The narrated experiences of different generations

(like generations) are focusing on different historical events, I will show what events or non-events are meaningful for remembering the Soviet period. As em-phasised earlier, I am mainly mediating narrated experiences of people born in Soviet Estonia in the 1940s and the 1970s, but also narrators born in the 1920s‒

30s are represented.

33 As at the example of people of sixties ‘shest’desiatnki’ in the Soviet Union or in the case of this dissertation as exemplified in the Article III.

The First Soviet Generation or Silent Generation ‒ born in 1940s

Due to my particular interest in late socialism, I focused, in the case of written biographies, mostly on the experiences of people born from the late 1930s until the first half of the 1950s, described by Wulf as ‘post-war children’ (2016).

Those born in the 1940s have also been described as the first Soviet generation who were socialised by the Soviet school system and workplaces. Many of them were born during or immediately after the Second World War, hence the war experience occupies an important place in their stories, first of all through (family) stories and post-war difficulties (see also Aarelaid-Tart 2012). Their older family members had experienced the war, either as soldiers or civilians.

Although, at the time when they grew up and were socialised, only the stories of those who fought on one side were permitted in the public discourse³⁴, in everyday conversations the war experience of both sides was articulated, i.e. on the level of experience different stories were represented in the field of social memory. In the life stories analysed in my articles, the war is often reflected on through a child’s eyes or the fates of the parents are described. The memories of forest brothers also occupy an important position. The experiences of life-story writers from this group do not always support the post-Soviet narrative of forest brothers as freedom fighters (see Article III). It can also be said that they acquired a certain perception of the conflict between the public and the private through different experiences.

On the other hand, relatively better educational opportunities were open to those born in the 1940s since secondary education was free from 1st of Sep-tember 1956, and scholarships were available for further studies. The children of the 1940s could benefit from the improvement of the economic situation in the 1960s, building up their independent (working)life namely in the years of mature socialism. In many respects, they profited from the Soviet social system ‒ kindergartens, free medical care and living space. The changes in the 1990s influenced this group in different ways: many were seriously affected by the dissolution of collective farms and sovkhozes, privatisation and selling of big enterprises, getting into the status of forced tenants. Yet, several people belonging to this generation grabbed hold of the opportunities of the 1990s and were able to transform their former Soviet experience successfully in the capitalist environment as well. The property reform law also touched this generation in many ways: they could be heirs of legal owners or find them-selves among forced tenants. At the same time this generation could participate in the privatisation of living space with privatisation bonds unlike those born in the 1970s. Compared with the previous and the next generation (the 1960s and the so-called “winners’ generation”, Titma 1999), those born in the 1940s can be rather characterised as a ‘silent generation’ whose voice was less heard in the reorganisations of the 1990s and 2000s (in detail, see Article III), but from the

34 Experience stories of the Great Patriotic War. Only members of the Estonian Rifle Corps, who fought as a part of Red Army, were included into public remembering. On the experiences of the Second World War, see Kõresaar 2011b.

2000s they have played an important role in creating the memory culture of late socialism, highlighting everyday discourse. In the late 1980s–early 1990s mostly the experiences of those born in the 1920s were dominant.

The Republican Generation – born in the 1920s

While the childhood of those born in the 1940s befell into the relatively tumul-tuous war- and afterwar years and the following life was more stable, the previous generation was born and grew up in the relatively stable 1920s‒1930s, but the changes hit them in their early adulthood. Those born in the 1920s were born into the Republic of Estonia and got their education in the context of

“national modernisation” (Kõresaar 2005: 28), two thirds of them in the countryside and one third in the cities (Sakkeus, Klesment, Puur 2016: 83).

Compared with the previous and following generations their homes were relatively intact: in earlier generations the death of one parent before the children reached adulthood was quite common and in the case of the following generations the number of divorces grew (Sakkeus, Klesment, Puur 2016: 74).

By the time of the regime change in 1940 they were still at the beginning of their independent life, some were already economically on their feet, but the life path still ahead. The 1940s ‒ changes of the regime, occupations and war ‒ influenced their life trajectories in the next decades. A great part of the men born in the 1920s (until the birth year 1927) fought at different fronts of the Second World War as mobilised or voluntary soldiers. Emigration to the West during the war, the changes in public space and incompatibility of some qualifi-cations with the new society also touched this generation. After the chaotic 1940s more clear-cut Soviet decades arrived for this generation too ‒ choices were multiple, some dedicated themselves more to work in the public sphere, some focused on life in the private sphere and hobbies.

In the life stories of this generation the experiences of the late socialism are often concluded with the sentence “it went on track” (Kõresaar 2016b: 117;

Kõresaar 2001). The Soviet-time division of public-private definitely affected most of this generation, because they had experienced different regimes. In scholarly literature, this generation has also been characterised as the ‘war generation’ (Wulf 2016), ‘the generation of bitter choices’ (Hinrikus 2003b),

‘betrayed generation’ (Hinrikus, Kõresaar 2004: 25) or ‘republican generation’

(Aarelaid-Tart 2006, see also Kõresaar 2005). The childhood experiences and memories of those born in the 1920s and had mostly retired by the late 1980s, became very important in the atmosphere of the Singing Revolution. On everyday level, they were affected by the property reform, due to which many of them got back their childhood homes while others, similarly to those born in the 1940s, could become forced tenants.

This generation has also contributed a lot to the life story campaigns that began at the end of 1980ies. Thereby those who were born in the 1920s had a prominence in Estonian life story research in the 1990s and, in some extent, also later (Aarelaid 2000; Kõresaar 2004a, 2005b; Hinrikus 2003b; Raudsepp 2016). Their childhood experiences from the pre-war Republic of Estonia were

in harmony with the national narrative dominating in the first half of 1990s and this bright picture was also used later to explain social and economic reforms, as a return to the bright future (see also Kõresaar 2005). But, of course, there are people with different life experiences among those born in the 1920s (see Raudsepp 2016); some of them became part of the Soviet nomenklatura, some of them adapted to the new system, or chose their own way of life. Those different experiences are also represented in the life stories sent to the Estonian Cultural Archives. The experiences of those born in the 1920s are dealt with in Article II where the story of a man born in 1928 is analysed. In Article I, two of three Estonian presidents born in the late 1920s represent different experiences of that generation. In Article V the experiences of people born in the 1920s provide the basis for describing the place of late socialism in the 1990s memory culture (co-authored with Ene Kõresaar). They play an important role in remembering late socialism by constructing the discourse of the “culture of disruption”, “resistance” and “suffering”.

The Last Soviet Generation – born in the 1970s

Those born in the 1970s can be regarded as the last Soviet generation in the Estonian context³⁵ who had personal conscious experiences from the Soviet time. This concerns first of all the (ideological) school system, consumption (longing for western goods, scarcity of everyday products), everyday details and shared cultural texts (on the generation of cartoons see Grünberg 2009). Born in the years of late socialism, most of them got education in the Soviet system, those born at the beginning of the decade already started their work life in the late 1980s. Their coming of age coincided with great structural changes in society, and thus they went through double transition (Nugin 2015). In the new society that had opened up, there were, on the one hand, several new opportu-nities to shape one’s life trajectories, but, on the other hand, social structures supporting their entry into adulthood were missing (ibid.). For them the 1990s mostly meant the opening of borders in all directions and going along with the changes, unlike the older generations³⁶ who were hit by the changes ‒ the dis-appearance of established structures ‒ relatively unexpectedly.

Peeter (born in 1974) has described the experiences of different generations in the 1990s, first of all that of the young, born in the 1960s‒1970s, and older, born in the 1940s‒early 1950s, as follows: “Well … naturally, to me it seemed they [parents] were not keeping up with time. That they did not understand.

Right now, [2005] I think that I was of course unjust to them. In reality, their life was turned upside down” (in Nugin 2015: 88). In the everyday aspect, the stories of those born in the 1970s about getting their own home differ from the stories of those born in the 1940s, as well as from those born in the 1920s; since they were not adults in Soviet society, they mostly had to make their homes

35 Cf. Yurchak’s approach to the last Soviet generation described above.

36 Except those born in the 1960s, who have been called the ‘winners’ of the transformation in the Estonian context.

relying on their own resources (bank loans), which again frames their expe-riences in two different social formations. Their experience of the open society of the 1990s has definitely also shaped their attitude to late socialism.

Most of them interpret the period of late socialism either through personal experiences or reinterpretations of cultural texts (see Articles IV and V); yet, through some cultural texts, they also deal with earlier times (c.f. Vadi 2008;

Wimberg 2002). In this dissertation, the authors of cultural texts born in the 1970s who have created new frames for the interpretation of late socialism are under special scrutiny.