Tallinn, 3 September 2004.
11 Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Trivimi Velliste, Founder of Tõru Klubi, in Tallinn, 20 February 2004.
12 Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Tunne Kelam, dissident, organizer of Citizens’ Movement, in Tallinn, 21 August 2008.
13 Prominent former members were Hardo Aasmäe, Toomas Alatalu, Jaak Allik, Siim Kallas, Sulev Kannike, Rein Lang, Toomas Leito, Rein Ruutsoo, Edgar Savisaar, Riivo Sinijärv, Rein Toomla (Laar, Ott, and Endre, 1996;).
14 Interview with Toivo Palm in Tallinn, 3 September 2004.
15 Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Ignar Fjuk, member of the Kuku Klubi, Tallinn School of Architecture, in Tallinn, 14 August 2017.
16 Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Jaak Jooerut, poet, writer, member of the Writers’ Union, in Stockholm, 21 May 2014; Interview by Li Bennich-Björkman with Paul-Erik Rummo, writer, poet, member of the Writers’ Union, in Tallinn, 26 May 2016.
References
Aarelaid-Tart, A. (2003) ‘Estonian-inclined Communists as Marginals’, in Humphrey, R., Miller, R., and Zdravomyslova, E. (eds.) Biographical Research in Eastern Europe. Altered Lives and Broken Biographies. London: Ashgate, pp. 138–167.
Aarelaid-Tart, A. (2006) Cultural Trauma and Life Stories. Helsinki: Kikimora Publications.
Alexiev, A. (1983) Dissent and Nationalism in the Soviet Baltic.New York:Rand Corporation.
Bennich-Björkman, L. (2007) Political Culture under Institutional Pressure. How Institutions Tranforms Early Socialisation. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burds, J. (2001) ‘The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944–1948’, The Carl Beck Papers on Russian and East European Studies, 1505, pp. 1–73.
Grybkauskas, S. (2018) ‘Anti-Soviet protests and the localism of the Baltic republics’ nomenklatura: Explaining the interaction’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 49 (4), pp. 447–462.
Huber, C. (1992) Nationalism in Soviet Estonia, MA diss., Texas Tech University. https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/60022/31295007088213.pdf?sequence=1.
Johnston, H., and Aarelaid-Tart, A. (2000) ‘Generations, Microcohorts and Long-Term Mobilization: The Estonian National Movement 1940–1991’, Sociological Perspectives, 43 (4), pp. 671–698.
Järvesoo, E. (1978) ‘The Postwar Economic Transition’, in Parming, T., and Järvesoo, E. (eds.) A Case Study of a Soviet Republic. The Estonian SSR. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 131–190.
Laar, M. (1992) War in the Woods. Estonia’s Struggle for Survival, 1944–1956. Washington, D.C.: Compass Press.
Laar, M. (2002) Das estnische Wirtschaftswunder. Tallinn: Tänapäev Publishing and Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung.
Laar, M. (2015) Pööre: mälestusi I. Tallinn: Read.
Laar, M., Ott, U., and Endre, S. (1996) Eeslava: Teine Eesti: Eesti iseseisvuse taassünd 1986/1991. Intervjuud, dokumendid, kõned, artiklid. Tallinn: SE & JS.
Ledeneva, A. (1998) Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Loader, M. (2016) ‘Beria and Khrushchev: The Power Struggle over Nationality Policy and the Case of Latvia’, Europe-Asia Studies, 68 (10), pp. 1759–1792.
Misiunas, R., and Taagepera, R. (1993) The Baltic States. Years of Dependence 1940–1990. London: Hurst & Company.
Muuli, K. (2013) Vabariigi sünnimärgid: varjatud murdehetki Eesti poliitikas 1987–2007. Tallinn: Tulimuld.
Niitsoo, V. (1997) Vastupanu 1955–1985. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus.
Parming, T. (1978) ‘Roots of Nationality Differences’, in Allworth, E. (ed.) Nationality Group Survival in Multi-Ethnic States. Shifting Support Patterns in the Soviet Baltic Region. New York: Praeger Publishers, pp. 24–57.
Pennar, J. (1978) ‘Soviet Nationality Policy and the Estonian Communist Elite’, in Parming, T., and Elmar Järvesoo, E. (eds.) A Case Study of a Soviet Republic. The Estonian SSR. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 105–127.
Pruuli, T. (2013) EÜE Jälg: pildikesi üliôpilasnoorsoo elust. Tallinn: Varrak.
Raun, T. (1991) Estonia and the Estonians. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
Renwick, A. (2006) ‘Anti-Political or Just Anti-Communist? Varieties of Dissidence in East-Central Europe and Their Implications for the Development of Political Society’, East European Politics and Societies, 20 (2), pp. 286–318.
Ruutsoo, R. (2002) Civil Society and Nation Building in Estonia and the Baltic States. Impact of traditions on mobilization and transition 1986–2000 – historical and sociological study. Rovaniemi, Finland: Acta Universitatis Lapponiensis.
Smith, J. (2003) ‘Republican Authority and Khrushchev’s Education Reform in Estonia and Latvia 1958–1959’, in Mertelsmann, O. (ed.) The Sovietization of the Baltic States 1940–1956. Tartu, Estonia: Kleio Publishers and Tartu University, pp. 237–252.
Smith, J. (2013) Red Nations. The Nationalities Experience in and after the USSR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Statiev, A. (2005) ‘Motivations and Goals of Soviet Deportations in the Western Borderlands’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 28 (6), pp. 977–1003.
Strods, H., and Kott, M. (2002) ‘The file on operation “Priboi”: A re-assessment of the mass deportations of 1949’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 33 (1), pp. 1–36.
Suny, R. G. (1998) The Soviet Experiment. Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States. New York: Oxford University Press.
Taagepera, R. (1993) Estonia. Return to Independence. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Taru, M., Pilve, E., and Kaasik, P., Coussée, F., and Williamsson, H. (2014) ‘The history of youth work in Estonia’, in Taru, M., Coussée, F., and Williamsson, H. (eds.) The history of Youth Work in Europe. Relevance for Today’s Youth Policy, volume 4. Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe, pp. 15–33.
Tromly, B. (2014) Making the Soviet Intelligentsia. Universities and Intellectual Life under Stalin and Khrushchev. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vardys, V.S., (1975) ‘The Role of the Baltic Republics in Soviet Society’, in Szporluk, R. (ed.) The Influence of East Europe and the Soviet West on the USSR. New York: Praeger Publishers, pp. 147–179.