Fictionalizing the Past in Estonia: Cultural Memory in Women’s Literature

Abstract

This article analyzes the way in which traumatic memories of the Soviet past are communicated in Estonian- and Russian-language women’s literature published in Estonia. The representation of the past in these works does not support the claim that the collective memories of Russian and Estonian communities are antagonistic and incapable of “agreeing to disagree.” Focusing on women’s prose written in independent Estonia after 1991, this article examines narrative elements that expose agonistic, rather than antagonistic, interpretations of the cultural memory of these two communities. These interpretations rely on a multiplicity of perspectives, dealing with issues of personal and collective responsibility and agency.

The memory of World War II and the Soviet past remains a source of contention in Central and Eastern Europe. Over the past few decades, official Russian memory politics has gradually shifted from condemning communist crimes to emphasizing continuity between the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods, glorifying past victories and the role of the state. The Kremlin has used the memory of World War II and of the Soviet might to justify the current war in Ukraine and gain the support of the Russian public for this endeavor. In Estonia, as in most other East Central European countries, the politics of memory was antagonistic after the restoration of independence in 1991, but mnemonic differences gained some acceptance after the so-called Bronze Night in 2007, when riots broke out in Tallinn over the controversial decision to relocate, from the city center to a cemetery, the Bronze Soldier monument dedicated to Soviet soldiers, a memory symbol for the local Russian community. The authorities permitted the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the victory in the war in May 2010. ¹

The war in Ukraine has triggered new public debates in the Baltic states on Russia’s involvement in World War II and the impact of the Soviet period on those nations. As a result of these debates, in August 2022 Soviet monuments were removed from public spaces in Latvia and Estonia, a decision which stirred controversy and showed deeply polarized and antagonistic interpretations of recent history. ² Both Estonian- and Russian-speaking experts advocate for more open discussions about the past and express regret that such discussions did not occur before the removal of the monuments. ³ They argue that a debate could reshape collective memory about World War II and the Soviet past, thus bringing the Estonian- and Russian-speaking communities in Estonia closer together. ⁴

We contribute to this discussion by reviewing the evolution of cultural memory of the Soviet times in post-Soviet Estonian women’s literature. Cultural memory is understood here as collective memory formed by the symbolic heritage embodied in texts, monuments, and celebrations. In contrast to official historical and memory politics, popular culture represents a polyphonic field that can challenge official interpretations of the past, sustain agonistic remembrance, and contribute to future inter-community dialogue. ⁵ The sociologists Triin Vihalemm and Jānis Juzefovičs showed that the new conflict exposes old scars. ⁶ We demonstrate that a conflict also offers new opportunities for reconciliation.

To test this assertion, we undertake a comparative discourse analysis of fiction written by female Estonian- and Russian-speaking authors living and working in Estonia. In choosing to focus specifically on women’s writing, we are not motivated exclusively by the fact that women’s voices are often disregarded when it comes to the study of politics through the lens of popular culture. In fact, the very reasons why texts by women are not given sufficient consideration make them an important source for the study of traumatic memories. Female writers often foreground individual perspectives and personal experiences in the treatment of historical events; they explore the consequences of gendered traumas and experiment with narrative forms. Such privileging of private experiences not only makes the politics of such texts more subtle and difficult to analyze but also opens a wider range of options for dealing with societal conflict. By focusing on not only gaps and divergences but also potential points of agreement, we trace the formation of different narratives on the past in literary fiction, including autobiographical and historical fiction genres, with an emphasis on the stories of ordinary people.

Our method and source selection were finetuned in line with this goal. We selected sources that mention World War II, the occupation of the Baltic states, and deportations, all key aspects of the ongoing debate on cultural memory in Estonia. Only books written after Estonia’s 1991 declaration of independence were included in this analysis. Some of these works were written in Estonian, others in Russian. To understand better the position of Russian authors, we conducted interviews with two authors, Jelena Skulskaja and Manja Nork. To shed light on how Estonian women authors interpret the past, we chose books nominated for literary awards and described by Estonian scholars as significant sources of cultural memory: Leelo Tungal’s trilogy Comrade Child and Ene Mihkelson’s novels Plague Grave and Labor of Naming. ⁷ To represent the Estonian—Russian discourse, we included works by women authors who write in Russian and live or have lived in Estonia, even if they are not ethnic Russians. We found few mentions of World War II in these books, although the war remains important for Estonian Russians. We therefore considered Jelena Skulskaja (In Terms of Pain, Love and Other Stories about Love, Frontier Love, Marble Swan) and Manja Nork (Anamor), two authors who have lived in Estonia all their lives. We also included the novel I’m Not Afraid of Bluebeard by Sana Valiulina, who lives outside Estonia but identifies as a Russian-speaking Tatar from Estonia. ⁸

Selected novels were coded with reference to the Soviet past and whether they assessed that past in a positive, negative, ambivalent, or neutral way. We identify differences in the interpretation of the past in women’s prose and propose this aesthetic work of memory as a foundation for analyzing the way in which a divided past is interpreted. With an eye to the diverse interpretations of the nation (described as a family by Estonian writers and a multi-ethnic society by Russian writers), this study aims at tracing two historical narratives in Estonia: the Soviet political repression against Estonians in the Russophone literature and the evolving portrayal of Russians in Estonian prose. The rethinking of these aspects of memory, we believe, can contribute to societal cohesion in Estonia.

Approaching Cultural Memory in Estonia

Since the early 2000s, the representation of the recent past in post-Soviet countries has been part of memory wars, or antagonistic memory, and often has emphasized the “one and only story” about a nation’s past. ⁹ As the insistence on only one “correct” interpretation of the past can negatively impact the societal cohesion, this study highlights the potential of the agonistic mode of remembering. This mode, as the political scientists Ana Cento Bull and Hanse Lauge Hansen write, “in addition to exposing the socially constructed nature of collective memory and including the suffering of the ‘Other,’ would rely on a multiplicity of perspectives in order to bring to light the socio-political struggles of the past and reconstruct the historical context in ways which restore the importance of civic and political passions and address issues of individual and collective agency.” ¹⁰ The agonistic mode does not whitewash political regimes, but questions the nationalist interpretation of the past as a unified narrative of national suffering or triumph.

The concept of agonistic memory provides a normative perspective to our study, informing our understanding of how memory narratives shape societal transformation. From a theoretical standpoint, our research is also grounded in cultural and transcultural memory. In using the concept of cultural memory (das kulturelle Gedächtnis), we are inspired by the historians Jan and Aleida Assmann. Cultural memory, which encompasses various media, “comprises of the body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose ‘cultivation’ serves to stabilize and convey that society’s self-image.” ¹¹ Adopting this approach prompts the examination of literary texts as manifestations of cultural memory. We also employ the concept of transcultural memory to explore and compare the memory narratives of ethnic groups with diverse historical experiences that live in the same country. ¹²

Since around 2010, the academic discourse in Estonia has increasingly embraced an agonistic mode of remembering. This is reflected, inter alia, in the ethnologists Ene Kõresaar and Kirsti Jõesalu’s suggestion that Estonian memory culture should focus on the different interpretations of the past upheld by subsequent generations. ¹³ Without covering the entire debate on Estonian cultural memory here, we can mention several recent studies that advance the agonistic approach. In 2020, a special issue of the Journal of Baltic Studies addressed the challenge of entangled histories and cultures in the region. Its authors presented notions of entanglement, cultural transfer, and multidirectional memory as alternative perspectives to methodological nationalism, which had previously dominated the academic study of the region. ¹⁴ Memory studies, which are rapidly growing in Estonia, critically examine memory politics and official discourses, focusing on autobiographical memory and cultural texts as “memorial forms.” In 2021, a special issue of Memory Studies explored cultural memorial forms and their transnational circulation and appropriation to bridge the dichotomy between individual and collective (social and cultural) memory. ¹⁵ Estonian memory politics was explored there as a pivotal case. When it comes to Estonian cultural memory as a wider societal phenomenon, the literary scholar Eneken Laanes estimates that, during the past decades, it has shifted its focus from heroic deeds to suffering individuals and the active role of the second and third generation of victims in telling the story of suffering. However, a political focus on “the one and only story” continues to be an obstacle to societal cohesion. Attempts “to include the voices of Russian-speaking people in the story of Estonian cultural history and to create a dialogue between the two Estonian language groups” have been half-hearted. ¹⁶ As the political scientist Martha Merritt wrote in 2000, “[c]ultured Russians could come to share [with Estonians] the fact of having suffered, enjoyed, and hoped together . . . But at present historical memories tend to divide rather than unite.” ¹⁷

It can be argued that the omission of the voices of Russian speakers from Estonian history narratives has hampered cross-cultural dialogue and, most conspicuously, triggered the Bronze Night in 2007. The crisis was precipitated, on one hand, by the country’s accession to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union, which boosted Estonian national self-confidence and a sense of security. Consequently, the Estonian side felt empowered to assert its values and proceed with the relocation of the war memorial. On the other hand, Russia increasingly emphasized the significance of its victory in World War II and used it in its identity politics which influenced Estonian Russians and enticed some of them to protest. ¹⁸ The clash between Estonian and Russian identity politics underscored the need to reconcile historical narratives in this multi-ethnic society and adopt a more agonistic approach to memory that would acknowledge and engage with diverse memory cultures. After the Bronze Night events, scholars identified two distinct mnemonic communities in Estonia in particular, and the Baltics more generally. ¹⁹ Acknowledging this division could facilitate a re-evaluation of memory politics by both communities and enhance the understanding of the historical perceptions of the Russian-speaking minority. Comparing memory politics in Russia and the Baltic states, the historians Karsten Brüggemann and Andres Kasekamp suggest that contrary to Russia’s “sacralization of memory,” the emphasis in the Baltic debates must be on a “democratization of memory” to foster societal integration. ²⁰ This democratization effort should be initiated by Estonians, but Estonian Russian intellectuals should also play an active part.

As a result of all these developments, a lively scholarly discussion has focused on the historical perspectives of the Russian minority. For instance, the sociologists Triin Vihalemm and Valeria Jakobson examine the portrayal of history in the Estonian Russian-language press, uncovering a “memory divide” that has extended beyond World War II to encompass other historical periods, such as the Russian Empire under Peter the Great. ²¹ The sociologists Piia Tammpuu, Jānis Juzefovičs, and Külliki Seppel explore conflicting interpretations of Soviet childhood in Estonia, arguing that a “common Soviet past” proposed by Russian speakers clashed with Estonians’ perception of the Soviet regime as an illicit and aberrant phase marked by hardship and resistance. They posit that individual memories are intertwined with personal experiences, ethnicity, and individual social status. ²² Russian memory politics usually remains silent on the ethnic background of the victims of the regime. ²³ In the Baltic countries, this position is interpreted as a lingering imperial attitude. At the same time, the Estonian discourse rarely mentions Russians who were victims of political repression or supported Estonian independence. ²⁴ Regrettably, intellectual endeavors to reassess national memory hold limited sway over the prevailing political agenda in Estonia today. Given Russia’s war against Ukraine and “Great Victory” rhetoric, further study of the two mnemonic communities, and their divided interpretations of the past, is required.

Dealing with Women’s Memories in Estonia

Even though the importance of gender aspects in the study of transcultural memory is no longer questioned, women’s voices are sometimes ignored. ²⁵ As the literary scholar Caroline Schaumann argued in her analysis of women’s German post-war literature, the focus of mainstream historiography on men’s war experiences skewed both the literary canon and the study of literature to the disadvantage of female perspectives. ²⁶ The anthropologist Jill Didur, writing about the emergence of two nation-states on the wake of the 1947 India–Pakistan partition, argued for the necessity of a gendered perspective of the partition through literature representing women’s lives, since “a gendered understanding of the partition necessitates a shift in the scholar’s attention from the public to the private, from the high political story to the local, everyday account.” ²⁷

Women’s fiction provides an effective means of exploring how Estonia’s Estonian and Russian communities process traumatic memories. First, it weaves personal experiences with historical events, often privileging the subjective perspective and challenging the official narratives; second, it explores the effects of specifically gendered trauma on women’s psyche and bodies; and third, it is open to experimental narrative forms, which are well suited to depict the disorienting effect resulting from trauma. ²⁸

Other types of evidence, such as oral history, “naïve narratives,” and works of literature, also testify to women’s experiences under political repression. ²⁹ Gender-sensitive Estonian literary and memory studies have produced nuanced examinations of women’s life-writing, along with documentary narratives about the Soviet past, exile, and repression. Scholars examining Baltic women’s autobiographical writings have observed that narratives of deportations are not “stories of trauma,” because they emphasized survival rather than injury, while women often presented themselves as ungendered. ³⁰

Existing scholarship has rather thoroughly examined the works of fiction produced by female authors writing in Estonian. Scholars have debated the somber themes of deportation, forceful displacement, and survival under Soviet political repression, as poignantly portrayed in women’s prose. ³¹ They have also looked at the general effects of the trauma inflicted by the Soviet occupation on Estonia and other Baltic nations.

In the context of our study, the most important findings concern the strategies of survival and overcoming trauma, with the central role of family as a source of support and as a symbol representation of the nation. In her analysis of Leelo Tungal’s autobiographical work Comrade Child (2008), literary scholar Leena Kurvet-Käosaar presented a complex psychological interpretation of both the trauma of the child, separated from her incarcerated mother, and the strategies to overcome the trauma. For the child, the way out is a loving family, while the narrator uses self-irony and humor to deal with tragedy. This book was not about a “happy childhood,” but about survival. ³²

Another key contribution comes from the postcolonial approach, with its emphasis on multiple colonial legacies. The historian Tiina Kirss used this lens to analyze Ene Mihkelson’s novels Plague Grave (2007) and Labor of Naming (1994). Labor of Naming focuses on an Estonian family which traces its roots to the “good old Swedish era” (1561–1721), living through the Soviet and German occupations of Estonia. ³³ For Kirss, the novel frames this experience as “encountering a multiplicity of pasts” and suggests that one should search for the origins of collaboration and denunciation in the colonial power relations between Estonian peasants and Russian and German landlords. ³⁴ All this provides material for reflection on agency in a postcolonial situation, where subalternity is overcome against a background of hybridity. ³⁵ Kirss also highlighted postcolonial agency in her analysis of one of the threads in Plague Grave, which describes the search for a noble ancestor, an attempt to ground one’s personal identity in the legacy of aristocratic colonization. ³⁶ For us, the significance of these observations lies in contrast with cultural memory as it is represented by the works of Russian writers, including those living in Estonia. Given that the discussion of Russian imperialism against the background of postcolonial theory is still at an early stage, it is hardly surprising that war rather than colonization and occupation, defines the meaning of twentieth-century history for Russian authors. Nevertheless, as our analysis suggests, authors like Skulskaja and Valiulina do show some postcolonial sensitivity in their works.

In sum, given the growing interest of comparativists in the literary expression of women’s historical experiences, the way in which cultural memory is seen by women writers in Estonia has become by now a prominent research topic. ³⁷ In contrast, the works of the Russophone writers in Estonia have been overlooked. ³⁸ In order to work on the collective memory of the entire society within the framework of building an agonistic model, it is necessary to turn to Russian-language texts about Estonia and written in Estonia. To address this gap, this article compares narratives crafted by female Russophone authors residing in Estonia and their Estonian counterparts. Building on prior research on Estonian prose and historical narratives, our study traces the shifts in cultural memory as depicted in women’s literature and illuminates the interplay between cultural memory, historical narratives, and gender in Estonia’s ethnically divided society, where the memories and identities of Estonian- and Russian-speaking communities remain substantively different. Before embarking on the analysis of Russian-language works, however, it is necessary to highlight a few features of Estonian fiction that play an essential role in our analysis.

Estonia as a Broken Family: Disrupted Bonds and Fractured Identities

Presenting the nation as a family, tightly connected but also haunted by an uneasy past, is an established tradition in Estonian women’s literature. It is inextricably linked not only with the Soviet occupation but also with the exodus of Estonians to the West after World War II. The Estonian diaspora in the West has created its own literature, which reflects Estonian identity and presents the history of the people and the country through a complex overlap of patriotism, guilt, and aspirations for personal and national freedom. ³⁹

The writings of the émigré author Helga Nõu are an important early example of fiction dealing with the painful themes of guilt, betrayal, and responsibility. Ivo, the protagonist of her Tiger, Tiger (1969) saves one of his uncles, a communist collaborator, but indirectly betrays another. His story encapsulates Estonian history, in which families have been divided along political lines. Ivo is murdered, most likely in an act of revenge for his betrayal. The narrator (Taavi Valk, who emigrated as a child) is tormented by guilt; he wonders whether he can be near Ivo and share responsibility for the betrayal.

Depicting the nation as a family divided by politics and historical destinies becomes a recurring theme in late Soviet Estonian literature. Viivi Luik’s The Seventh Peaceful Spring (1985) is a coming-of-age novel written from a child’s perspective. The maturation of the girl narrator is a metaphor for the nation coming of age and becoming ready for future emancipation. Her search for a creative voice is inextricably linked to the struggle for national independence and personal atonement. The subtle psychology of the girl’s character helps the author show the non-linear evolution of Estonian nationalism. The key element is not political opposition to Soviet occupation, but moral self-realization, articulated through references to historical memory.

Comrade Child (2008), Leelo Tungal’s semi-autobiographical trilogy, is in dialogue with Luik’s novel in its portrayal of a family as a metaphor of nation. While Kurvet-Käosaar has pointed out the similarities between the two texts in the child’s perception of Soviet propaganda, we would like to take this comparison further by highlighting how protagonists of both novels, naïve and mired in family and political complexities, come to represent the entire post-war generation. ⁴⁰ The personal coming of age does not just coincide with the national one; it requires serious memory work. Tungal’s characters are more urbane, educated, and politically involved than those in Luik’s novel, but their education and broader horizons fail to save them from deportation and other troubles. The members of the Tungal family are good-hearted and kind people, generous to each other and the world around them and expecting the world to pay them back with the same kindness. This is how the family is described in the first novel:

Tata laughed, almost as usual, placed me on the floor, and said: “. . . You still have to be a good kid—against all odds! . . . We are who we are, and they are who they are!” I knew who we were, but understanding who they were at that time proved difficult for me. And even these adults, did they truly understand themselves? ⁴¹

The innocence and childishness that Tungal’s book exudes also symbolize the nation youthfulness and its openness toward the future, combined with sometimes unrealistic expectations. The narration from a child’s viewpoint softens the apparent irrationality of Leelo’s parents’ standing. Her mother encourages her pupils at school to sing the Estonian anthem and to visit the graves of heroes of the 1918–1920 War of Liberation. Family members expect Estonia to soon be liberated again, with help from the West. The light-hearted and playful text concludes with a heart-wrenching finale: Leelo’s mother is sentenced to thirty years of hard labor.

Mihkelson’s Labor of Naming and Plague Grave, already mentioned above, offer a more somber treatment of the family theme, centered on the narrative of betrayal. Both books reflect on the self through historical events of Stalin’s era. Both feature members of the same family. In Labor of Naming, the narrator reconstructs the stories of her relatives: Some were involved with resistance fighters, some ended up in the Gulag, and still others were perpetrators, assisting with the deportations. The narrator is attempting to overcome psychological barriers between herself and her emotionally “burned-out” mother in order to forgive, understand, and love. She cannot figure out how her aunt Milli, with whom she had a warmer relationship than with her mother, could be a perpetrator: “Her children were of the same age as those who were deported. It is strange that witnessing their helplessness she had not felt pangs and regrets. How was it possible that she got involved in the deportations? She should have been aware of [their] the scale and the methods.” ⁴² There are no answers to her questions, as the older generation remains silent about the past.

Mihkelson refers to an unexpected problem that arose during the 1990s, after the public became acutely aware of the numerous crimes committed in Estonia by the Soviet authorities, and sometimes perpetrated by ethnic Estonians. ⁴³ This produced a new regime of memory; all members of the old generation were encouraged to testify about their collaboration. In response, some asked to be left alone so as to not reopen old wounds. ⁴⁴ Mihkelson’s narrator, who belongs to a younger generation, has to come to terms with this entangled past. She voices a sense of guilt that the older generation apparently does not share: “I had to learn about myself, as if I was unable to be faithful, to long for freedom, could have betrayed my people and country. I have even thought that perhaps I was a traitor and why I did I not become a dissident.” ⁴⁵ This soul-searching was a response to the Singing Revolution’s “euphoric time.” Today, Mihkelson writes, this would be compared with mass psychosis, but then she adds that it was necessary and important at the time. ⁴⁶

Mihkelson avoids simplifications and does not draw clear-cut lines between “us” and “them.” In Plague Grave, aunt Kaata, the narrator, betrays her family in order to survive the turbulent times, but by doing so, she betrays herself. This thought is encapsulated in a single dialogue: “We Estonians are few and we must be smart and brave. Others have always pushed and kicked us, therefore we have to stick together,” says Kaata. But she fails to answer her niece’s question: “And whom did you stick with? With whom indeed?” ⁴⁷ The moral and psychological fragmentation of identity is expressed in Kaata’s failure to describe clearly the events and places where the story unfolds and to explain her choices. The reader can only speculate as to why Kaata actively supported the regime by helping The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (in Russian NKVD) to set traps for “spies” from the West or by handing over Forest Brothers to extermination squads. Likewise, the book does not clearly explain why the narrator’s mother betrayed her husband. All characters have to adapt to the Soviet regime, making choices that would look dubious in the eyes of the Singing Revolution generation. Mihkelson’s work avoids any attempt not to simplify the reader’s engagement. Instead, she brings her narrative closer to the reader’s own experiences. In the first chapter, she touches on the Bronze Soldier conflict as part of transcultural memory, highlighting that both sides encountered sorrow and trauma and underscoring that the people involved in the Bronze Night were only descendants of those who had lived with this traumatic war experience.

Similar to Luik and Tungal, Mihkelson uses family as a metaphor for the nation. This family consists of ordinary people caught up in a political conundrum, who try to survive without paying too much attention to the moral aspect of their actions. There is intergenerational tension between the protagonist-narrator and the antagonist, both women linked by blood and ethnicity, representing the victim and the perpetrator. The work of memory is physically and psychologically demanding: the first-person narrator sweats while conversing with her relatives and experiences nightmares; she is fearful of the graves of her ancestors, where the past remains dormant. Similarly, the reader must try to piece together sequences of narrative out of the purposefully disorganized prose. Engaging with memory is an exhausting endeavor, whose liberating effect is at best undecided. For instance, it remains uncertain whether the narrator eventually fully overcomes her dread of graves. Time plays a significant role in Mihkelson’s writing: various historical eras intermingle in an unconventional and fragmented chronology or, as Kirss terms it, a “multiplicity of pasts.” ⁴⁸

Notably, neither the end of World War II nor the onset of the Soviet occupation are explicitly thematized. This highlights a general feature of Estonian texts, which becomes apparent if contrasted with the Russian sources. While the latter place the greatest emphasis on World War II as a pivotal point in the shared historical timeline, Estonian writers portray the twentieth century as a series of occupations, quests for independence, and internal conflicts. In line with Kirss’s analysis summarized above, this difference indicates the defining significance of the postcolonial context for Estonian cultural memory. The foregrounding of the occupation notwithstanding, the Russian Other remains in the background in Luik’s and Mihkelson’s works. The Soviet empire is there as an abstract oppressive force, Russian characters are either totally absent or remain undeveloped. It would seem that both authors prefer to avoid this theme, perhaps due to its potential to reduce the nuanced treatment of complex issues to binary opposition.

In Tungal’s books, the Russian Other is present, but its treatment undergoes significant transformation in the course of the trilogy. In the first and second volumes of this trilogy, Comrade Child and the Grown-Ups (2008) and Velvet and Sawdust (2009), Russians are depicted as barbarians, in tune with Estonian’s disappointment with Russians in the aftermath of the Bronze Night. Yet even this depiction is softened by images of some Russian communists who sympathize with the protagonist of the trilogy. The school director, a Russian, is humane, while the (KGB) officer, an ethnic Estonian, persecutes the family and betrays his own people. The conflict in the trilogy is not limited to the actions of Russians but also includes complex relations within the nation-family.

In the third volume of the trilogy, A Woman’s Touch, or Comrade Child and Dad (2018), the portrayal of Russians is even more nuanced. Tungal’s characters admit that “there are good people among the Russians” and highlight the fact that many Russians also suffered from political repression. ⁴⁹ This subtle approach is exemplified by the protagonist’s interpretation of an image in a school textbook: “There are two Russian girls in the picture whose mother returned from the prison camp and brought them to school!” ⁵⁰ This is the perspective of an Estonian girl whose mother was arrested and sent to a labor camp. Notably, this passage also tells of Russian victims of the Soviet regime, addressing the omission in the earlier books.

The narratives we have explored thus far revolve around the family sphere, with the principal conflicts not centering on the state-versus-people dynamic or Estonian—Russian tensions. Instead, the focal point lies in intergenerational and psychological struggles inside the nation. The younger protagonists symbolize Estonia’s maturation and resilience, forged through internal betrayals and a sense of remorse. While the works of Luik and Mihkelson do not assign central roles either to the Soviet Union or to Russians, Tungal’s trilogy subtly but clearly casts Russians as guilty, albeit to varying degrees. All parts of this trilogy underscore the stifling impact of the Soviet regime but sidestep antagonism and irrevocable divisions between characters of distinct ethnicities. Furthermore, in the third volume of Comrade Child a new narrative element emerges, portraying Russians as victims of political repression.

Russian-Speaking Authors Caught between Conflicting Narratives of the Past

While Estonian cultural memory revolves around a compassionate reflection on a family’s traumatic ordeal, symbolizing the plight of the nation, the discourse surrounding trauma in Russia has taken a different route. Soviet dissident literature already featured shared culpability and collective atonement among its key themes. Rather than emphasizing the traumatic experience of specific ethnic groups, the public discussion of terror in Russian writings dwells on collective responsibility. ⁵¹ In the post-Soviet discourse, this thread was progressively weaved together with expressions of pride over the claim to being the country that had defeated Nazism.

These triumphalist aspects are very much tuned down in the literature produced by Estonian authors writing in Russian, as exemplified by Jelena Skulskaja. While presenting the war as the central event of the twentieth century, she treats it as a painful, traumatic experience, refusing to romanticize heroism. The novel In Terms of Pain (1991) is dedicated to Skulskaja’s father, Grigori Skulski, a war journalist, writer, and veteran. “We aestheticized death,” Skulskaja writes, referring to the post-war generation, “but my father’s generation knew its physiology so well that they were not concerned with metaphysics. They aestheticized life.” ⁵² In the interview, she recalled that “the war was the central event in the life of not only my father but all people who visited our home. Yet they did not need to speak about the cruelty of war.” ⁵³

For Skulskaja, war is not simply a battle for survival but a test of humanity. Humanity is defined by emotions, one of which is fear. In a battle, combatants do not experience fear. “We will be afraid when the war ends,” a wounded female officer says. She is referring to both the fear of death and the fear of losing the ability to be human as a result of the uneasy moral choices faced in the war. Mutual assistance and kindness to the enemy were also criteria of humanity. Skulskaja stresses that both sides were capable of humanity amid cruelty. She appeals to women’s war experiences, describing their readiness for self-sacrifice to save the lives of loved ones. Skulskaja emphasizes the horrific and grotesque aspects of war, likewise, accompanied by fear. For example, she depicts women happily dancing under a tree where collaborators were hanged. ⁵⁴ She describes the decaying bodies and the women’s happiness with macabre realism: This is the happiness of those who survived, not those who triumphed over the enemy.

Skulskaja is consistent in describing all peoples of the Soviet Union as jointly suffering through the war and repressions. In Terms of Pain presents people fighting against Nazism as belonging to different ethnicities: the Russian woman Lena, who breaks a police barricade and is shot along with Mark, her Jewish husband; the Estonian poet Lilli Promet, who works in besieged Leningrad; and Sergei Spirt, a poet from Kyiv, who dies in the war. ⁵⁵ When she writes about the deportations and the political repression of Estonians, Skulskaja takes the same approach, emphasizing the shared suffering of people of different nationalities in the labor camps. The Baltic deportations play less of a role in Skulskaja’s narrative than denunciations, censorship, and political repression. Nonetheless, she includes three stories and interviews with well-known Estonian writers and politicians in her collection Love and Other Stories about Love (2008). These stories offer insight into her concept of using the author’s voice. Her interlocutors are Lennart Meri, anthropologist, filmmaker, and the first president of post-Soviet Estonia, and the writers Enn Vetemaa and Jaan Kross. She let her Estonian respondents speak while she remained in the background as the chronicler, who selects the most interesting parts of the interview to tell a story. Hence, the stories about the Estonian and Russian peoples’ shared suffering, as well as the everyday struggle of the Estonian and Russian intelligentsia against communist ideology, come from an Estonian author, whose words Skulskaja simply relays. While none of her respondents claim that the Soviet nation was one family, they all reflect on the shared experience of tyranny and the common struggle to overcome it.

Both her family background and her experiments with different voices suggest that Skulskaja’s prose must be treated as a manifestation of transcultural memory. For the same reason, Skulskaja is sensitive to the postcolonial concerns of Estonians even though she does not express this in the language of postcolonial theory. For her, neither Estonia’s forcible annexation by the Soviet Union, nor the country’s independence are not subject to debate. “I knew from my childhood that we are strangers here and this is not our homeland,” writes Skulskaja in The Marble Swan (2015). “My father also knew this and supported this sense of foreignness in me as mandatory for our presence here . . . he was forgiven for not knowing the language . . . But there was a line which was not to be crossed in conversation: beyond this line, there could be a conversation about the legitimacy of our presence in this city and this country.” ⁵⁶ Her prose embodies the self-narrative of the Soviet dissident intelligentsia as a multinational group opposed to the communist regime. However, this superficial sense of unity completely disappeared after Estonia regained independence. She said in an interview: “When I write about my people, that is, Russians and Jews, I feel completely free. When I write about Estonians, I feel that I have no right to do that,” explaining that she was not sure about her knowledge of Estonian society. ⁵⁷

Nonetheless, Skulskaja in her recent writings has engaged with the history of Estonia and its colonization by the Russian Empire. She incorporated historical vignettes in her novel Border Love, which has parallels with Mihkelson’s works, particularly when it comes to “encountering a multiplicity of pasts.” Skulskaja presents a complex picture of the Russian presence in Estonia, simultaneously invoking to three phases of Russian imperialism—the era of Peter I, the Soviet period, and Putin’s regime. The male protagonist condemns Soviet policy toward Estonia, but, like Mihkelson’s characters, tries to find his place in modern Estonia by searching for a noble ancestor in the Petrine period. This self-identification allows him to avoid being associated with Soviet occupation. ⁵⁸

Our analysis of Skulskaja’s prose reveals several significant features. First, World War II is not depicted as a moment of triumph but rather as a traumatic experience and a drama of survival, with the preservation of humanity as a central theme. Second, the war and the fight against Soviet totalitarianism are presented as struggles of a multi-ethnic nation. While Skulskaja fully supports Estonia’s independence, the position of the Russian-speaking population in the country remains uncertain for her as a writer, and historical references fail to provide a definitive answer to this pressing question.

A writer of Tatar origin who grew up in Estonia, Sana Valiulina similarly depicts the Soviet regime’s crimes against Estonia, against the background of shared responsibility. The second part of her novel I Am Not Afraid of Bluebeard (2017) contains a side story about the murder of a Russian woman, Potapova, whose father served in the KGB and actively persecuted dissidents in Estonia. Potapova’s murder in 1979 is perceived as a political assassination, and the characters of the novel actively debate it. Some claim that Potapova’s father was in the military and issued orders that resulted in the deaths of many Estonians. The idea that Potapova became a victim of vengeance, taking upon herself the sins of her father, seems plausible to the Russian characters. The murder also casts a shadow over the teenage boy Jüri Simm. Jüri’s father Indrek is a high-ranking Estonian police officer, while his mother is a Russian journalist from Moscow. The following dialogue between the two parents highlights unspoken feelings of guilt and denial. Indrek is plagued by self-doubt and confides in his wife:

They all hate us. Us . . . People like me . . . I do not even know who I am anymore. As you know, my father fought you know where, but me . . . When power changes, I will be hanged from the first tree . . . father was thinking aloud.

You mean from the first lamppost, darling? But perhaps your dad’s German uniform will then save you—mother laughed and then added—Don’t exaggerate your importance, Indrek. You are not serving in the KGB. And then, you can’t be serious about the power change.

You are right, I don’t serve in the KGB, but I wear the uniform of an occupier. Thus, I am part of “the oppressive apparatus of the proletarian dictatorship,” as your classic said. ⁵⁹

The dialogue reveals the different perceptions of responsibility between an Estonian individual who has compromised himself by serving the occupation authorities and his wife, a Russian from Moscow, who does not take his moral and political dilemma seriously. The author presents Indrek’s conundrum empathetically, pointing to the lack of understanding among his Russian relatives who criticize him: “He still can’t calm down, he needs the historical truth, his soul, you see, tortured him, his national feelings won’t give him peace. How is it then possible that he, a pure-blooded Estonian, worked all his conscious life in the punitive organs that oppressed his own people?” ⁶⁰ The attitude toward the past in this novel is ambivalent.

Valiulina’s writing also reflects the postcolonial motives in the Estonian public debates about the past. The multi-ethnic Soviet intelligentsia displays an ambivalent attitude to such issues. On one hand, it collectively condemns Soviet atrocities against Estonia, while individually the Russian characters proclaim the deportations to be a crime. On the other hand, they demonstrate a colonial attitude by refusing to admit guilt. These attempts to rework the imperial past and its legacies positively resonated with the Estonian public, as demonstrated by the reception of the Estonian translation, which appeared in 2018. ⁶¹

Overall, we found little reflection on the Estonian’s role in World War II in the recent writings of Russian-speaking female authors. This is probably due to the fact that, with the literary canon still taking shape, our authors do not feel confident enough to make any statements on this sensitive topic. The few existing attempts are, however, revealing of the transcultural memory mechanisms at work in these writings. For example, Manja Nork’s book Anamor (2011) recounts her Soviet childhood in the 1980s in Tartu. This semi-autobiographical tale includes different episodes, two of which play on the theme of World War II and relations with the Estonian population. In the first, the author writes: “Our neighbors are Estonians. There is one old woman. I am afraid of her. It seems that either she does not have one breast or is mutilated. Much later, I found out that during the war, the woman was helping the [Soviet] partisans, and the Gestapo tortured and mutilated her.” ⁶² This memory is of a childhood phobia, but it is interesting how the author rehabilitates her hero. A child’s fear of disability is replaced by respect for the Estonian woman as a martyr in the war who fought in the anti-Nazi resistance. In another instance, the narrator recalls how an old Estonian woman harassed Russian children; a local drunkard, a Russian, chastised her, saying, “What a scum-sucking fascist numbskull! All you can do is fight with kids.” ⁶³ This chauvinistic remark is placed in the mouth of a drunkard, a declassed representative of the Russian-speaking population. For the author, these passages are part of a child’s personal memories, where the word “fascist” was an ordinary curse all but devoid of ideological connotation. In the first example, the girl narrator reveals that her stereotype about Estonians siding with the Nazis was shattered; in the second example, the stereotype is a marginal theme. In our estimate, these subtle shifts in the character’s perception result from a transcultural memory process where the idea of heroic resistance to fascism overlaps with the accusation of Estonian complicity in Nazi crimes.

Our interview with Nork confirmed that her position is rooted in transcultural memory. Unlike many Russians who lived in Estonia, Nork has heard different stories about the deportation of Estonians since her childhood. Her family includes many victims of repression, which explains her idea of common suffering. During perestroika, she read many publications unveiling Soviet crimes in Estonia, which led her to the conclusion that the Estonians’ accusations against Russians were justified. ⁶⁴ Still, when asked about the collective guilt of Russians toward the Baltic populations, Nork said that she believes that all the peoples of the Soviet Union suffered from political repression, although some suffered more than others. Besides, Nork insisted that she is categorically “against using the theme of World War II in vain, and it is even more wrong to speculate on it.” ⁶⁵

To summarize, we see crucial changes in historical narratives constructed by female Russian authors when dealing with the past. In the early 1990s, the victory in World War II remained the central historical event, whose meaning involved triumphalism and the memory of heavy trauma in a shared past. Then, in the 2010s, the discourse changed, as the Russian community’s cultural memory was progressively turning into a transcultural phenomenon. Local public debates thoroughly investigated political repressions against Estonians, and Russian authors could no longer speak openly about Soviet victories without touching on the crimes of the political regime. Skulskaja found a solution by using the third person: it is Estonians, not the author, who speaks of the shared past and the multiple nationalities of the regime’s victims. The examples of the dialogues in Valiulina’s and Nork’s novels shed light on the subject’s unease and the uncomfortable character of these topics. At the same time, we observe the growing prominence of postcolonial themes, especially with reference to the Russian and Soviet imperial rule in the region. These novels vaguely resonate with the Estonian discussion on Soviet crimes, while simultaneously touching on the theme of betrayal within the family, an important idea in Estonian literature.

Conclusion

In contrast to studies that focus on literary works aspiring to construct a national idea or engage in ideological wars, our study of women’s literature has focused on fictionalized narratives of ordinary people’s lives, imaginary universes of individuals who lived through historical disasters. This perspective—a human subject against the background of historical change—allows women writers to explore the rich possibilities of the past without making profound statements about national identity. We do not claim to understand patterns of cultural memory in Estonia by analyzing only a handful of novels but hope that literature can foster mutual understanding more than official discourses because literature can overcome conflicts through the artistic representation of different experiences and points of view.

Women’s literature allows us to contrast the cultural memory of Estonians and Russophones, specifically regarding the key narrative surrounding differing perceptions of the family’s role during the Soviet regime. Within the texts under discussion, families take center stage, both in the past and at present, but their histories are portrayed differently by Estonian- and Russian-speaking authors. This divergence sheds light on the complex historical experiences that shape the collective memory of these two communities.

Our study reveals the continued presence of significant differences. Estonian cultural memory conceptualizes the nation as an ethnically homogenous family unit. As a result, the work of memory in Estonia is inextricably linked with the concept of betrayal within the family, which occurs in the face of the Soviet regime’s obvious and indisputable malevolence. At the same time, family is believed to be the only foundation for survival. By contrast, cultural memory reflected in Russophone sources initially appealed to the ideal of the USSR as a family of peoples, a multicultural and multi-ethnic entity, but not identical to the political regime, and bearing responsibility for the suffering of everyone, regardless of nationality. Thus, in Estonian discourse, the harshness of the regime is countered by the portrayal of a loving family, while in Russophone texts, this narrative is enriched with the theme of solidarity and friendship among people.

Yet the situation is gradually changing under the impact of transcultural memory. In both Estonian and Russian fiction, we can find references to this change. Rather than antagonizing Russians, the focus of Estonian cultural memory is on working through the betrayal of the nation, on the internal more than the external enemy, as exemplified by Mihkelson’s and Tungal’s novels. The acknowledgment of the repressions of the Soviet power against Russians also appears in Estonian discourse. The theme of repressions against Estonians as an ethnic group, missing in the Russophone discourse in the first years after independence was restored, is gradually emerging in the Russian fiction published in Estonia. It is also gradually linked with a postcolonial take on Russian imperialism and colonialism. This is a slow process; as of now, it is more evident in Valiulina’s works, but the recent books by Skulskaja also demonstrate this tendency.

Both Estonian and Russian fiction reveal the “multiplicity of the past.” Authors do not restrict themselves only to one historical interval, they include references and allusions to different periods in Estonian history. Kirss describes this aspect in Mihkelson’s novels in terms of postcolonial agency. Skulskaja’s books give a voice to Estonian Russians by addressing different periods of Estonian history, but conflicting interpretations of the past, as pointed out by Vihalemm and Jakobson, make this effort entangled.

Incompatible chronology plays an important role. For the Russian-speaking audience, the timeline is clear, and the main historical event of the twentieth century remains the war against Nazism. Historical events are viewed differently in Estonian discourse: consecutive periods are marked by milestones symbolizing occupation and liberation, while wars are seen as the background to the development of Estonian statehood. Notably, the Russian Estonian discourse on World War II and Victory Day far from celebratory. In the 1990s, Skulskaja approached the war primarily as trauma, and Victory Day as a day of grief, not of triumph. Today, as Nork’s book testifies, the war is a somewhat controversial event in the common history of Estonians and Russians.

In these realistic stories about ordinary families and individuals under duress, we see cultural memory at work, assisting writers and readers in processing the traumatic past and producing templates for actual conversations and public discussions about the recent history of Estonia. This moment is crucial for understanding the differences in historical narratives that are no longer mutually exclusive. We are not claiming that women’s writing is an undisputed site of agonistic memory, and some writings may still be perceived as offensive or insufficiently nuanced. However, we maintain that this is one under-appreciated source of knowledge about the multiplicity of perspectives in which memory work is developing in Estonia as a still divided, but interconnected transcultural space. While the criticism about the lack of a public debate on the inadequate processing of the uncomfortable past is valid, literature and culture can provide an alternative form of cultural memory that compensates for this lack.