Results by title
7 books match the query 'Estonia'
Estonian Life Stories
Tiina Kirss
Central European University Press, 2009
After a short period of independence, Estonia was occupied in World War II by the Red Army, then Nazi Germany, and again, for a lasting occupation, by the Soviets. No wonder that a greater part of the roughly one million Estonians had harshly eventful lives.
This anthology contains 25 selected life stories collected from Estonians who lived through the tribulations of the 20th century, and describe the travails of ordinary people under numerous regimes. The autobiographical accounts provide authentic perspectives on events of this period, where time is placed in the context of life-spans, and subjects grounded in personal experience. Most of the life stories reveal sufferings under foreign (Russian) oppression.
The volume is the product of a large-scale national project to record history by collecting autobiographical accounts, and a process of engaged selection for publication which followed. The variety of life-experiences recorded offers comparison across cultures, as well as an overview of the powerful neighbors as they relinquish and strengthen their hold on Estonia.
On the Margins
Essays on the History of Jews in EstoniaAnton Weiss-Wendt
Central European University Press, 2017
Estonia is perhaps the only country in Europe that lacks a comprehensive history of its Jewish minority. Spanning over 150 years of Estonian Jewish history, On the Margins is a truly unique book. Rebuilding a life beyond so-called Pale of Jewish Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Jewish cultural autonomy in interwar Estonia, and the trauma of Soviet occupation of 1940–41 are among the issues addressed in the book but most profoundly, the book wrestles with the subject of the Holocaust and its legacy in Estonia.
Specifically, it examines the quasi-legal system of murder instituted in Nazi-occupied Estonia, confiscation of Jewish property, and Jewish forced labor camps and develops an analysis of the causes of collaboration during the Holocaust. The book also explores the dynamics of war crimes trials in the Soviet Union since the 1960s and so-called denaturalization trials in the United States in the 1980s. The haunting memory of Soviet and Nazi rule, the book concludes, prevents a larger segment of today’s Estonian population from facing up to the Holocaust and the universal message that it carries.E
Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia
An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban TracesFrancisco Martinez
University College London, 2018
Francisco Martinez brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia: a street market in Tallinn where concepts such as "market" and "employment" take on distinctly different meanings from their Western use; Linnahall, a multi-purpose venue, whose Soviet heritage now poses difficult questions of how to present the building’s history; Tallinn’s cityscape, where the social, spatial, and temporal coevolution of the city can be viewed and debated; Narva, a city that marks the border between the Russian Federation, NATO, and the European Union and represents a place of continual negotiation; and the new Estonian National Museum in Raadi, an area on the outskirts of Tartu that has avoided promoting a single narrative of the past.
By exploring these places of cultural and historical significance, which all contribute to our understanding of how the new generation in Estonia is not following the expectations and values of its predecessor, the book also demonstrates how we can understand generational change in a material sense.
Sounds Beyond
Arvo Pärt and the 1970s Soviet UndergroundKevin C. Karnes
University of Chicago Press, 2021
In Sounds Beyond, Kevin C. Karnes studies the interconnected alternative music and art scenes in the USSR during the second half of the 1970s, revealing the audacious origins of some of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s most famous music. Karnes shows how Pärt’s work was created within a vital yet forgotten culture of collective experimentation, the Soviet underground.
Mining archives and oral history from across the former USSR, Sounds Beyond carefully situates modes of creative experimentation within their late socialist contexts. In documenting Pärt’s work, Karnes reveals the rich creative culture that thrived covertly in the USSR and the network of figures that made underground performances possible: students, audio engineers, sympathetic administrators, star performers, and aspiring DJs. Sounds Beyond advances a new understanding of Pärt’s music as an expression of the aesthetic and religious commitments shared, nurtured, and celebrated by many in Soviet underground circles. At the same time, this story attests to the lasting power of Pärt’s music. Dislodging the mythology of the solitary creative genius, Karnes shows that Pärt’s work would be impossible without community.
The Internet of Elsewhere
The Emergent Effects of a Wired WorldFarivar, Cyrus
Rutgers University Press, 2011
Through the lens of culture, The Internet of Elsewhere looks at the role of the Internet as a catalyst in transforming communications, politics, and economics. Cyrus Farivar explores the Internet's history and effects in four distinct and, to some, surprising societies—Iran, Estonia, South Korea, and Senegal. He profiles Web pioneers in these countries and, at the same time, surveys the environments in which they each work. After all, contends Farivar, despite California's great success in creating the Internet and spawning companies like Apple and Google, in some areas the United States is still years behind other nations.
Surprised? You won't be for long as Farivar proves there are reasons that:
- Skype was invented in Estonia—the same country that developed a digital ID system and e-voting;
- Iran was the first country in the world to arrest a blogger, in 2003;
- South Korea is the most wired country on the planet, with faster and less expensive broadband than anywhere in the United States;
- Senegal may be one of sub-Saharan Africa's best chances for greater Internet access.
The Internet of Elsewhere brings forth a new complex and modern understanding of how the Internet spreads globally, with both good and bad effects.
The Quality of Divided Democracies
Minority Inclusion, Exclusion, and Representation in the New EuropeLicia Cianetti
University of Michigan Press, 2019
The Village and the Class War
Anti-Kulak Campaign in Estonia 1944-49Anu Mai Kõll
Central European University Press, 2013