The private sphere in Estonia during Stalinism

© 2007 r.

O. Mertelsmann

THE PRIVATE SPHERE IN ESTONIA DURING STALINISM

Historical background

On many ways, Estonia like Latvia or Lithuania represented a ‘special case’ in the context of Soviet history. When exploring the private sphere, one has to bear in mind the different cultural and historical background compared with other regions of the USSR.1 Estonians are a Finno-Ugric people, speaking a language similar to Finnish. In the 13th century, the country was conquered by German and Danish crusaders and until the First World War a Baltic German elite dominated. As a result, Estonia became part of the Central European cultural space. The reformation took place in the 16th century and Protestantism is today still the dominant faith. Except for Germans, there were also other ethnic minorities, Russians, Swedes, Finns and since the 19th century a small group of Jews. Different languages, cultures and faiths were always present a similar situation to many other areas in Eastern Europe.

After being part of the Swedish Empire, Estonia was conquered by Peter the Great at the beginning of the 18th century and incorporated into the Russian Empire. The German elite preserved their preferable situation. Until the Russification campaign in the 1880s, German remained the language of administration and higher education,2 and meanwhile elementary schooling, in the vernacular, already had been introduced in the 18th century. The end of the 19th century was the period of the so-called national awakening of the Estonians, who saw, especially in the German elite, the ‘other’ and the national ‘enemy’. Since nearly the entire population was literate, the Russian Empire offered opportunities for a career and a better life, let it be as a settler in Siberia or a skilled worker in St. Petersburg. When the First World War broke out, nearly one fifth of the roughly one million Estonians lived outside the country; St. Petersburg housed the second biggest settlement of Estonians after Tallinn.

After the February Revolution in 1917, Estonia received autonomy inside the Empire and was for the first time governed by an Estonian administrator. Estonian was to be introduced as the language of administration. The October Revolution and the beginning of violence triggered the striving for independence, which was declared one day before German troops occupied Tallinn in February 1918. The weakness of both dominating powers in the region, Russia and Germany, and a successful War of Independence until 1920, allowed the establishment of a democratic Estonia. In the following period, the state was internationally recognized, but it had to solve a great many severe problems. A radical land reform was conducted to break the power of mainly German estate owners, to tame radical aspirations of the lower classes and to establish a large number of small- or middle-sized peasant farms. Since Estonia consisted originally of the province of Estland and the Northern parts of Livland, not only state building, but also measures of unifying different territories were necessary. The new nation state had to come to terms with its minorities, to reconstruct after nearly six years of war and to stabilize the economy.

Estonia was one of the successor states of Tsarist Russia and many old traditions, norms and regulations continued, especially because of an elite being educated under the old regime. About 40,000 Estonians re-emigrated from Soviet Russia according to the settlement of the peace treaty. Since they were often better educated and had made

a career, they could very often enter the elite.3 Nine percent of the population were Russians and nearly one fifth of the citizens was Orthodox. All this enforced continuity. It was hoped that the situation in Soviet Russia would ‘normalize’ and the huge Russian market would be opened for Estonian products. The process of economic reorientation towards Western Europe was long and painful.4

As mentioned above, Estonia belonged culturally to the Central European space. Politically, close contacts with Finland, Sweden and Great Britain were preferred. Denmark and the Netherlands served as a model for the further development of agriculture, the dominating sector of the economy. Imperial Russian traditions were also important. In addition to these different political and cultural influences, one should not underestimate the influence of the peasant world. The vast majority of Estonian town dwellers was living in an urban surrounding in the first or second generation and had a peasant background; the same might be said about the national elite. Serfdom had already been abandoned at the beginning of the 19th century, but only after the land reform did the majority of the peasants own the land on which they were working. The government decided to choose a peasant-based strategy of development. With the help of cooperatives and the state, a certain, but limited success was achieved.5

Like in other European states, democracy was replaced in the 1930s by an authoritarian regime, playing the card of nationalism. Compared to other cases, the regime was relatively mild and the rule of the law remained, but censorship, a number of political arrests, elements of corporate drive, a high degree of state intervention in economics, Estonization campaigns or the beginning of the cult of the ageing president all estranged at least parts of the population. In addition, nepotism and corruption were widespread phenomena.

On the other hand, the period of independence still remained a success story. Economic growth was not impressive, but Estonia was catching up and incomes were more evenly distributed than in most European states. The living conditions of the vast majority had improved visibly. An impressive expansion of education had taken place and concerning high school or university enrolment, the country ranked second in Europe.6 Statehood itself seemed to be stable and long-lasting, even when authoritarian rule had weakened civil society and there existed a certain amount of discontent. The experience of the period of independence was thus very different from the development in the USSR.

The German-Soviet pact of Non-aggression in August 1939, and the secret protocols dividing Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin, changed the situation. One month later, Estonia like Latvia or Lithuania was forced by an ultimatum to allow the establishment of Soviet bases on its territory. In June 1940, accepting a second Soviet ultimatum in the shadow of Hitler’s military successes in the West enforced the increase of stationed troops, the occupation of the country and the establishment of a pro-Soviet government, misnamed a revolution by later Soviet propagandists. In August 1940, the three Baltic States were incorporated into the USSR.

To explore the topic, I rely on different archival sources. The archives, of the state and of the Estonian Communist Party in Tallinn, have been used and present a view from above.& In addition, oral history interviews, a collection of life stories and the replies of the correspondents of the Estonian National Museum provide a glimpse of the perspective of the ruled.8 Some contemporary diaries are also preserved. The interviews, or life stories, played an important role for my understanding of the period of Stalinism in Estonia, of social processes and of the sentiment of the population, but they are not always quoted.

Soviet sources might sometimes be highly problematic. For example, the reports on the sentiment of the population, in the different counties of Estonia 1940-41, started as a more or less fair description of the situation. During the passage of time, they became more and more formalistic, employed increasingly Bolshevik stereotypes and language and tended to report non-existing sentiments like a neutral or even positive attitude of the population toward a mass deportation.9 Oral sources or life stories have a narrative and highly subjective character. The story might change when being retold, the media or collective memory influences what is remembered and how it is presented. Human beings forget or memorize incorrectly. In other words, these sources also provide us with a problematic picture.10 When keeping this in mind, it is, in my opinion, possible to ask for the borders of socialism.

The private sphere before Sovietization

Because Soviet order and the Stalinist way of life were not established over night, we should have a look at the starting point. Despite authoritarian rule and the legacy of Tsarism, Estonia followed, more or less, a Western pattern of development. A certain role was played by culture and the aim to catch up with more developed countries. There existed a constitutional state, and a political society of citizens, forming the public sphere. Civil society had emerged and the private sphere of personal or family life was comparable to that of other European countries.11

The authoritarian state remained within the framework of the rule of law, of course breaking it sometimes, but not destroying it. The number of political prisoners was relatively low, constituted mainly of Communists and members of a right-wing party, the League of the Veterans of the War of Independence (Vabadussojalaste Liit). In 1938, an amnesty freed a large number of prisoners.12 The problems of nepotism and corruption were not only evident under authoritarian rule, but also under democratic governments. The reasons were manifold, the legacy of the old regime and lack of

experience of work in a constitutional and democratic framework influenced the

situation.13 Another factor was the small size of the new Estonian elite. In 1915, nearly 800 Estonians possessed tertiary education; more than a third of them lived outside the country.14 This tiny group, being mainly members of one generation cohort, should some years later run an independent state with more than 34,000 civil servants,15 establish higher education in the national language and run a national economy. The pool of the elite was too small and they knew each other so well, from attending the same educational institutions, to keep away strong vested interests.

To understand the structure of Estonian society, one has to regard Estonian networks. “Every second person is an acquaintance, every fourth a relative”, stated a former Soviet official in an interview.16 Rural Estonian society was originally centered on the village, the estate and the parish, few persons left for the outside world. Inside this closed unity kinship ties were strong. With the arrive of the railway in the 1870s and rapid modernization in the last decades of Tsarist rule, an enormous social and local mobility started, but networks remained and new ones were added. The hierarchy of relationships might be listed in the following way: a member of the family, a friend, a comrade from school or military service, a relative, an acquaintance, a person from the same village, a colleague and at the end of the list a person from the same region. The higher the social position and the better the education, the larger were the networks. Usually, a male’s network was bigger than a female’s one. The networks helped to obtain a job, to start a career or to establish social contacts. They were also very important in the case of danger. In the collection of life stories, one finds dozens of examples of how people changed identity during Stalinism or were warned of deportation or arrest by a member of her or his network. Thousands of Estonians, who had served in the German army, could evade Soviet persecution after the war. The same was the case for many others.

The pedagogue and literary figure, Jaan Roos, for example, escaped arrest from

places all over the country, where he could stay for a while and work for a living. Among those who hid him were relatives, comrades from school, friends, members of the same student fraternity, colleagues and former pupils, whom he had taught in secondary school. He was even able to meet some leading cultural figures, who were at that moment favored by the Communists, or spouses or close relatives of Estonia’s Stalinist leadership circle. After forced collectivization his network was shrinking. His diary has survived and the first four volumes have already been published. This diary is an excellent source for the history of Estonians’ mentality under Stalinist rule.

Networks spanned over political convictions, parties or social positions. In the network, a person was, for example, perceived as a member of a student fraternity or a comrade from school and not as a Communist or right wing radical. Since the background of the vast majority of the people was so similar, classes or stable milieus, which were hard to overcome, as was the case in Britain or Germany, were not really established. Ministers, professors, industrial workers, peasants or white-collar employees were not divided by a large gap impossible to bridge. The negative aspect of the networks was, of course, that they favored all sorts of corruption. As a positive aspect, it should be mentioned that they eased the formation of voluntary associations, clubs or societies.

Following the example of the Baltic German elite, Estonians organized themselves, beginning from the second half of the 19th century, in a large variety of associations. Agricultural societies and later cooperatives promoted the spread of new methods of farming or helped in marketing agricultural products. Choirs, dance groups or cultural circles preserved and supported folklore, traditions and the rising feeling of national identity. Voluntary fire brigades were needed in a country with nearly everybody living in a wooden house. There were societies to promote temperance or education, religious circles, the nucleus of trade unions or professional associations. All this

played a crucial role in the process of national awakening and social change from a

peasant society to a national state.18

Even more than in Western Europe, the nucleus of civil society lay in associations and to a lesser extent in the market economy. But the economic aspect should not be forgotten. In Southern Estonia, where farms were larger, the soil was better and the peasants were richer, this led to more intensive social activities. When Estonia became independent, the newly elected politicians had experienced the benefits of social activities; they were formed by those associations and supported them later. Political parties might also be traced back to voluntary associations of all kind. At the beginning of the 20th century, Estonians replaced, for the first time, German mayors of towns. Political and civil society had strong connections and both spheres were intermingled.

During independence, the state promoted and supported all sorts of clubs and associations, especially in the countryside. Behind this lay the idea to trigger social modernization and national consciousness, but also to overcome vices like alcoholism. The establishment of people’s meeting houses (rahvamaja) in the countryside should give the associations a home. Rural teachers should spend part of their time to support libraries, the educational movement or clubs. Sports, hygiene and temperance were in favor. Among the biggest social events was the national song festival, which was in 1934, for the first time conducted in folk costumes, a habit the Communists should continue later.19 Local song and dance festivals, the annual celebrations of the fire brigades or other associations and clubs played an important role in local social life.

The life stories idealize of course the pre-war social life in the village because of later events. But if one imagines an Estonian parish (vald) of that time, then it would consist of three or four villages, having one school, one people’s house, two small shops, a voluntary fire brigade, a church congregation in the neighboring parish, a number of different cooperatives and other voluntary associations like a rural women’s club. On a regular basis some lectures were organized and meetings of the different circles. In the center of social activities, one could find so called social activists (seltskonnategelased), mainly better off or well-educated peasants, the parish secretary, teachers, local businessmen or respected craftsmen.

Concerning the private sphere, Estonia followed, in general, the Western European pattern, but with a certain connotation originating from rural life. The peasant world was rather small and social control established through neighbors’ strength. For example, the idea of entering marriage as a virgin was not common, but bearing an illegitimate child was a sin that village society would not forget. Having children outside marriage stopped being a serious problem during Stalinism. A motive of envy often occurs in life stories. Among the peasants nobody should be richer than the others. As an Estonian proverb says “The best food for an Estonian is his neighbor”. As a result, personal feuds were not rare and Estonians, characterized by others and themselves as stubborn, would not forget quickly.

The rural economy had faced rapid modernization. Peasant farms, except for those operating on the level of subsistence, had been integrated into the market economy since the 1870s. Reading peasant diaries or their farm ‘chronicles’, one becomes aware of the fact that they were running a small enterprise. This certain ‘spirit of capitalism’ would make it difficult for them later to accept the kolkhoz as a form of agricultural production.

Not only Estonian culture was influenced by the Baltic Germans, but also the language, the grammar and the meaning behind the expressions. The public sphere, in Estonian avalikkus, is identical to the German Offentlichkeit. Private might be described by priivatne or the prefix era-, stemming from the verb eralduma, to separate, privacy is privaatsus. A person is an isik and personal isiklik. Society can be translated as uhiskond, the German Gesellschaft in the wider sense, voluntary association as selts (German Verein), seltskond (German Vereinigung or Gesellschaft in the narrower sense) or uhing (German Gemeinschaft). The concepts are mainly identical to German usage. Later, the Soviets would try to manipulate the language. A private house (eramaja) should be called a personal house (isiklik maja) or individual residential building (.individuaalelamu).20 While official language would try to speak of personal life (isiklik elu), the normal usage remained as before private life (eraelu).

Stalinism in Estonia

With the incorporation in the USSR in 1940 huge social changes should start, but they took more than a decade.21 During the first year of Soviet rule, the process of Sovietization could not be finished. From 1941 to 1944, the country was occupied by the Third Reich. After the re-occupation by the Red Army, Sovietization continued. Still, a lot of elements of the pre-war period were preserved. The biggest blow to continuity came with a mass deportation and the forced collectivization of agriculture in 1949 and with a cleansing of party, state apparatus and culture of ‘bourgeois nationalists’ starting from 1950.

Soon after taking power in 1940, the nationalization of the economy started, especially of bigger enterprises and industry. Houses larger than 170 or 220 square meters, depending on the town, were also nationalized. Restrictions on living space meant that many were forced to rent out rooms at a fixed rate. A land reform reduced the size of farms to a maximum of 30 hectares. The freezing of bank accounts, the introduction of the ruble as a new currency and other measures led to the loss of property especially of the middle and upper strata of society. The result of economic restructuring was a decline of real wages by a half.22 The reduction of individual economic independence influenced the private sphere, which was thus reduced.

All these measures increased state intervention in the economy, but the main sector, agriculture, remained privately owned like smaller enterprises. Only former state estates were converted into sovkhozes. A report from November 1940 spoke

about 124,000 persons employed by the state or state enterprises and 40,000 employed

by private enterprises, excluding agriculture.23 The total workforce of the country numbered 700,000. At the turn of the year, there were still 5,250 private in opposition to 1,899 state-controlled shops.24 This means, private shops were at that time outnumbering party members by about four times. Private industry still produced, according to Soviet sources, six percent of the total output.25 Given the massive amount of tax evasion, real numbers were surely higher.

As another result of the political turnover, voluntary associations were closed, for example, student fraternities, religious circles and temperance societies or were subjugated to official institutions and controlled by them, for instance the voluntary fire brigades. Many traditions ended, but one could hardly speak of a total eradication

of voluntary associations. Concerning the Stalinist State, civil society seems not to be an appropriate concept, but the remains of it continued in Estonia. I would argue that the state was not yet in the situation of strict control of the public sphere in the towns, and in the countryside it was even weaker. In many ways, the situation bore similarities to the NEP in the 1920s. A large extent of continuity to the period of independence remained; society had not yet changed much. People were getting poorer and began to fear, but they still risked demonstrating their discontent in public, documented by a large number of party reports. In addition, Stalinist terror started. At the beginning, the arrests were not widely notified by the population; only a mass deportation, in June 1941, opened the eyes of the majority and was a deep shock for society. The outbreak of war was accomplished by Soviet atrocities. The private sphere had become highly vulnerable.

The German occupation was relatively mild compared to the experience with Stalinism, except for those groups singled out as ‘enemies’ by the Nazis and killed: Jews, Gypsies, Communists or alleged sympathizers. The nationalizations were not reversed to ease the exploitation of the country, except for a de facto reversing of the

Soviet land reform. Political oppression was milder, leading to an understanding of

Hitler as the lesser evil.26 The overwhelming majority of life stories and interviewed persons stresses that levels of coercion and pressure were lower under German rule than under the Soviets.

When the Red Army reoccupied the country, 70,000 Estonians had already flown

to the West. Immediately, political arrests started and reached the highest level ever.27 In addition, many soldiers behaved not like as being on liberated Soviet territory, but as if in the country of the enemy. The majority of registered crimes, in the fourth

quarter of 1944 was, according to the people’s commissariat of the interior, committed

by these soldiers.28 Plunder, theft, robbery, rape and murder upset the population. The svodki, summary reports, about the questions of the population, reveal that people still risked to ask, in the public sphere, quite uncomfortable questions. The agitators reported those lists to local party organizations, where a compilation was prepared for higher authorities. Examples of discontent, compiled by postal censorship for the party, also demonstrated that the population had not yet learnt to express their opinion. Some examples from the svodki:

— “Will the Red Army and the NKVD begin to shoot the Estonian population?”

— “Will Estonia be dependent on the USSR?”

— “Do the workers in the Soviet Union starve?”

— “Will there be a forced collectivization?”

— “Which culture will dominate in Estonia, the Western European one or the

Russian?”29

— “How many five year plans are necessary that Estonians look so hungry and worn out like the Russians?”

— “Why are the Russians robbing and stealing so much?”30

— “Why the discipline has fallen in some army units and the soldiers rape girls

and steal bicycles?”31

— “Please answer the question, why are the Russians killing people and are stealing? What is this, the culture of the Soviet Union?”32

— “Will the Russians leave the country after the end of war?”33

Of course, one very important question was the attitude of the state towards private property.34

Sovietization continued, but there were two striking difference to 1940-41, the

Soviet state was better prepared and there existed armed resistance.35 Already in the Soviet hinterland during war-time, Estonian cadres were chosen and trained for post-war reconstruction in Soviet Estonia. From the arts to bookkeeping or tractor driving, evacuated Estonians were prepared in courses for future assignments. The Estonians units of the Red Army, after being half a year imprisoned in camps, should function after demobilization as the pool of cadres needed. At the end of war, the reservoir of alleged ‘loyal’ Soviet Estonians was thus bigger. In addition, ethnic Estonians from the ‘old’ republics and Russian speakers should support and control their work. While we might characterize the first year of Soviet rule by a politics of sheer muddling-through and improvisation, later preparation was better.

The armed resistance in the countryside hindered, on the other hand, a fast restructuring and pointed to the weakness of the regime, which relied on armed forces to stay in power. Elena Zubkova has argued that Moscow conducted a ‘special’ compromise policy in the three Baltic republics. This period ended with a mass deportation and the collectivization in 1949 and the so-called ‘Estonian affair’ in 1950, followed by two years of ‘cleansing’ state, party, culture and education from ‘bourgeois nationalists’.36

Besides political pressure, terror and a very low standard of living, life continued in many aspects in the way of the 1930s. In Estonian language, to the period of independence is referred to as the Estonian time (eesti aeg). The Russian and the German time mean, respectively, Soviet and Nazi rule. The 1940s were somehow still seen as a post-Estonian time (jarel-eesti aeg),3 because of the strong element of continuity.

Another author names it “the illusion of continuity of the time of independence”.38

The claim of continuity might be better understood with the help of some examples. A number of visible leading officials were already known to the population from their activities in independent Estonia like the formal head of the republic, the physician and poet Johannes Vares-Barbarus. The professor for finance law, Juhan Vaabel, served 1932-35 as a leading adviser to the Estonian minister of economics and taught from 1931-40 at the University of Tartu. 1940-41, he was head of the Estonian State Bank, respectively the Estonian branch of Gosbank and 1940-41 and 1942-47 deputy people’s commissar, respectively deputy Minister of Finance. From 1946 to 1951, he served as deputy head of the Soviet Estonian Academy of Sciences.39

A number of voluntary associations stayed intact, too. The Red Cross had 48,000 members in 1946, in 1947 the voluntary fire brigades numbered 86,000 persons, nearly one out of three grown-up males took part in their work, and there were 81,000 sportsmen registered.40 In addition, agricultural cooperatives had roughly 110,000 members at that time, nearly every peasant farmer.41 These organizations could not be controlled by the state, since in a number of parishes there was not even a single party member. They represented a center of social life in the countryside and were still led by the same men, the ‘social activists’, just as before the war. Actually, their role was very important and highly dangerous. They were largely overrepresented among those being arrested or deported.42

Other examples for the persistence of old elites and pre-war traditions are the

architectural competitions to rebuilt a central square in Tallinn,43 Estonian literature44 or the Learned Estonian Society. The society was originally founded by Baltic Germans at the beginning of the 19th century. Later Estonians joined and started to dominate during independence. Being an important center for intellectuals in the university town of Tartu, the society had published mainly in German, English and French. After the political turnover Estonian and Russian became languages of publication. The old leadership remained in office and the research continued in the old directions. Only one out of four employees, of the society during German occupation, was fired when the Soviets came back. Of course, the society lost members due to war, terror and migration, but work continued and the themes of research were now, step by step, adapted to the requirements of the new regime. In summer 1950, the society was dissolved.45

Like social or economic restructuring, the borders of the state also controlled public and the unofficial public and private spheres changed little by little and not overnight. Even when an institution ended its activity, like the Learned Estonian Society or student fraternities, the existing networks and the memories remained. A large number of important organizations of civil society were successfully re-founded at the end of the 1980s and play an important role today. These elements of persistence were unknown and not important for the migrants. Estonia faced the highest inward-migration during Stalinism; nearly 20 percent of the population in the middle of the 1950s were migrants. They brought other attitudes, norms and values with them, this fact should not be forgotten.

The relatively slow speed of change is also documented in the diary of Jaan Roos.46 Collectivization and the ‘Estonian affair’ destroyed many existent patterns of life and ended the ‘post-Estonian time’. This is well described in the diary and in many life stories. “The entire life went to hell and in front of them lay something unknown. I began to think later that all the evil, the hate, low moral standards and so on we face today, started in those years. At the beginning, the old way of thinking was still dominant, but then came the deportations and the arrests and in the countryside the kolkhozes, then ... One realized that life has gone up in smoke, but there was no

The 1950s was the decade, when armed resistance ended and people changed their attitude towards the regime from silent disagreement or passive resistance to pragmatic cooperation. Estonia became a ‘model’ republic in the second half of the decade, a window to the West, because of the cultural differences and above average economic figures. Still, change was smaller than the rulers hoped.

Another institution, continuing work under every ruler, was the Estonian National Museum, in Soviet Estonia renamed Ethnographic Museum. The correspondent network stayed active for the entire time. In 1953, the questionnaire ‘Life in the kolkhoz’ was sent out. Aadu Toomsalu replied with a work of 121 pages, posted on 10 April. He had conducted 13 long interviews in his kolkhoz, ten with elderly peasants and three with officials. Everybody was named and the full address given as required. His work consists of the replies of his informers and he tried to write them down as authentically as possible, preserving the dialect and the spoken form. The officials use Bolshevik phrases, one peasant mentions Soviet order. The deportation and the economic collapse following collectivization are not discussed. Still, the answers of the

peasants are highly interesting. Their world had changed, the worldview not. They describe every single farm in their village, some had been rich, others poor. Some people virtually disappeared; this means they flew to the West, were arrested or deported, others went to the towns. Many farms lay in ruins or had been burnt down. Their description, written down by Toomsalu, has a sad tone. Only single families

prosper. A blossoming kolkhoz, or even the kolkhoz as something to identify oneself

with, was not present. The basic unit of the village remained the former family farm.48 The custom to call people by the name of the farm at the first and by the Christian name at the second place was preserved for a long time and can be met even today sometimes (Lepajoe Tiina or Hunditalu Mart).

The diary of Robert Taha, born in 1873, a teacher and peasant, reveals also the preservation of the rural worldview, despite disruptions. He retired in 1933 and kept on farming, writing the diary from 1937 to 1953. On his 80th birthday, Taha decided not to complete the diary, because his eyes were getting worse.

Fall 1940 [land reform]: “Now all the peasants became small-holders and poor peasants without social differences.”50

people lived in plenty, joy and peace.”52

Summing up his life, on his 80th birthday in May 1953, Taha notes that he was married for 45 years and had taught 2,000 pupils at school. He was socially very active and a member of the church council. “In the same period from 1890 until now, during 62 years I have baptized 950 children and spoken the last words at 750 funerals.”55 The tone of the diary is still mainly neutral and the author tries to avoid emotions even when his son was robbed and murdered by a Soviet soldier in 1944. Taha wanted to write down what he sees and experiences. One important aspect of Soviet and Nazi rule for him was the economic framework introduced, another repression and terror, a third the changes in the world around, especially the collectivization. Still, Taha’s

worldview and his private activities were not entirely affected. He continued baptizing, social activities and church work.

It may sound paradoxical, but collectivization weakened the collective. The village communities were partly destroyed and the social control by neighbors lost influence. In other words, the private and family sphere was in some cases even strengthened. The atmosphere of mistrust, the risk of denunciation and the decline of voluntary association triggered the development. But one has to bear in mind that the situation was different from village to village, depending on the local rulers and the peasant community. Closed village communities like the Old Believers on the shores of Lake Peipus could obviously preserve their integrity much better.56

Private economy

In the discussion about the nature of Stalinism it seemed for a long time self evident to neglect the private economy, since the economy was run by the state. The small garden plots of the kolkozniks were important for them, but appeared to be more or less negligible and other private economic activities were mainly related to the black market and the shadow economy.

In the case of the newly annexed territories, the situation was quite different. The last reliable set of data about the Estonian economy we have for 1938, beginning with Soviet rule only educated guesses are possible, since Soviet economic statistics are highly unreliable. The share of agriculture of the Estonian GDP in 1938 was 47 percent, of industry 24 percent and of services 29 percent.57 Industry recovered from

war and restructuring only in the second half of the 1950s, despite of all propaganda of

rapid industrial growth.58 Agriculture remained, until the forced collectivization in 1949, in private hands except for the sovkhozes. The losses because of war and restructuring were also much smaller than in industry.59 This means that the most important sector remained for years privately owned. In addition, even after collectivization, the private garden plots remained crucial for food production. According to a calculation of the national income of the republic in 1955, done, of course, in a Soviet manner at fixed prices and being very inaccurate, one quarter of the net national income was generated by the private plots and together with kolkhozes and sovkhozes one third originated from agriculture.60 These figures are far from exact, but they show an important tendency, the prevalence of a large private sector in agriculture even after collectivization. A budget study, conducted from 1952 to 1956 for Estonian worker’s households, supports this notion. Except for bread and vodka, roughly three fourths of all foodstuffs was obtained from the kolkhoz markets or private households (see Tabl. 1). Without private food production, the workers would have starved. Actually, only bread was supplied mainly by the state and in addition conserves, sugar and salt. Alcoholic beverages consisted to a large extent of privately brewed moonshine.61

SOURCES OF FOOD OF ESTONIAN WORKER’S HOUSEHOLDS, 1952-1956

Year Potatoes in kg Vegetables in kg Fresh fruits in kg

State trade Markets Private house-h olds State trade Markets Private house-h olds State trade Markets Private house-h olds

Milk in liters Eggs Meat in kg

Per month and per capita.

Source: Budget Study 1952-1956, ERA R-10-43-57. P. 25-6.

The kolkhoz market itself was a hybrid of private and collective economic activity. According to a Soviet historian, in 1950-52 Estonian kolkhozes generated 57.4 percent of their incomes by selling on the market,62 approximately 150 million rubles per year. This was just a fracture of total market turnover. The overwhelming majority of products sold came from private sources. Still it is interesting that kolkhozes delivered mainly to the state, but received the main part of their revenues under market conditions. Peasant trade was not restricted to the borders of the republic. Beginning from the end of the 1940s, single peasants or groups, sometimes with the support of local officials, traveled to Leningrad to market their products. This offered an important additional income especially in the Eastern regions. For example, the demand for fish and fresh onions from Lake Peipus, in combination with a long tradition

of minor trading and ‘bourgeois virtues’ among Old Believers, provided the base for

economic success.63

Directly after the war, private shops were allowed but heavily taxed. Services and small-scale production, in the Baltic republics, were to a high degree privately run. In 1946-47, bagmen (Russian: meshochniki; Estonian: kottipoisid) appeared on a large scale as a result of starvation in Western regions of the USSR.64 They also figure prominently in oral history. The number of private enterprises later declined, but the state was even renting out nationalized facilities to private enterprises. Unfortunately, information is scarce. From the protocol of a meeting of Estonia’s Central Committee Bureau, in April 1948, we know, for example, that 250 of 650 enterprises of an Estonian ministry were rented out to private entrepreneurs in 1947. 76 were able to prolong the contract the next year. 109 private enterprises were checked by the state, 50 should be nationalized and in 15 cases this did happen. Those enterprises were

mainly rural. Mills should not be nationalized, because this would lead to bottlenecks in flour production.65

The importance of private economic activities might be judged from the distribution of the workforce in 1955 (see Tab. 2). Nearly one fifth was employed at home or in the private economy, mainly on the garden plots of 0.5 hectares allowed for members of a kolkhoz and a number of other rural inhabitants. Roughly 150,000 families were entitled to such a garden plot,66 but virtually every rural inhabitant and

many urban dwellers owned a garden. The keeping of animals in towns was forbidden

in the second half of the 1950s because of hygiene reasons.67 Other opportunities for private employment were market trade, moonlighting, the black market, private building and customer services. If state trade already employed 25,000 persons and private trade was more important for the distribution of food, how many people were at least part-time salespersons in private trade? We will never know. The number of housewives and other economic not active persons was negligible, since only the small elite could afford the luxury that family members did not work. Temporary employment could be found, for example, during harvest time on a kolkhoz, at the railways and in private house building. Actually, roughly 20 percent of newly erected living space in the towns was built privately,68 in the countryside it was obviously the majority.

Tabl. 2.

DISTRIBUTION OF ESTONIAN WORKFORCE ACCORDING TO THE PLAN

Total (“Labor reserve“) 702.1

idctlpara.) Employment in state or cooperative institutions 356.3

Of this in: Industry 122.6

Building 22.2

Transport and communication 44.9

Sovkhozes and forestry 50.2

Trade 25.2

Education 25.2

Health 19.0

b.) Artel’s 13.5

c.) Kolkhozes 154.4

d.) Learning. 16 and older 38.0

e.) Independent farmers and craftsmen 0.9

f.) Working age population employed at home or in private economy (domashnie ili lichnoe khozaistvo) 139.0

Without military and security services.

Source: ERA R-1-5-406. P. 5-6.

According to a budget survey of kolkhoz households, in the second quarter of 1952 nearly 80 percent of the income was generated outside the kolkhoz.69 The artel’s also functioned very often in a way that they hid better paid private economic activity. Life

stories from rural teachers reveal that for a number of them, the garden was more important than their salary. Because the state neglected customer services, they

maintained a field for private activities. There existed a private market to rent out

rooms in houses not being nationalized. The party of course called it speculation.70 In

March 1941, half of urban living space was in the hands of the state,71 after the death of Stalin approximately two thirds. Physicians regularly accepted gifts, and many of the state employees were corrupt. Socialist trade and other sectors were engaged in blat’, an economy of favors, described for Russia by Alena Ledeneva.72 As we know from Joseph S. Berliners’ path breaking study, regular deliveries in industry depended also on blat’, private middlemen and employed experts, who received usually premia.73 The life stories and interviews describe the same practices in Estonia.

Stealing from the state or the kolkhoz might also be characterized as a private economic activity; this phenomenon was widespread and accepted by society. Very often, there existed no other possibilities to keep animals, build a house or receive deficit products. Like an Estonian proverb says “Stealing from the estate is not a sin” and the Soviet state was perceived as a sort of a large estate. I would estimate that before collectivization more than 60 percent of Estonian household incomes were generated privately and in the beginning of the 1950s still more than 40 percent. The state could and would not stop the private economy. It fought in a nearly quixotic way against corruption, theft and ‘speculation’, which were grounded in the structure of the command economy and the over-all shortages.

The state received taxes from the garden plots and tried to keep private activities under control, but it also benefited from them and, to a certain extent, it also used a mechanism related to free professions, honorariums. Members of the elite like leading politicians, journalists, writers, artists or scientists generated at least part of their income with the help of honorariums paid for their articles or other works.

What does the extent of private economy imply for the private sphere? If the private economy was so important, as state and oral sources reveal, then the private sphere was much larger than expected. Of course, the state could always interfere and the private economy was vulnerable. If the vast majority of food was produced and distributed privately and buying foodstuff was the major expenditure for all households, except for independent farmers and the small elite, then we have to reconsider our image of the Stalinist economy as more or less totally state run, at least in the Estonian case. Other local studies are necessary to prove the size of private economic activity. The state restricted private property, but even the means of private small-scale production were predominantly privately owned.

Private spaces

Private and family life usually takes place in the home. As the result of war, the growth of urban population and the small number of newly erected flats, the per capita urban living space declined from 15.5 to 8.8 square meters between 1940 and 1955,74 being still larger than in the ‘old’ republics. This meant that many people were deprived of their privacy, living in dormitories, communal apartments (komunalkas) or

crowded barracks. The record was established by an enterprise offering their workers

only 1.25 square meters living space per person. Especially in the Northeastern

region, which faced large investment in the oil shale industry and also the biggest inward-migration from Russia, conditions were awful. Sometimes even former concentration camps used by the Germans or the GULAG, housed industrial or construction workers.

In a dormitory, one had to count on the probability of informers, state surveillance

and the student accommodations were especially plagued by this problem.76 Katerina Gerassimova has characterized life in a communal apartment. The public and the

private space were somehow intermingled and she tries to describe the hybrid character

and different levels of privacy. The same might be said about the dormitories. In

addition, on the large building sites in Northeast Estonia, party control was obviously

weaker than that concerning the students. A large number of urban inhabitants still lived in private flats and house owners tried, according to many life stories, to rent them or single rooms out to relatives and acquaintances belonging to their network. Thus, private flats and privacy were more widespread than in the ‘old’ republics.

In the countryside, the situation was quite different thanks to migration to the towns, terror and the flight to the West, per capita living space did not shrink, maybe it even increased, despite the destruction of many farm houses. Beginning from 1940, until the death of Stalin, the villages lost 200,000 inhabitants, more than a quarter of their inhabitants. The structure of settlement remained the same, despite plans to transport isolated houses to the kolkhoz center. Estonian villages are quite different from Russian ones. There is no dense settlement, no crowded village where the peasants’ houses stand one next to the other. The major forms of settlement are single farms distributed over a large territory with a higher density in the heart of the village or nearby the former manor estate. Lonely farms in the middle of the wood were not rare.

As a result of the settlement structure, the central buildings of the kolkhoz were mainly located in the heart of the village or in a former estate with additional buildings distributed over the territory and those taken from the wealthier peasants. The vast majority of kolkhoz members lived in their former farmhouse surrounded by a garden, some trees and a fence or a hedge. These farmhouses were separated not only visibly but also by space from the next neighbor. The garden plot was located nearby. When having a look at photographs, taken from the kolkhozes at that time, it is hard to distinguish them from the pre-war period except for the Soviet slogans in the kolkhoz centre and the larger share of females and elderly people employed in agriculture.79 The kolkhoz brought economic hardship, Stalinist terror and violence, but the private space of the peasant was, in many ways, preserved as it had existed before the war.

The privacy of isolated farms allowed listening to foreign radio broadcasting without fear of denunciation. Sometimes larger groups assembled in front of the

transmitter. Since ownership of radios was quite common, before the war every third

household, and after the war every fifth, possessed its own radio.80 People listened extensively to foreign radio stations to hear political news, but also as a form of entertainment, because Soviet popular music could not compete with jazz, German

schlager or Western dance music. Foreign music influenced Estonian musicians and

the country later became one of the most important centers of Soviet jazz.81 News items were discussed and especially after ‘Voice of America’ started to broadcast in Estonian in 1951, the radio offered an alternative to official constructions of reality. Despite harsh censorship, and the destruction of a vast amount of pre-war books by

the state,82 reading the forbidden titles in private was widespread, as the life stories reveal. One might again say that the state was not able to control the private sphere. Those books should influence collective memory and support together, with oral narratives, a sort of alternative and often idealized history of the country in opposition or be an addition to the official version.

In the discussion about the private and public spheres, one should also mention religion. In Estonia, secularization had already started under the Tsars because the dominating Lutheran church was under the influence of Baltic German pastors and was perceived by many Estonians as a church of the masters. The Soviets saw the Orthodox Church as more loyal than the Lutheran and thus applied less pressure. “The

Lutherans, despite the repression by the organs of state security, continue with their

anti-Soviet attitude. The Orthodox Church holds a more loyal position”,83 stated a

report. Lutheran church leadership was infiltrated by agents and informers and brought

by force on the party line.84 All faiths had lost priests and congregation members due to war, emigration and terror. In 1949, there were 160 Lutheran pastors, for the protestant free churches, like Baptists or Methodists 114 in total, and two catholic priests.85 These numbers stayed more or less stable during the following years. In addition, there existed more than 100 orthodox congregations with their own priests and the small Jewish community employed a cantor in Tallinn.

The stability of the Old Believer’s congregations has already been mentioned. The protestant free churches were another relatively stable community, regularly attending church on Sunday. Church membership is difficult to judge, since only those financially supporting the church were registered. The free churches had roughly

approximate 3,000 Moravian brethren, later incorporated into Lutheran and other

congregations, still had 55 lay preachers after the war.87

The free churches were on one hand attacked by the state, especially because they were thought to represent ‘fanatical believers’, on the other hand, state security could find only a small number of informers among church members. Nearly all members visited church regularly, according to the plenipotentiary of the ESSR for ‘religious

cults’, their total church attendance every Sunday was nearly as high as that of the ten

times larger Lutheran church.88

Judging from the registered donations of church members, Orthodox believers supported their church, in the middle of the 1950s, with the same yearly sum as the Lutherans, roughly 2.5 million rubles. But their congregations were fewer and traditionally Estonia was Lutheran. In addition, ethnic Russians donated more money to the church than ethnic Estonians.89 Baptizing, Christian funerals, marriages and confirmation declined in numbers. But those were only the officially registered ones; the real figures seemed to be somehow higher. Thus one might say that the majority of the population, while not being active church members, still followed Christian rituals for the important steps of life. Concerning Christmas, 25 and 26 December were declared a state holiday in 1940 and in 1944 later to be officially replaced by Ded Moroz.

Regardless of infiltration by agents and informers and official atheism, religious faith represented for many an essential part of the private life and church services remained a part of the non-state public sphere, even when the pastors and priests were forced to integrate parts of official ideology into the ceremony. Some strong believers might become parallel Soviet activists, as was the case with Valve, a teacher born in 1923 in a family of Moravian brethren.90

Other places of public privacy were caffis. Estonia, especially Tallinn before the war, possessed a lively restaurant and caffi culture, more interesting than the one of Helsinki.91 Parts of it were preserved. An important meeting place in the university town of Tartu was caffi ‘Werner’, situated in the city center and close to the university. Of course, political topics were avoided, but discussions were nevertheless active. Leelo, born in 1927, finished university in 1951 and remembered: “I became a Westernist during my first year of study. ‘Everybody’ was there. The only ‘right’ place was the room with the ‘wagons’ and a place in a ‘wagon’, because the tables at the windows were reserved (without formal agreement) for the older generation of intellectuals. Later, there sat the chess players when the back rooms were closed to the guests. It was normal that respected professors sat together with students, if there were no other free tables. I think, I received the best part of my education in caffi ‘Werner’. One was happy if able to sit together with ... [she names several well-known Estonian intellectuals]. Maybe only the weather was discussed, but always on a high intellectual level. Usually the topics of conservation were the latest plays in the theatre, an article or another cultural event. At that time, ‘Werner’ offered no meals and the waiters accepted the fact, when a group of people would be sitting for hours around a table and ordered only some coffee.” Leelo introduced this piece of memory with a characterization of Stalinism in Estonia: “The period until the death of Stalin was totally extraordinary, Estonians were in a permanent situation of shock. One did not know who was a friend and who an enemy. Whom could be trusted and whom not?”92

Other occasions for public privacy were parties, dance nights or traditional village feasts on Saturdays. One peasant remembered the situation in the village Amula: “Even ten years after the war no young Communist or veteran of the Red Army participated in local parties. At least here, I have not seen one of those guys on the dance floor. They understood that they were in the minority and hated and so they avoided trouble with us, which could end with their being beaten up. The small number of young Communists and some lonely party members or veterans usually met in the parish administration house in Kohtla, where they drank samagon.”93 It is impossible to judge how correctly the peasant memorized, but obviously there existed many public activities out of the reach of party control, where forbidden songs were sung or banished music was listened to.

The quoted memory fragments are only a few among many others. They indicate that the private sphere was more important than usually imagined and that to a certain degree there existed even a public space outside the direct reach of the state. Of course, these examples are from one Soviet republic only incorporated in 1940 and having a very different historical and cultural background. Nevertheless, I would argue that, at least in Estonia, the private sphere was not such a marginalized space as Ingrid Oswald and Viktor Voronkov argue.94 In opposition to their point of view, I think a private-public sphere existed in Estonia even during Stalinism. When some 86,000

men form voluntary fire brigades for serving virtually every parish, or more than

Transition

I would argue that the era of Stalinism in Estonia should be interpreted as a transition phase. Society was restructured and life unstable. People could not predict what the future might bring. Only de-Stalinization and the ‘Thaw’ offered stability and predictability. The transition ended in the second half of the 1950s when Soviet patterns of life had already taken roots in society, which was still somehow different from the ‘old’ republics. Marc Garcelon has argued — in my opinion convincingly — that the dichotomy of the public and the private sphere, so central for Western thought and society, is not an appropriate concept for Soviet-type societies. He prefers to speak of an ‘official’ or ‘social’ realm and a ‘domestic’ realm.95

In the Estonian case, the public and the private sphere, which could be generally characterized by Western concepts, but with a certain traditional and peasant connotation, was transformed into the Soviet ‘official’, ‘social’ and ‘domestic’ realm. In an interpretation of the life story of Linda, a woman born in 1928, Ene Kxresaar has noted a paradigm shift from thematizing the relationship of public and private to describing the domestic sphere. The shift in the narrative takes place, step by step, when Linda writes about the 1950s.96 A similar development might be found in a number of other life stories. Of course, those life stories were written later, usually after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. It might be questioned if narratives, formulated decades after the alleged development took place, can be used as an indicator, but the few preserved diaries support the same notion.

The Estonian sociologist Aili Aarelaid-Tart conducted 73 in-depth interviews with intellectuals in the second half of the 1990s. Her interpretation is based on a dichotomy of the public and the private sphere. According to her findings, the 1940s might be described as a post-Estonian time with a large extent of continuities and the 1950s were the decade when double mental standards developed. There was a distinction between ‘own’ = Estonian, and ‘alien’ = Soviet.97 While I do not agree with her proposition of a dichotomy of private and public for the entire Soviet period, her notion of a prevalence of pre-war patterns in the 1940s and an adaptation process in the 1950s seems accurate to me. In addition, I would not consider people being of two-minds, but of different roles taken in different surroundings.

Based on the above mentioned interviews, Aarelaid-Tart and Hank Johnston single out generation cohorts among the intellectuals, the so-called republican generation (born 1906-25) was formed during independence. According to them, there existed ‘two master collective action frames’, a ‘pure Estonian nationality’ and a ‘sovietized Estonian national identity’ amidst the ‘national movement’.98 The different age groups reacted in a different way to Sovietization. The national and cultural components should not be ignored. Soviet rule was perceived as ‘Russian’ and foreign. The Soviet way of life was thought of as underdeveloped, in comparison to the situation during independence. This fostered continuity and persistence of pre-war concepts. In addition, Soviet rule was perceived as something temporary. The people hoped for an

intervention from abroad or the outbreak of a Third World War. In diaries, people wrote of a Soviet occupation. A ‘white ship’ (valge laev) should rescue them from Communism; these hopes were ridiculed in the Soviet press. The brutal crash of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 made clear that hopes were illusionary and adaptation (kohandumine) became favored which was eased by the end of terror.

Oleg Kharkhordin comes to the conclusion that the Bolshevik revolution swept away the distinction between public and private and replaced this, during the course of time, with a division of ‘social’ and ‘personal’ life and a unrecognized ‘private’ life, which was concealed to intimacy.99 He argues this in the context of Russian culture and Bolshevist attitudes. In my opinion his notion might not be applied to the Estonian example. Cultural differences were too great. The country experience