Interpreting Sites of Historical Rupture in Post-Soviet Urban Space: The Case of Tallinn, Estonia

Abstract

This chapter analyses how sites of traumatic memory are managed by institutional policies as well as different social groups. I draw on recent discourse in memory studies which suggests that memory is fluid, multidimensional, changeable and fragmentary. Based on this, sites of memory are never produced exclusively by institutional discourses or nationalising policies: they are also constantly reinterpreted by different social groups. As the meanings of landscape change in time, memorial landscapes can also become vernacular—and vice versa. Landscapes can often possess both of these qualities. Vernacularisation and symbolisation become especially meaningful with generational shifts, since the meaning of historical rupture changes radically for the younger generation that never experienced the rupture directly. The case study for this chapter is Lasnamae, an urban district in the Estonian capital of Tallinn. Since independence, the district has been largely represented by institutional and media discourses as “Russian”. I analyse how two different generational cohorts view the area, and how they appropriate the dominant discourse for their needs. While the older generation generally sees the area as representing the Soviet period, it also considers Lasnamae “placeless”. The younger generation challenges the discourse of Russianness, stressing instead personal memories linked to the area. The analysis demonstrates how the nationalising discourse deals with a historical rupture—that is, the end of the Soviet period—by turning Lasnamae into a site of oppression, whereas two generations of Estonian-speakers have subsequently added new layers of meaning.