Hanna Maria Aunin
In January 1988, the editorial board of the Tallinnfilm studio signed a contract with Rein Saluri for a feature film script about mass deportations. According to the studio, the topic “become[s] extremely relevant in a society seeking to eliminate so-called ‘white spots of history’ through artistic means”.[i] Although Saluri’s script had already attracted attention in 1986, making a film on this topic had been considered impossible at that time. The board’s positive decision in 1988 reflects the rapid societal changes related to the policy of glasnost in the Baltic societies, allowing discussions about previously taboo topics.
The resulting film, Awakening (Äratus, 1989), directed by Jüri Sillar, portrays one day in rural Estonia during the 1949 Soviet mass deportations. It became the first Estonian film featuring this topic. Another remarkable Estonian feature film on mass deportations came out 25 years later. Martti Helde’s debut In the Crosswind (Risttuules, 2014), featuring the June 1941 mass deportations, captivated local and international audiences with its art-house aesthetics and a dramatic story of a young woman’s tragic deportation presented through 13 black-and-white tableaux vivants. These two visually and narratively distinctive films, produced in different contexts, are compelling case studies for comparing how the representation of the memory of mass deportations has changed in Estonia between 1989 and 2014. In this blogpost, I will discuss how the representation of Stalinist deportations in the films represent the time of production and their role in shaping the memory of mass deportations.[ii]
Considering the magnitude of the Stalinist deportations, it is not surprising that mass deportations are central to Estonia’s memory culture.[iii] Post-Soviet Baltic memory narratives have largely emphasised victimhood and suffering under the Soviet regime. However, the institutional focus on Soviet-era memory within dominant narratives has led to several lacunae in remembering the 20th-century past, particularly regarding the culpability and collaboration of locals with both the Nazi and Soviet regimes. In recent decades, these topics have begun to receive more attention. In Estonia, debate about the culpability of local party activists surfaced in spring 2023, following the revelation of archival evidence confirming prominent writer Juhan Smuul’s involvement in the 1949 March deportation as a recorder of deportees’ property. Similarly, in Lithuania, controversies about the participation of local anti-Soviet resistance fighters in the Holocaust, such as Jonas Noreika and Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, have brought new attention to the memories of Nazi collaboration.[iv] Two Lithuanian feature films released in 2019 – The Purple Mist (Purpurinis rūkas, dir. Raimundas Banionis) and Isaac (Izaokas, dir. Jurgis Matulevicius) – address Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust, going beyond the dominant victimhood narrative. This blogpost will examine how Awakening and In the Crosswind reflect these tendencies in the context of Estonian memory culture, comparing portrayals of mass deportations across two post-Soviet periods.
Awakening: uncovering the historical blind-spots in the late 1980s
Discussion of Stalinist repressions, especially the deportations, was instrumental for the formation of a new collective memory in the late 1980s.[v] The aim at that time was to de-Sovietise the official version of history by filling in historical ‘blind spots’.[vi] Besides political initiative and legislation, memories of the repressed were investigated in journalism, literature, life stories and theatre.[vii] In order to assert the illegality of the Soviet regime, the transition period was dominated by the idea of legal and historical continuity of the interwar republic.[viii] This allowed the interpretation of the Soviet occupation from the end of the 1940s until 1991 using the framework of “rupture” from the “normal” course of events and from the continuity of national independence.[ix] The newly constructed national historical narrative emphasised victimhood under the Soviet regime, creating a binary division between Estonian victims and Soviet Russian perpetrators. This, however, has led to the externalisation of perpetration.
Analysing Awakening in the context of this emerging memory culture of the late 1980s reveals two notable aspects. First, as a pioneering effort to visually represent mass deportations, the film contributed to shaping the national narrative of rupture. Rather than following a single character or storyline, it presents various episodes of deportation. The story is told from the perspective of the perpetrators – the deportation squads who moved from farm to farm arresting people in rural Estonia. By portraying Estonians as the bourgeoisie of the countryside (kulaks) and naming the two main deporters “Townswoman” (Linnanaine) and “Townsman” (Linnamees), the film juxtaposes the local rural community with the deporters. This underscores the popular notion of Estonians as country folk (maarahvas, literally ‘people of the land’), emphasising the connection between Estonian people and their land. The film illustrates how Soviet polices dismantled the Estonian rural life and the pre-war society, which is remembered with nostalgia, attempting to annihilate the continuity of Estonians as masters of their own land.
Second, the film features characters such as Estonian collaborators and beneficiaries of mass deportations – figures later sidelined in the nationalised memory culture that emphasises victimhood under the Soviet regime. The role of Estonians as the perpetrators and accomplices of mass deportations is not widely acknowledged in Estonian society.[x] By featuring a character representing a “new settler” – a landless individual or a poor peasant who receives the land and assets of a deported wealthier peasant (kulak) through the dekulakization campaign – the film highlights the complexities of Soviet mass deportations and blurs the line between simplified binary of “good victims” and “bad perpetrators”. Such rendition of film characters aligns with Michael Rothberg’s concept of the implicated subject: a subject which is neither a victim nor a perpetrator, as they are not “direct agents of harm” but only benefit from regimes of control.[xi] I argue that, in this respect, Awakening’s departure from the national narrative of victimhood, is related to the film being produced at a time of transition, when national memory narratives were not yet fully formed and solidified.
In the Crosswind: seeking international recognition in the twenty-first century
In the Crosswind was made with an international audience in mind and received acclaim beyond Estonia.[xii] This outward perspective is reflected in the film’s narrative and cinematographic choices. Firstly, the film focuses on the trauma of the individual, allowing viewers to empathically engage with the plight of the protagonist, Erna. The focus on individual trauma is absent from the representational mode of Awakening, which does not present its story through the perspective of one protagonist or a victim. Secondly, the film borrows visual icons of Holocaust memory, such as the pile of victims’ shoes. Moreover, it establishes a clear connection between the Holocaust and Baltic mass deportations by dedicating the film “to the victims of Soviet Holocaust”. Scholars of Holocaust memory have shown how the cosmopolitanisation of Holocaust memory has turned it into a narrative template within global memory culture and a de-contextualised symbol of evil.[xiii] The reference to the Holocaust is intended to make the gravity and importance of the memory of mass deportations for the Baltic nations understandable for international viewers. However, the dedication raises ethical questions about how equalising historical experiences may lead to trivialisation and appropriation of some experiences, instead of promoting solidarity.[xiv]
The film thus illustrates the ongoing internationalisation of Estonia’s memory culture. Since joining the European Union in 2004, the Baltic countries have been at the forefront of advocating for the condemnation of the crimes committed by the communist regime to a similar level to those of Nazism.[xv] As a result, after the 1990s, Estonian memory culture has taken on a more outward orientation, influenced by shifts in global memory culture – particularly the development of Holocaust memory into a global model – and Russia’s inactivity in relation to the condemnation of Stalinist crimes and the occupation of the Baltic states, which has prompted the need to establish historical justice regarding Stalinist repressions.[xvi] In the Crosswind contributes to the Baltic countries’ broader effort of making Soviet repressions part of the collective European memory of the Second World War.
Conclusion
Awakening, as the first cinematic attempt to address Soviet mass deportations, helped shape the Estonian national narrative of rupture while also tackling complex topics like local collaborators and beneficiaries – subjects later sidelined in nationalised memory culture. In the Crosswind, in turn, is aimed for global audiences and testifies to the emergence of new interpretive frameworks for examining the memories of Soviet repressions at the beginning of 21st century. However, the film’s focus on victimhood and comparisons with Holocaust memory raise ethical concerns regarding the equalization of different historical experiences and the clear-cut division between perpetrator and victim subject positions. In contrast, Awakening offers a more nuanced portrayal of the memory of mass deportations, challenging the simplistic ethnic-based division of perpetrators and victims. It is time to rediscover this largely forgotten film and view it alongside In the Crosswind, as both films offer valuable insights by highlighting different aspects of Soviet mass deportations in Estonia.
Hanna Maria Aunin is a junior researcher at Tallinn University and part of the ERC-funded project "Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena". Her research lies at the intersection of memory and film studies, focusing on Baltic memory cultures through the analysis of post-Soviet Baltic films about World War Two and the Soviet era.
This article is part of the project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’ that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No 853385).
[i] Eesti Filmi Andmebaas, ‘Äratus (1989)’, Eesti Filmi Andmebaas, 2023, https://www.efis.ee/et/filmiliigid/film/id/806/.
[ii] For a longer analysis, see Hanna Maria Aunin, ‘The Transformation of the Memory of Soviet Mass Deportations in Estonia: From Awakening (1989) to In the Crosswind (2014)’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 15 July 2024, 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2024.2379368.
[iii] The 1941 June deportation resulted in the deportation of around 10 000 Estonians, the 1949 March deportations around 20 000 Estonians. Aigi Rahi-Tamm, ‘Deportations in Estonia, 1941-1951’, in Soviet Deportations in Estonia: Impact and Legacy: Articles and Life Histories, ed. Kristi Kukk and Toivo U. Raun (Tartu University Press, 2007), 9–54. Memory culture refers to collective practices, texts, images and other mediums that societies use to construct and maintain their relationship with the past and their identity, see Jan Assmann, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, New German Critique, no. 65 (1995): 125–33, https://doi.org/10.2307/488538..
[iv] Violeta Davoliūtė, ‘Between the Public and the Personal: A New Stage of Holocaust Memory in Lithuania’, Cultures of History Forum, 12 2018, https://www.cultures-of-history.uni-jena.de/debates/between-the-public-and-the-personal-a-new-stage-of-holocaust-memory.
[v] Tomas Balkelis and Violeta Davoliūtė, ‘Introduction’, in Narratives of Exile and Identity. Soviet Deportation Memoirs from the Baltic States, ed. Tomas Balkelis and Violeta Davoliūtė (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2018), 2.
[vi] Ene Kõresaar, Elu ideoloogiad: kollektiivne mälu ja autobiograafiline minevikutõlgendus eestlaste elulugudes (Tartu: Eesti Rahva Muuseum, 2005), 19.
[vii] Marek Tamm, ‘In Search of Lost Time: Memory Politics in Estonia, 1991-2011’, Nationalities Papers 41 (1 July 2013): 653, https://doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2012.747504; Kõresaar, Elu ideoloogiad, 20–22.
[viii] Tamm, ‘In Search of Lost Time’.
[ix] Kõresaar, Elu ideoloogiad, 72.
[x] 61,4% of those participating in Operation Priboi came from the ranks of local Soviet authorities, the Komsomol, or the local Communist party in the Baltic states. Heinrihs Strods and Matthew Kott, ‘The File on Operation “Priboi”: A Re-Assessment of the Mass Deportations of 1949’, Journal of Baltic Studies 33, no. 1 (2002): 24.
[xi] Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), 1.
[xii] The film has participated in 37 film festivals all around the world, and won 4 awards in Estonia, and 9 abroad Eesti Filmi Andmebaas, ‘Risttuules (2014)’, Eesti Filmi Andmebaas, 2023, https://www.efis.ee/et/filmiliigid/film/id/11723/filmi-yldinfo.
[xiii] Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, ‘Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory’, European Journal of Social Theory 5, no. 1 (2002): 87–106.
[xiv] On the ethics of transcultural comparisons, see Michael Rothberg, ‘From Gaza to Warsaw: Mapping Multidirectional Memory’, Criticism 53, no. 4 (2011): 523–48.
[xv] Maria Mälksoo, ‘The Memory Politics of Becoming European: The East European Subalterns and the Collective Memory of Europe’, European Journal of International Relations 15, no. 4 (2009): 653–80.
[xvi] Eneken Laanes, ‘Transnationalisation of the Estonian Memory Culture’, in Estonian Human Development Report 2016/2017: Estonia at the Age of Migration. Foundation Estonian Cooperation Assembly, ed. Tiit Tammaru, 2017, https://www.2017.inimareng.ee/en/estonias-cultural-changes-in-an-open-world/transnationalisation-of-the-estonian-memory-culture/.