Propaganda, Immigration, and Monuments: Perspectives on Methods Used to Entrench Soviet Power in Estonia in the 1950s–1980s ed. by Meelis Saueauk and Meelis Maripuu (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Propaganda, Immigration, and Monuments: Perspectives on Methods Used to Entrench Soviet Power in Estonia in the 1950s–1980s ed. by Meelis Saueauk and Meelis Maripuu Ivan Sablin (bio) Meelis Saueauk and Meelis Maripuu (Eds.), Propaganda, Immigration, and Monuments: Perspectives on Methods Used to Entrench Soviet Power in Estonia in the 1950s–1980s (Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2022). 282 pp. ISBN: 978-9949-9687-6-3. The publication under review is the third volume of the Proceedings of the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory and consists of translated articles by Estonian historians who work at the institute. Due to the type of the publication, which lies between a book and a journal special issue, the volume is somewhat coherent in terms of the topics of the contributions but not in their approaches and genres. It consists of a very brief introduction, six chapters, and a book review. The chapters deal with topics as diverse as information acquisition by the party in early Soviet Estonia, migration, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR, and the destruction of non-Soviet and the construction of Soviet monuments in Estonia. Somewhat standing alone is the chapter discussing the resurgence of the Soviet interpretation of the World War II in modern Russia. All chapters differ in their genre, source base, and argumentation. While most of them explore political, economic, and cultural history, several contributions are closely dealing with the matters pertaining to historical memory. The volume and the whole initiative of making the discussions among Estonian historians of the Soviet Union accessible to nonspecialists on Estonian history is very welcome. Unfortunately, the introduction does not reference any literature and therefore does not contextualize the six empirical studies in the historiographies of Estonia, the Soviet Union, state socialism, and dictatorial regimes globally that are featured in the edited volume. The studies themselves would undoubtedly be of interest to specialists in all these fields and would contribute to the respective debates. The volume opens with Hiljar Tammela's chapter, "The Communist Party's System for Processing Political Information in the Estonian SSR in 1944–1950," which focuses on information acquisition by the party authorities in Estonia. As shown by Tammela in a historiographic overview, although information notes composed and compiled at different levels of party organization have been extensively used as sources by historians, little research was done on information notes themselves as the medium. Based on the materials of the district committees of the Estonian Communist Party (ECP), he then reconstructs the work of the whole [End Page 304] system for requesting and providing these information notes, in which the leadership expected to see not just a summary of facts but also their analysis. Most notes were prepared on the request of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) in Moscow, while most of the work was done at the county and municipal levels, with numerous modifications and – which is especially interesting – some omissions being introduced at other levels. I wonder if further research into the matter could provide more insights into the interworking of different branches of Soviet dictatorship – namely, the participation of the NKVD/MGB apparatus in controlling the content of reporting. The chapter "Targeted Migration to Estonia in the Post-Second World War Period" by Peeter Kaasik provides an extensive overview of the predominantly economic factors behind migration to the Estonian SSR. It is noteworthy that there were occasional protests of the Soviet Estonian leadership against the uncontrolled immigration. Although Kaasik argues that the migration was based on both intentional colonization and the immigration of manpower, he offers little evidence of intentionality on the level of the VKP(b)/CPSU leadership. In particular, it would be of great interest to determine whether there were particular directives from Moscow on facilitating migrations from specific regions to Estonia, or whether the intentionality pertained only to the level of the ministries and large enterprises that needed manpower for their operations in Estonia. Olev Liivik's contribution to the volume is titled "An Exemplary Quota-Based 'Representative Assembly'? The Composition of the People's Deputies of the Estonian SSR Supreme Soviet from the 1940s to the End of the 1980s." The chapter analyzes the statistics of...