INTRODUCTION

This article will examine “rupture” as one of the central categories of Estonian narrative memory.^[1] I analyze the meaning and significance of rupture in the autobiographical re-constructions of Estonian experiences with Stalinism. In so doing, I am placing the concept of rupture into the wider context of the Estonian textual community. Afterwards, I shall analyze the cultural meaning assigned to the concept of rupture in Estonian history and memoirs. Finally, I shall draw conclusions on how the representation of the Soviet occupations as the “Great Rupture” is used to provide both content and meaning to the whole of 20th century Estonian history.
Rupture is one of the key concepts used to explain the past in post-socialist Estonian society. The domination of the concept of rupture and the lack of continuity in political, social, cultural, and other spheres has been used to explain specific traits and consequences of the post-Soviet transition. The cultural trauma theory of Piotr Sztompka, a well-known theoretician of East European transition, provides an example of the interpretation of post-socialist rupture for Estonian social scientists.^[2]According to this theory,

“The year 1989 was not only a political break from an autocratic, mono-party regime toward a parliamentary, multiparty system – the ultimate victory of democracy; nor was it an economic break from a socialist, planned command economy, to a basically free, capitalist market – the second birth of capitalism. Neither was it the radical transformation of institutions, or the restitution of some earlier social order – the return to Europe, to the West, to normality or whatever. Rather, [...] it was a major cultural and civilizational break, a beginning of the reconstruction of the deepest cultural tissue as well as civilizational surface of society, the slow emergence of the new post-Communist culture and civilization.”^[3]

Sztompka emphasizes that, in comparison with other components of social change, cultural trauma has the greatest inertia and it may take several generations to overcome its effects. A milder version of cultural trauma has been used by Estonian social scientists to interpret the social experiences of Estonians in the 20th century. For example, the sociologist Aili Aarelaid used biographical interviews to demonstrate the difficulty of retrospectively recounting one’s life in the Soviet period, as a result of which the whole period has been experienced as a sequence of rupture with preceding norms. Lives lived and stories told under one ruler had to be reconsidered and revised under a new ruler every time the political leadership changed. This has been an obstacle to the creation of a coherent image of the Soviet period.^[4] In late 20th century, such historical ruptures constitute the main concept used by Estonian social sciences for interpreting personal experiences.
Rupture as narrative template is not new and did not emerge with the fall of communism, but is characteristic of the Estonian national, historical, and cultural consciousness in general. The perception of Estonian history and culture as a sequence of ruptures appeared with the emergence of pre-professional, national-romantic history writing in the 19th century. The esteemed Estonian historian Ea Jansen, when analyzing Estonian historiography in the framework of conflicting ideologies, argued that Estonian history writing has to a great extent been teleological. When public opinion, the state or any another influential socio-political actor has accepted certain values, then history has been reconstructed as the constant, linear movement toward the realization of those values. The understanding of history has been subordinated to the quest for evidence to prove the timelessness and inevitability of these values.^[5]In the patriotic tradition, the goal is clearly national independence and statehood. The writing of Estonian national history is founded on a pattern of continuity “ruptured” by foreign invasion. Estonian history is divided into periods according to which foreign authorities ruled the country,^[6]with every interference from outside interpreted as an affront to history even when European states in general claimed their legitimacy on dynastic rather than national principles. In this regard, use of the term “ancient struggle for independence” to describe the fighting that followed the crusader invasions between 1208 and 1227 is a good example. The period preceding the invasion is portrayed and is widely accepted in Estonian national memory as an ancient golden age of freedom, an initial Estonian independence where any form of dependence was non-existent, that was ruptured and destroyed by invasion.^[7]
The main historical myths surrounding the concept of historical rupture were fashioned during the national awakening in the second half of the 19th century in opposition to prevailing Baltic-German historical traditions. Reflecting the Herderian influence on professional writing of Estonian national history, a special role was assigned to the myth of a golden age. In the early decades of the Estonian national movement, this myth had political connotations as well. Moreover, it became widespread through promotion in literature and newspapers. Many similar myths also came to flourish, such as the myth of “the night of the seven hundred years of slavery” (regarding to the period after the Catholic conquest in the 13th century), the myth that Estonian history was a fight between the forces of darkness and light, good and evil; or the myth of the extraordinary bravery demonstrated by the Estonians in their fight against the Crusaders. Later, a myth grew up around the national awakening that made heroes of the “great” individuals of the 19th century national movement. Myths associated with the national awakening itself acted as one of the important reservoirs of national memory in the 20th century.^[8]In 1996, the Estonian writer Hasso Krull outlined an image of Estonian culture as a culture of rupture:

“Estonian culture is originally built on the motif of rupture. The first positive rupture is when Estonians detached themselves from the Baltic-German cultural community and from German cultural commu-nity in general.^[9]The first negative rupture involved the historical myth of a lost, ancient national independence. All the following [ruptures] have been to a lesser or greater extent variations on these themes.”^[10]

In the 1990s, Estonian cultural discourse focused on two historical “ruptures.” On the one hand, the regaining of political independence was interpreted as a positive rupture with the previous, undesirable Soviet norm.^[11] On the other hand, much stress has been put on the negative rupture that began with Soviet occupation and annexation, and continued throughout the Stalinist era. Professional historical study of autobiographical texts from this period portray these events as the Great Rupture.
The aim of the current article is to analyze the cultural content of autobiographical accounts of the Stalinist era in Estonia that were written in the 1990s. In the course of this analysis, the images commonly used by autobiographers to convey the essence of their experiences will be revealed and explained within their historical background. The article will also demonstrate how the creation of certain images expresses the needs of a shared group identity. This article will treat rupture as a narrative template,^[12]in keeping with a broader school of thought on how to interpret the past as presented in memoirs. The autobiographical interpretation of certain historical periods will be treated as historical images^[13]or a complex of images that formed as a result of retrospective selection and evaluation, and an understanding of historical realities based on the knowledge of the unanimity of temporality.^[14]The term collective tradition has been applied in ethnology to denote the meaning given to a historical image^[15]by members of a certain group as well as to refer to the complexes of meanings and explanations inherent in different interpretations of the past.^[16]

THE RENOVATION OF HISTORY AND THE COLLECTION OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL TEXTS

My analysis is based on life stories written by Estonians born in the 1920s who were responding to public appeals made between 1989 and 1999. This was part of an undertaking initiated by the Estonian Life Histories Association and its predecessors^[17]at the end of 1980s and in the 1990s. These efforts were part of a national discourse focusing on individual perspectives and experiences of national history. Without going into the details of the broader context of memory and life-stories’ collection, it should be noted that the boom in the writing of memoirs and in the gathering of autobio-graphies in Estonia since the 1980s cannot be separated from the rather similar process of the rewriting and nationalization of history observed in all post-socialist countries.^[18]However, it would be a mistake to maintain that the means and methods of these processes were identical. The symbolic “recovery” of history in the discursive practices of Central and Eastern Europe at the end of 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s was synonymous with individualization of everyday experiences and consciousness, and the growth of plurality in society. As a result, one can understand the “autobiographical boom” as a distinctive feature of post-socialist societies.^[19]Individual lives have been used to illustrate broader historical processes. They had to demonstrate that, despite all kind of repression under the Communist regime, the pluralism of historical consciousness and experience existed and that history was not homogenous despite official efforts to make it so. The decentralization of history and the privatization of the past are strategies that were meant to confront the official, socialist version of the past and construct “a new history” from individual and group-specific experiences. In this context, Estonia has a special position because of active role played by the Estonian population in response to public appeals by various institutions for the submission of memoirs. In other countries, the oral history method is dominant.^[20] The remarkable success of the public appeal in Estonia has to be understood as a result of the long standing tradition of other methods requiring active public participation (the beginning of this tradition is usually seen in a similar public appeal made by Jakob Hurt in 1888).^[21]Also, the fact that the institutions behind these public appeals are perceived as nationally important institutions, such as The Estonian Literary Museum and The Estonian National Museum, helped guarantee a significant public response.
Regarding topics, rhetoric, and audience, the appeals made between 1989 and 1999 were under the decade in which they were made, resulting in the individualization and diversification of Estonian history in the 20th century.^[22]The first appeal, entitled “Estonian Life Histories,” was made in 1989 by the Cultural-Historical Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum and emphasized the importance of collecting autobiographies for Estonia’s social and collective memory. The appeal provided a brief explanation of the concept of the autobiography.^[23]The appeal pointed out that each individual fate is part of the history of the Estonian nation. In the following years, the archive repeatedly published similar appeals in the press. Following their attempts, the collection of memoirs and autobiographies receded for a few years until the Estonian Life Histories Association was founded in 1996 and announced a competition to collect autobiographical texts and stories, this time entitled “My Destiny and the Destiny of those Close to Me in the Labyrinths of History.” This competition resulted in the largest collection of stories and concentrated on domestic life and the changes wrought by revolutionary times. In the context of the 1990s, the expression “labyrinths of history” specifically meant wars, revolutions, deportations, or some other kind of violence, focusing on events immediately before and after World War II. The last major campaign to collect autobiographies in the 1990s, “One Hundred Lives of a Century” (1998), was launched with the end of the century in mind. The aim was to compile an anthology of autobiographies that would represent the experience of the 20th century. This appeal again focused on the right of Estonians to tell their life stories and the identification of these autobiographical texts with the broader historical context of the 20th century. The appeal claimed, “All in all, [this is synonymous with] the history and the story of the nation.” Contrary to the two previous appeals, this campaign revealed the possibility for conflicting public and private interpretations of not only in the Soviet occupation, but also the period of Estonia’s interwar independence.
Approximately 300 life stories of people born in the 1920s were submitted in reply to the Estonian Life Histories Association’s different appeals. This article is based on analysis of 100 of these life stories. They are of different length, from a few to over three hundred pages. The autobiographies published in life story anthologies between 1997 and 2003 also provided important background information.^[24]

THE CONFLICT OVER HISTORY IN THE (RE)EMERGENCE OF RUPTURE

Memoirs written by older Estonians in the 1990s are marked by a strong sense of nationalism, a close connection with the national version of history, and the consequent use of national and political repertoire when interpreting events from their individual lives, which are given a testimonial quality. The urge to remove the “coverings from the blind spots” (the ultimate catchword of the 1988-1991 drive for independence) of national history by committing one’s life story to paper was the main motivation for Estonia’s autobiographical boom in the 1990s.^[25]In the public rhetoric of the early 1990s, each individual Estonian was treated as an integral part of the national body. The call to give history back to the Estonians meant simultaneously rethinking history and placing Estonian nationhood at its centre; that is, writing “real” history by placing an emphasis on the collective experience that it reflected.^[26]
The decentralization, renovation, and nationalization of history during the period from the end of perestroika to Estonia’s “singing revolution”, was an attempt to fill in history’s “blind spots.” This can be fittingly described as the (re-)emergence of the concept rupture in Estonian collective memory. This inevitably led to a conflict between Marxist and nationalist approaches to history. The nationalist approach used the strategies mentioned above to oppose the official, socialist version of history. In fact, this was itself part of a broader rewriting of history.
During the Soviet occupations of 1940-1941 and 1944-1991, the writing and teaching of history was subordinated to the needs of the centralized, totalitarian political regime. The official Soviet understanding of history was in conflict with previous Estonian historiography. If the writing of history and especially its teaching in schools was structured according to nationalist principle during the Estonian Republic (1918-1940), then the purpose of history during the Soviet period was the formation of a national consciousness and awareness of Soviet citizenship. Historical research and the teaching of history became part of the ideology of class struggle, with the paramount aim being to develop a Soviet patriotism and a sense of Soviet nationhood. The Soviet approach to history was dictated by the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet regime, and Estonian unification with Russia, which were presented as the end goal of historical processes. This approach did contain some connections with earlier traditions, especially the Slavophile approach to Estonian history, which stressed the “urge, will, and wish” of the peasantry in the Baltic States to join the Russian Orthodox religion and live in a big, friendly family under Russian leadership. This idea was expressed in Soviet historical writing through the myth of the ancient friendship of the Estonian and Russian peoples. The main Soviet historical myth that Estonian nationalist opposed was the myth that class struggle was the determining factor in the history of the Estonian people and the leading cause for the Soviet regime’s victorious accession to power in Estonia.^[27]
Significantly, two contradictory interpretations of the Stalinist period existed in the Estonian SSR. The historical events that most affected families were omitted from the official version of the history of the Estonian SSR. These included the War for Independence (1918-1920), the names of Estonia’s interwar government leaders (especially President K. Pдts), the secret protocol of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1939, the Forest Brethren movement after the Second World War (1944-1951), the mass flight of Estonians to the West to escape the Soviet invasion in 1944, and, most of all, the repression and mass deportations of the Stalinist period. These events and persons were suppressed in the Communist regime’s official history. In the discourse of the so-called new national awakening at the end of the 1980s, they obtained the status of blind spots, the “filling in” of which stressed the illegality and illegitimacy of the Soviet order in Estonia. History became an argument providing for national consolidation and national independence. The univocal image of the Soviet period as a “rupture” with a true national past was opposed to the previous Soviet interpretation of the Stalinist period as a “socialist revolution and construction”.^[28]This (re-)emergence of the concept of historical rupture represented a total shift in the understanding of the Soviet period’s place in 20th century Estonian history. The common understanding of the pre-war and post-war periods shifted from being official positive to being strictly negative. In official Soviet history and officially recognized biographies, the victory of the Communist regime was considered to be the beginning of a new, better, more just life. The nationalist approach saw the Communist regime as the starting point of national degradation and disaster, the disruption of the natural development of the nation.

THE TEXTUAL COMMUNITY AND THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF RUPTURE IN ESTONIAN AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

Using one autobiography as an example, I will demonstrate the working of the concept of rupture in connection with the Stalinist era and how this idea of rupture structures the history of Estonia in the 20th century. This will be examined in the context of how the Stalinist era is remembered as a rupture with a natural historical order and how this relates to the wider “culture of rupture” in Estonian historical narratives. In this relation, the role of the textual community in the conceptualization of rupture in 1980’s and 1990’s Estonia will be spelled out.
The concept of the textual community revolves around questions of how different semiotic codes are used to organize memory. This article’s analysis is based on the work of James Wertsch, which claims that members of a group share a certain representation of the past because they share textual resources. The outcome of the use of a shared “canon” may be the formation of homogeneous, complementary, or contested memory, but the key to the question of the distribution or transmission of memory is to understand the role and shared knowledge of texts in this process.^[29]A textual community, a notion very close to the shared knowledge of certain texts, has been applied by Vieda Skultans in her interpretation of Latvian memoirs, especially as they pertain to childhood memories.^[30]The textual community is a micro-society organized on the basis of a shared understanding of certain texts. Through participation in a textual community, the individual can experience the textual materials around which the community has organized itself without necessarily having read the texts himself or herself.^[31]Historical and cultural environments that fashion the frames for autobiographical stories consist not only of the present, but depend on traditions formed by the mutual influences of the past and the present.^[32]
The cultural discourse of the so-called New National Awakening at the end of the 1980s was based on a shared a group of shared texts that originated in the previous national awakening in the second half of the 19th century. This shared textual basis provides a certain national logic to the resulting culture. The first National Awakening created a remarkable number of myths that became firmly lodged in Estonian historical consciousness, in the end becoming a myth in its own right. This myth of the first National Awakening served as an anchor during the Soviet period, preserving national identity, in part because it was not a topic prohibited by the Communist ideology or regime. Such myths and texts functioned as the carriers of feelings of identity.^[33]
Kalevipoeg (The Son of Kalev), compiled by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald between 1857 and 1861, became an Estonian national epic and played an important role in providing imagery for the New National Awakening. Kreutzwald originally designed Kalevipoeg as a monument to a dying language. In Estonian historiography Kalevipoeg is regarded as a harbinger of changes in the consciousness of the Estonian peasantry that resulted from a comprehensive complex of reforms. Consequently, according to the established view, “Estonians started to increasingly analyze their position [in the world] and think about the future of their people.”^[34]
Kalevipoeg’s influence on Estonian culture is complex; it has been successfully employed by different systems and ideologies. In the 1930s, Kalevipoeg was the symbol of Estonian diligence. In the 1950s, it was harnessed to support the building of socialism.^[35]Kalevipoeg is the main hero. His archenemy, the Warlock, is invoked to personify various foreign powers at different periods in Estonian history. In the 1930s, the Warlock was interpreted as the German crusader of the medieval war for independence. During Soviet times, Hitler was presented as the Warlock. In post-Soviet times, Stalin has come to represent the Warlock. Significantly, the Kalevipoeg epic is fraught with various “ruptures.” At the end of the epic, Kalevipoeg looses his great powers and he is chained to the front gates of Hell to guarantee that the Warlock will never again enter the human world. The absence of Kalev's son is portrayed as a rupture with the natural order, which will be abolished when Kalevipoeg returns home. For Estonian nationa-lism, the return of Kalevipoeg is the vision of an independent nation-state.^[36]

MEMOIRS AS NATIONAL EPICS

The following example of an autobiography written in the 1990’s uses the plot and poetic form of the epic Kalevipoeg to recreate the ruptures in the lives of Estonians in the 20th century. The author submitted his memoir to the Estonian Life Histories Association in 1991, shortly after the establishment of Estonian independence.^[37]
He was born in the southern Estonian countryside in 1925. Later, his family moved to a small town on the southeastern border where his parents ran a restaurant. He spent his summers on the farm where he was born and enthusiastically recounts these experiences. He depicts the political events of 1940-1941, the first year of Communist occupation, in great detail. He describes the “nationalization” of his family’s property, his fear of being deported to Russia, and the contempt he felt toward the representatives of the new Soviet regime. In 1943 he enlisted in the German army and was imprisoned by the Soviets in 1945. He was subsequently released from prison camp in 1952. In 1945 his father was arrested and his mother was deported to Siberia in 1949. Both parents returned home in 1956. This part of his memoir has been described meticulously with a great number of facts. In 1955 he married. In his memoirs he describes the rest of his life in just few words – life was getting normal. His story ended with a very topical theme for the 1990s, that of the restoration of confiscated property, in relation to which he explained the necessity to once more in [his] lifetime feel himself to be the master.
The following poem was included with this memoir. In an accompanying letter, the author wrote that it was his intention to concentrate on events that mirrored his destiny and the destiny of many others. The poem is presented in the form of a table as follows. Explanatory remarks in the right column are based on insights gained through the extensive study of Estonian autobiographies written in the post-Soviet period.^[38]
The popular view of Estonia’s 20th century history is represented in the poem in lines with the beliefs of the New National Awakening. The poem invokes rhetoric from the regaining of national independence in the early 1990s. The period from 1939 until 1991 can be summarized in the Estonian national narrative as the “Great Rupture” witnessed in different waves of repression, the destruction of the national way of life, and individual lives spent in physical and mental, literal and figurative camps. The events of the 1940s are portrayed as annexations and occupations. The disastrous rupture with the national past caused by the Soviet and German invasions are presented in sharp contradiction to the harmonious national development of the interwar period. The meaning of this rupture is derived from later developments in Estonia, especially from the positive “rupture” of 1991 that returned things to their previous, natural order.
This autobiographical poem was probably written in 1991 to honor the regaining of independence and vividly illustrates how the understanding of the Stalinist experience as a rupture with the natural order occupies a central position within Estonian twentieth century narratives. It also endows previous and subsequent periods with meaning. Hereafter, the article will more closely analyze the cultural content of rupture motifs in memoirs and will explore the historical imagery of the Stalinist period. A far-reaching conclusion on the position of the Stalinist “rupture” in the Estonian narrative memory will be attempted.

THE REPERTOIRE OF RUPTURE IN ESTONIAN MEMOIRS

It is important to point out that the portrayal of the Stalinist experience as a rupture with the natural order is based on culture and ethnicity. The central questions for autobiographers revolve around symbols, morality, and national integrity. Whereas in documents presenting institutionalized memory (texts, books, etc.), the political repertoire (annexation and occupation) is used to characterize change in times of “rupture,” a story line revolving around “the coming of the Russians,” an ethnically defined image, predominates in personal memoirs. The latter originates from Estonian national historiographic traditions, specifically the tradition of organizing Estonian history into the periods of Baltic German rule. The so-called last Russian period, a phrase taken from the title of a popular book written by a professional historian^[39]refers not only to a political period in Estonian history, but also to the cultural meaning bestowed on the Soviet period (Russian is synonymous with Soviet in the sense of being bad, absurd, poor, low-class, and irrational). It also alludes to the ethnic changes wrought by migration.
The published autobiographies include many references to popular Estonian myths as well as moral values that convey specific meanings and provide a clear-cut judgment on events. The selection of specific types of people to personify certain periods of life is – like the selection of events – symbolic in exemplifying the world’s cruelty and injustice or its basic benevolence towards the narrator. Autobiographical narratives double as morality plays both in the underlying design of the story and in the mythical, national elements presented through the use ofpersonal memories. Specific elements, chosen to demonstrate the collective destiny, in testimonio, in the Stalinist experience, are organized with the concept of rupture which serves as the main narrative template for understanding the past.
Below, some central cultural themes of rupture are explored using the above-mentioned poem as an example.

RUPTURE AS THE DEPICTION OF THE INTERWAR ESTONIAN STATE USING PASTORAL IMAGES

The childhood remembrances of elderly Estonians are the main surviving personal memories of Estonia’s first period of independence. Historical images that express a collective understanding of historical reality and a shared knowledge of modernity are important factors in the formation of the generation’s identity. Estonians born in the 1920s acquired their childhood and adolescent experiences in the environment of national modernization. During the subsequent period of Soviet occupation, the memories of this experience were crystallized and served as a patriotic anti-reality opposed to the dominant reality. This gave rise to a type of narrative that can be classified as the national childhood. The childhood memories of the interwar period reached a profound popularity during national restoration at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. Given the socio-political developments of the later 1990s, these memories lost their wider social significance, though they continue to be vital carriers of group-specific values.
In Estonian autobiographies, childhood villages are linked to such esteemed social values as solidarity, mutual help, respect, and informal equality. The village is construed as an ideal national society where no person dominates or assumes a position of power. As equal members of society they cooperate to ensure the harmonious operation of society.
Just as the farm is presented as the scene for a proper childhood environment, the organization of life and social relationships in the rural home represents an ideal order. The farm is a metaphor for the proper, self-determined nation-state, focused on internal purity and an economy of national resources. The way to self-determination is presented as honesty and diligence, wise calculation, the optimum division of labor, and advanced planning (so-called peasant wisdom). This is considered to be the ideal model for the functioning of both the state and private institutions like the family.^[40]

THE CONCEPT OF RUPTURE AS AN ENCOUNTER BETWEEN NATIONAL SYMBOLS AND CULTURAL CONFLICT

The portrayal of national symbols and institutions such as the Estonian national flag, legendary state leaders, and national mass-organizations is central to the historical images of the interwar Estonian Republic. It is characte-ristic that their portrayal occurs when the narrator reaches the point of rupture. For example, when the narrator comes to describe the events of 1939 and 1940, he or she returns to the time of the first republic and starts reminiscing about his or her life, invoking national symbols and activities connected to them. Or, vice versa, the rupture is portrayed through the fall of national symbols. The theme of state symbols in decline occurs in different emotional contexts that serve various strategic functions. First of all, irony and ridicule are used in order to portray the establishment of Soviet power in Estonia as illegal and illegitimate. This strategy is more common in memoirs written in the first half of the 1990s and is obviously connected to popular attitudes during the co-called juridical period^[41] at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s.^[42]
A crucial part is played by the portrayal of national integrity, which is contrasted with an ideological and ethnic other. Initial concerns about non-Estonians or those lacking the most important features of proper “Estonianess” are described by contrasting national characters. The Estonians are portrayed as diligent with a love for hard work, mastery of the soil, and peasant wisdom, which expresses a natural skepticism toward Communist ideology. Tales of the invasion by Soviet troops and the first personal encounters with Soviet soldiers portray ethnically and culturally based contrasts and comparisons. The Soviets are characterized as lacking culture and having poor hygiene, a portrayal that continued to be prevalent in popular discourse throughout the 1990’s. Pille Runnel’s research on popular discourse on Estonia’s integration into the European Union demonstrates a continuation of these images. ^[43] Soviet soldiers are presented as dirty individuals, poorly dressed, lacking knowledge of the world, ignorant, uncultivated and ideologically brainwashed. This image of a culturally unacceptable invasion and anecdote-like stories about Soviet soldiers that first encounter the civilized world in Estonia have also been used by professional historians in popular history books.^[44]
Another dominant emotion connected to the concept of rupture as demonstrated in the downfall of national symbols is the anxiety and feeling of powerlessness that are expressed in the light of the repression and Soviet occupation that followed World War II. In this context, the Soviet/Stalinist period is demonized from its very beginning as an essentially evil empire with images of constant secret surveillance and oppression – images of NKVD men in black leather jackets and exile in Siberia that formed a part of the “Great Martyrdom.”

EXILE IN SIBERIA AS RUPTURE – RUPTURE AS SUFFERING

The symbolic capital and political currency of exile to Siberia was an important feature of Estonian public discourse in the early 1990s.^[45]There was a well-developed repertoire of commemoration among the Estonian diaspora in the West (novels, anniversaries, commemoration rituals, etc.). During the period of Soviet domination in Estonia, they paid more attention to the first mass deportation in 1941. The focus was similarly on the events of 1939-1941 during the emergence of historical debate at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s.^[46]
During the 1990s, different experiences of repression melded together to form a single narrative of suffering. To begin with, audiences came to perceive different waves of repression and deportation as one event. Rutt Hinrikus, the compiler of We Came Back, a collection of stories from Siberian exile, claimed in her later analysis of the responses that the book generated a perception of uniform experience of exile on the side of the readers. All of the deportations are lumped in the popular memory into one “Great Martyrdom,” toward which one is expected to show compassion and horror. This was the dominant impression from the book despite the fact that it contained stories of people deported at different times and under different. All of the people who suffered, regardless of the time, the reasons, or the degree of their suffering, were united in readers’ minds as having shared one event.^[47]
In the narrative of suffering, destiny (saatus) is accorded a large role with strong implications for Estonian historical consciousness as a small nation. The research by linguist Leena Huimas, whose 2002 comparative study of the frequency and valence of the word saatus as a linguistic stereotype and metaphor in Estonian and Finnish women’s memoirs demonstrates a similar point.^[48]A key aspect of the meaning and use of these terms is the degree of agency that the writer attributes to herself in shaping the course of her life. Tiina Kirss has also shown in her study of the role of Siberian exile in Estonian women’s memoirs that the connotations and tonality of the Estonian word saatus closely resemble that of the Latvian liktenis, examined by Vieda Skultans in regards to post-Soviet Latvian autobiographies.^[49]The term liktena stasti – literally translated as tales of destiny – is used to denote the autobiographies of the politically repressed. Although it can be used in everyday speech with a more neutral or attenuated meaning, saatus has the valence of ineluctability and inevitability, if not determinism. When fate enters the scene, the protagonist is left with a limited number of options. Expectations and agency are largely subverted as the course of life is disrupted from without. On an emotional level, saatus almost invariably signifies darkness, sadness, and loss – doom rather than good fortune.^[50]Kirss suggests that, in light of the signals latent in the word “destiny” and its frequent use in the titles of biographies, memoirs should be read with attention to stylistic and structural clues pointing to a metanarrative of fateful suffering.^[51]
Invoking human suffering to portray the concept of historical rupture has an interesting dynamic. In the autobiographies written in the first half of the 1990s, the concept of rupture is primarily focused on the events of 1940–1941. This probably has to do with the so-called juridical period in historical debates as well as the newly available possibilities for practicing public commemoration. There was a 50th anniversary of the first mass deportation in 1991, which was preceded by a movement to re-establish monuments destroyed by Soviet authorities in 1940 and 1941. In the memoirs collected at the end of the 1990s, the Soviet re-occupation after World War II is presented as the main historical point of rupture. Again, it could be assumed that the date of the second mass deportation in 1949, the 50th commemoration of which was held in 1999, goes a long way to explaining this shift in focus. Although the wider public had largely lost its interest in Estonia’s history of suffering by the second half of the 1990s,^[52]it by no means meant the end of the collection of autobiographies, a movement that had already reached significant proportions by that time and had contributed to the formation of a “narrative of suffering”.^[53]There is also a demographic aspect to this shift in focus as there are more survivors of the 1949 deportation still living in the late 1990’s. The topic of forced collectivization is tightly connected to Soviet repression and is portrayed in memoirs as the destruction of family farms.^[54]The inappropriateness of collectivization was a powerful argument in the de-collectivization and privatization processes of the 1990s that in turn served as a trigger for the memories of many people.

CONCLUSION

The main purpose of this article has been to demonstrate the important symbolic role that rupture plays in the Estonian national narrative. In constructing various historical “ruptures,” the Estonian national narrative builds on earlier cultural memory, drawing on a textual community that has been forming from the 19th century in order to give meaning to autobiographies written in the last decade of the 20th century.
It is interesting that the interpretation of Stalinism as a historical rupture was established at a time that was itself a historical rupture, albeit one that was positively perceived.^[55]Filling-in “gaps” in Estonian history took a leading role in the discourse of the so-called New National Awakening that started at the end of the 1980s. The national-normative approach to history confronted the Soviet version of history. To form a counter-weight to the official Soviet picture of the Stalinist period as a period of socialist construction, the image of the same period as a rupture with national tradition supported a national approach to the rewriting of Estonian history. In the discourse of “rupture,” historical memories were evaluated in order to rehabilitate a national sense of memory. This historical memory was primarily understood as the destiny of a small nation that had suffered greatly. At the same time, the problem of the continuity of history was brought to the fore of public discourse in the popular sense that Estonian society was returning to history – to the independence of the interwar period. This return to history was common in most post-Socialist countries. The reconstruction of events, situations, and status following the new national ideology of the late 1980s and early 1990s was synonymous with the effort to reestablish things as they were before the Soviet period, with the goal to overcome the burdens of an unwanted past.
Both in the public discourse and in autobiographies, the concept of rupture became fixed as the dominant narrative template for explaining the Stalinist period. This image is made up of dominating events and processes – such as repression, ideological pressure and persecution, nationalization, collectivization, etc. – that define the collective “fate” of Estonian society in the 1940s and the early 1950s.^[56]Within these collective events, individual lives are described as endangered by external forces and characterized by a lack of ability to control one’s fate. The Soviet state is a constant and threatening presence. As a rule, this part of the life story is narrated by the autobiographer from a collective standpoint – the nation – using reference points from Estonian public discourse. A strong rhetoric of victimization accompanies the image of rupture both in public discourse and in individual memoirs.
Rupture as the dominant narrative template for the Stalinist period has multiple meanings and functions, interacting with other historical images in the life stories of elderly Estonians. First of all, rupture constitutes the glasses through which the previous period of national independence is represented as a time of national harmony and prosperity.
Secondly, the concept of rupture became part of political discourse at the end of the 1980’s and in the early 1990’s. This can be seen in popular autobiographers’ responses to social processes, such as land reform and compensation, and in Estonian political debates, such as accusations that the West betrayed Estonia during and after the Second World War and discussions about forced migration in the USSR. On the other hand, the present enters into autobiographies as a motivator and stimulator of certain themes, as demonstrated when the concept of rupture is intertwined with the downfall of certain symbols and exile in Siberia.
In political discourse, the interpretation of the Stalinist period as a rupture with natural order is expanded to the entire Communist period. This was especially dominant during the period of the so-called New National Awakening at the end of the 1980s. During the first half of the 1990s, when history lost its importance in the public sphere,^[57]the expanded notion of rupture was used in liberal economic and socio-political discourses as an argument for restructuring the labor market. The main focus of the argument was, again, based on cultural elements – it stressed the genuine inability of Soviet experience of work, and the Soviet mentality in general, to be adaptable to the needs of a future capitalist Estonia. This corresponds to the ideology of rupture as the destruction of the national way of life and the invasion of alien norms and habits. This is reflected in life stories written at the end of 1980s and at the beginning of 1990s. The memoir analyzed in this article, for example, portrayed Soviet Estonia in its entirety as “being in [the] camps.” The expansion of the concept of rupture to the Soviet period makes the entire period a kind of interruption separating two periods of national independence.
In conclusion, the 1990s saw the development of a so-called collective tradition based on interpretations of the recent past.^[58]This is especially true regarding the rise of the concept of rupture as the dominant historical concept. Collective tradition means that official history writing, popular discourse, and individual life stories all remember the 1940s and 1950s in a relatively coherent way. It is possible to replace one with another without changing the meaning assigned to the interwar, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods. At the end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, when this use of rupture as a historical paradigm was at its peak, the right or wrong of fact-centered remembrances became debated. Facts themselves existed, but included a meaning that could only be right (national) or wrong (Communist). Although the relationship between the public and the private, the collective and the individual, is more complex, most of the memories and testimonies of the older generation have played a significant role in establishing rupture as the leading historical image of the Stalinist period.
The notion of the Stalinist era as a negative, unnatural rupture has helped establish an Estonian national narrative and forms the center of Estonian self-identification for more than one generation.^[59]Official history writing and the autobiographical interpretation of the past concur unconditionally in this case.^[60]Reasons for this can be sought in the magnitude of Stalinist era events as well as in the framework of later interpretation of these experiences. First of all, Estonians suffered significant loss of human life in the Second World War and the Soviet and German occupations. According to recent data, 17.5 % of the pre-war population of Estonia died.^[61]In addition, later Soviet repression has to be taken into consideration as well as the loss of property that resulted from Soviet occupation. It has influenced the life of many generations and is strongly emphasized in the memoirs. The other side of the coin is the positive rupture that took place at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, the ultimate positive change in terms of nationalist ideology.^[62]National ideology stresses the continuity of national and political independence, and uses a selection of events that constitute a “rupture,” to verify the illegality and illegitimacy of the Soviet regime in Estonia. In this process, professional history writing has been backed by autobiographical memory and vice versa. The latter has been directed towards the publicly accepted version of events and interpretations. Even legal procedures support this understanding of Stalinist repression – from the privatization of nationalized enterprises in the 1990s to benefits provided to the repressed in the spheres of health care and transportation in 2004.
The study of rupture as a narrative template is a continuously intriguing problem in light of the theory of cultural trauma. How many negative ruptures are acknowledged to have taken place in Estonian history? Here, the period of Soviet occupation again plays the penultimate role. Just to touch shortly on some aspects of the problem: for many of older Estonians, whose life stories were compiled in the second half of the 1990s, the Estonia of the transition period has also become a time of negative rupture, while the positive picture of the new start has continued to be portrayed in public. A conflict between these meanings became evident at the level of everyday life and at a more systemic level.^[63]The same observation is true for the development of a coherent image of the history of the later Soviet period, an experience which is shared by a notably larger number of people than the interwar and Stalinist era. The experience of the older generation in the 1990s has been eliminated from this process because their recollections of the interwar period do not fit the standard image. The process itself continues in the words and imagery adopted by younger generations. Younger generations of professionals and those interested in history have also questioned the pillars of the older generation’s identity – the picture of a nationally unified pre-World War II Estonian republic.
The expansion of the concept of rupture as a narrative template to cover the entire Communist period makes the latter a kind of time in between that separates the two periods of national independence from each other. Different value assessments are applied that make the remembering of the late Soviet period highly contested throughout Estonian society, whereas there is agreement in society on all levels about the Stalinist period.