Soldiers of memory: World War II and its aftermath in Estonian post-Soviet life stories 9789042032439, 904203243X

Citation preview

Soldiers of Memory World War II and Its Aftermath in Estonian Post-Soviet Life Stories

On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics 27

Founding and Executive Editor Leonidas Donskis, Member of the European Parliament, and previously Professor and Dean of Vytautas Magnus University School of Political Science and Diplomacy in Kaunas, Lithuania. Editorial and Advisory Board Timo Airaksinen, University of Helsinki, Finland Egidijus Aleksandravicius, Lithuanian Emigration Institute, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania Stefano Bianchini, University of Bologna, Forlì Campus, Italy Endre Bojtar, Institute of Literary Studies, Budapest, Hungary Ineta Dabasinskiene, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania Robert Ginsberg, Pennsylvania State University, USA John Hiden, University of Glasgow, UK Martyn Housden, University of Bradford, UK Mikko Lagerspetz, Åbo Academy, Finland Andreas Lawaty, Nordost-Institute, Lüneburg, Germany Olli Loukola, University of Helsinki, Finland Valdis Muktupavels, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia Hannu Niemi, University of Helsinki, Finland Yves Plasseraud, Paris, France Rein Raud, Rector of Tallinn University, Estonia Alfred Erich Senn, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania André Skogström-Filler, University Paris VIII-Saint-Denis, France David Smith, University of Glasgow, UK Saulius Suziedelis, Millersville University, USA Joachim Tauber, Nordost-Institut, Lüneburg, Germany Tomas Venclova, Yale University, USA

Soldiers of Memory World War II and Its Aftermath in Estonian Post-Soviet Life Stories

Edited by

Ene Kõresaar

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2011

Translations: Kersti Unt, Tiina Ann Kirss & Wiedemanni Tõlkebüroo OÜ Language editing: Derettens OÜ Layout: Aive Maasalu Cover photograph: autumn 1944 in North Estonia; the private collection of the Prööm family This book has been published with the support of the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence of Cultural Theory)

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3243-9 E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-3244-6 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2011 Printed in the Netherlands

Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................ Introduction. Remembrance Cultures of World War II and the Politics of Recognition in Post-Soviet Estonia: Biographical Perspectives ................................................................... Ene Kõresaar Estonians in World War II. A Chronology ......................................... Tiit Noormets

vii

1 35

Part I ‘Our Lives Would Soon Be Turned Upside Down’: Soldiers’ Wars, Veterans’ Memories My Biography: Memoirs of Childhood, Study Years, Territorial Defence Army and War, German Prison Camp and Time Spent in the Soviet Prison Camp .................................................................. Aleksander Loog

49

Between the Cogweels: Victimized by the Course of History ............ Heinrich Uustalu

75

My Life in the Twist of History .......................................................... Reinhold Mirk

99

Hope of Staying Alive ........................................................................ 119 Boris Raag Wonders of Living .............................................................................. 143 Ailo Ehamaa Born Under a Lucky Star .................................................................... 163 Lembitu Varblane My Youth in the Turn of History ........................................................ 187 Boris Takk An Islander’s Life Story, Along with Interesting Things that Happened to Him ................................................................................ 209 Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

vi

Contents Part II Trajectories and Meanings: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biographical War Experience

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way: The Opportunities and Choices of Estonian Men during the Political Changes of the 1940s ..................................................... 235 Aigi Rahi-Tamm Boris Raag – Hope of Staying Alive: Survival Strategies of a Soviet Soldier ............................................... 263 Olaf Mertelsmann The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality: Double Mental Standards in Ailo Ehamaa’s Life History .................. 279 Aili Aarelaid-Tart How to Remember? The Social Framework of Reinhold Mirk’s Reminiscences of War ........................................................................ 297 Rutt Hinrikus The Lucky Star and Discernment: The Positioning of the Self and War in the Life Story of Lembitu Varblane ........................................ 317 Tiiu Jaago Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War in a Post-Soviet Life Story ...... 343 Ene Kõresaar When is the War Over? Ylo-Vesse Velvelt’s Life Story and Surviving the ‘Czech Hell’ ................................................................. 365 Tiina Ann Kirss Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels: Stigmatised Family Relations in the Life Story of a Repressed Man ................................. 385 Terje Anepaio Notes on Contributors ........................................................................ 409 Authors Index ...................................................................................... 413 Word Index ......................................................................................... 417

Acknowledgements The existence of this volume is due to the extremely generous contributions of various individuals and institutions. The basis of the idea and concept of the book was a collection of biographical studies entitled She Who Remembers, Survives: Interpreting Estonian Women’s post-Soviet Life Stories (edited by Tiina Kirss, Ene Kõresaar and Marju Lauristin; Tartu UP), which was published in 2004. She Who Remembers combined the memoirs of nine women with academic interpretations of their lifestories by the representatives of various disciplines. At that time, the idea arose of using the intriguing and inspiring atmosphere that accompanied the preparations of that book in order to prepare another study that would deal with the life stories of men. However, several years of involvement in various cooperation projects, seminars and workshops, as well as informative and stimulating discussions passed before the idea germinated and started to take shape. The high degree of consideration and the conflicting attitudes that affect the remembrance of World War II in both the public and academic spheres played major roles in the development of the idea, which subsequently became Soldiers of Memory. In the case of Soldiers of Memory, as well as She Who Remembers, the thread linking the autobiographers and researchers was the Estonian Life Stories Association (established in 1996). The Association has organized numerous public life-writing campaigns, the texts of which form the majority of those published in Soldiers of Memory. Moreover, all the authors in Soldiers of Memory have a degree of involvement in the activities of the Association. Rutt Hinrikus, Chairman of the Association, deserves special thanks for her help in finding the authors of the life stories, as do the autobiographers and their relatives for their trust in allowing their material to be published. Many thanks are due to Aadu Must, Aivar Kriiska and the Institute of History and Archaeology of the University of Tartu, for their friendly helping hands and considerable monetary support during the initial years of this project, which enabled us to computerise, edit and translate the autobiographical texts.The translators took particular care in reflecting as close as possible the autobiographers’ self-perceptions and ways of making sense of the wartime world, which they have so colourfully expressed in their native language. Special thanks go to Kersti Unt and Tiina Ann Kirss for their sensitive contributions in achieving this aim. The principal support for preparing this book for publication came from the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence of Cultural Theory). In the development of the project, grants were made available by the Estonian Science Foundation (Grants No 6687 and 8190) as well as the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (SF0180002s07).

viii

Acknowledgments

My special thanks go to my colleagues and friends Tiiu Jaago, Aigi Rahi-Tamm and Marcus Denton, who have been my principal partners in this complex undertaking. The entire book owes a lot to their inspiring recommendations. I am also grateful for the continuous support of Halliki Harro-Loit in managing this project. The photograph on the cover of this book is remarkable for depicting two men from the same neighbourhood, wearing the uniforms of the opposing sides, getting together after the war. The image conveys a great deal about the contradictions of World War II experiences in Estonia. The photo is from the archive of the Prööm family. I would like to convey my thanks to the family of Valle Prööm (on the right in the photo) for permission to publish the photograph on the cover of this book, and also to Anton Pärn for his valuable help in obtaining the photograph, identifying the two men and explaining their life histories. Ene Kõresaar

Introduction Remembrance Cultures of World War II and the Politics of Recognition in Post-Soviet Estonia: Biographical Perspectives

Ene Kõresaar 1. Introduction World War II is an event the impact of which is characterised by a conflict of collective memory. A special meaning continues to be assigned to World War II in most European countries, in order to define one’s own identity and the consensus of values related thereto. In the actual wave of an ‘upsurge in memory’ (Nora, 2002), universalist, national, ethnic and other group-specific memories are intertwined, which feed the politics of remembrance as one of the increasingly important fields of action. Attitudes toward emotional and actual pasts have far-reaching consequences in the creation of cultural and social affiliations and influence political positions and outlooks (Welzer, Lenz, 2007, 7). At the beginning of this millennium, the Baltic countries, including Estonia, have come to symbolize this conflict of memories related to World War II – be it historical disputes with Russia (Onken, 2007) or the ‘battle of monuments’ (Tamm, Petersoo, 2008; Brüggemann, Kasekamp, 2008; Brüggemann, Kasekamp, 2009; Smith, 2008; Lehti, Jutila, Jokisipilä, 2008). Especially in the case of the latter, World War II is seen as a source of exclusion and a mechanism of divisiveness in both the bilateral and ethnic sense (Lehti, Jutila, Jokisipilä, 2008, 394–397).1 Although just as the war is a characteristic part of the contemporary collective memory, it also forms a reference point for individual identities. This study focuses on this aspect of the war. Highlighting, fixing, continuing, as well as changing the methods for ‘reading’ the past, take place on the one hand at the institutional level of collective and cultural memory, and on the other hand, by means of communicative practices at the everyday level (Welzer, Lenz, 2007, 8; Ashplant, Dawson, Roper, 2004a).2 This book is juxtaposed between them with the task of analysing the experiences and remembrances of World War II from an autobiographical viewpoint. The focus is on the experiences of soldiers and the narratives of veterans. The eight autobiographical narrations and eight essays in this book explore the way, in which World War II and its aftermath is remembered in Estonia after 1989. It is definitely not the task of this book to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of war remembrance in Estonia. This task would exceed the

2

Introduction

scope of one book, especially considering the recent flood of studies and writings dealing with the memory of World War II. Instead, this book tries to provide a glimpse into one aspect of this broad topic – the war and the experiences influenced by it from the biographical viewpoints of the former Estonian soldiers who fought in the opposing armed forces on the Eastern Front. Through this prism and approach, we have tried to provide a view into the complexity of commemorating World War II at the end of the 20th century and in the initial decades of the 21st century. This book is multilayered in many ways: First, the war experience has been disseminated from various points of view. Both the participants in the events of World War II, through their autobiographical texts, and the researchers who have analysed the texts have been given the floor. The structure of the book is based on the principle of the separation of voices, which means that the voice of the witness to the event is heard independently, not solely through the authoritative interpretation of the researcher.3 Secondly, the selection of the biographical texts is based on the multifaceted nature of the military trajectories of Estonian men, while keeping in mind that the stories should also represent the central themes of war remembrance in post-Soviet Estonia. When possible, the war narratives are presented in the context of individuals’ full life stories, thus indicating their importance in the narrators’ lives as compared to their earlier and later periods of life. The narrators have made an effort to explain their choices, goals and actions as well as the ideological beliefs, morals and motives that guided them. Thereby, thirdly, the selected stories also provide a composite image of the textual scope available for recounting war experiences. The published and analysed stories represent various, parallel and competing methods of remembering the war, as well as cultural schemes and political ambitions that are based on the multifaceted war memory history of Estonia. Fourthly, every story in this book also constitutes a separate case study. Each autobiography is accompanied by an interpretation by a researcher. The interpretations are based on the researchers’ specialised background and research tradition, and focus on opportunities for constructing narrative themes of the war experiences, the scope for talking about the war or the choices and opportunities of individuals in the war. In this way, the book adopts a critical approach towards the presented witness accounts and analyses them from the aspects of both Estonian military and cultural history as well as of post-Soviet remembrance culture and politics.4

Ene Kõresaar

3

2. ‘With Estonia in Our Hearts’: Life Stories and the Struggle for Recognition The world wars of the 20th century were fought by nation states. A national military venture requires internal stability and solidarity, which the authorities endeavour to achieve and preserve with the help of legislation and propaganda. When peace arrives, one of two things happens, either the idea of national commitment subsequently becomes increasingly coherent or, if the war was not successful, a need develops for the national identity to be rethought. Popular opinion holds that World War II ended for Estonia on 20 August 1991, after independence was declared.5 This period – the end of the 1980s and especially the 1990s – was a time for national redefinition and historical searching in Estonia, which was ‘pregnant with the reminiscing, collecting and revising of historical memory’ (Hinrikus, 2003, 178). The context of the historical and memory debates at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s is characterised by the motto ‘crisis of truth’ – when help was sought from the witnesses to history (Skultans, 1998, 50–51). This was a complex process related to the dialogue and dialectics between the development of grassroots remembrance and new public-official interpretation schemes. In this national discourse at the end of the 1980s, this process was denoted by the popular phrase ‘to give the people back their history’ (Laar, 1988). In popular rhetoric this was combined with ‘giving life histories back to the people’ which was accompanied by a discernible increase in the importance and credibility of memories and life stories for the public. In this process, people turned to their memories and historical traditions, and to their life and family stories as memory reservoirs (Gross, 2002, 347, 349–351). Memories were seen as the ‘real’ story of a people that was surviving and enduring. The individual was treated as a part of the ‘national body’; the call to ‘give Estonians back their history’ also meant the Estonian-centred reinterpretation of history – in order to highlight a collective experience related to what had happened in the past. During the renovation and reconstruction of history that took place at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s (Niedermüller, 1997), the method of collecting historical tradition through public appeals reached remarkable dimensions.6 A particularly Estonian feature in this post-socialist process for the construction of a ‘new history’ was the highlevel of activity demonstrated by the Estonian-speaking population in writing their own life stories and sending them to various institutions in response to public appeals, while at the same time, the oral history method predominated in other post-socialist countries.7 The considerable success of the public appeal method in Estonia is related to similar traditions (or

4

Introduction

similar methods that presume personal activeness, usually traced back to Jakob Hurt’s appeal to record memories in 18888) as well as the national importance assigned to the institutions behind these appeals. The authors of the autobiographical memoirs published in the first part of this book were also motivated to share their experiences by appeals disseminated in the public media, and sent their stories to the Estonian Life Stories Association in response to thematic life writing campaigns.9 Writing one’s life story was a step related to the politics of recognition; while each individual conducted this political aspect independently, based on their own motives, they were also unavoidably influenced by wider social trends, as were the initiators of the life writing campaigns and the life story researchers (Jaago, Kõresaar, Rahi-Tamm, 2006). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, people wrote themselves into Estonian history and Estonian history was in turn detached from Soviet history. Toward the end of the 1990s and at the turn of the millenium, people were already reacting to new taboos and stereotypes produced by post-Soviet discourses (Kõresaar, 2003). The new millennium has added new developments to the remembrance landscape of World War II, to which life story narrators react and with which they negotiate. Of the biographical narratives published in this book, seven were written in response to the four appeals made by the Estonian Life Stories Association and the Estonian Cultural History Archives in 1989–2005.10 The first appeal to write life stories and send them to the Estonian Literary Museum was announced in late summer 1989 by the Estonian Cultural History Archives under the title ‘Do You Remember Your Life Story? The Life Histories of Estonia’. The appeal briefly explained the concept of life stories, and stressed the historical mission of collecting life stories and the value of every person’s life experience. The appeal was sent to the Estonianlanguage and larger Russian-language newspapers and was repeated during subsequent years, including among the Estonian émigré community. At the end of the following year, a few hundred biographical narratives had been received by the archives, which had been written in response to the specific appeal or even earlier. They included Heinrich Uustalu’s story, which he had already started writing during Christmas in 1988. Uustalu’s memoirs were addressed to his family; it is his way of asking for forgiveness and explaining the choices he made. By writing, he sought recognition and a pardon for the decisions he made during the maelstrom of the war and occupations. As Terje Anepaio points out in her analysis, Uustalu’s life story is noteworthy in a way which stands out in its audacity in categorizing the problematic political, social and private aspects of his own and his family’s life.

Ene Kõresaar

5

In 1996, the Estonian Life Stories Association, which was founded in the same year, announced a life writing campaign entitled ‘My Destiny and the Destiny of Those Close to Me in the Labyrinths of History’. The appeal focused on people’s home and family spheres and the changes that forced their way into these spheres during the ‘critical times’ of the 20th century. The title of the appeal included symbolic references to how history and the role of the individual therein were interpreted in Estonian society at that time. As some researchers of Estonian life stories have pointed out (see Huima, 2002; Kirss, 2004b), the concept of ‘destiny’ is related to the interpretation of an individual’s agency in history; it refers to the fact that one is influenced by external forces and is thereby directly connected to the historical perception and experiences of a small nation. However, in the context of the 1990s, the phrase ‘labyrinths of history’ (qualified in the appeal as ‘the war, overthrow of government, deportations and other violence’) focused on events preceding and following World War II. In response to this appeal, Reinhold Mirk, Boris Takk and Ylo-Vesse Velvelt sent their life stories to the Association. Boris Takk had already recorded his life story three years earlier, motivated by the death of his mother and his thoughts of the temporal nature of human life. He also assumes the roles of a witness to history and of a spokesperson for his generation, who are writing a collective story, similar to many Estonian men who had to live through this. As Ene Kõresaar states in the analysis of Takk’s story, this includes a discourse, that developed and became fixed during the 1990s, of the impossible conditions of the Soviet occupation – an argument that already exists in the Uustalu story. Takk’s story also includes the basic repertoire of the nation-centred narrative of World War II, which focuses on the choices of Estonian men between two ‘saviours’ – Communist Russia and National Socialist Germany. Ylo-Vesse Velvelt also used the opportunity to write down his story for the general public; his war story centres on his service in the auxiliary services of the German Air Force and his experiences in the event known as the ‘Czech Hell’ in the Estonians’ memories of World War II. As Tiina Kirss states in her analysis, a separate memory cohort has developed from the memories of this systematic, revenge-based violence in North Czechoslovakia after 8 May 1945, which the Czech partisans meted out to all men in German uniforms, regardless of their background or reasons for being in the war. Tiina Kirss shows that Velvelt’s narration of his escape from the ‘Czech Hell’ reproduces among other things one of the oldest soldier stories in cultural history – the story of male bonding, to which both individual heroism and miraculous escape are subordinated. Stories of suffering were at the centre of the early post-Soviet discourse on World War II. In the context of examining Estonian life

6

Introduction

stories, Tiina Kirss has emphasised the heightened symbolic capital and political meaning of the deportations to Siberia in the public discourse at the beginning of the 1990s (Kirss, 2004a, 14). In the 1990s, a tendency appeared in remembrance and its reception to blend various repression experiences together into one narrative of suffering. At first, it was the readers that perceived different repression experiences in this way, and thereafter, the same response was evoked from the memoir writers (Hinrikus, 2004, 63; Kõresaar, 2004). Therefore it is not surprising that in answer to the appeal, Reinhold Mirk, a veteran of the Red Army’s Estonian Corps, first sent memories of his own extremely difficult life in the labour battalion, since little has been written about the life and conditions of [its] members, and only thereafter writes about his life as a soldier in the Great Patriotic War. Indeed, at the beginning of the 1990s, the mass deaths of Estonians in the labour battalions in the Soviet rear in 1941– 194211 were one of those Soviet-era historical gaps that needed to be unravelled and discussed. This was started by talking about and publishing memories (Usai, 1993a; 1993b) and using other means of expression (Kõresaar, 2007, 94–95). Mirk has decided to write about his memories of his labour battalion period separately from the rest of his life story, in which he recalls his war experiences according to the Soviet-era narrative, the ‘struggle of the Estonian Corps in the Great Patriotic War’.12 Mirk’s decision to write two stories, by using his war experiences to transmit two separate themes, expressively indicates the status of his labour battalion experience and the dislocation in the Soviet image of history. On the other hand, Reinhold Mirk also writes against the new post-Soviet exclusions in understanding the meaning of World War II, by indicating the swing in the scale of historical assessments between the two extremes – the Soviet and post-Soviet assessments. He does not directly oppose the developing image of history, but takes the trouble to find his place – and dignity – within it. The result of the new defensive nationalist discourse on World War II in post-Soviet Estonia was an ethnocentric narrative that ‘revolved around issues such as military strategy, expressions of patriotism and national destiny, leaving little room for more complicated things such as liability, option of choice, causality, treatment of minorities and so on. The former leaders [were] seen as national heroes and/or martyrs and the collaboration with National Socialist Germany as a mere instrument for safeguarding the national interest.’ (Lehti, Jutila, Jokisipilä, 2008, 397.)

In the second half of the 1990s, this became the dominant interpretation on the remembrance landscape of World War II in post-Soviet Estonia. Subsequent acts of memory politics added nuances to this landscape and

Ene Kõresaar

7

strengthened certain tendencies, but did not fundamentally change the order of things. Attempts, including issuing appeals for life writing, to reverse the trend of remembrances becoming rigid and to pluralise them were done elsewhere, primarily in the recollections of the Soviet period (Kõresaar, 2003). The last large-scale life writing campaign of the 1990s, entitled ‘A Hundred Life Stories of the Century’ (1998–1999) was based at first glance on the neutral idea of the end of the century, and in order to compile an imposing biographical anthology (see Hinrikus, 2000a; 2000b). The announcements for the campaign again focused on the right of the Estonians to their life histories and the coherence of life histories and history in the context of the 20th century. However, unlike the previous two appeals, possible conflicts between the public and private interpretations of the past were emphasised, not only during the Soviet occupation, but also during the period of independence: ‘There were probably forbidden life stories even before 1939: for instance, connections to the League of the Independence War Veterans13 or a communist mentality. Today, the parliament is also filled with forbidden life stories: no one assumes that one should mention that he or she once belonged to the Communist Party. This is kept secret like one’s bank balance.’ (Merle Karusoo cited in Hinrikus, 2000c, 7–8.)

Motivated by this appeal, Aleksander Loog and Lembitu Varblane sent their life stories to the Estonian Life Stories Association. Contrary to what might be expected on the basis of this appeal, neither of these are ‘protest stories’ that question the established historical interpretations.14 Aleksander Loog’s autobiographical narrative is, paradoxically, an example of how durable ‘forbidden episodes’ can be in people’s life stories. Loog does not describe, or even mention, his short service with the German occupation-era political police – a fact that Aigi Rahi-Tamm reconstructs from archival sources.15 At the end of the 1990s, a tendency clearly appears that is pointed out by Tiiu Jaago in her analysis of Lembitu Varblane’s treatment of his life and the war. By this time, the remembrance landscape had noticeably diversified in the form of various forums and group-specific auditoriums and people were sharing their memories and their views of the past between them. Lembitu Varblane has previously published episodes from his war experiences in a collection of memories by the ‘Finnish Boys’, i.e. Estonian men who fought in World War II against the Soviet Union in the Finnish Army. Now, writing his life story for the Estonian Life Stories Association, he uses fragments from the previous text, in turn being in

8

Introduction

dialogue with this text and his own earlier experiences with writing and publishing. A reference to the close connection to the textual community and the practice of pouring his war experiences into a certain entertaining form (cf. Köstlin, 1989) is also evident in Boris Raag’s memoirs, which Olaf Mertelsmann interprets as being narrated as a parody of his Soviet experiences. Boris Raag sent his life story, of which one chapter is published in this book, in response to the Estonian Life Stories Association life writing campaign entitled ‘The Impact of War in the Life of Me and Those Close to Me’ in 2005. The announcement for this campaign at the end of 2004 was dedicated to the upcoming 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and focused on remembrance of the war years and the after effects of the war.16 By the time the campaign was announced, significant shifts had taken place in the Estonian memory landscape of World War II. Supported by the tradition of restitutive commemoration that had started more than fifteen years ago, and with the support of the younger generation, the men who fought on the German side during the war were more actively seeking official confirmation that they had fought for Estonian independence in 1944. Striving for public recognition of their place in the national history, the Federation of Estonian Freedom Fighters that united the veterans who had fought against the Red Army collected donations to erect a monument. In 2002, an attempt was made to inaugurate a monument depicting an Estonian soldier equipped with an automatic rifle and wearing a German uniform in Pärnu, which was removed by the city authorities before it was inaugurated. Later, a less controversial plaque was installed in its place nearby. However, a new location was found for the original monument in Lihula where it was opened with a slightly modified text in August 2004. However, the desired official recognition did not arrive and less than two weeks later, the government had the monument removed under the cover of darkness. As a direct reaction, many Red Army monuments throughout Estonia, including the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn, were defiled (Brüggemann, Kasekamp, 2008, 425).17 By 2005, the fate of the Lihula monument was still unclear (it was returned to the owner and erected in dedication to freedom fighting in a private museum in the autumn of 2005). The associations of the veterans who had fought against the Red Army had achieved an output in the public written word (the nationalist-minded magazin Kultuur ja Elu had rallied behind them), and the upcoming international events commemorating the end of the war promised to produce new conflicts (see Onken, 2007). However, there is no hint of these tensions in the life stories sent in response to the appeal dedicated to war experiences. There are no signs that the Lihula conflict had any impact on the war stories. In the public space, e.g. on the pages of Kultuur ja Elu or

Ene Kõresaar

9

the homepages of the associations,18 the veterans who fought in German uniforms dedicate their time and energy to justifying their choices and ideologies at the time. They are also seeking to create a recognised space in the remembrance landscape of World War II, but most of this argumentation does not reach the life stories. In the life stories, the individuals are confronting their own pasts,19 where a role is played by deeper currents than actualisation at the media or organization level. If individual references to the topical discussions of their status and activities in the war, which was taking place at the time, can be found in the stories of those who fought in German uniforms,20 then signs of a struggle for recognition are totally missing from the life stories of the Finnish Boys. This is to be expected since they were given high-level recognition quite early on. The participation of the Estonians in the war between Finland and the Soviet Union was recognised by Finland in 1991, and Finland presented, in 1992, commemorative medals to the Finnish Boys who fought in the Continuation War. Several monuments have been erected to them in both Estonia and Finland; in 1994 and 2004, both Estonia and Finland commemorated the anniversary of their return to Estonia with the participation of senior level government representatives, (see more at URL: http://www.hot.ee/soomepoisid/ajalugu.htm.) The influential ‘third way’ concept in Estonia’s history politics (which would have precluded cooperation with German or Soviet authorities) is associated with diplomatic activities, as well as the search for direct support for Estonia in the armed struggle of the Finnish Boys against the Red Army. Those who served in the German armed forces have also been assigned the status of resistance and freedom fighters, primarily in connection with the battles during the German retreat in the autumn of 1944, when the Estonians fought against the Red Army in their own country (See Laar, Vahtre, Valk, 1989; Pajur, Tannberg, Vahtre, 2005; Laar, 2005a; Laar, 2005b; Laar, 2007). The publications of those who remember and the widespread reporting on them in the media have played just as important a role in the development of this national resistance image. In 2005, the Federation of Estonian Freedom Fighters and the Finnish Boys’ associations combined their voices in an effort to have the men who fought against Communism in World War II equated with the heroes of the War of Independence (1918–1920). Their activities, it was argued, should be recognised as a battle for Estonia’s national independence.21 In 2006 they protested against the ‘Tallinn Liberator’ statue in Tallinn on Tõnismägi Hill – which became known as the Bronze Soldier as a result of subsequent events – and demanded its removal.22 A year later when, accompanied by unrest, the monument was removed and society was

10

Introduction

discussing the nature of the ‘April Crisis’,23 Ailo Ehamaa, a war invalid and veteran of the Great Patriotic War, started to record his memories at the behest of his descendants. Based on these, and a life history interview subsequently conducted with Ehamaa, Aili Aarelaid-Tart has compiled his life story for this book.24 Like Reinhold Mirk, Ailo Ehamaa feels himself in opposition to different war experiences and dragged into a battle for recognition that is dominated by those who fought in German uniforms. Remembrance politics consist of the negotiational tensions between various levels – global, bilateral, domestic policy, group-specific, etc. (Ashplant, Dawson, Roper, 2004b; Onken, 2007). The autobiographical memory work of those who fought in World War II also takes place on this field of tensions. Twenty years separate the memory texts in this book, but the conflicts, hurts and reconciliations in them persist. 3. ‘Between Bad and Worse’: Trajectories, Opportunities and Decisions in World War II The biographies of the men who narrate their life stories in this book form intersecting trajectories. It is complicated to define them exactly at the levels of both masses and individuals.25 The men moved from one unit to another and there were also those who served in the pre-war Estonian Army, the Red Army and the German armed forces. Historians have estimated that a total of about 100,000 men served in the Soviet and German armed forces during World War II – about a third of them in the Red Army and two thirds in German uniforms.26 Aleksander Loog (born in 1914), a professional officer, was one of those men who were incorporated into the 22nd Estonian Territorial Rifle Corps of the Red Army, which was created from the Estonian armed forces after the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union in 1940. At the beginning of the war in the summer of 1941, the Corps was sent to the front in the Porkhov, Dno, and Staraya Russa area. Even before they arrived at the front, about a thousand men were left behind or deserted (some of the soldiers were arrested during the June Deportations, cf. Aigi Rahi-Tamm in this book), and a large number of the Estonians subsequently surrendered or were taken prisoner. Hoping to get back to Estonia, Loog also made the decision to go over to the German side.27 After imprisonment in the Stablack POW camp in East Prussia, he was sent back to Estonia in the spring of 1942 with two other officers. There he was obligated to join the German armed forces. In addition to mobilisation into the NKVD Destruction Battalions, forced conscription into the Red Army was started in July 1941. Ailo

Ene Kõresaar

11

Ehamaa (born in 1922) ended up in the Red Army as a result of the conscription of those born in 1919–1922, and somewhat later, so did Boris Raag (born in 1918) and Reinhold Mirk (born in 1918), when reservists and railway workers were mobilised. Historian Tiit Noormets estimates that about 45,000 men were mobilised into the Red Army, of these approximately 10,000 escaped to Estonia, 3,000 men perished on the way to Russia and 32,000 were actually brought to Russia (Noormets, 2006, 442). After three months of battles and numerous defeats, the men who had been mobilised into the Red Army were sent to labour units in the rear (as a contingent that did not ‘deserve to be trusted’ for political, national or other reasons), and these camps were transferred to the Gulag system in September 1941 (Kaasik, 2006a, 788). The men who had been conscripted into the Red Army from Estonia were sent mainly to the labour battalions in the Archangelsk and Urals Military Districts, where they were divided up into construction battalions and work columns. On September 1941 all construction battalions were made self-sufficient to remove them from the supply norms of the Red Army. The men started to die en masse. It is estimated that during the autumn and winter of 1941–1942 up to one third (over 12,000) of the Estonians had died who had been sent to the labour battalions (Kaasik, 2006b, 886–887). They included men who were accused of anti-Soviet activities and who were caught trying to escape. Boris Raag and three companions were able to avoid the tribulations of the labour battalions by escaping from Krasnouralsk, with the ambitious goal of reaching Afghanistan. Reinhold Mirk survived a hard winter and severe living conditions in a labour camp near Irbit. Ailo Ehamaa was transferred from a training camp to a labour camp in Southern Kazakhstan. At the end of 1941, the formation of an Estonian military unit was initiated in the Ural military district, and in his life story, Reinhold Mirk vividly describes the hopes related thereto. He also describes the ideological selection carried out among the men being recruited (see Kaasik, 2006b, 890; 898–899). The 8th Estonian Rifle Corps was formed in the summer of 1942 based on Estonian units; of the 26,000 men in the unit almost 18,000 were Estonians (Kaasik, 2006b, 907). The trial by fire of the Velikiye Luki battles in the winter of 1942/43 have been vividly embedded in the war memories of the Corpsmen (and the cultural memory of Soviet Estonia). Units of the Estonian Rifle Corps were next sent to the front in September 1944, when the Soviet offensive on South-Estonia began. Mirk and Ehamaa arrived back home in the ranks of the Corps, as did Raag, who had rejoined the Corps with his companions for just this reason.

12

Introduction

Heinrich Uustalu, who was born in 1915 and had hid out to avoid conscription into the Red Army, ended up between the two firing lines in 1941. In his life story he describes the war brutalities on both sides during the summer of 1941, which preceded the German occupation. In total, about 12,000 Forest Brothers28 and over 33,000 members of the Home Guard participated in battles against Soviet armed forces, in addition to more than 2,200 men in Estonian volunteer units and about 2,000 in units directly subordinated to the Wehrmacht Divisions (Kaasik, Raudvassar, 2006, 502). Initially, these men were motivated to volunteer for the German army by various circumstances. In his copious life story, Boris Takk refers to the desire to fight against the hated Communists and to pay them back for the families that were lost as the result of Soviet terror (see Ene Kõresaar in this book). However, there were also more prosaic reasons, such as the chance of a proper salary in wartime, the possibility of service for regular soldiers, and the opportunity to obtain a higher education (this opportunity was later used by Aleksander Loog, who went from a military base to study at the University of Tartu).29 Estonian units were mostly formed on a voluntary basis until 1943, although this principle was not always adhered to (Hiio, 2006, 818–819); the types of battalions to be formed (cf. Hiio, 2006; Niglas, Hiio, 2006; Hiio, Kaasik, 2006) depended on the speed that the front was progressing. In August 1942, the German occupation authorities declared voluntary recruitment into the Estonian SS Legion,30 although for various reasons the number of civilians that volunteered was small. Therefore, men were recruited into the Legion from Estonian security groups, defence battalions and eastern battalions (Hiio, Kaasik, 2006, 932–935). Since volunteers no longer sufficed, an obligation for compulsory service was established for those born between 1919 and 1924, and the men were given the following choices: volunteering for the Estonian Legion, working in the German war industry or service in the auxiliary services of the German army (Hiio, Kaasik, 2006, 936–938). In the spring of 1943, Lembitu Varblane also received his mobilisation order; initially he chose the Estonian Legion, but then got an extension to complete his schooling. He later hid from German mobilisation and searched for an opportunity to go to Finland. Thereafter, when direct conscription was instituted in the fall of 1943, a massive flight to Finland began. Approximately 3,000 Estonians served in the 20th Estonian Infantry Regiment and other Finnish Army units. Lembitu Varblane served in the Navy, and was the only Estonian in his crew. In October, the German occupation authorities established a military service obligation for boys born in 1925, and in November, a mobilisation order was also sent to Boris Takk, whose path led him with others to the Estonian Legion (at that time the Estonian SS-Volunteer Brigade31)

Ene Kõresaar

13

training camp and later to service in Estonia. In January 1944 those born in 1904–1923 were called up, as were reservists, doctors, etc. A mobilisation order was also received by Heinrich Uustalu, who was doing communications work and who ended up serving in the Frontier Guard Regiments. A few months later, Aleksander Loog was called up to serve in the 3rd Frontier Guard Regiment, which for him was a welcome alternative to being sent to serve in Germany. In the summer of 1944, those mobilised included boys who were born in 1927 including Ylo-Vesse Velvelt (born 1926), who was sent to serve in the auxiliary services of the Air Force. When hostilities again arrived in Estonia in the summer-autumn of 1944, the life trajectories of the men met. Their trajectories did not actually intersect: Heinrich Uustalu, Aleksander Loog and Boris Takk participated in battles on the Narva front in German uniforms, while Reinhold Mirk and Ailo Ehamaa were invading South-Estonia in the ranks of the Red Army’s Estonian Rifle Corps. When the German army started to retreat, Uustalu, Loog and Takk searched for opportunities to remain at home on their own. Their stories include plentiful descriptions of strategies for hiding and moving on Estonia’s roads and in its forests, of being caught and wriggling free. At the end of the summer, Lembitu Varblane along with two other Finnish Boys decided to come back to Estonia and join the resistance to the Red Army organised by Rear Admiral Johan Pitka.32 Ylo-Vesse Velvelt decided to retreat with his unit to Germany, where he was sent for retraining to Denmark. In the life trajectories of these men, the end of the war and its followup are just as diverse as the war itself. Conscription into the Red Army was announced in the autumn of 1944, which affected Boris Takk, Heinrich Uustalu as well as Lembitu Varblane. While Takk decided to hide from the mobilisation (and according to him, this short period of being in the forest is disclosed for the first time while writing this life story) the other two answer conscription summons. Lembitu Varblane got an extension, since he was offered a job – as a teacher – that was strategically important in the post-war society. However, Heinrich Uustalu was arrested for his service in the German army when he appeared before the mobilisation committee and sentenced to fifteen years in a Gulag forced labour camp at the end of 1945. The same fate struck Aleksander Loog a few years later: in 1944 he succeeded in returning to study at the University of Tartu and as student was exempt from the mobilisation obligation. He ended up in the Soviet security forces’ sphere of interest as the result of his work responsibilities after graduating from university. He was arrested, and at the beginning of 1949 his trip to Siberia began. In March 1949, a deportation operation called ‘Priboi’ was simultaneously carried in the three Baltic countries, in the course of which about 95,000 people were

14

Introduction

sent to Siberia. Lembitu Varblane eluded deportation because he was not home at the time, although he was due to be deported because his father had been declared an ‘anti-Soviet element’. The soldiers of the Estonian Rifle Corps were demobilised in 1946; Ailo Ehamaa entered civilian life as a war invalid, and Boris Raag had also been wounded. Ylo-Vesse Velvelt arrived back in Estonia in September 1945 via the ‘Czeck Hell’, Loog returned from the mines of the Gulag after the amnesty of 1956, and Uustalu who followed his deported family to Siberia in 1949, returned later with his wife and children. Finnish Boy Valle Prööm and non-commissioned officer Karl Joost, of the Estonian Rifle Corps, who are posing on the cover of this book, probably met immediately after the end of hostilities33 at Prööm’s parents’ home in North-Estonia. One can speculate that, unlike the different war trajectories described above, the paths of these men might have crossed in battle – farm boy Valle Prööm, who following the example of his brother escaped to Finland in 1943 as a 16-year-old, served as a volunteer with the 200th Infantry Regiment of the Finnish Army, and also fought against the Red Army offensive near Tartu in South Estonia. The abundance of decorations on the chest of neighbour Karl Joost, a Communist Youth who was a worker before the war, seems to indicate extensive battle experience. It has not been possible to discover any more details about his subsequent life course, but after being demobilised he is rumoured to have managed a kolkhoz in North Estonia. Valle Prööm was arrested for helping a former comrade-in-arms after 1949 and he was freed from the Karaganda prison camp in Kazakhstan in 1956. He died fifteen years later. Rutt Hinrikus states that, starting with the Khrushchev Thaw, the leeway in which Estonians had to make choices and decisions in World War II was a topic in the fiction that sometimes replaced historical writing in Soviet times. In the post-Soviet period, the choices, opportunities, and decisions based on various war trajectories have been examined and evaluated primarily at the collective level and from the standpoint of statehood. Historian Jaak Valge (2007) has made a retrospective evaluation of the options at the time by analysing the choices for Estonian men on the pages of the press in 1941–1944 (i.e. armed partisan struggle against the NKVD Destruction Battalions in 1941, fighting in the Red Army in 1941– 1944, in the German armed forces in 1941–1944 and in the Finnish Army in 1940–1944) based on the yardstick of Estonian national independence.34 He assesses the choices of the men that fought on the various sides according to what ‘contribution these groups made to the battle for the Estonian nation and people in World War II’, by defining the battle for statehood as the battle against the Soviet occupation. Proceeding from the veterans’ self-perceptions as collective agents, their relationships with

Ene Kõresaar

15

nationalism and Estonian national independence are central to the their argumentation, irrespective of whether we are dealing with a discourse on the ‘third way’ (Finnish Boys), ‘the choice between two evils’ (German war veterans) or the ‘equal victim’ discourse (Red Army veterans). The collective cause theme is an integral part of the pre-war and post-reindependence political and remembrance culture, as well as an important explanatory factor in military history. Of course, making judgments about collective choices and decisions and the mentality behind them is a questionable undertaking in many senses (see Jureit, 2005, 165–166). Above all in the context of this book, the undertaking ignores the biographic dimensions of these decisions. Making decisions and choices is always related to the need to act that develops when a problem must be solved (Burkart, 1995, 72). The need to act and one’s motives are very personal; other people may have similar motives, but in each case, the weight of the motive differs for every decision-maker. Various factors play a role here, such as personality structure, the experience horizon, creativity, decision competence, the pressure of the actual problem in the specific biographical context, etc. (Burkart, 1995, 72; Jureit, 2005, 166). Agent-centred question placement in regard to the decisions, motives and choices related to war require interdisciplinary concepts and methods (Jureit, 2005, 164–165). In this book, this course has been followed by allowing room for viewpoints and problem setting of various disciplines, which in turn open up the worlds and decision-making logics of the specific agents. Tiiu Jaago focuses on the role of ‘ordinary cognition’ in the choice-making process, which is expressed in the interplay of the biographical (identity) and the social (socio-cultural expectations); Aili Aarelaid-Tart analyses the same interplay from the generational aspect and Ene Kõresaar bases her analysis on the syncretic nature of ‘ideologies of life’. On the other hand, Aigi RahiTamm takes a look at the situative logic of choice and demonstrates the alternatives in war situations based on parallel life courses. Among other things, Tiina Kirss points out the importance of human contacts and the ability to filter information in the decision-making process – a process the quality of which is only determined in retrospect. Not every life story narration provides the opportunity to examine choices and motives, because it does not reveal the background or actually make an issue of this aspect. The latter is not based on the fact that the narrator has never felt himself at a ‘crossroads in life’, but rather how he perceives the decisions. As Tiiu Jaago argues in her analysis of Lembitu Varblane’s story, decisions are often intuitive; they need not be perceived as individual circumstances and when making decisions one does not compile a ranking of reasons, as might be done in retrospect. Even more,

16

Introduction

in retrospect, the time that the decision was made may not even be recalled as a separate event. Decisions can be perceived as motion: I have acted – I have decided. In this case, the life story conveys a trajectory of forward motion, not a discussion of the decisions and motives behind them. From Tiiu Jaago’s analysis, it appears that a written life story may not reflect the decision-making process, while this may be revealed in an interview situation. Olaf Mertelsmann’s analysis shows how the entire description of a life period can be reduced to a ‘simple’ survival motive, while Terje Anepaio brings forth the aspect of retrospective remorse in life stories, which is not focused on the decisions that were made, but on the dissection of the consequences. 4. The Symbolic Universes of War: Making Sense of the Experience In addition to explaining wartime choices and decisions, this book searches for answers related to the nature of war memory in the Estonian space through life stories and their analysis, i.e. what forms the symbolic universe of war and how this reveals itself in autobiographical remembrance. ‘The symbolic universe is conceived of as the matrix of all socially objectivated and subjectively real meanings; the entire historic society and the entire biography of the individual is seen as events taking place within this universe’ (Berger, Luckmann, [1966] 1991, 114).

Being the social product of one’s own life story, allows a symbolic ‘universe’ to create order in biographical experiences by incorporating the experiences from various times, spheres of reality and life phases in the same universe of meaning. This kind of symbolisation in turn contributes to a sense of security and belonging, while also having a legitimising function for the individual subjective identity. In addition – and this is particularly important from the viewpoint of war experiences – symbolic universes have a strategic legitimisation function related to individual biographies through the ‘location of death’ (Berger, Luckmann, [1966] 1991, 115–119). Fritz Schütze, a researcher of soldier biographies, has stressed that ‘symbolic universes are not simply available like ready-made collective systems of knowledge. Instead, they have to be permanently produced within all-embracing contexts of communicative discourse. [---] Naturally, any single member of a we-collectivity incorporates the pertinent symbolic

Ene Kõresaar

17

universe through the medium of an individual biographical version. However, one cannot accomplish such incorporation without some collective model for incorporating the socially shared symbolic universe. Every personal version of incorporation has to be ratified by significant others.’ (Schütze, 1992a, 197.)

The interpretation of one’s experiences in the symbolic universe of war is a problem for the authors of the analyses published in this book; each of them resolves this according to the collection of methodological keys and conceptual framework of her or his field of activity. If we try to summarise them, the common question is how the memory of experience that is expressed in the form of autobiographical narratives (Erfahrungsgedächtnis, Assmann, 2006, 205) is related to what Maurice Halbwachs ([1925] 1985) called the social framework of remembrance. Although Halbwachs has been much criticised recently for his vague and unfinished theorising (for a summary, see Misztal, 2003, 54–55), this aspect of his approach regards the reliance of autobiographical remembrance on the conceptual structures defined by communities, seems to be a productive point of departure. The common conceptual structures, which are necessary for individual remembrance, begin, for example, from certain shared information or concepts, understandings of what happened and how. The war stories in the first part of the book are placed within the bigger picture of various intersecting social and cultural contexts – be it war and the legitimising narratives of its outcome at various times, national and community-specific notions of the collective war trajectories of specific groups, or a more general knowledge that recreates social structures. The war experiences of the men who are narrating their memories in this book and their texts, originate from different times, and the intervening period includes a somewhat complicated dynamic of social contexts and their reciprocal relations. By placing the autobiographical memoirs in the dynamics of the social contexts of war remembrance, an answer is sought in the second half of the book to the question of how subjectivity is constituted through the narratives and practices of war remembrance,35 or more generally, through the technologies of comprehending social reality in the context of war memory. As Ashplant, Dawson and Roper (2004b, 16–32) suggest, the meaningmaking of war is formed in relation both to personal experience and to pre-existing narratives. The latter may relate to personal or family history or they may circulate within the wider arena of the nation. In the context of comprehending social reality, we can place the roots of the symbolic universe of war in Estonia in the pre-war period, or even earlier. Tiiu Jaago demonstrates that in conflict situations, the necessary continuity in a life story is created with the help of everyday observations at a prosaic

18

Introduction

level, i.e. ‘peasant wisdom’, which in turn are based on the social order of religious and everyday concepts. At the same time, support for decisionmaking in crisis situations and the subsequent justification of these decisions is provided by existing war experiences in the family, e.g. the participation of the previous generation in World War I, and the stories about this experience shared within the family. In a more political context, in the pre-war society, the legitimisation of the role of conscription and military training throughout the inter-war period increased, as material conditions in the army improved. The ideal citizenship that dominated in the public sphere was politically biased, privileging bourgeois notions of nation and manliness influenced by Christian and conservative moral values. This heritage was especially visible in voluntary defence organisations which were both symbols for the social order and its physical guarantor. Together with their youth organisations for boys and girls they constituted ‘a national defence family’ (Seija-Leena Nevala Nurmi cited in Ahlbäck, Kivimäki, 2008, 117) where every member contributed towards securing the continuation of the nation (Kõresaar, 2005b, 58–62). The idea of manliness that was at the centre of ‘national upbringing’ was a conceptual part of the training of boys and moulding of soldiers, which emerges vividly from the life stories in the form of recollections of participation in sports and military training. Tiina Kirss demonstrates that male bonding is a narrative line of recollection that becomes a key to the interpretation of the survival stories of ‘ordinary soldiers’. Ene Kõresaar indicates – although indirectly – that the idea of manliness in soldiers’ experiences forms another line of continuity, on which one can base one’s self-determination in an uncertain and insecure situation. However, Terje Anepaio refers to conflicts that may develop in the traditional concept of manliness, if the life courses of intimates depart from the frame of habitual social biographies – as mostly happened under the conditions of the post-war ‘negative peace’ (Karonen, Tarjamo, 2006, 405). The inclusion of the pre-war political culture in wartime and post-war choices and making them into narratives form the key question for many of the life story analyses. Aili Aarelaid-Tart bases her analysis on a concept of the pre-war generation that is characterised by ‘Westernoriented liberal education and strong patriotic formatting’. According to Aarelaid-Tart, this generation was united by the ideal of working collectively for the good of the country and the people – an attitude that she considers to be a decisive factor in how this generation orientated in its subsequent life. In this collection, the ethnic point of reference forms the core of the life story analyses, which provided Olaf Mertelmann’s reason for criticism. However, from the life story narrations it seems that the

Ene Kõresaar

19

ethnic point of reference is not just a theme related to the war or a retrospective choice of national policy, but an empirical wartime means of orientation. This finds expression in most of the life stories, regardless of the uniform worn at the time by the narrator. The important aspect was that the unit was comprised of Estonians – be it in the Red Army, the Waffen-SS, or elsewhere. The existence of comrades that were compatriots was an important means of social support under extreme war conditions – Tiiu Jaago demonstrates that ‘ethnic solitude’ is thematised separately. The Frontier Guard Regiments that consisted exclusively of Estonians were not generally perceived as the military units of a foreign country, but as Estonian units that happened to wear a uniform ‘similar to the Wehrmacht’s’ (see Aleksander Loog’s story).36 In this sense, the decisions behind the discourse of the ‘third way’, which was centred in the émigré culture during the Cold War and reactualised in the post-Soviet period, were not just a (subsequently invented) political choice, but included a way of perceiving the world at the time – the fighting individuals were also members of ethnic and national communities. The pre-war institutional image of history and political culture served as a resource not only for the soldiers that came from this pre-war nationalist society. It was also used by the regimes that were waging the war in order to legitimise the goals and casualties of the war. From Rutt Hinrikus’s analysis we see that an important motif in Soviet war propaganda from the beginning of hostilities was the figure of the Germans as the sworn enemy, which was created by Estonian historiography at the end of the 19th century. This motif was appropriated by the historical writings of Soviet Estonia after the war (Undusk, 2003), by creating a symbolic universe for the war that maintained continuity at a lower conceptual level along with that which already existed in society (Berger, Luckmann, [1966] 1991, 126–127). Rutt Hirnikus demonstrates the vitality of the theme of the Germans as the sworn enemy based on the individual decision-making and biographical remembrance in the story of Red Army veteran Mirk. From Ene Kõresaar’s analysis it appears that the motif of the Germans as the sworn enemy functioned as a strategy for distancing oneself from the Nazi war goals, and as such also emerges in the life stories. The image of the Germans as the sworn enemy stems from the historical image of the 13th Century age of conquest as the ancient fight for freedom, which still endures today. In the light of various historical conflicts, ‘freedom-fighting’ functions in some sense as pre-memory (Ashplant, Dawson, Roper, 2004a, 34) or a narrative template (Wertsch, 2002; Wertsch, 2009), which represents a generalised structure, into which

20

Introduction

all subsequent conflicts can be meaningfully positioned. The vitality of ‘freedom-fighting’ as a cultural narrative can be assessed by how it enables the integration of various conflicts or images of the enemy. As a characterisation of the Estonians’ ‘great freedom-fighting’ narrative, historian Marek Tamm has written: ‘Estonian national history has always, starting from the very first endeavours in this area, been analysed from the perspective of losing and gaining liberty. [---] This articulation of history is supported by narrative constructed with the aim of binding different battles and uprisings into one great struggle. We can conditionally call this schematic narrative template ‘The Great Battle for Freedom’, where Estonian history is characterised by centuries of struggle for liberty and against the Germans. The narrative of ‘The Great Battle for Freedom’ combines into one coherent plot of all the prominent conflicts with Germans that Estonians have preserved in their cultural memory, from the crusades of the thirteenth century to the so-called War of Independence of 1918–1920. The latter was fought against the Bolshevik Red Army, but Estonian cultural memory has given prominence to the battle against the Landeswehr near Võnnu (Latvian – Cēsis) in the summer of 1919 [which] [---] became the final victory of The Great Battle for Freedom.’ (Tamm, 2008, 505– 506.)

During World War II, in addition to Soviet war propaganda (Kruus, 1943), Nazi propaganda also used the (ancient) freedom fighting narrative template in its interests. In the Baltic countries the Nazi declarative battle on ‘behalf of Western civilisation’ could be supported by the experiences of the first Soviet occupation, which – as Olaf Mertelsmann (2005) has shown elsewhere – changed the minds of many Estonians regarding their ‘sworn enemy’. Jaan Undusk (2000) has shown that in the war novels of both Soviet Estonia and the émigré community, the concept of the ‘idealess Estonian’ dominated during the Cold War, which, regardless of which side one fought on, stressed the coerced options of Estonian men during World War II, which were unaffected by the ideologies of either side. Being caught in the middle in ‘someone else’s war’ is a thought framework into which Rutt Hinrikus’s and Tiina Kirss’s interpretations in this book can be placed. Therefore, the way one perceives war experiences is based on earlier cultural war memory that sees Estonia’s territory as the battleground for the conflicts caused by the ambitions of various foreign powers (Loorits, 1935). The roots of the main axis of the post-Soviet master narrative – the comparison of ‘two evils’, Communism and National Socialism, and the resulting demands to rethink totalitarianism by recognising the crimes of

Ene Kõresaar

21

Communism (Kattago, 2009) – are seen namely in this war-time experience that was intensified by memory and history politics during the Cold War. During the post-Soviet period the narrative template of freedom fighting has become a genuine ‘deep memory’ (Wertsch, 2009) by being expanded to the resistance to the Soviet occupation in the battles of summer-autumn 1944,37 to the post-war partisan warfare and subsequent forms of dissidence. Although templates of more remote wars or ‘pre-memories’ may be consciously manipulated by political elites, to some extent this misses the point: ‘Their efficiency lies in the fact that they circulate in cultural spaces which antecede, and thus are part of the constitution of, personal memory. Where subjectivities have been shaped by such templates, people feel the significance of these past events to be deeply personal.’ (Ashplant, Dawson, Roper, 2004a, 36.)

This applies not only to events as pre-memories, but more generally to interpretation schemes, including state-centred interpretation schemes. The Soviet/Russian narrative of the Great Patriotic War in particular has been left in the background. In the Baltic context this is treated on the level of international (power) relations (see Onken, 2007; Kattago, 2009) rather than related to the construction of individual subjectivity. Presumably one of the reasons is the fact that in the post-Soviet memory politics process, the ‘Soviet past’ was repudiated. ‘National memory’ – as the ‘strong version’ of collective memory (Wertsch, 2002, 21–23), which assumed the uniformity of the individual and the collective – was treated in the role of counter-memory in regard to official Soviet history narrative. This was mostly characterised by such motifs as suffering and survival, imprisonment and exile, dissident views of the Soviet system and power. Repression memories were considered ‘more authentic’, and therefore, ‘truer’; they achieved the dominant position and started to represent the ‘national memory’ (Kõresaar, 2004; Kõresaar, 2005b, 105–106). On the other hand, Soviet collective memory was treated as foreign in contrast to the ‘national memory’; it was assumed that the Soviet collective memory was falsified, ideologically controlled and dislocated, and believing in it was seen as a sign of brainwashing (Liljeström, 2003, 235–236). In this book there are two case studies of the life stories of Red Army veterans. Of these, Rutt Hinrikus’s treatment of Reinhold Mirk’s life story demonstrates the transferability of official Soviet memory templates to autobiographical meaning-making of the past, and Aili Aarelaid-Tart’s analysis of Ailo Ehamaa’s life story the contradictory positions of these two.

22

Introduction

Rutt Hinrikus’s analysis shows that in the autobiographical comprehension of war experiences, the symbolic universe that developed during the Soviet period continues to be eloquent38 and it is not as unequivocally comprehensible as we sometimes have the tendency to believe. According to Hinrikus, in addition to the official historiography of the Great Patriotic War, and the depersonalised remembrance genres related thereto (Liljeström, 2004, 54–55), literature, which as of the 1960s allowed for a more nuanced and humane approach, made possible a more emotional understanding of the war experience.39 Literature, which during the Soviet period, to a great extent took over the role of historical writing, has perhaps had a greater effect on the development of war memory than, for instance, war memoirs in Estonia today, where they are actually popular only with the groups concerned. Against this background it is understandable that in addition to Rutt Hinrikus, Olaf Mertelsmann has also found the key to analysing life stories in the influential literature of the time. Simultaneously, it should be noted that other veteran groups have not be able to rely on such a powerful force of remembrance technology. As Rutt Hinrikus indicates, literature and memoirs that provided versions that contradicted the official Soviet version were possible in the émigré community, but their entry into the corresponding veteran cultures in Estonia was marginal, if not totally nonexistent. As a result, (war) literature as a remembrance technology does not have a similar impact in other war remembrance cultures.40 Historian Ruth Bettina Birn, who conducted research in Estonia in 1992, states in the foreword to her book that she noticed when speaking to people about World War II, that while they were not influenced by official Soviet propaganda, they also had not had the opportunity to critically assess the national images of history or to replace them with anything besides ‘the memories of their grandparents’ (Birn, 2006, 7). ‘Grandparents’ stories are also represented in this book. Based on the memories of Red Army veteran and war invalid Ailo Ehamaa, Aili Aarelaid-Tart points out how a image of history based on one’s own experiences can be more decisive than the official history of the Great Patriotic War – even when the veterans’ privileges based thereon were not considered totally detestable. Even more critical is the relationship between experience memory and official history in the case of those men whose war trajectory was presented during the Soviet period as antagonistic to that of the veterans of the Great Patriotic War, whose death was the death deserved by a traitor or fascist. Terje Anepaio describes the consequences of a stigmatised status for former soldiers and their families. Ene Kõresaar’s analysis indicates that a critical image of one’s role in World War II was

Ene Kõresaar

23

difficult to form under these conditions, even if one is dealing with a very reflective narrator. In the context of Estonian life stories, Juri Lotman’s discussion about the ‘right to biography’ is appropriate, which far from everybody possesses in the given society. Understandings, of which society members have a ‘biography’ and which do not have one start to form social roles in the society. A ‘person with a biography’ is associated with choices that are based on the society’s established, ‘norms of correct behaviour’ (Lotman, 1991, 366; 370; 385.) The distinctive veteran cultures that have functioned in Estonia from the end of the war until today have developed from the great narratives of time, the primary function of which is to differentiate. But, as in the case of ethnicity and masculinity, here too there are unifying textual factors – namely military history. Here I do not mean the Story itself with its suffering and survival, heroes, enemies, victims as well as selections and correlations of facts – but, as the life stories published in this book, and as Rutt Hinrikus’s and Ene Kõresaar’s analyses show, the interaction between the histories of the ‘veterans’ and the units is an important way of interpreting war experiences. Primarily, a more general understanding that comprises military history is being taken into account. Its generally recognised goal seems to be comprised of positivistic importance, realism and exactness of detail. Since this does not convey the ‘taste of war’ very well to those who have not experienced it, then for former soldiers adhering to these criteria provide an opportunity to rationalise what they experienced and give it perceivable frames. Based on the example of the dialogue in Lembitu Varblane’s texts, Tiiu Jaago shows the importance of the role of military history, in its aforementioned sense, in ordering the experiences in life stories. It is not possible to say that war stories are subordinated unconditionally to some uniform paradigm. Fritz Schütze (1992a) has shown that soldiers’ war biographies can mostly be narrated as mixtures of various schemes. The analyses included in this book also show how temporally and textually multilayered war memoirs are. The narrative resources that are implemented to convey one’s experiences can be regulated chronologically, but in life stories, based on the definition of the experience, they end up in syncretic and dialogue-based relationships. Whether this is a ‘sad mixture’ (Shütze, 1992a, 191) or a productive opportunity (LomskyFeder, 1995) for the integration of exceptional experiences into one’s life story apparently depends on how cultural memory, the society and specific individuals relate to the war experience.

24

Introduction Notes

1

2

3

4

5

6

It would be misleading, however, to see a bogeyman only in the eyes of the external observer. After the Lihula Monument incident in 2004 (Brüggemann, Kasekamp, 2008, 431–433), a trend appeared in the Estonian media to give the conflict, and the war experiences on which it was based, primarily an ethnic dimension. For instance, Estonian and Russian veterans were invited to discuss the matter on popular talk shows, as representatives of the warring sides, in the context of experience of World War II; thus the Red Army was represented by a Russian veteran of the Great Patriotic War and the opposite side was represented by an Estonian from the Federation of Estonian Freedom Fighters. In the discussion that took place immediately before the removal of the Bronze Solder, and which dealt with the identity of the statue’s model, Estonian authorities concentrated on his ‘de-Estonianisation’ (Lehti, Jutila, Jokisipilä, 2008, 398). By juxtaposing the life stories and their analyses with varied disciplinary backgrounds, finally cradled in this book under a common denominator, I am relying on Jan and Aleida Assmann’s definitions of memory, which are based in turn on Maurice Halbwachs’s ([1925], 1985) concept of the social framework of memory. In their theory, the Assmanns differentiate between communicative and cultural memory, but rely on the latter. (See Aleida Assmann’s differentiations of social, collective and cultural memory in Assmann, 2006, 26–61. See Welzer, 2005 concerning the theory of communicative memory based on the same system.) In the interests of publication, the autobiographical texts have been shortened and edited, but this has been done based on the principle that the autobiographical message must still be heard. Since the book focuses on war experiences, the chapters dealing with the war have been chosen from longer texts. Where possible, an attempt has been made to give an idea of the language used to convey the war experiences. The comments on the texts have been made from the standpoint of war, memory and cultural history. Conceptually and structurally, this volume follows the example of the collection published by almost the same group of authors in 2004, in which the life stories of Estonian women narrated in the post-Soviet period were published and analysed (Kirss, Kõresaar, Lauristin, 2004). Actually, there are more dates associated with the post-Soviet discourse regarding the end of World War II. A second position is that the war actually ended in 1994, when Russia, the legal successor to the Soviet Union, withdrew its forces from Estonia. The third, most far-reaching interpretation associates the end of the war with the accession of the Baltic countries to the European Union and NATO. (See also Lehti, Jutila, Jokisipilä, 2008, 405.) In this period, the foundation is laid for the massive collections of historical tradition. The action to ‘restore’ historical heritage in 1988–1992

Ene Kõresaar

7

8

9

10

11

12

25

was organised by the Estonian Heritage Society, which associated itself with the example of Jakob Hurt a hundred years before (see also note 8), involved a lot of people. The Estonian Heritage Society collection that developed as a result, and is located in the Estonian Cultural History Archives, comprises over 1,700 archival documents including various memoirs, notices, letters and diaries. In 1996, the Estonian Life Stories Association (see http://www2.kirmus.ee/elulood/en/eng.html) was officially founded, and its activity focuses on the promotion of the collection of written autobiographical memories, and the publication and researching of these collections. See more about the context of the methods and archival collections in Hinrikus, Kõresaar, 2004. By using life writing campaign methods, Estonian cultural researchers, especially in ethnology and folklore studies, share the same common scientific as with Finland and the other Scandinavian countries (Jaago, Kõresaar, 2009). For more information about Hurt’s method of collecting folk tradition, see Jaago, 2005, 58–61. This way of collecting (folklore) texts is based on the formation of local people into a literate nation in 19th century Estonia, and is also characteristic of the Scandinavian countries. Life writing campaigns are appeals for public thematic life story writing. The Estonian Life Stories Association sends the appeal texts to the press where they appear in various forms. The appeals have a fixed term and the received life stories are read by a jury convened by the Association. Summaries of the campaigns are made on Life Story Day in March (the month the Association was founded), when a symbolic prize with a small sum of money and a book is presented. An important motivation is definitely the opportunity to have one’s life story published in the life story anthologies published by the Association. When drawing up the appeals for life story writing, an attempt is made to consider very different interests – such as national and cultural history, sociological, literary, ethnological, historical, etc. In addition to the theme of the appeal, general guidelines were given for framing the life stories: childhood, home, age, environment and its changes, important events in one’s life, the current living situation, etc. People often phoned the Association themselves in order to obtain instructions. See the chronology of the life writing appeals until 2004, Hinrikus, Kõresaar, 2004, 21–25; an anthology entitled ‘Girls Who Grew Up During the War: The Memories of Estonia Women from the German Occupation’ (Hinrikus, 2006; in Estonian) was published based on the life stories collected in 2005. As of September 1941, the Estonians that were transferred from the Red Army operational forces to the labour battalions were incoporated into the Gulag system of the NKVD. In the interests of the integrity of his story, Reinhold Mirk’s war memories have been compiled from two separate texts, both of which were sent to

26

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Introduction the Estonian Life Stories Association in 1997. See Rutt Hinrikus in this book. The League of the Independence War Veterans was initially created with the goal of caring for the wellbeing of the veterans of the War of Independence (1918–1920), but started to increasingly intervene in politics, and developed into a considerable political force. In the autumn of 1933, tensions increased in Estonia’s domestic political situation; in order to prevent the war veterans from coming to power, the state declared a state of defence. The organisations of the Independence War veterans were banned and people who sympathised with them were discharged from the state apparatus. The activities of the Independence War veterans, like the activities of the Communists, were placed under future police supervision. For example, such stories are typical of the collection campaign carried out at the turn of the century, which was entitled ‘My Life in the Estonian Republic and the ESSR’, and in the course of which people used the opportunity to protest against the imposed ‘Soviet amnesia’. Since substantial discrepancies appear in this book between the life story narrator’s version of his life story and the researcher’s version of it, it has been decided not to reveal the name of the autobiographer, even though he has given permission for his memoirs to be published. The appeal was not limited to World War II, but also encouraged people to recall war experiences, directly or indirectly, or more generally, e.g. the participation of family members in the Afghanistan War, the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968, etc. From the viewpoint of the veterans, the public commemoration of the war is not only a trivial struggle related to ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ versions of the past, but has a necessary social function. Psychologists Barron, Davies and Wiggins (2008) assert that public commemoration rituals enable safe recollection work, which supports and facilitates social integration. Public commemoration rituals can compensate for a feeling of separation and isolation that veterans may feel due to their social position, age or the state of their health. The quote in the subtitle (Section 2 above) originates from the Estonian SubBranch of the Returned and Service League of Australia homepage, where, in an appeal to West Europeans, the choices that were made by Estonian soldiers in World War II are explained (http://veterans.eesti.org.au/ opinions/estonian-soldier-in-ii-world-war). Partially, one may be dealing with a certain more general individualisation tendency in autobiographical remembrances. If in the 1990s, it was important for the autobiographers to manifest their relationship with a collective (ethnic group, generation), then in the new millenium the 1st person singular (I) of the story is brought to the fore. For instance, the life writing campaign dedicated to the 2008 jubilee celebration (90th) of the Republic of Estonia, elicited highly individualistic stories, although the

Ene Kõresaar

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

emphasis of the appeal was directed at the relationships of the writer with their relevant others (from a verbal discussion with Tiiu Jaago). I found the memoirs for 1938–1955 of Erich Arak who died in 2004, among the life stories sent by former soldiers in response to the life writing campaign entitled ‘The Impact of War in the Life of Me and Those Close to Me’. Arak was forcibly conscripted into the Red Army in 1941, but never arrived in Russia, since the ship with the conscripts was hit by a bomb. Shortly after, the Estonians were hit with a new conscription drive into the German army; believing the promises that the mobilised Estonians would not be stationed outside of their homeland, he volunteered for the Waffen-SS Estonian Legion, and thereafter fought in the Ukraine in the ranks of the Narva Battalion. He briefly states the following about this episode of his life: We did not participate in any terror operations (KM EKLA, f. 350, 1787, 57), thus connecting his life description with the topic of Estonians being connected to the Holocaust and the possible crimes committed by the Estonian battalions in occupied Eastern areas, which had been quietly unwinding in the press since the turn of the century (Brüggemann, 2006, 40–45). However, the status of the Finnish Boys among the veterans who see themselves as having contributed to the battle for Estonian independence against the Soviet Union in World War II, does not seem be unequivocal. For instance, in its third issue in 2007, the Estonian soldiers’ newspaper Võitleja, publishes a report by Ilor Tamm on the gathering of the Estonian Freedom Fighters in July. He reports that, in conversations between the veterans, those who went to Finland to escape conscription and fought there in the Finnish Army were accused of having escaped their responsibilities and having searched for an easy way out (Tamm, 2007). See the actions of other Estonian nationalists around the Bronze Soldier in 2006, in Brüggemann, Kasekamp, 2008, 433–434. See a longer analysis of the Estonian ‘monument war’, its background and discussions caused thereby in Tamm, Petersoo, 2008. See the information on the principles for compiling a written life story text based on a life story interview in Atkinson, 1998, 54–57. Ailo Ehamaa has approved the result. The initial text has been slightly shortened for publishing purposes. For example, in July 2006, Boris Takk answered my naïve request to reconstruct his war experiences according to the units he served in, by saying that he cannot identify the units by number, because they changed all the time. In both the interview and written memoirs, he recalls the events of the war by social and emotional markers, by recalling places, people and relationships, not the formal parameters of the units. Hereinafter, only a general landscape of military service is provided, in order to place and set the life stories being dealt with into relationship with each other. For a more thorough and detailed picture of Estonia during World War II, see ‘Part II: Combat in Estonia in 1941’, ‘Part III: German

28

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

Introduction Occupation 1941–1944’ and ‘Part V: Combat in Estonia in 1944. Attempt to Restore the Independence of Estonia in 1944’, but especially, ‘Part IV: Estonian Military Units in the Soviet and German Armed Forces’ in Hiio, Maripuu, Paavle 2006, 413–1128. It is presumed that in July 1941 about 4,500 soldiers went over to the German side in the Porkhov area (Kaasik, 2006a, 789). See the definition of the Forest Brothers in Kaasik, Raudvassar, 2006, 497–498. See the reasons for ending up in the German army based on life stories in Hinrikus, 2000a; Hinrikus, 2000b. See about the role of the Estonian SS-units in the context of the general military history of World War II in Hiio, Kaasik, 2006, 959–967. See about the formation and re-formation of the Estonian SS-units in Hiio, Kaasik, 2006, 950–959. See about attempts by Estonian troops to continue resistance to the Red Army in August-September 1944 Hiio, 2006, 1081–1085. The date of the photo is unknown. Valle Prööm’s clothing, which is a combination of a Waffen-SS uniform (upside down lightening bolts on the collar) and Red Army breeches, boots and belt, suggests 1944. Hanging onto a German uniform put the wearer and his family in danger. An esteemed Estonian historian Ea Jansen, when analysing Estonian historiography in the framework of conflicting ideologies has argued that Estonian history writing has been in great extent teleological: when public opinion, state or another influential social political actor has accepted certain value, then the historical process has been seen as a constant and mostly linear movement toward that value as a final goal. The understanding of history has been subordinated to the quest for evidence to prove this movement exists (Jannsen, 1997, 39). In the national history writing tradition the goal is related to the national independence (national statehood). See the criticism of the treatment of the construction of subjectivity in the context of researching war memory, e.g. Ashplant, Dawson, Roper, 2004a, 33–34. It has become clear from Aigi Rahi-Tamm’s studies that similar assessments of the Frontier Guard Regiments were shared by many of the men that served in them. For example, Juhan Vermet (pre-war rank of lieutenant-colonel), who was appointed commander of the 2nd Frontier Guard Regiment, even informed the NKVD inquisitor who interrogated him in 1946 that, despite subordination to German command, he considered his unit to be part of the Estonian armed forces that were fighting against the Red Army. (Verbal discussion with Aigi Rahi-Tamm.) For instance, at the end of 2009, a military history conference entitled ‘The Second War of Independence – Decisive 1944’ was organised in Tallinn by the Association of Veterans of the 20th Estonian Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the Wiking-Narva Club, the Estonian Academic Military

Ene Kõresaar

38

39

40

29

History Society, and the Friends of the Estonian Legion Club, and which was based directly on the idea of the War of Independence conducted in 1918–1920 in the name of newly achieved national independence. See how one’s life events are narrated into the Soviet revolutionary picture of history in post-Soviet life writing in Kõresaar, 2005a. See the changes in written war interpretation (and differentiation against the background of other memory politics) in the Soviet Union in Scherrer, 2004. This does not reduce the role of literature in shaping cultural and communicative memory more generally. See the implementation of texts that are significant for the national textual community in the autobiographical remembrance, e.g. Kõresaar, 2006.

References Ahlbäck, A. and V. Kivimäki (2008), “Masculinities at War: Finland 1918– 1950”, Norma. Nordisk tidsskrift for maskulinitetsstudier / Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies, 2 (3): 114–131. Ashplant, T., G. Dawson and M. Roper (eds.) (2004a), Commemorating war: the politics of memory. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publisher. Ashplant, T., G. Dawson and M. Roper (2004b), “The War Memory and Commemoration: Contexts, Structures, Dynamics”, in: T. Ashplant, G. Dawson and M. Roper (eds.) Commemorating war: the politics of memory. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publisher, 3–88. Assmann, A. (2006), Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik München: C.H.Beck. Atkinson, R. (1998), The life story interview. Qualitative Research Methods, Vol. 44. London: Sage. Barron, D.S., S.P. Davies and R.D. Wiggins (2008), “Social Integration, a Sense of Belonging and the Cenotaph Service: Old Soldiers Reminisce about Remembrance”, Ageing & Mental Health, 12 (4), July: 509–516. Berger, P. and T. Luckmann [1966] (1991), The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. London: Penguin Books. Birn, R. B. (2006), Die Sicherheitspolizei in Estland, 1941–1944: eine Studie zur Kollaboration im Osten. Paderborn: Schöningh. Brüggemann, K. (2006), “‛Wir brauchen viele Geschichten.’ Estland und seine Geschichte auf dem Weg nach Europa?”, in: H. Altrichter (ed.) GegenErinnerung. Geschichte als politisches Argument im Transformationsprozeß Ost-, Ostmittel- und Südosteuropas. München: Oldenbourg, 27–50. Brüggemann, K. and A. Kasekamp (2008), “The Politics of History and the War of Memories in Estonia”, Nationalities Papers, 36 (3): 425–448.

30

Introduction

Brüggemann, K. and A. Kasekamp (2009), “Identity Politics and Contested Histories in Divided Societies: The Case of Estonian War Monuments”, in: E. Berg and P. Ehin (eds.) Identity and foreign policy: Baltic-Russian relations and European integration. Farnham & Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 51–63. Burkart, G. (1995), “Biographische Übergänge und rationale Entscheidungen”, BIOS: Zeitschrift für Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen, 8 (1): 59–88. Gross, T. (2002), “Anthropology of Collective Memory: Estonian National Awakening Revisited”, Trames. A Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 4 (6). Halbwachs, M. [1925] (1985), Das Gedächtnis und seine sozialen Bedingungen. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Hiio, T. (2005), “Estonian Security Groups and Eastern Battalions in German Army in 1941–1944”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu, and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 807–824. Hiio, T. and P. Kaasik (2005), “Estonian Units in the Waffen-SS”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu, and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 927–968. Hiio, T., M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) (2005), Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Hinrikus, R. (ed.) (2000a), Eesti rahva elulood I. Sajandi sada elulugu kahes osas. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Hinrikus, R. (ed.) (2000b), Eesti rahva elulood II. Sajandi sada elulugu kahes osas. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Hinrikus, R. (2000c), “Saateks”, in: R. Hinrikus (ed.) Eesti rahva elulood I. Sajandi sada elulugu kahes osas. Tallinn, Tänapäev, 7–12. Hinrikus, R. (2003), “Eesti elulugude kogu ja selle uurimise perspektiive”, in: A. Krikmann and S. Olesk (eds.) Võim ja kultuur. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, Eesti kultuuriloo ja folkloristika keskus, 171–214. Hinrikus, R. (2004), “Deportation, Siberia, Suffering, Love. The Story of Heli”, in: T. Kirss, E. Kõresaar, and M. Lauristin (eds). She who remembers, survives. Interpreting Estonian women post-Soviet life stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 62–77. Hinrikus, R. (ed.) (2006), Sõja ajal kasvanud tüdrukud: Eesti naiste mälestused Saksa okupatsioonist. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Hinrikus, R. and E. Kõresaar (2004), “A Brief Overview of Life History Collection and Research in Estonia”, in: T. Kirss, E. Kõresaar and M. Lau-

Ene Kõresaar

31

ristin (eds.) She who remembers, survives. Interpreting Estonian women’s post-Soviet life stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 19–34. Huima, L. (2002), “Saatuse tahtel”, Mäetagused. Elektrooniline ajakiri, 16: 70–94. Jaago, T. (2005), “Jakob Hurt: The Birth of Estonian-language Folklore Research”, in: K. Kuutma and T. Jaago (eds.) Studies in Estonian folkloristics and ethnology. A reader and reflexive history. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 45–78. Jaago, T. and E. Kõresaar (2009), “Pärimusliku ajaloo uurimine Eesti ja naabermaade koostööruumis”, Mäetagused. Elektrooniline ajakiri, 43, 7– 18. Jaago, T., E. Kõresaar and A. Rahi-Tamm (2006), “Oral History and Life Stories as Research Area in Estonian History, Folkloristics and Ethnology”, E-Lore, 13 (1): 1–15. Jannsen, E. (1997), “Hajamõtteid eesti ajaloo uurimisest”, Kleio. Ajaloo ajakiri, 1 (19): 35–41. Jureit, U. (2005), “Motive – Mentalitäten – Handlungsspielräume. Theoretische Anmerkungen zu Handlungsoptionen von Soldaten”, in: C. Hartmann, J. Hürter and U. Jureit (eds.) Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Bilanz einer Debatte. München: C. H. Beck, 163–170. Kaasik, P. (2005a), “Formation of the Estonian Army into the Red Army Rifle Groups”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 769–796. Kaasik, P. (2005b), “Formation of the Estonian Rifle Corps in 1941–1942”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940 – 1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 885–908. Kaasik, P., and M. Raudvassar (2005), “Estonia from June to October, 1941: Forest Brothers and Summer War”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 495–517. Karonen, P., and K. Tarjamo (eds.) (2006), Kun sota on ohi. Sodista selviytymisen ongelmia ja niiden ratkaisumalleja 1900-luvulla. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Kattago, S. (2009), “Agreeing to Disagree on the Legacies of Recent History: Memory, Pluralism and Europe after 1989”, European Journal of Social Theory, 12 (3): 375–395. Kirss, T. (2004a), “Introduction”, in: T. Kirss, E. Kõresaar and M. Lauristin (eds.) She who remembers, survives. Interpreting Estonian women’s postSoviet life stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 13–18.

32

Introduction

Kirss, T. (2004b), “Three Generations of Estonian Women: Selves, Lives, Texts”, in: T. Kirss, E. Kõresaar and M. Lauristin (eds). She who remembers, survives. Interpreting Estonian women’s post-Soviet life stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 112–141. Kirss, T., E. Kõresaar and M. Lauristin (eds.) (2004), She who remembers survives. Interpreting Estonian women’s post-Soviet life stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press. Kruus, H. (1943), Eesti ajalugu saksa fašismi vastu. Moskva. Kõresaar, E. (2003), “Ajaloopiltide dialoog eestlaste elulugudes”, Vikerkaar, 10–11: 162–164. Kõresaar, E. (2004), “The Notion of Rupture in Estonian Narrative Memory: On the Construction of Meaning in Autobiographical Texts on the Stalinist Experience”, Ab Imperio, 4: 313–339. Kõresaar, E. (2005a), “Collective Memory and the Politics of Experience in Estonian post-Soviet Life Stories”, in: O. Ronström and U. Palmenfelt (eds.) Memories and visions. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 45–87. Kõresaar, E. (2005b), Elu ideoloogiad: kollektiivne mälu ja autobiograafiline minevikutõlgendus eestlaste elulugudes. Tartu: Eesti Rahva Muuseum. Kõresaar, E. (2006), “Kollektives Gedächtnis und nationale Textgemeinschaft im postsowjetischen Estland: Ein Beispiel über die intertextuelle Verwendung des Nationalepos ‘Kalevipoeg’ in den estnischen Lebensgeschichten”, in: H.-H. Bartens, K. Röhrborn, K. Sagaster and E. Winkler (eds.) Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher. Internationale Zeitschrift für uralische und altaische Forschung. Neue Folge. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 101–124. Kõresaar, E. (2007), “Zwei Ausstellungen über den Zweiten Weltkrieg im Estnischen Museum für Geschichte (Tallinn): Notizen zur Dynamik der Erinnerungskultur”, in: O. Kurilo (ed.) Der Zweite Weltkrieg im Museum: Kontinuität und Wandel. Berlin: Avinus-Verlag, 83–102. Köstlin, K. (1989), “Erzählen vom Krieg – Krieg als Reise II”, BIOS: Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung und Oral History, 2: 173–182. Laar, M. (1988), “Veidi meie ajaloolisest mälust”, Kultuur ja Elu, 4: 11–13. Laar, M. (2005a), Eesti Teises maailmasõjas. Tallinn: Grenader. Laar, M. (2005b), Emajõgi 1944. II maailmasõja lahingud Lõuna-Eestis. Tallinn: Varrak. Laar, M. (2007), September 1944: Otto Tiefi valitsus. Tallinn: Varrak. Laar, M., L. Vahtre and H. Valk (1989), Kodu lugu. 2. Loomingu raamatukogu 42/43 (1662/1663). Tallinn: Perioodika. Lehti, M., M. Jutila and M. Jokisipilä (2008), “Never-Ending Second World War: Public Performances of National Dignity and the Drama of the Bronze Soldier”, Journal of Baltic Studies, 39 (4): 393–418. Liljeström, M. (2003), “Success Stories from the Margins: Soviet Women’s Autobiographical Sketches from the Late Soviet Period”, in: D. Bertaux, P. Thompson and A. Rotkirch (eds.) On living through Soviet Russia. London: Routledge, 235–251.

Ene Kõresaar

33

Liljeström, M. (2004), Useful selves: Russian women's autobiographical texts from the postwar period. Helsinki: Kikimora. Loorits, O. (1935), Sõjad eesti rahvatraditsioonis. Tartu. Lotman, J. (1991), Kultuurisemiootika: tekst – kirjandus – kultuur. Tallinn: Olion. Mertelsmann, O. (2005), “How the Russians Turned into the Image of the ‘National Enemy’ of the Estonians”, Pro Ethnologia, 19: 43–58. Misztal, B. A. (2003), Theories of social remembering. Maidenhead, Philadelphia: Open University Press. Niedermüller, P. (1997), “Zeit, Geschichte, Vergangenheit. Zur kulturellen Logik des Nationalismus im Postsozialismus”, Historische Anthropologie, 2: 245–267. Niglas, A. and T. Hiio (2005), “Estonian Defence Battalions/Police Battalions in the German Armed Forces”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 825–876. Noormets, T. (2005), “Mobilisation into the Red Army in Estonia in 1941”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 431–445. Nora, P. (2002), “Reasons for the Current Upsurge in Memory”, Eurozine, 19.04., URL: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2002-04-19-nora-en.html. [last visited Dec 21st, 2009]. Onken, E.-C. (2007), “The Baltic States and Moscow’s May 9th Commemoration: Analysing Memory Politics in Europe”, Europe-Asia Studies, 59(1): 23–46. Pajur, A., T. Tannberg, and S. Vahtre (eds.) (2005), Eesti ajalugu. VI. Vabadussõjast taasiseseisvumiseni. Tartu: Ilmamaa. Scherrer, J. (2004), “Sowjetunion/Russland: Siegesmythos versus Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung”, in: M. Flacke (ed.) Mythen der Nationen. 1945 – Arena der Erinnerungen. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 619–670. Skultans, V. (1998), The testimony of lives. Narrative and memory in postSoviet Latvia. London, New York: Routledge. Schütze, F. (1992a), “Pressure and Guilt: War Experiences of a Young German Soldier and Their Biographical Implications (Part I)”, International Sociology, 7(2): 187–208. Smith, D.J. (2008), “‘Woe from Stones’: Commemoration, Identity Politics and Estonia's ‘War of Monument’”, Journal of Baltic Studies, 39 (4): 419– 430. Tamm, I. (2007), “Kirjakast,” Võitleja, 3 (487): 3.

34

Introduction

Tamm, M. (2008), “History as Cultural Memory: Mnemohistory and the Construction of the Estonian Nation”, Journal of Baltic Studies, 39(4): 499–516. Tamm, M. and P. Petersoo (2008), “Monumentaalne konflikt: sissejuhatuseks”, in: M. Tamm and P. Petersoo (eds.) Monumentaalne konflikt. Mälu, poliitika ja identiteet tänapäeva Eestis. Tallinn: Varrak, 9–15. Undusk, J. (2000), “Ideetud eestlased. Eesti sõjakirjandust lugedes”,Vikerkaar, 8–9: 105–115. Undusk, J. (2003), “Retooriline sund eesti nõukogude ajalookirjanduses”, in: A. Krikmann and S. Olesk (eds.) Võim ja kultuur. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, 41–68. Usai, U. (ed.) (1993a), Eestlased tööpataljonides 1941–1942. 1. raamat: mälestusi ja dokumente. Tallinn: Olion. Usai, U. (ed.) (1993b), Eestlased tööpataljonides 1941–1942. 2. raamat: mälestusi ja dokumente. Tallinn: Olion. Valge, J. (2007), “Eesti meeste valikud 1941–1944”, Kultuurileht Sirp, 40 (3180), 02.11. Welzer, H. (2005), Das kommunikative Gedächtnis. Eine Theorie der Erinnerung. München: Verlag C. H. Beck. Welzer, H., Lenz, C. (2007), “Erste Befunde einer vergleichenden Tradierungsforschung”, in: H. Welzer (ed.) Der Krieg der Erinnerung. Holocaust, Kollaboration und Wiederstand im europäischen Gedächtnis. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenburch Verlag, 7–40. Wertsch, J. V. (2002), Voices of collective remembering. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (2009), “Blank Spots in History and Deep Memory: Revisiting the Official Narrative of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”, in: E. Kõresaar, E. Lauk and K. Kuutma (eds.) The burden of remembering: recollections and representations of the 20th century. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 37–56.

Estonians in World War II. A Chronology Tiit Noormets 1939 August 23

The Soviet Union and Germany sign a non-aggression treaty – the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Secret clause of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact assigns Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia to the Soviet sphere of influence and Lithuania to the German sphere.

September 1

World War II begins. German troops invade Poland. Estonia proclaims neutrality.

September 3

Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.

September 17 The Red Army invades Poland. September 28 Supplementary agreement to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact transfers Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of influence. Signing of the Estonian–Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance. Under pressure from the Soviet Union, Estonia allows Soviet military bases on Estonian territory. October 18

Red Army base troops begin to enter Estonia. Umsiedlung, (voluntary resettlement of Baltic-Germans in Germany) begins, and lasts, till May 1940. During Umsiedlung, a total of 14,000 Baltic-Germans leave Estonia.

November 30 The Soviet Union attacks Finland. Finland defends her independence in the Winter War lasting till March 12, 1940. More than 50 Estonian volunteers go secretly from Estonia to join the Finnish Army. December 14 The Soviet Union is thrown out of the League of Nations because of its aggression against Finland.

36

Estonians in World War II. A Chronology 1940

April 9

Germany invades Denmark and Norway (Denmark surrenders April 9, Norway surrenders on June 9). In Finland, foreign volunteers are released from military service and ten Estonians go to Norway to join the Norwegian Army.

May 10

Germany launches offensive on the Western Front.

May 20

Arnold Soinla, a volunteer in the Norwegian Army, is the first Estonian soldier killed in action, during World War II, at the Battle of Narvik against the German invasion forces.

June 10

Italy, declaring war on France and Great Britain, enters the war on the German side.

June 14

German troops enter Paris. Germany conquers Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium, and France. The Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Lithuania and occupies the country on the following day (June 15).

June 16

The Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Estonia and Latvia demanding a new government and free entry for the Red Army to their territories. Estonia and Latvia accept the ultimatum.

June 17

The Soviet Union occupies Estonia.

June 21

A coup d’état in Estonia leads to the erasure of the previous political system, national economy and civil society. Repressions and sovietization start.

July 10

The aerial Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe versus the Royal Air Force, begins (and ends on September 7 1940 when the Luftwaffe, unable to break the aerial defences, starts to bomb urban areas). The Royal Air Force starts aerial warfare against Germany on August 10, the first air raid on Berlin.

August 3

The Italian invasion of British Somalia starts the war in Africa.

August 6

Annexation of Estonia and Latvia by the Soviet Union is codified in Moscow (Lithuania is incorporated into Soviet

Tiit Noormets

37

Union on August 5). Estonia becomes a part of the Soviet Union under the name of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (ESSR). August 17

Germany announces a maritime blockade of the Great Britain. Total submarine warfare begins. Estonian merchant vessels and seamen suffer under the blockade (some of them remain outside the Soviet Union and work for the Western Allies).

September

The former army of the Republic of Estonia is incorporated into the Red Army and reformed into the 22nd Rifle Corps.

September 27 The Tripartite Pact is signed between Germany, Italy, and Japan. Following the political rhetoric of the times that speak of the ‘Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis’ these three states form the core of the pact known as the Axis Powers and the states fighting against them, Great Britain and the Commonwealth and USA, the Allied Powers. October 28

Italy invades Greece but the Greek Army pushes Italian invasion forces back to Albania by December. 1941

January 10

A treaty is signed between Germany and the Soviet Union about translocation – Nachumsiedlung – of all Baltic Germans still living in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. More than 7,000 people, among them nearly 4,000 Estonians leave Estonia.

February 14

The first units of the Afrika Corps of the German Army arrive in North Africa to support the beaten Italian army against British and Commonwealth forces. The North African war lasts till 1943.

March 11

President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the U.S.A. signs the Lend-lease Act for providing the Allied Powers with military and economic aid. Lend-Lease allows Great Britain and the Soviet Union to maintain their war efforts,

38

Estonians in World War II. A Chronology until USA enters the war after Pearl Harbour. Many Estonian seamen serve on Lend-Lease ships transporting arms and goods across the Atlantic to Great Britain.

April 6

The Axis Powers, Germany and Italy, start the Balkan Offensive. Yugoslavia surrenders on April 17; Greece surrenders on April 21.

June 14

Mass deportations start in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. 10,000 people or 0.9% of the population are deported from Estonia (men are sent to the Gulag prison camps, women and children are deported to Siberia). People start to hide in the forests on a mass scale and become to be known as the Forest Brothers (metsavennad). Some of the Forest Brothers organize themselves militarily and start an armed resistance.

June 22

Germany launches Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. The ‘Summer War’ in Estonia begins – the armed resistance movement launches guerrilla warfare against the Soviet regime.

June 26

Formation of NKVD Destruction battalions begins in Estonia to guard the areas behind the frontline; the practice of their activity is mainly to implement the ‘scorched earth’ tactics and to terrorize the local population. In addition to the deportations to the Gulag prison camps, 2,000 people are murdered in Estonia, after the beginning of the war.

July 1–3

New mass deportations in Estonia start. Nearly 1,000 people are deported from the Western Estonian islands.

July 2

Evacuation of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Soviet rear-areas starts. Nearly 25,000 people are taken away, a good many against their will. Mobilization into the Red Army of men born in 1896–1922 starts in Estonia. In July and August 35,000 men are taken to Russia and conscripted into NKVD labour battalions. By 1942, about a third of them are dead.

July 4

The Red Army’s Estonian troops in the 22nd Rifle Corps fight the German army in the region of Porkhov and

Tiit Noormets

39

Staraya Russa in north-western Russia till the end of August. (The majority of those Estonian troops of the 22nd Rifle Corps who are captured agree to serve in the German army. They are released from Prisoner of War (PoW) camps in phases, the last being released in April 1942). July 7

The first German army units enter Estonia. In areas where the Red Army is defeated, a voluntary armed organization called Omakaitse (Self Defence/Home Guard) is formed. By the autumn more than 40,000 Estonians are members. A further 4,000 or more, volunteers fight in German Army units and Estonian volunteer units until the Red Army is driven out from Estonia.

August 21

Recruiting of volunteers into the German armed forces starts in Estonia. They form Eastern front units and Police battalions. (By the beginning of 1942 over 11,000 Estonians serve in the German armed forces.)

August 28

The German army occupies Tallinn. The organs of authority of the ESSR accompanied by units of the Red Army evacuate from Tallinn. The Central Committee of the Communist (Bolshevik) Party of Estonia and the Soviet of the People’s Commissars of the ESSR continue their activities in the Soviet rear-areas.

September 14 The joint landing of German forces and Estonian volunteers occurs on the Island of Muhu. The battle to conquer the Western Estonian islands lasts till October 21. Osmussaar Island, the last Estonia land in Red Army control, is captured on December 6. The Red Army murders all the Estonian inhabitants of the island. September 15 The German occupation regime sets up Estonian Self Government, an administrative organ, acting under the supervision and control of the German occupational powers. September 28 Estonian soldiers still serving in the 22nd Rifle Corps are sent to NKVD labour battalions. December 5

The German army approaches Moscow. The Red Army’s counter attack starts and will last till the end of January 1942.

40

Estonians in World War II. A Chronology

December 7

Japan’s Imperial Navy attacks Pearl Harbour. December 8, the Allies declare war on Japan. December 9, the Axis powers declare war on the USA.

December 18 Soviet State Defence Committee issues an order to form Estonian units in the Red Army. At the beginning of 1942 two infantry divisions and one reserve regiment are formed from men mobilized in Estonia in 1941 and from Estonians living in Russia (the descendants of Estonians who emigrated to Russia before the founding of the Republic of Estonia in 1918). 1942 January 14

German Security Police and SD report Estonia is Judenfrei (‘free of Jews’). During the German occupation more that 7,000 citizens of the Estonian Republic are executed, among them nearly 1,000 Jews and at least 240 Sinti and Roma. Jews deported to Estonia from the Western European countries are executed as well.

January 25

Soviet bombing of Estonian towns starts with an air raid on Narva.

June 28

On the Eastern Front, German Army Group Süd starts an offensive; German army units approach the Caucasus and the town of Stalingrad on the Volga River.

August 28

German army formation of the Estonian Legion is announced in Tallinn, recruiting volunteers to form an Estonian Waffen-SS unit. The first 800 recruits form Battalion Narva and are trained at Debiça in Poland.

September 25 The Red Army creates the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps from Estonian units. November 19 The Red Army counter-attack at Stalingrad starts; the German 6th Army is encircled at Stalingrad. December 9

The Red Army sends the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps to the front. In the battles for Velikiye Luki lasting till January

Tiit Noormets

41

16 the Corps suffers severe losses (including 2,000 men going over to the German side). The Corps is then taken into the reserve. Until September 1944 only the artillery units of the Corps are used at the front. 1943 February 2

Battle of Stalingrad ends with the capitulation of the German 6th Army.

February 24

Germany announces, in Estonia, conscription service for men born in 1919–1924, offering different choices of service; 5,000 men join the Estonian Legion. At the same time those men not wishing to serve in the German forces begin escaping to Finland. They join the Finnish Army to fight against the Soviet Union in the Continuation War. They became to be called in Estonia, the Finnish Boys (soomepoisid).

April 4

Battalion Narva is sent to the Eastern Front. The Battalion fights in the Ukraine till February 1944, within the 5th SS Armoured Grenadier Division, Wiking.

May 5

An Estonian Waffen-SS brigade is formed of men recruited by forced conscription under the name of the Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade.

May 13

Axis (German and Italian) Forces surrender in North Africa.

July 5

The German Army starts the last great offensive on the Eastern Front. But the Red Army holds its positions at the Battle of Kursk and starts a counter-offensive on August 3.

July 9

Allied Forces enter Europe with the invasion of Sicily and then on September 3 land at Palermo in Italy. The war on the Italian front continues until the Germany surrenders May 7/8 1945.

September 8

Italy surrenders to the Allied powers. The Social Republic of Italy founded by Benito Mussolini in the northern part of the country continues the war on the side of Germany.

42

Estonians in World War II. A Chronology

October 26

Germany announces, in Estonia, mobilization of men born in 1925. (In January 1944 men born in 1924 are also mobilized.)

November 9

The Estonian Waffen-SS brigade is sent to the Eastern Front, in the region of Nevel, in north-western Russia. 1944

January 14

The Red Army offensive on the Leningrad front starts; the siege is broken and German Forces retreat in the direction of Estonia.

January 24

The Estonian Legion is brought back to Estonia and renamed 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division. The unit remains in Estonia fighting at the front till September.

January 30

A German general mobilization for men born in 1904–1923 and all officers and physicians is announced in Estonia; nearly 40,000 men are now mobilized. 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division is complemented and new units, including seven Frontier Guard Regiments, are formed.

February 2

The Red Army crosses the line of the Narva River onto Estonian territory. The battles on the Narva front start, lasting till the summer.

February 8

Estonian volunteers in the Finnish Army form the 200 JR (the 200th Infantry Regiment) as an Estonian unit.

February 14

In Tallinn, an underground resistance centre, the National Committee of the Estonian Republic, oriented towards the western Allies is formed with the aim of restoring the independence of Estonia.

March 6

A Soviet air raid destroys the town of Narva. Heavy air raids on Tallinn, Tartu, and other Estonian towns follow.

March 16

Battalion Narva is brought back to Estonia and joins forces with the 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division.

Tiit Noormets

43

April 22

One of the best known and most appreciated Estonian army leaders from the days of the War of Independence (1918–1920), Admiral Johan Pitka who had escaped to Finland in 1940, returns to Estonia to support and organize a fight against the Red Army.

May 6

Germany announces, in Estonia, conscription on a voluntary basis of men born in 1927–1928 to serve in the German aviation support staff (later women volunteers are also recruited). Nearly 1,000 volunteers serve in the Luftwaffe’s air defence artillery and signal service.

June 6

D-Day Landings of Allied Forces in Normandy (and western continental Europe).

June 9

A Soviet Red Army offensive against Finland’s Karelian Isthmus starts. The Finnish Army’s 200JR, consisting of Estonian volunteers, participates in the defensive battles.

June 23

The Red Army offensive, Operation Bagration, in the central section of the Eastern Front starts. German Army Group Mitte is defeated and the Red Army enters Poland.

July 24

German troops on the Narva front retreat to the Tannenberg Defence Line in the Sinimäed (Blue Mountains). The defensive battle at Sinimäed lasts till August 10. This is considered to be the biggest battle in the whole of Estonia’s history. German forces consisting of III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps, and assorted non-German Waffen-SS units (Estonian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Flemish) manage to stop the Red Army offensive, with great losses on both sides.

August 2

All Estonian men born in 1926 are mobilized into the German Army.

August 8

Almost 3,000 Estonian men born in 1927 are mobilized to serve as aviation support personnel – Luftwaffenhelfers – for the German air force.

August 10

A successful Red Army offensive starts in southern Estonia. Soviet power organs – the Central Committee of the

44

Estonians in World War II. A Chronology Estonian Communist (Bolshevik) Party and the Estonian Soviet of the People’s Commissars – return to Estonia.

August 19

1,800 Estonian volunteers in their Finnish armed forces return to Estonia of their own will to fight in the defence of their homeland.

August 25

Admiral Johan Pitka announces the formation of a military unit consisting of men who had avoided mobilization or deserted from the German army. These troops became to be called the Pitka Boys (pitkapoisid).

August 28

The Soviet of People’s Commissars of Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union announces a general mobilization of all Estonian men to the Red Army. (After conquering the whole of Estonia, more than 10,000 men are taken to military service.)

September 4

Armistice signed between Finland and the Soviet Union. Estonians who had fled to Finland are evacuated to Sweden.

September 17 Red Army offensive at the Emajõgi River Front, in Estonia, starts. The Red Army sends the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps Estonian to the battle. German troops retreat from Estonia and a mass-scale escape of Estonians to Sweden and Germany starts. Estonians serving in the German Army are taken as prisoners of war or go home and join the underground resistance movement or are evacuated to Germany with the German Army. Nearly 70,000 Estonians escape to the West. September 18 Jüri Uluots, the Prime Minister and acting-President of the Estonian Republic forms the Government of the Estonian Republic. The government announces restitution of Estonian independence. September 22 Units of the Red Army’s 8th Estonian Rifle Corps reach Tallinn. Groups of the Pitka Boys fight against both the German and Russian forces. September 29 Red Army lands on the Island of Muhu. The 8th Estonian Rifle Corps participates in the battles on the West Esto-

Tiit Noormets

45

nian islands. All the people from the Sõrve Peninsula, the main area of the battles, are evacuated to Germany. October 31

The offensive of the Red Army cuts through the land link between Germany and the German forces, which had retreated to Kuramaa (Courland) in Latvia. The Kuramaa battles between the encircled German troops in the Courland pocket (Kuramaa kott) and the Red Army start, and last till the end of the war.

November 1

In Germany, at the Neuhammer training camp, the re-formation of the 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division begins.

November 24 German troops evacuate from the Island of Saaremaa. All Estonian territory is now under the control of the Red Army. An armed resistance movement begins in Estonia, called the Forest Brethren, which lasts till the middle of the 1950s. August Sabbe, the last of the Estonian Forest Brothers, is killed in action in 1978. December 16 The Ardennes Offensive, the last great German offensive operation on the Western Front begins. The offensive ends in failure on January 25 1945. 1945 January 20

The 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division is sent to the East Front where it stays till the end of March fighting in defensive battles on the western bank of Oder in the region of Oppeln (Opole).

March 17

The Red Army sends the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps to participate in fighting at the Courland pocket. The Corps stays there till the end of the war, suffering heavy losses.

March 22

Allied Forces cross the River Rhine. Resistance of German Forces on the Western Front is about to break.

April 15

The 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division is moved from the Oder to the Eastern Front near the Czechoslovakian border where it stays till the end of the war.

46

Estonians in World War II. A Chronology

April 16

The Red Army offensive to conquer Berlin starts. In the fighting within the city, which last till May 2, a few Estonians are numbered among the defenders.

April 30

Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide.

May 5

Uprising against German power starts in Prague, the Czechoslovakian capital, spreading throughout the nation in a few days.

May 7

Unconditional surrender of Germany. World War II ends in Europe. The men from the 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division move through Czechoslovakian territory to surrender to US troops but most of them fall into the hands of the Czech rebels. Although considered prisoners of war, 500 are murdered by the Czech rebels. In Estonia this incident becomes to be known as ‘the Czech Hell’ (Tšehhi põrgu). The Czechs hand over more than 5,000 to the Red Army, who are sent to POW camps in Russia.

June 17

The Red Army brings the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps back from Courland to march festively into Tallinn.

June 23

Demobilization of the troops of the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps starts, lasting till 1946.

July

In the US Occupied Zone in Germany, the first Estonian prisoners of war are set free; (in the occupied zones of the Western Allies in Germany there are nearly 5,000 Estonian prisoners of war). In 1946 they are all set free, most of them emigrate from Germany as civilian refugees and go to the USA, Canada, and Australia. In the Soviet Union, Estonian prisoners of war are mostly sent to the Red Army’s labour battalions, from where they are released at the beginning of the 1950s. Thousands of prisoners of war are sent to the Gulag prison camps.

August 6

USA drops a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in Japan: another is dropped on Nagasaki, on August 9.

August 10

Japan decides to surrender.

September 2

Japan signs Act of Capitulation. World War II ends.

Part I ‘Our Lives Would Soon Be Turned Upside Down’: Soldiers’ Wars, Veterans’ Memories

My Biography: Memoirs of Childhood, Study Years, Territorial Defence Army and War, German Prison Camp and Time Spent in the Soviet Prison Camp1 Aleksander Loog, born 1914 I was born on July 8, 1914. My ancestors came from Villakvere village, in Laiuse Parish, Vaimastvere commune, in Tartumaa (Tartu County).2 My grandfather and grandmother had 9 children: 6 sons and 3 daughters. My father August was born in 1875 and was the eldest. At the beginning of the century my father and some of his brothers went to Russia to earn some money there. Father had been a master distiller of spirits in the Ufa province and was able to set up a farm and build a watermill. He got married in Russia, to girl of Latvian origin named Elisabeth, neé Diga in 1885. Then World War I started, the October revolution followed and a war between the White and Red Russians. Father could come home only when the war was over. Father had 4 sons: Eduard (b. 1908), Viktor (b. 1910), Villem (b. 1912), and me, Aleksander (b. 1914). So my birthplace is really the Ufa Oblast.3 In autumn 1921 our family returned to our home country, to the village of Villakvere. One of father’s brothers, Karl, remained in Russia to look after father’s farm. My grandfather had bequeathed the farmland to all his sons, about 30–40 hectares to everyone. So they started to build up their own farms and to cultivate the land. At the age of seven I went to the Villakvere Primary School and the next year [1922] to the Salla 6-year Primary School. Father was at the time a master distiller at the Salla spirits factory and rented the farm out. I went to the Salla School for 4 years and after graduating from the fifth form, at which time Father became a master distiller at the Kloostri factory, in the Harju region, we moved to that place and I graduated from the Kloostri Primary School. After that our family moved back to the home farm. We worked at the farm, raised cattle and had other animals. We had 15 cows, 4 horses, pigs, sheep, etc. In 1928, I went to study at the Tartu Technological Gymnasium. After graduating from my first year, I had pneumonia in the summer and had to skip one year at school for I was generally of a weak constitution. Because of that my inner organs remained weak. I made water procedures throughout the winter, kept a small window open and always had fresh air in the room. I did exercises and developed my chest which was weak. I slept on the porch, in a coat and felt boots, even when the temperatures inside and outside were the same, –10ºC or –15ºC. When spring came, I spent as much time

50

My Biography

outside as I could; I went to the woods, gathered herbs and drank tea made from them, breathing the fresh air and the smell of pine shoots. In winter I went to school again – this time to the Jäneda Farming School, trying to avoid town air. Father was at the time a master distiller at the spirits factory of the Jäneda Manor. I could live at home, near the school. In Jäneda there was a medical check-up at the beginning of the school year. The difference in my chest measurement when breathing in and breathing out was 15cm. This was very good and showed that my lungs were healthy. I continued taking care of my health with active sports: I swam, went skiing, and went in for track-and-field athletics. In doing this, my purpose was to strengthen my health. I succeeded. I graduated from the Jäneda Farming School in spring 1934 and went to work at the PolliMorna horticultural farm. In July 1935 I volunteered for the Tartu Cavalry Regiment. The service for young cadets lasted for two months; later I was sent to the Tondi Military School to attend the training courses of reserve officers, which I graduated from in May 1936. In July 1938 entrance examinations took place for the preparatory class of cadre officers. Tests had to be passed in Russian and German, in mathematics and in about 30 more subjects. I had to study every day from morning till evening. I got in. At the Military School one squad was formed from cavalrymen, other squads were formed of marines, airmen, and infantry. During the year we studied at the school we trained hard. The school also organized competitions in athletics, skiing, and self defence. I also participated in wrestling and boxing. The course was nearing the end in summer 1939. At the end of the studies there were again examinations, and according to the results a certain order of rank was made. This gave advantage in choosing a regiment. However, we cavalrymen had no choice. After graduating from the Military School I was appointed an ensign back at my Cavalry Regiment. At first I went to the 3rd squadron and later became the squad subaltern of the ski-cyclists’ squadron. Later, when we had served for a while I became a 2nd Lieutenant on the anniversary of the Republic of Estonia. The Cavalry Regiment had a tradition of riding every May from Tartu Town-hall Square to Värska in South Estonia. While in the Värska camp we saw troops coming from Russia in disordered columns.4 They were a shabby sight and we wondered how an army could have such an appearance. During the signing of the treaty of military bases we were on the alert. We were told to be ready to move towards the border and to go into action, or not, according to the orders of the high command. In summer 1940 we were in the Värska camp. We received an order to

Aleksander Loog

51

come quickly back to Tartu from Värska. However we were not allowed to move into our former barracks; the Red Army was already accommodated there. We were told to move to Elva where the Estonian military units were to be disbanded. In the course of disbanding the cavalry regiment I had to hand over all the skis and bicycles. The Russians received all the equipment on the basis of the inventory book. After all the equipment had been handed over, all men were dismissed. I had to go to Võru. Before going to Võru, I had married Ilse Meinberg in Tartu who was six years younger than me (b. 1920). We got a one-room apartment in Võru and I went to duty in the Võru military barracks by bicycle. The commander of the regiment was Colonel Iniapin. He was a very old man who loved alcohol and as a result often had roll-calls sounded at night. Everybody had to line up and whoever was late, was punished. There were also nightly expeditions. Even in winter we had to go on expeditions at night. The Colonel did so mostly when drunk. So I spent the winter in Võru, until in the spring of 1941, the deportations started. On June 13–14, during the mass deportations,5 many officers were gathered at the Headquarters, saying that we would all go to a tactical training camp in Irboska. Those who had come did not know they would not return. This became clear in the evening when buses returned empty. At the time, we already had political commissars; they had appeared when we were mixed up with the Russians in Võru. I was nominated as the Commanding Officer (CO) of the anti-tank defence squad, where there were four Estonians, the rest were all Russians. They had been brought from Russia as supplementary forces. We continued training, in Russian thereafter. One political commissar was nominated per battery. Our commissar was an Ukrainian who was good at skiing. We had a couple of competitions during the winter in the regiment. I and the Ukrainian went to represent our squad. From that time on he was very friendly with me. We had no political talk. He got no information of what I really thought. Neither did he keep an eye on me. However generally, the men started to keep quiet because some people had already disappeared and the others drew their own conclusions and were careful. One had to keep one’s mouth shout and not complain. By the way, we were given the same poor quality uniform as the soldiers of the Red Army had; our own uniforms were taken away. In summer 1941 we were again camping in Värska when the war started. We were at once taken to Võru. The sounds of battles were already heard from the south and additional forces from Russia were brought in. We were an infantry regiment. I was in the battery. The battery was horse-drawn and I had a riding horse to myself. Some of the

52

My Biography

battery’s soldiers moved on foot but those whose task it was to work with the big gun, mostly sat on its limber. So we started moving in marching order and saw along the edges of woods men in NKVD6 caps checking that no one disappeared into the woods. There were some attempts to escape but those men were shot at once. I remember that a colleague from the Military School, Lieutenant Grauer also wanted to escape but was shot. You had to be careful and move together with the column and nowhere else. The movement was organized as follows: when we stopped to have a rest, everybody had to get entrenched to be sheltered in case of a bombardment; then a whistle sounded and we moved on. A stop lasted about half an hour which was spent on digging trenches. I wanted to sleep very much. It was really tiring staying awake day and night. However it was harder for the soldiers who had to move on foot. During the march it was at once notable when we crossed the border. There were no roads; it was mainly brush, fields lying fallow and a generally shabby look. Farther on in Russia we also saw villages and fields. At the beginning of July we arrived at a road taking a certain direction. The unit turned off the main road, received an order to assume a position, got entrenched and waited for the Germans to attack and give them a battle. I noticed that the noise of the battles started passing us from the left and from the right. The Germans were advancing in a wedge formation.7 When [they were] on a main road, they were moving in motorized [columns] and penetrating farther into the land. The first site of our positions was out-of-the-way, so that we did not see any Germans. Only war refugees were moving along the village roads and they told that the Germans were pushing on and that they would be here soon. This gave me hope that if a suitable moment came, I could go over to the other side. I thought that I could not go any further into Russia as I had given an oath to fight for the Republic of Estonia. Then a moment came when there was silence ahead and the noise of the battles sounded only from the sides. I have remembered the date – July 8 [1941] for this was my birthday. I decided that this was a good night for getting away. There were two other Estonians among the soldiers. One was called Keres, he was from Valga and was a driver of the gun’s vehicle. The other was from Järvamaa and he was a gunner. I told them that the time had come to choose whether to return home or stay behind the lines in Russia. The boys agreed to return to Estonia. So we left, between the bushes, until we reached a village where we crept on between the furrows of a potato field and from there on into the woods. I had seen from the map that we had to go through a marshy area to reach the other side where the Germans were.

Aleksander Loog

53

A summer night is light and we could move on rather well. We skirted the wet area and by morning we reached a meadow where there was also a barn. Further on we saw a lot of people; it was like some sort of gathering. These people were civilians: women milking cows, and there were also some bearded old men. We were in full Red Army uniforms; we could not throw away the insignia for we did not know whom we might meet on the way. There was no army there, only civilians who asked where we were going and warned that the Germans were nearby and would shoot us. We talked for a while to those people. Then we went through the woods and onto a big road, where the Germans in helmets were moving on motorcycles. Their chests were bare; they were laughing and talking about something. We had taken off our uniform shirts before reaching the road, rolled them together and I also hid my pistol in the bundle. Thus our chests were also bare. We joined the Germans who were all sunbathing. We went on together; the Germans did not notice us. So we came to the Velikaya River along the road. There were many people here and also a guard on the bridge. I told the boys that if we wanted to get to Estonia, we had to swim across the river and go to Estonia secretly through Latvia. At the same time we heard loud German propaganda through the loudspeaker: the Germans were saying that if Estonians wanted to get home they had to come over and be sent home at once. This talk was all in Estonian for the Germans knew that many Estonians were getting over at Porkhov. I would rather have swum over that wide river but the other boys could not swim. I did not want to leave them on their own. They proposed to cross the bridge and report ourselves. They expected to be taken home and thus be saved from walking through the woods. We did that. The Germans told us, yes, bald, bald nach Hause,8 only [you must] go to that gathering place. We were among the first to go over to the Germans but soon there were about a hundred men around us. The majority came over when the battles around Porkhov and Staraya Russa started. The Germans said they were waiting for more men to gather and promised to send us all home then. At first we were not even fed. They said that the food supplies had not arrived yet and that the Russians had left nothing either, so we had to wait a bit. Later they made us millet porridge. In a few days some of the men were sent to Latvia, through Ostrov to Dünaburg [Daugavpils]; there they started to take notes about where everybody had come from. The Germans, the interpreters, and also some Estonians were busy taking those notes. At first we moved on foot; there were, by then, about 600 Estonians in Dünaburg. Then it turned out that they did not even have any water for drinking, so all 600 men were driven to a lake to drink like horses. In a few days a freight train arrived; everyone was

54

My Biography

herded into the carriage, given a loaf of bread and we were told that now we were to be taken home. Thus we continued on to Kaunas and from there the train went on in another direction, to East Prussia. So we were again deceived. We were promised one thing but got another. In Prussia we came to the village of Ebenrode where there were big paddocks. Here people of many nationalities had been gathered together; all in separate camps. The Estonians were all together in one camp. Our biggest worry was food. At first we were given a kind of soup made of rotten beet. The soup had an awful stink. At home, even pigs did not get such food. On the first day no-one touched the soup; later we simply had to eat it. We also lacked water to drink, for it was July and very hot but we were only given half of a mess-tin of water for drinking. There was also no water to wash with, so all kinds of ailments began to occur, as well as lice. We could not wash ourselves. The soil was a mixture of sand and clay; we slept on the earth. We scraped hollows of about half a meter deep into the earth to hide from the wind. My companion was the CO of the anti tank squad; we made a hole together and had a greatcoat to cover us two when we slept in that hole. During daytime, we took all our clothes off, and sat naked as we hunted and killed the lice. In the evening we put our clothes back on. Once a day we had to queue up for food: to get that beet soup. Now dysentery was spreading. Many men fell ill. I had preserved my wristwatch and I kept counting my pulse. I have generally a low pulse but there it was exceedingly low. The lowest count I got was 36 times a minute. Here, in the camp of Dünaburg they started to ask questions and made lists of those who had been political commissars. Generally the Germans did not take things away from the prisoners. But they sought out the communists and gipsies and when they were found, they were separated from the rest of us. I started to think of how to escape from the camp. I could not even think of simply running off; I was too weak for that. But there was a possibility to get out of the camp to work. In the morning a German Sergeant-Major came to the camp gates and took people to work. Groups of 10 or 15 went to do fieldwork and even worked at a large bakery. When out of the camp, you had opportunities to find some food or get additional food from civilians. Thus an idea was born to get out, although they said that officers were not taken. I did not pay attention [to this advice] for my uniform was not an officer’s, I looked like everybody else. I went to the gates to wait for the German guard. A lot of people thronged there already. So, I had been at the gates for two mornings but had not yet got work. On the third morning, I went to the gates when it was still dark and when in the morning the German guard came, I was among the 20 men chosen. We were taken to the town and put on a truck. We were taken to the military

Aleksander Loog

55

depot where 10 men were set down and 10 went further on. I was among those set down. We had to load all kinds of goods onto trucks; the depot was being taken to another place. At first a bag of peas was given to four men to lift but lifting the bags was very difficult; the guards understood that we were too weak for the task and gave us some food. We got marmalade and bread, ate them and felt better; then we kept on loading the pea bags and later all kinds of other things like canned food. Later we loaded sugar; we made small holes in the bags and ate sugar by the handful. We got energy and worked till evening. We were given more food. Finally we got a mess-tin full of marmalade and a loaf of bread and took them to the camp; as we did not eat the camp food any more we gave it to our companions. I thought that when the others learnt what a good a job we had, it might be impossible to get out next morning. I made a list of men and gave it to the Sergeant-Major, so that he could call the roll next morning and avoid new hungry men being chosen. The Sergeant-Major agreed to do so. This work lasted for two weeks. Those two weeks saved me from falling ill with dysentery and my health became normal again. Then there was no work any more. In the autumn, when August was over, in September and October it started to rain. The ground became soft and we had to build wooden barracks to live in for it was terribly cold outside and it rained constantly. Those barracks were 50–60 metres long and 2 metres wide. So many men were accommodated in them that we could sleep only on our sides. When we wanted to turn in to sleep, we had to do it all together. There were many rats in the barracks and we had to keep them from biting off our ears. We were also tortured by lice. In November an order arrived that all soldiers, i.e. the Privates, would now be sent to Estonia. There were more than a thousand men in the column. The officers were told, however, that they could not go, that the Germans were waiting until the battle was over at Leningrad and we could go then to be used in the eastern areas to keep order. We could go nowhere else. We wanted to go to the front. We had come over to fight against communism. But nobody paid attention to what we wanted. We were still in the camp and diseases were rampant among us. Then we were sent to the environs of Königsberg, into the camp of Stablack where there were wooden barracks. These were high buildings through which the wind blew. There was also a stove in the barrack and 100–150 officers in one room. There were quadruple bunks in the barrack and the men were placed onto them so that in the lower bunks slept the [younger] junior officers. The higher the bunk was, the higher was the rank of the officer who slept on it. Majors and Generals had the highest positions for it was warmer there. Near the windows there were

56

My Biography

big cracks in the walls and the wind kept blowing through them. At that time, in November and December, it was already rather cold. For it was the winter of 1941. But in those barracks we could at least think of washing ourselves. The killing of lice was also organized. Our old clothes were destroyed and old French uniforms given instead of them, sometimes partly covered with blood. The bunks had a thin layer of wood chips and the blanket was also very thin and this is how we had to be there in this cold weather. The stove was heated but it was very cold and the most senior officers kept closest to the stove. Junior men had to stay farther away. I thought that if I remained unoccupied I should soon be dead of cold because when sleeping I felt myself trembling. The flannel I used for washing froze solid. One could sleep only for an hour and a half; then it was time for exercise to get warm. I often ran to get warm. Everything was covered with ice in the wash room. I rubbed myself all over with cold water, so that my skin became red; then went back under the blanket again. A bit of sleep, then it was cold again and the procedure had to be repeated. And so on, several times a night. Our food was mostly mashed swede. The cooks in that camp were French, Belgians, and Poles. There were no Russians in that camp: just west European prisoners. The Estonians were starving like the others. The French and Belgians had the support of the Red Cross. They had a contract with the Red Cross and did not eat the prisoners’ food. The cooks kept telling the Estonians to take as much of the mashed swede as they wanted. The mess-tin was about 1–1.5 litres. So sometimes men ate their tinful and went and refilled it and ate that too. But the food was so poor that the stomachs of the men became swollen; we all had big stomachs and weak legs. All this was very bad for our health. So then I started to look around at how to get out of the prison zone. For it was also possible to get out. Some German guards came and asked who would like to do some fieldwork. True, it was December, but there was a great lack of workers on the farms, and there were lots of potatoes still in the ground. So we could go and dig potatoes. Farmers came to ask for help from the military and thus we could work in the fields a couple of times. I remember a day, in December, just before Christmas Eve when the carrots had to be pulled up. There was a whole field of carrots and it had already snowed a bit and in some places the ground was frozen. The farmer said that this was the last opportunity [to harvest the carrots], that after Christmas there would be no more pulling up of carrots and that we could take as many carrots as we wanted, because they would otherwise remain under the snow. I had my knapsack with me which was quite big; I could hardly carry it when full of carrots. I took it to the camp and the contents were a great help. I could eat a few

Aleksander Loog

57

carrots every day and give some to my friends. Sometimes we also got potatoes. We had an iron stove in the barrack. We cut the potatoes into slices and put them on the hot iron plate. The potatoes became soft and we ate them. There is nothing bad to be said about the Germans. Sometimes they even gave us bread from their own supplies. None of them were hostile towards us. I also got into contact with my folk at home: the soldiers who had been taken home in November took a letter from me with them. Thus my relatives learnt that I was alive. They had been informed that I had been killed in a bomb explosion at the very beginning of the war. In fact it was another man with the same name; I even knew the man who had been killed. My parents had thought me dead and my letter came as a great surprise. Then they started to send me parcels. This helped me a lot; we were also helped by the Estonian National Relief (ENR).9 During the time we were in the Stablack camp, the ENR sent us woollen things and food. But it was nevertheless too little, because our bodies were too weak, we had been starving for a long time and the diseases had sapped our strength; so we only started to get better in March. Generally we had all kinds of sores and abscesses. Our feet were so swollen that we could not wear boots; we had to wear slippers or galoshes. Then came the 1942 Anniversary of the Republic of Estonia (February 24) and we were brought National Relief parcels and the ENR representatives visited us. They told that in the near future younger officers, those who were under 30 years were intended to be taken back to Estonia. They were to be trained to be sent to the newly conquered areas. However, the meagre transport did not allow everyone to go all at once; which is why some of us had to wait a bit. And so it was that in March two buses came and the younger officers, I among them, were returned to Estonia. We were sent from Valga to Tallinn via Pärnu. There was also a reception ceremony in Pärnu’s Endla Theatre. An orchestra was playing, the people cheered but we did not look very well. I had an old bloody French greatcoat on; a galosh on one foot and a slipper on the other. There was a festive dinner in the Endla Theatre and then we went to Tallinn. The Germans wanted to send us to training courses at once but we said that we were so starved and worn out that we needed rest. So we were given a couple of weeks of rest. So we all got better and in a couple of weeks we gathered together again; we did a short training course and after that the Germans wanted to use us in ports and airports as border police checking documents. So time passed on [through 1942 to 1943]. The Germans wanted to send some of us to SS units, to a training school in Germany, saying that our training was inadequate, that we needed the training of a German

58

My Biography

officer. But I thought that this was not what I wanted, not an SS-officer; if anything then perhaps [I would accept being] Wehrmacht but not the SS. At first I started to avoid any contact and visited the doctors to get a release from military service. I was told that if I wanted to be released, I had to appear before a state commission where my fate would be decided. I was, however, studying at that time at the University of Tartu. I had, in the meantime, submitted a study application. So I was able to attend lectures of the Faculty of Physical Education for a couple of months in 1943. I could not take any examinations because the University was closed; only the Medical Faculty remained working. I was given a directive to go to Klooga where officers were collected to be sent to Germany. I thought that if the medical board deemed me unfit for military service, I would be released. I was sent to the commission in Tallinn. At the time I had high blood pressure. I thought that if I stayed awake through the night, walked a lot on foot after travelling, I would be tired and have high blood pressure. So I went to the commission and the pressure was 160, the normal being 120. I had also got a medical paper saying that I had the symptoms of myocardial disorder. My heart was slightly widened, and was in fact caused by my sporting activities! The commission unfortunately decided that whereas I was unfit for active service, I could serve ‘out of the ranks’ so I was not released. I was given a paper and sent back to Klooga.10 There was another commission [in Klooga]; they [the Tallinn commission] said that if the Klooga commission decided not to send me away, I could stay in Estonia. I doubted that the [Klooga] commission existed; but went there anyway. At the station I met a soldier of that regiment and he told me that, [indeed] there was no commission at Klooga. All who went there were at once listed and sent to Germany. I turned around for I had been in Germany once and had very bad memories of it. I started to go from the Klooga station towards Keila along the railway lines. There I had an acquaintance from our former Cavalry Regiment, Lieutenant Valner. I went to his place and stayed in his apartment for the night. This was just after the March air-raids, when Tallinn was bombed in the night of March 9, 1944.11 Many Tallinn citizens had fled to the countryside. When we were having supper, a Captain appeared the same one who had given me the written orders to go to Klooga – Captain Randla. For me, it was a surprise but I stayed calm and said that I had gone to Klooga and got a few days of rest before leaving. And that was that. Next morning, I went on to Tallinn. There I met Lieutenant Pool who was the adjutant of the 3rd Frontier Guard Regiment [3FGR], which was just being formed. They needed a CO for the training company and he invited me to take that post. I agreed at once for that was the only possibility to avoid being

Aleksander Loog

59

sent to Germany. If I did not go to the Frontier Guard Regiment, I would become a kind of defector. In going there [to the 3FGR], no-one would be looking for me. That was an Estonian regiment formed of men from Läänemaa (Lääne region), Pärnumaa (Pärnu region), and Viljandimaa (Viljandi region). The senior officer was Colonel Kaermaa. Concerning the weapons and uniform, it was Wehrmacht uniform with all the insignia and [we had] all the equipment the Germans had. We were armed with rifles and machine guns. I started to fulfil my tasks in Tudulinna as a Company Commander. I had to start training the men. Although some of the men had been trained under the Republic of Estonia, we had to retrain again and introduce the new weapons. It was not long before we had to take a position at the frontline on the north coast of Lake Peipsi. So, my activity as the CO of the training company came to an end and I became the CO of an anti-tank defence company. This was according to my having graduated from the Tondi Military School in the Estonian Republic. I spent this summer [1944] at the frontline. It was generally rather calm there, although sometimes there was some artillery fire. There were no battles at the time in this region, except for one occasion. In the Narva River there is Permisküla Island on which was a battalion (not ours). The Russians crossed to that island, the battalion was beaten backwards and the Russians occupied the island. We had some small tanks at our disposal, meant for scouting purposes; we took those and prepared to resist if the Russians attempted to cross the river. Thus the summer ended. The Russians started an onslaught. Then we received an order to start retreating. This was in the autumn, in September [1944]. The Germans went first; the Estonians were left behind to cover the retreat. At first nobody knew how far we would go. First we went to the Alajõe line [on the north coast of Lake Peipsi], then further back. I was still on horseback and was not directly connected with the battles. Then we came to the environs of Avinurme [12 km inland from the NW coast of Lake Peipsi], it was dark and a big battle started. Russian tanks were coming from the south; they had broken through [the German front] at Mustvee [on the west coast of Lake Peipsi]. The Frontier Guard Regiments [1FGR, 2FGR, 3FGR] were destroyed, there was no resistance. Everybody tried to save themselves. I took a courier, also on horseback, with me and we went towards the West. We stopped a couple of times in barns. We let the horses feed for a couple of hours and had some food too. Then we hurried on. There were bodies on the road; the Russians had bombed a German transport convoy, some carts and field-guns had been bombed to pieces. The towns we passed through on our way were empty; we saw not a soul. The Russian tanks were coming from the south. Finally we came to Tori. We found an abandoned

60

My Biography

German transport convoy in the woods with all sorts of equipment and food. The men had fled but left behind the food and other stuff called Marketenderware12; vodka, cognac, cigarettes, marmalade and chocolate but also blankets and other things. It seemed all this had already been thoroughly searched. When we reached there I gave my horse, whose hooves were swollen, to a farmer. There were Russians already all around us and there had been several raids. It was dangerous to move about on horseback. We also had uniforms on. We got a bicycle in return for the horse from the farmer. The courier also swapped his horse for a bicycle. So, we went on together by bicycle. We met two SS-men and one more man and so there were five of us. From the direction of Pärnu bombing was heard and we did not want to go there. We went towards the Läänemaa region, in the northwest. We stayed at a farm where there was threshing going on. There were three daughters at the farm and they had a sewing machine. I had two blankets. The courier also had two blankets. We gave the blankets to the girls and asked them to sew us civilian clothes. They sewed us jackets and trousers of a sports’ style and we were thus able to take off our uniforms and looked like civilians. The military documents simply had to be destroyed. I hid my driver’s licence, because the photo was of me in military uniform, and my pistol. I also gave my bicycle to the people of that farm. We spent a few days at the farm and helped with the threshing; then an idea was born to start going home. My courier was from Viljandi. We thought that we would at first go to Viljandi and check the situation; the courier would then stay in Viljandi and I would move on towards home in the Vaimastvere commune in Tartumaa. We kept moving along country roads. On our way we met a man who was moving very awkwardly. He dragged one leg along; it was apparent his hip was causing him pain. When we caught up with him, it turned out we knew him. He was an adjutant of the same Frontier Guard Regiment; only from another battalion and his home was in the Tarvastu commune in Viljandi region. He had also got away from the mess [at Avinurme], and had spent some time in Haapsalu. He was in civilian clothes. He had got them and new documents from his brother in Haapsalu. There had been air-raids on Haapsalu and he had been hurt by a log. He had initially been moving along a big road. On his way he met a column of prisoners who had been caught by NKVD during the raids. The guards of that column stopped him, and told him to go with them. He had tried to explain that he had the right documents, but in vain. He was put among the prisoners. It seemed someone had got away and the guards were interested in having the right number of prisoners. So he kept limping at the back of the column until, during a stop at the edge of a drainage ditch, he could hide himself in the

Aleksander Loog

61

brush, stayed behind and got away. He said there had been about 50–60 men in the column. After that he did not walk on the big roads, but kept moving along the country roads and tracks in the woods like us. We came to the Viljandi cemetery where I stayed behind and my companion went home, to get some information. He came back and said that his mother had been home and his sister too. But the town government was in the hands of the Russians: the order was Soviet and an Executive Committee was the most powerful authority in the town. Younger men were already being mobilized. This was a very unsafe situation. I thought that as I had no documents I was a kind of outlaw. I had to get myself documents. According to my date of birth, I was also of an age to be mobilized. I went to Lieutenant Aardemäe who was my companion at the [Tondi] Military School and whose father was a head of the school. Lieutenant Aardemäe had served in the same regiment as I had. By the way, after the war he was for a while the head of the Communal Section of the town’s Executive Committee. But later he got a 25+5 anyway.13 I spent a couple of days at his place and then went to Lieutenant Uibo’s [home], his sister worked for the Executive Committee. I got a Personalausweiβ14 from him, validated for the period of the German occupation, where his sister wrote all my personal data, faking the year of my birth in order to avoid mobilization, making me older than 35. The Chairman of the Executive Committee, who understood nothing, signed the document; it got also a seal on it and thus it became my passport. Having got this document, I moved on. By chance, I came to the farm where a distant relative of mine, called Marta, lived. Threshing was just under way, many villages had gathered and my relative was standing in the doorway. She recognized me at once. It was certainly a great surprise. I stayed at the farm for two weeks, helping with the threshing and later to pick potatoes. I started to organize a new document for myself. I wanted to go to university. I had my papers from the former time at Tartu University. In autumn 1944, the University started to admit not only new students but also the old ones who wanted to continue their studies. But before being admitted to the University one had to pass a kind of commission where they examined everybody carefully. It was a hard task to make those documents that were already in the University’s archives fit for the times. No documents telling about my being at the military school could be left in the University’s files and my correct date of birth had to be fixed in the identity card. As a relative’s daughter was working at the Kursi commune centre, she could help me. Now my document was in order. It was, however, necessary to become a student, as students were not mobilized. I got this done also; now I only had to pay a visit home. I

62

My Biography

wanted to know if mother and father were at home and well. What was the situation there? So I stole to the farmhouse at night, peeped in through the window, saw that there were no strangers, only Father was in bed on his back. He had been hit in his back by a bullet from an airplane. Mother was knitting a sock. Near the stove there was an old woman dozing off. As there were no strangers in the room, I went in and naturally everybody’s surprise was great seeing me alive and well. I told them that I would stay for a night and a day and go away the next night. And so it was: I changed my clothes, ate, took some food with me and went away, on foot again. I went in the direction of Tartu and chose a byway to enter the town. I did not want to use the major road where there were guards waiting. I went to my uncle’s and started to take steps in connection with the University, and I was successful. I got a lot of encouragement from Fred Kudu, the Dean of the Department of Physical Education. I knew him from the time when I gave horse-riding lessons to the students while serving in the Tartu Cavalry Regiment. Fred Kudu was also a student at the time so he knew me and admitted me to the University. I was admitted to the second year. The period of study was four years but I passed the examinations quicker and studied at the University from autumn 1944 till autumn 1946. I stayed at the University as a teacher of the Department of Physical Education because there were no teachers after the war; and the University needed men. During the two years I taught at the University, nobody showed any interest towards me. I worked hard, taught lessons and went in for sports. I participated in all kinds of competitions. I had nothing to be afraid of; I had done nothing against humanity but [my travelling attracted attention]. After I had been in Moscow on a scholarly visit lasting a couple of months, I went to an Alpine camp in the Caucasus and later to Riga where I represented the University at the anniversary of the Institute of Physical Education. When I came back, some people hinted to me that there had been questions about me. I kept travelling about and that had attracted attention. On April 1, [1948] I was in the University’s gym watching a weight lifting contest from the balcony, when suddenly two men came to me and asked, in Russian, for my documents. I showed them my documents and I was at once taken away and brought to the NKVD [building] to a cellar room. There I was closed into a ‘box’, that is a room of a square metre with a cement floor where there was a stool and a mug of water. This is where I had to sit till the next night, that is, more than a day and night and then I was taken to an interrogation. I did not deny anything. For it was known that I was an officer of the Estonian army. I told where I had been, told about the German army and how I became a prisoner.

Aleksander Loog

63

Naturally I did not tell about becoming a prisoner the way it really was; I said that I had been wounded and taken prisoner. Then they started to ask who had been with me and where they were now. They wanted me to grass on the others but they did not get anything from me. I did not tell them any names. Thus it lasted for four months. Then I was in a cell with other prisoners. Interrogations took place at night and prisoners were brought back to the cell for the day. Prisoners came and went. There were also people I knew. Innocent men. But innocence was not what counted there. Everybody got 25+5. Interrogations were mostly in Russian. The main interrogator was a Georgian in a General’s uniform, a big man. There were others too, but he interrogated me most often. The court hearing took place on July 26 at the Leningrad Military Tribunal, which took place in Tartu. Practically everybody got 25+5 in a prison camp and confiscation of all property. The Russians said that as they did not have a capital sentence, the 25+5 replaced it. After the session of the tribunal we were taken to the prison. We could all certainly guess what the sentence would be. It made one laugh. We were sure we would not survive all that time in a prison camp. I thought that I would escape whenever a possibility arose. Therefore I had to keep as healthy as possible. So I did a lot of exercise. In November we were taken to Tallinn. We were moved from the Tartu prison in a line, accompanied by dogs and guards. We were told that if we dared to take one step to the left or to the right we would be shot at once without warning. Thus we went to the railway station in a wagon and when in Tallinn [were taken] to the Patarei Prison.15 Here we were accommodated in cells with thick walls. The cells were so full of men that we had very little room. In January 1949 we were sent eastwards on a freight train. There were 16 Estonians in my carriage, plus prisoners of other nationalities and the carriage was packed full. The stops were [generally] very short. In some places we stopped for 10 days and then a new stage of journey was organised. We were mixed with criminals. From then on being with the criminals meant life became more complicated. The criminals tried to take away anything that seemed at least a bit useful for them. There were finally 10 Estonians in the carriage. A major incident occurred when we were in Sverdlovsk, in a peresõlka,16 that is a prison where the next stage was being prepared; 3 platnoi’s17 were let into our cell. They came looking for clothes or food they could take away from the other men. There were three of them: one Kazakh of about 100 kg, one dark-skinned Chechen, and one Russian. This band of robbers had a division of labour. The Russian held an empty mattress bag open and the others took things away from the men and threw them into the bag. Thus Lithuanians, Latvians and others gave

64

My Biography

their things away one by one. I told the Estonians that we should not do so but give them a good beating instead. I said that the first man whom they approached should strike back. And so it happened. The Kazakh came to a Paide boy who was smoking a pipe and told him to give away his tobacco. The boy struck him instead in the face. The Kazakh took out a knife but I wrenched it out of his hand. The other men came to help and we beat him and the Chechen up. They fled from us. We did not see them any more. The guards might have taken their bag, because it seems they had an agreement with the guards who got a part of their booty. There were no more such incidents. We were still going eastwards, through Novosibirsk, then through Krasnoyarsk until Taishet, north of Lake Baikal in Siberia. This was a big region of prison camps and here the construction of BAM18 was going on. We also helped to partly build the railway. There was the Central Office of Prison Camps in Taishet but we were sent 50–60 km farther. After every few kilometres there was a camp, with about 1,000 prisoners in every one of them. Then we came to a place with barracks where before us had been Japanese prisoners-of-war. We were told that the Japanese had been sent away and that they had brought us here instead of them. And so the work started. It was the beginning of spring; the thaw had started. There were bunks in the barracks and we had only those clothes with us that we were wearing. There was nothing to sleep on besides wooden bunks. We had to sleep under fufaika’s.19 We also wore padded trousers. There was nothing to be put under the head as a pillow. If you put boots under your head, your feet got cold. The work was organized so that men who had got less than 10 years went logging; men with 25 years did not go to the woods, they had to work harder. They had to dig and put sand under the rails and other work of the kind. We were searched when going to work and when coming back we were searched again. When taken to work, four sticks were dug into the ground to mark the area we were not allowed to leave. It was hard physical labour all day long. The men whom the guards did not like got special attention. Thus one man was shot through the thigh when his foot was over the rail marking the borderline not to be passed. The guards had been convinced that all those prisoners there were fascists. The guards were mostly Asiatics. They could even have been regular soldiers but they had been trained and warned. I thought that I would not survive 25 years there. I intended to use every opportunity to somehow escape. There were two attempts of escape during the summer. On both occasions the men were caught and locked in the isolator and we never saw them again. Those two attempts in summer were as if [fate] meant to warn us that if someone thought of escaping he would not succeed.

Aleksander Loog

65

This made us think, certainly, but I did not change my plans. One had to take risks, for it was a question of life and death but I had to wait for an opportunity. Once a carriage ran off the rails and a work-brigade was sent to move along the rails with shovels and throw sand between the rails. That was a mobile brigade and consisted of men sentenced to 10 years of camp. Those men were sent to the place of the accident and we were sent to do their work on the railway. At lunchtime we were brought food. It was a very salty fish soup. The guards ate the same food. After lunch we set about working at once. But soon we got thirsty, both the prisoners and the guards, for we had eaten salty fish. When we were sent to work on the railway I had spoken about escaping to two men, one Ukrainian and one Belorussian. The latter was a university teacher and the Ukrainian, a cavalry lieutenant. We had agreed that if an opportunity presented itself, we would use it. There were 30 men in the brigade but I could trust nobody else. I was the only Estonian. There were men of 22 nationalities in the brigade. All in all there were 42 nationalities represented in our camp. There was even a Czech General among us, and an American pilot of Chinese origin as well as Swedes, Englishmen and others. I had also made some preparations for an escape because I had got a package from home and had saved some flour, about 600 g. I had hidden it in the lining of my undershirt. I had also 500 g of sugar also hidden in my clothes, so that it would not be discovered at the daily search. And naturally matches, between the linings of my cap. A guard from near us went to fetch water with his mess-tin. I said that the right occasion had come; we threw our shovels on the ground and ran 50–60 metres along the railway where there was a bend. The other guard saw us doing it but he could not open fire because other men were in between. We ran into the woods. I knew that through the woods, at the distance of about 300 km in the south was a railway passing Lake Baikal. I had decided to reach that railway. We had no map but I had studied the surroundings on a map earlier. Camps were all located along the railway. In between them there was primeval forest, an uninhabited area. So we headed for the south at once. At first we heard gunshots and dogs barking. All work in the camps in this region was stopped. All the guards were used for chasing us. In the woods I met only the Belorussian. The Ukrainian had deviated so much from the right course that we did not meet him any more. Later I learnt that he had been shot while escaping. The two of us moved towards the south and it was soon growing dim. We reached a creek. This was lucky for now we could move for quite a while along the bottom of the creek to hide our tracks so that the dogs could not smell us. Maybe this was what saved us. From there we went further into the

66

My Biography

mountains. This was a wooded mountainous region. When it became quite dark and we heard no more gunshots and barking, we stopped. There were some bigger trees growing in that spot. In the woods dangerous beasts could move at night. So we climbed up a big tree with strong branches. We squatted in that tree till morning came and then set out in the right direction once more. Moving on, we went through a thicket and further to higher mountains. Our daily ration of food was two spoonfuls of flour and one spoonful of sugar. We were most of all concerned about thirst for there was no water in those mountains. Our throats went dry and we became weak. On the third day we came to a clearing where we saw that some bigger beasts had been resting. We found an animal trail and that brought us into a valley where there was a creek from where we got water. We kept moving only at daytime for it was not easy to find our way at night. We moved towards the south finding our way following the growth of moss on trees and the location of the sun at dawn. The sun was sometimes shining in the day and this helped us to find the right way. On the fifth or sixth day we came to a river. On the other bank we saw smoke rising. This seemed to be some kind of settlement ... We intended to cross the river. But how? It was September. The current was too strong and the water too cold. We were discussing the situation in the brush, when a young couple, a man and a woman, came rowing across the river in a boat. They pulled the boat onto the river bank and went towards the woods. We used the opportunity, jumped into the boat and rowed across. We arrived at a potato field. The potatoes had been picked but there were also some potatoes left. The moon was up, so we filled our pockets full of potatoes left on the field. Then we came to a road. Here we kept moving only at night. On the tenth day we came to a railway. There was a train standing at the station transporting coal. We hid ourselves in a wagon under some coal. We were tired, hungry, unshaven, and cold. The train soon started to move. We fell asleep. When we woke, the train had stopped at a station. Now we had to find out where we were going – to the west or to the east. The main thing was to get farther from the region of the prison camps. My companion went to the door, looked out and said we were in Kansk. This was to the west of Taishet. Now we knew we were going westwards. The main thing was to get as far as possible. Soon, during a stop, some people came to check the wagon. I hid under the coal; my companion stayed near the door, was noticed and taken away. So I remained alone. After a while the train went on. I fell asleep again. Then I woke up and heard that the coal was being shovelled out of the wagon. Under the coal, just beside me, there was an opening in the wagon’s wall; I looked through and saw a man

Aleksander Loog

67

with a gun walking outside. The wagons were on the land of a factory, unhooked from the train. When the men were having a rest and smoking, sitting at the door, I went out from [the wagon] between them. At first they looked frightened but did not react. I started to run towards the station as fast as I could. There is hot water in every station in Russia. I wanted to drink hot water for I was frozen through and through. At the station building there was a big mug chained to the tap. I started to drink. I drank a lot of hot water and felt nice and warm. I finished drinking and saw a train coming in. On a carriage was written Vladivostok-Moscow. The train stopped and a lively movement [of soldiers] started. I tried to get away. Behind the station building I met two men; one was in uniform and had a gun, the other in civilian clothes. They demanded my documents. I had none and as I looked suspicious I was taken along with them. At some distance there was a building. This was a department of the Ministry of Security. I was invited in and then interrogated. I had to make up a new biography in order not to be sent back to the prison camp for that would have been my death; I would have been beaten up. They asked where I was born. I answered that [I had been born] in the Caucasus; at a collective farm called Linda where, amongst others, Estonians lived. I had visited the place while on an Alpine camp in 1947. I had visited Sukhumi and the Linda farm. I remembered the name of the head of the collective farm: Plovits. He had several sons. I said Plovits was my name. Then they asked where I had worked during the German occupation. I said in Pskov, as a railway official. Then they asked where I worked now and how I had come to that town. I remembered the 1949 deportations20 and I told them that as I was from Estonia, I had been deported to the Far East. But how did I happen to be here now? I said that at the time of deportation I had left the train in Krasnoyarsk, the column went on and I stayed behind. The interrogator believed me. I had to win time. I was also starving. I was fed and they started also to treat my feet which were bruised and swollen. Then I was sent to Krasnoyarsk. At Krasnoyarsk prison I got treatment and vitamins and I was nursed until I started to get better but then the interrogations started again. They had learnt that no such person had been sent to that place [Krasnoyarsk]. Then information from the Caucasus arrived that no such person had been born there. I said again that there had to be some mistake. They believed me long enough. But then a telegram arrived from Pskov saying that no such person had lived there. Then doubt set in. So it continued for several months. I was able to gain strength meanwhile. At that time all kinds of people stopped at the prison. I saw Lithuanians and Latvians but not a single Estonian.

68

My Biography

Then I started to think that in the end they would find out about me from the archives. I had to be quicker, to tell everything; perhaps my punishment would then be easier. Then I made a proposal to the investigator, the head of the department, promising to tell him everything about myself, who I was and where I came from, on two conditions. He thought for a while and agreed. My conditions were that I get lunch, an officer’s lunch, such as they were eating themselves, and that I would not be sent back to where I had been. The interrogator agreed. During the lunch I kept talking and he wondered how I had succeeded in escaping and about everything else. In a couple of days two NKVD officers arrived with a dog from the Taishet headquarters. I was handcuffed and off we went to Taishet. They said that their highest authority wanted to see this fugitive. I was brought to him, offered a seat and he said that I had greatly damaged the Soviet Union and that I should be shot. But he also said that I had suffered so much and therefore he would let me live. Every day of the All-Union search had cost at least 5,000 roubles, according to him. Work had been stopped at the camps for several months. After that I was locked in an isolator. This was a small room where I was together with a Tartar who was a former commissar. The Tartar was a communist but an opponent of Stalin and a supporter of Trotski.21 He continued to make his propaganda and had therefore been kept in prison for years. He explained me the whole system, how everyone suffered, how millions of people had been destroyed. We were given 400 g of bread and soup twice a day. We did not have to work. And we were taken out for a walk every day. Then there was a new tribunal and I got 25+5 again. This was now in compliance with paragraph 59/3.22 Sabotage and unwillingness to work. I was sent to the same region as before, to another camp, however. They said that this was a camp with a strict regime. We had to work in an open cast stone mine. We had to blow the rocks up with explosive, break the bigger rocks with a sledge-hammer and lift them onto trucks to be driven away, to some construction site. This was convict’s work and I had to do it for a whole year. Whoever did not work as much as was demanded got less food; if you worked more, you got an additional scoopful of porridge. After a while I was sent from this camp to another where all the suspicious convicts were sent, to get rid of them. Here the camp authorities wanted to send me to the north, towards Kolyma. The conditions were harder there and offered practically no opportunity of escape. They collected about 1,000 men and sent us towards Vladivostok by train. We came to a port. The convicts were mostly criminals there. Political prisoners had been earlier sent to various places, so I was suddenly among several thousand convicted criminals. We were taken

Aleksander Loog

69

around Sakhalin Island by boat; there Japan and the Kurile Islands were on the other side, and further to Magadan. In that camp, when you got your share of bread, you had to eat it at once, otherwise you would soon lose it. Better quality clothes were also taken away, that was what the company there was like. From this camp, men were sent away by sections, further towards the north, to work in the mines. I was sent to a camp where there were about a thousand men, [there were] only two Estonians in addition to me, younger men with a criminal record They came from Tartu and they had demanded money, pistol in hand, from a cashier. So, they were like highwaymen. They got 25+5. I told them my story and they became interested in it; they liked the idea of escaping from there. I did not agree with them, I said that there was nowhere to go from here. There were thousands of kilometres of tundra around us but they wanted to escape anyway. Then one day they did it. Suddenly some NKVD men appeared, put me in the back of a truck and took me to an interrogation. I was reprimanded for not letting [them] know that they [the two Estonians had] intended to escape. However, I had not known about it, we were not in the habit of talking about such things to one another, so that one could at once report about it. The interrogators were so angry with me that chained my hands behind my back and pulled me up, hanging me by my hands from the joist and then started to beat me demanding that I tell [them] where the two had gone. I fainted. Then they threw water in my face until I came to and beat me again. I was used as a punch bag. Next day the boys were caught and I was sent to a cell where there were all kinds of criminals and they did not let me return to the camp. A new tribunal and 5 years was added to the former punishments. It was then all together 25+5 and 25+5 and 5; it makes 65 years all in all. I spent all winter in that cell. Then they decided that I was a political prisoner, by paragraph 5823 and I was sent to a camp where there were only political prisoners. There work in a gold mine started; it was underground in winter. In summer when the prisoners worked outside, the [camp authorities] read my record and sent me back to the accommodation zone. It was not permitted to go outside with a paragraph for escaping. So I sat indoors the whole summer, got the rest which the others who went out did not get. I got a good rest. Then those in control saw that it was not a good idea to keep me, so I was sent from one camp to another. Thus I travelled from one camp to another and finally Stalin died and we got some concessions, such as being paid for prisoners’ work. Those who were free got full pay, the prisoners got 50%. You could put the money in bank; take a sum out to buy food, etc.

70

My Biography

Thus it lasted through 1954 and 1955. I pulled through and finally a time came when I did not have to spend 25 years in prison. It came down to only 8 years and in 1955 the Amnesty Law was passed.24 People with my paragraph also had to be set free. Many prisoners were released but there was no order about me. The camp authorities wanted to keep me there for I had been starting to do useful work lately. Then I started to write all kinds of appeals. It was already 1956 but I was still kept in the prison camp. All this time I hoped that once again I would see Estonia, I never thought I would stay there forever. One had to believe and hope despite the presence of fate. In 1956 an order came to release me. In February I arrived in Tallinn. At first I lived at the Lehtse spirits distilling factory where my father was working. During the summer months of that year I worked as an instructor of physical education at the Aegviidu sports camp and as a track-and-field coach of Tapa Physical Training School in Jäneda. I learnt that my wife, who had in 1944 gone to Germany as a refugee, had died in 1956. On September 1 [1956], I got a job as a teacher of physical education at the Tallinn Technical School of Communal Construction where I worked for 23 years, being at the same time for a while the Chairman of the Technical School Sports Club, the Chairman of the ALMAVÜ,25 and the Chairman of the Methodology Commission of the Vocational Secondary Schools. At the time I worked at the Technical School, I also trained young people in skiing and wrestling. I married for the second time in autumn 1956; my wife Virve was the Head of the Health Care Department of Väike-Maarja. She then came to live in Tallinn and became the pediatrist at the Health Care Department in Tallinn. In 1958 our son Tiit was born; he died in 1974. Since then there has only been me and my wife. In May 1993 I retired, having worked for 73 years. As I have been interested in physical education and sports all my life, it is my lifestyle even today to be active in physical training. During the week I go swimming in a swimming pool, exercise in a fitness studio, and go for trackand-field training in the fresh air and in a sports hall. My everyday activities also include yoga exercises and transcendental meditation during the last two years. I also try to participate in sports veterans’ competitions and live in harmony with nature.

Aleksander Loog

71

Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8 9

10

This is an abbreviated version of Aleksander Loog’s life story which was written in 1998 for the life story competition ‘A Hundred Life Stories of the Century’ and is now stored in the Estonian Cultural History Archives, fond 350. The name of the author has been changed. Translated by Kersti Unt. Jõgevamaa, the current county location of Villakvere, did not exist as a county before 1949. Ufa Oblast (Province) is located in west-central Russia, to the west of the central region of the Ural Mountains. On June 17, 1940 troops of the Red Army entered Estonian territory. The Treaty demanded that the Estonian units move out of their barracks and buildings immediately. During the 14.–18. June deportations more than 230 Estonian members of active units were arrested; two thirds of whom were arrested in the Värska-Petseri summer camps. Similarly about 40 officers released earlier from service were taken from their homes. About 10% of these men returned alive, the others were shot or died in the Siberian prison camps. NKVD (in Russian) – People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and NKGB (in Russian) – People’s Commissariat for State Security. At various times the Ministry of State Security and Internal Affairs was known by various names and, likewise, performed various functions. From August 1940 to February 1941 the Department of the State Security acted subordinately to the NKVD of the ESSR. From the end of February till the end of July 1941 both the NKVD and NKGB were active. From July 1941 the two services joined forces. In 1943 the NKGB was separated from the NKVD of the USSR. Setting up the respective Estonian institutions took place in February 1944. In March 1946 the NKVD of the ESSR was renamed the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD in Russian) and the NKGB of the ESSR – the Ministry of State Security (MGB in Russian). New reforms took place in 1953–1954. In March 1954 the Committee of State Security (KGB in Russian) was founded at the Council of Ministers of the ESSR, its activity finished in December 1991. Modern wedge formation tactics depend on mobility and speed of penetration. Panzerkeil – armored wedge formation – was a favourite offensive tactic of the German Army in World War II. Bald, bald nach Hause – ‘home, home soon’, in German. Estonian National Relief was founded in September 1941 to help people who had suffered because of the Soviet occupation and the war. The sanitary departments of the ENR took over the functions of the Estonian Red Cross. Klooga military base, founded in 1939 within the framework of the Estonian-Soviet agreement about military bases. At this base the reserve and training regiments of the Estonian Legion were accommodated.

72 11

12 13

14 15

16

17 18

19

20

My Biography Bombing of Tallinn on March 9, 1944 – within the attack of the Red Army the biggest towns of Estonia were bombed from March till September 1944, causing notable human losses and destruction. The bombing of Tallinn, the number of victims and the structural damage, has been compared to the losses of London, Dresden, Luebeck, or Helsinki during the air raids of World War II. During the period of Soviet occupation, any participation of the Red Army in the bombing of Estonian towns was hushed up; discussions about Red Army participation started during the glasnost period at the end of the 1980s. The greatest attention has been paid to the bombings of Tallinn and Narva; the former – March 9 – is now marked by an annual commemoration day. Marketenderware, die – food and consumer goods the soldiers could buy. A penalty of 25+5 meant 25 years of imprisonment either in a prison or in a convict camp, plus 5 years of compulsory exile with limited rights; in some cases an additional 5+5 (5 years of exile and 5 years of limited rights) was given. Personalausweiβ, der – certificate of identity, in German. Patarei, a coastal fortification built in 1840 became a prison in 1919 and remained a prison till 2002. Due to the Stalinist repression the prison, from the Estonian people’s point of view, became a symbol of unjust repressions. Пересылка – a prison for transferring prisoners, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Плотной – a criminal, in Russian, author’s adapted spelling unchanged. BAM – the Baikal-Amur Mainline railway (4,280 km) was initially ordered by Stalin in 1938 to parallel the Trans-Siberian line. World War II and Stalin’s death brought construction work to a halt. Little further construction occurred till Leonid Brezhnev announced in 1974 that BAM was a ‘Shock Project’ which gave it national priority. BAM, undertaken with the purpose of conquering the Siberian interior was one of the most grandiose of the Shock Projects. In Stalin’s time the work to open up the region and exploit Siberia’s mineral and forestry wealth was mostly achieved using convicts as the work-force. Фуфайка – a padded jacket, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. March deportation – During a mass-scale operation which started in the early morning of March 25, 1949 in all three Baltic States, 21,000 Estonians were arrested and taken to the Siberia. The action took place with the aim of eliminating the kulaks and was meant to support compulsory collectivization. At the same time it was undertaken to suppress resistance as country people kept supporting the ‘Forest Brethren’. The majority of the deported were from the families of the ‘people’s enemies’; men who had previously been arrested; now their families (wives, children, sisters, brothers, and parents) were punished by sending them to the Siberia.

Aleksander Loog 21

22

23

24

25

73

Lev Trotski, an influential politician of the Soviet Union whom Stalin fought off during the fight for power; Trotski came to be called a traitor, supporters of him and his ideas were named enemies of the Soviet regime by Stalin. Paragraph 59 of the Soviet Criminal Code marked crimes especially dangerous to the Soviet Union. Paragraph 58’ of the Soviet criminal Code denoted counter-revolutionary crimes against the state. After Stalin’s death, prisoners and exiles began to be set free according to their categories. Aleksander Loog got the decision about his discharge from the camp in 1955. ALMAVÜ – Voluntary Society for Assisting the Army, Aviation, and Naval Forces.

Between the Cogweels: Victimized by the Course of History1 Heinrich Uustalu, born 1915 Today, on December, 24 [1988], on Christmas Eve, I am sitting here as a gatekeeper of EPT.2 I have been working here since leaving my post of blacksmith. I shall try, as much as I can, to put down my life on paper. Let those who are interested, read it but it is not obligatory for anyone. For that story is similar to the stories of many Estonian men who had to go through with it all. I am now 73 years old and I have seen all the fooleries of this government, surviving in spite of them. Living under the sun which gave no warmth to me in my life, I only lost my teeth and my big toes. Although I spent a long time in prisons and prison camps as a traitor, the expanses of Russia are not my homeland. I have never betrayed my country and that is why I do not have to feel ashamed. A government who punishes old people and small children is no government. I am, however, to blame before my children and they can freely say: ‘It is because of you, that we had to go to the Siberia.’ However I could not behave otherwise; I did everything according to my conscience and have no regrets. What I shall write about now, I must write according to the stories told by my parents. I was born on July 23, 1915 in Tallinn. Father was working at the carriage building plant, mother was a housewife. When single, my father had worked at manor houses as a builder. When they married, they went to live in Tallinn. During World War I my father worked at the carriage building plant and did not have to go to the war. They have told me I had also a brother who died at the age of one year. It is not known exactly whether it was in 1917 or in 1918 but about that time my parents left Tallinn and moved to Tõstamaa. They settled in the Kiriku-Hansu farm where mother’s mother had invited them to keep the farm as her other son had married and gone to live at the much bigger farm of his wife’s parents. However, after three years father had to leave the farm again. So we had to look for another place to live. Father, being a builder, built a house in the centre of Tõstamaa in 1920–1921. In 1919 my sister was born. In 1922 I went to school although only seven years old; the others were all eight or nine. For the first year the Tõstamaa manor was used as a schoolhouse. At the age of 13–14 I started to go to the woods with my father, to help him saw the trees and to cut the branches with an axe. In summer I went to a workshop to work as an apprentice for 5 cents an hour. We fixed what we could: household utilities, tableware, threshing machines, tractors and mobile steam boilers.

76

Between the Cogweels

The year of 1930 brought a big change into our lives. My mother’s home farm, where my parents had been once invited from Tallinn but from where they later were made to move away again, was doing very badly because of the drinking habit of my mother’s brother. So her mother started to talk around my father to take over the farm in 1929 but there was almost nothing else in that farm except an old woman and her bed. [There was] no proper roof on the house, and the fields [were] all lying fallow. Now father let her make the farm over to his name in order not to be deceived once more. In winter we started logging as the farmhouses needed repair. We worked in the woods day after day for a whole month. Spring came quickly, the logs were in the farmyard, and they had to be sorted out, shingle blocks to be sawn. We got a machine for cutting shingles for we needed them in great quantities. Father showed me how to do it and so we started. This work taught me patience and perseverance, and taught me not to throw work away once you had started with it. Nailing the shingles on the roof was not easy at first, the nail kept bending and I often hit my finger. At first I kept on against my will, then it became easier and at last I became skilled. It took me several weeks to nail the roof. Father did not have time for that; he had to sow rye and corn as much as possible as well as replace the joists of the house in some places. Deep in his heart my father was in fact a farmer, who had gone to work in town out of necessity. A farmer always wants his own farm, even if it is a poor one; he finds happiness from his work if he succeeds despite all the toil and hardness. Father had always taught me that work never killed anyone when your stomach was full and that it was full only when you were really hard-working. One week before Midsummer Eve I did not have a pair of trousers and shoes to put on. I knew where father’s money got from the sale of our house had gone! He had bought a cow, two sheep, and three piglets. They were all necessary to keep the farm. So I took the bicycle and rode to the Vaiste sawmill, a distance of 9 kilometres to see if they had some work for me. I got a job of cutting fence rails to the right size with a saw. I kept sawing for a week and got the money to buy the trousers and the shoes. After midsummer we started making hay. The mare had a foal, the cows had calves, the sheep had lambs and in the pigsty pigs were grunting – the farm was growing. Then winter came and I started to think where I could find work to earn some money, because there was nothing to expect from the farm this first year. I needed a suit and other things in spring. There was a distant relative from the neighbouring farm who did logging; he transported timber to the coast in winter, made rafts in spring and then sold the whole lot. He needed another man to drive the other horse-drawn cart; I was not

Heinrich Uustalu

77

actually a man, not even 16 years old yet but I could give it a try. So I went to help him for the winter for 2 crowns a day, plus food and that was a good salary at that time. We started work and the farmer did not spare me, neither himself nor his horse. In spring I had all the money I needed and there was an order to go to the confirmation for soon I was to be seventeen. In the middle of May confirmation started; there were six boys and six girls in the group, three pairs. We kept joking that after confirmation it would be convenient to marry at once, with clothes on and everything. The girls were ready to get married at that age, boys, however, willing to court but not to marry yet; able only perhaps to take [or lose] virginity. I do not know about the others but I got along very well with one of the girls. However, she was from a rich farm and I had nothing to offer. We did not meet [again] until the local autumn fair. This was a place where people always met, a big gathering. I met that girl and she took me to meet her parents. We spent that day together but this was our last meeting. Next year she was married to a man equal to her standing. Maybe if she had lived closer … then; but the distance between our farms was 12 kilometres and I was still young. In 1944 their family fled to Sweden. At the beginning of 1933, life on the farm started to get better: we had three cows and the pigs; we left two for ourselves and sold three or four every year. We also got money for milk but it was all too little. In May I went to work at the local dairy. I liked the job; I started work at 3 a.m. or half past and was free by 10 a.m. I slept an hour or two and then started working at home. I got a good salary and could make butter, 25 cents a barrel. The barrels contained 50 kg of butter; I sold 4–5 barrels a day. At that time, you could buy good clothes for that salary, patent leather shoes too and some money was even left over. The dairyman gave the bookkeeping also to my care. At home, however, we had to start cultivating virgin soil. The state paid money for that, a certain sum for every hectare. I went to a two-day stone breaking courses for there had to be a licence for working with explosives. How much sweat and toil went into this farm! Had I only known what sin I was committing: but that became evident only after 10 years. What a fool I was. But no, this was only the obstinate character of an Estonian who wanted to make something from a poor farm. The punishment was something to be forever remembered. If I think only of myself then I had no need whatever to mess with those stones for I had a good job anyway. Now that I am writing about it, the end of 1988 is approaching. The place has become a wooded mire. The stone fence has been transported to different construction sites. By May 1934 we had got our farm more or less going. We had more fields and the buildings looked nice. We had a glass porch with a table and

78

Between the Cogweels

chairs. In summer evenings it was so comfortable to sit there, resting after the day’s work. The farmhouse had now a mansard3 with additional two rooms. In the living room we had soft furniture, a big mirror and a lamp hanging on chains reminiscent of a chandelier. In the grain-drying room there was a wooden floor and there was a built-in toilet in the house. In the garden we had an arbour, the garden was separated from the cow pen; 12 young apple trees had been planted in the apple orchard. Now the army commission was waiting me at the end of May. That day I went to town and met other young men in front of the old post office in Kalevi Street, one of them was a mill-owner’s son from our neighbourhood. I got an extension till autumn, the mill-owner’s boy got free from service. It seems his father had bought him off. Coming home, I started to think of how to make my extension longer. The two years at the dairy gave me a right to get into the Õisu Dairy School to learn how to become a dairy master. So I wrote an appeal to the military commissar saying that I wanted to take my service before going to the school, asking not to be sent to serve in the infantry. On June 30 I got an order by mail to appear at the military commissar’s office in Pärnu on July 1 at 10 o’clock to be sent to my squad and from there we went to Viljandi. According to the paper the escorting officer had, it was the 5th Artillery task force. So my wish not to serve in infantry was fulfilled. It was a training battery for the young and after three months of drill we were to be sent to a defence battery. One more month and a new roll call for the young took place: they had to be trained. By that time I was already a training instructor. I trained a few groups and was home in eleven months. That was my military service. Father started to convince me not to go to the Õisu Dairy School, saying that I was the only son who would inherit the farm. True, I had buried a lot of work into that farm and I had my heart in it. I worked for a couple of years in the dairy, then left: I did not like to get up that early. In the summer of 1940 the trouble started. A new government [was put in place, and there were] different flags and slogans praising the ‘great plan’ of our father Stalin and inviting everybody to promote it. In the old schoolhouse just behind our home, the Russian border guard settled in. They put up a big watchtower and dug trenches around it. Toward the end of the autumn I saw that there were quite a lot of big stones in one stretch of the field. I had some explosives left and the weather was fine, so I decided to bore holes into the stones and blow them into pieces. I kept boring the whole day: by the evening there were holes in 15 stones. I put the charges in, it was a quiet evening and father came to the field too. I blew up a group of four and the blasts were loud. Then we heard a gunshot from behind the wood of alders which stood between our home

Heinrich Uustalu

79

and the Russians’ cordon. Father says, “They are coming, ignite new charges”. I said “No. Then they will be all among the explosion and flying stones the very moment they come out of the wood“. Then five soldiers came and surrounded us, guns pointed at us. The Politruk,4 their ideological leader, had a Nagant revolver in his hand but his hands were trembling with fright. At that time we had no idea how cheap a human life was in their hands. We were escorted from the field at gunpoint and taken to the cordon. We did not know their language and so we had managed to attract their attention but did not know how to explain it all. Before reaching the cordon there was a small house by the road where a man lived who had been living earlier in Narva and who therefore knew Russian well. When he saw them escorting us, all armed with guns, he came out. He then explained how important the work we were doing was for agriculture. The politruk asked if we knew what the Finnish War5 was and what a blast meant. They had thought that it was a military landing from the sea as there were only three kilometres to the coast. Then they said that if we wanted to blow anything up in the future, we had to let them know when we would do it and how many explosions there would be. Now I have come to the autumn of 1940 in my writing. In the autumn I took a new job. It was not good to be home for the new powers did not like me. Three men in Tõstamaa had trucks. The trucks were taken from them and made the property of the new truck base No 7 in Pärnu. I asked to be employed as one of the men to load logs on the trucks. So a new life started, today here, tomorrow in another place. This was what saved my life. In January 1941, the first elections according to the new order took place. Election posters had been put up on the barn wall near the post office. Being at home on a Sunday, I passed the place early in the morning when it was still dark. I did not even think of looking at the posters. When it became light the posters were found to have been torn down. The local militiaman who had been placed in the office the previous day wanted to demonstrate his zeal with taking quick action. So he went to town in the morning by bus and came back with a higher officer. This officer had also been placed in office recently and was our militiaman’s schoolmate. I had a narrow escape that time. It all happened at about 12 o’clock a.m. I was at the time sitting on a truckload of logs by the road between Tõstamaa and Seliste when a car passed by heading for Tõstamaa, militiamen sitting in it. When I came home in the evening, mother said that our local militiaman had been there to ask for me, two other men with him. They had been to the mill-owner and taken their boy with them. The militia-man had said that it was he who tore down the posters. Had I been home, I

80

Between the Cogweels

would have been the one. As they did not get me, they took the other young man towards whom the militiaman had a grudge. He was taken away and shot. I was not any more a member of the damned Defense League since autumn when they gathered all the guns. I had given mine away at the Manor barn where they collected all the arms. On June 13, 1941 we were again transporting logs. We had put two logs into the load when an express telegram came – the truck had quickly to be sent to Pärnu. We loaded the two logs off the truck, hooked the trailer and off to town we went with an empty platform. We arrived at the base; it was at the time in the town by the Riia Road. There were buses in the base yard and trucks started to gather along the bystreets. In the yard a technical inspection started. The radiator of a bus was dripping and the driver got reprimanded, a gun being waved under his nose. They seemed to like trucks with platforms. The checkers were all soldiers; we knew nothing about army services or their insignia. We called those who were in leather jackets and were carrying the Nagant guns, politruks, I think perhaps it was what they were. Then the turn of our truck came and I kept aside, trying to remain unnoticed. Oh, how they kept cursing, matj and matj,6 one after another but the truth was – the truck’s platform did not have any borders. At last they got tired and the truck was held to be unfit for their purposes. We did not know at the time what had threatened us all. It was only after a few weeks that we got a list of names that had been in the desk drawer of the local militiaman. All our family was there, the mill owner and his family and two families from Tõhela. Only the Tõhela families were taken away, but then perhaps they lacked transport. But [later] in 1949 the yield was good – eight men and women all together. A week passed and we were in the Lõõba-Aadu farm visiting our cousins. It was June 22, Sunday morning and there were four or five young men. In the morning at about 10 a.m. the radio announced the beginning of the war. I met the chief of the post office the next day and he said he needed a telephone operator for his office. There were other tasks too: to sort the mail, to sell stamps, to pay out money orders and connect calls by the switchboard. The work was in shifts. On June 8, the Germans took Pärnu and drove through Tõstamaa on their motorbikes and three open trucks, then drove through Lihula and back to Pärnu. Life took such a shape now that one saviour was 35 kilometres away and the other 40 kilometres. We were afraid of the Russians but did not know much about the others. We had seen the German soldiers when

Heinrich Uustalu

81

going to the town. They were friendly and we could talk – no fear. The soldiers of the other side had their guns ready all the time and looked at the people as if they were all mad dogs; they did not dare to talk to us fearing that the politruk might see it. When I was at the post office I had communication with all places. When a warning came we were always able to take measures. Then a squad was formed [by the Bolsheviks] at the end of July to take Pärnu. The people said that there were about 300–400 men there. But instead of going and taking Pärnu, they came down to Tõhela and Tõstamaa from Koonga-Lõpe. The Germans stayed put, did not risk attacking the enemy across a field. This was in the night of August 3 when they [Bolsheviks] arrived in Tõstamaa. We knew about their coming early and everybody had been evacuated to the other side of Pärnu. The horse carts had moved them to shelter a few days earlier. Only those who waited for our boys7 to come or other simple-minded people stayed where they were. When we returned in four days we found that 14 men and women had been shot in the surroundings of the village. They had been taken into the brush, shot there and only some earth had been shovelled on them. A cousin of mine was among them. We had to bury the dead quickly for the weather was exceptionally hot. By the end of August the Germans had cleared the coastline. Thus we got rid of one ‘saviour’ in 1942 and another had come, as they both then called themselves. This chapter of my life is the hardest to describe, to think now, in my old age, back to those years and everything that year brought into my life in 1942. For an undertaking of mine brought trouble to all the people I loved. Maybe I should tell myself: listen, old chap, what are you complaining about, you should be proud instead. You survived; all four children of yours are getting on well. You have got eight grandchildren, all decent and healthy people. My only blame was that I had been born an Estonian and wanted to die an Estonian and that I have never denied it. I have never swum with the current and I hate people who do. Had I not taken that step in that year, I would have been dead now. Living alone, I would not have let them play their games with me. Towards the end of the winter of 1942 we went to Pärnu with another boy, my friend, from my village. We wanted to take that trip while the snow was still on the roads for we needed some things from the town. Coming back, I turned straight towards Lihula at the Audru crossroads. My friend asked where I was going and I answered that I wanted to visit a girl who lived there and whom I had not seen for three years. Turning into the farmyard, I met the whole family: her brother, brother’s wife, mother and the girl. I was 27, the girl was 20. We talked

82

Between the Cogweels

for a while, jokingly. Then we agreed to meet on the Midsummer Night’s Eve at the Valgeranna party. Meanwhile I asked my granduncle who lived in town to make a bedroom furniture set for me. He had a carpenter’s workshop in Pärnu where they made things of that kind. On the Midsummer Night’s Eve we met at the Valgeranna party and I saw the girl home after that. I hinted that I might perhaps come to visit with a bottle of red liquor.8 She said: ‘You may try [and] see what happens.’ On the first Saturday of August I set off alone by bicycle, all necessary things with me. The family accepted me. We set the wedding date on September 6, a Sunday which was a month from that day. On Saturday, September 5, the marriage was officially registered at the Audru community centre. The wedding party took place in my bride’s home farm for there was enough room there. On Sunday morning my granduncle came from Pärnu by car which was difficult to get because of the war. We drove to the Tõstamaa Church. We were wedded in the church, the party followed and I started my married life. Like in a good Christian marriage, we had a son, not too early, not too late, just at the right time. We were very happy. Thinking back now, I cannot understand the hurry. Maybe it was necessary. For we could live together for such a short time, we had to hurry. However, I was not destined to raise my son. He was raised by others to live in a bright future of plenty. On February 4, 1944 I had to appear at the Sauga schoolhouse as written on the mobilization summons. I hoped that my work at the post office would save me but it did not. It was war and the war needed men. To get to the mobilization unit we had to harness a horse to a cart and father came to take me there as war has always been the business of men. They needed men to form the 1st Pärnu Regiment. I was enlisted at once because I was an artillerist. The next day was a Sunday and getting horses for the regiment started. It turned out that our company had to be formed of Pärnu and Viljandi men and horses. We were the 3rd Company of the 1st Frontier Guard Regiment. The Regiment was quickly formed and went to the front after two weeks. We were left behind. Now the schooling of the horses started, several of them were stallions, they were gelded. The work was hard, there were only three of us but I had lots of experience and skills learnt from life. That winter was lucky for us. I got more freedom in the barracks for I was a signal officer and the company’s clerk. There was no definite place to school the horses; we could ride where we wanted. We worked in shifts in the barracks, according to a schedule. In April, during Easter, we went home for the last time, my brother-inlaw and me. He was sent to training courses for officers, to Tõltsi, it was

Heinrich Uustalu

83

said – and never came back. My sister was left to raise her two children alone and to take them to Siberia later. The 6th Regiment, formed in April, took us along. On May 4 we were loaded onto a train. Next day we were at Tartu railway station where the artillery was waiting. We were ordered to go out of the town, to the village of Suure-Lohkva. There we lived rather quietly till June 8. Then we had to go to the vicinity of Pskov on foot. We could move only at night and had to rest by day in some well sheltered place. For if discovered we had to be afraid of bombers. The artillery were drawn by horses. The three of us started on our way about three hours before the rest. We had to choose a sheltered place for the day and lead the others to that place when they arrived. So on we went towards Russia. Leevaku, Kahkva, Värska, Petseri, Uue-Irboska and across the border at the village of Duruk. This was at 01:00 on July 13 when I crossed the border. I climbed off the horse and said: no good is coming to me from this. The border was a three metres high barbed wire fence, ten metres of no-man’s land between the two fences. Towards the Estonian side there were houses and cultivated fields a few metres from the fence. Going towards Russia no human abode existed for 10 kilometres. Everything was abandoned, alder brush and ruins showed that there had been life once there. Then, at about 10 kilometres [we came across] triangular concrete bunkers with embrasures facing towards Estonia. That big and powerful country was defending itself against Estonia. We could not go further from the line of the bunkers. We stayed there for barely a week when an order came to load the cannons onto a train at the Uue-Irboska station. On we went towards Narva and the cannons were loaded off at the station of Iisaku. Then to Krivasoo by the Narva River. We arrived on July 23, my birthday. As we were artillerists, we had to stay in the woods at the distance of a kilometre. We were busy now by day, and had to follow the enemy’s smallest movement. In war it seems to be that one gets hit in the first small collision, while the other fights in big battles without even a scratch. There was one dangerous occasion: I was riding on horseback from the headquarters towards the cannon across a hillock covered with pines. Suddenly a bomber was flying straight towards me across a flat stretch of mire. I tied the horse to a pine tree quickly and jumped into a bunker hole of about two metres deep. Then I heard the sound of four bombs dropping, each about a hundred kilograms (as it turned out later). They were dropped at intervals of about three to four metres from one another, three had penetrated halfway into the earth, one had bounced from a pine root, turned upside down and was sitting now, its base in the sand. What luck it was that not one of them

84

Between the Cogweels

went off. Nothing would have remained of me and my horse, if they had exploded. In mid-September the retreat started one night. Tartu was already taken by the Russians and we were afraid they would cut off the way of retreat for us. This is what actually happened. We moved on till Avinurme, and then we had to leave everything behind. We took the horses off the harness and moved on horseback from now onwards. We continued this way until we had firm land underfoot, then we climbed off and went on straight across the mire using a boardwalk. We thought that it would not be wise to show ourselves on roads and near inhabited centres. So we went into the Pandivere forests. There were five of us, three boys from Pärnu, two from Viljandi region. We buried our bigger arms and documents in the forest. We went (there were four of us now) across the fields after coming out of the forest and to a farm there. We heard at the farm that the Russians had entered Väike-Maarja at night. The farm people laid the table and we sat and ate with them. During the meal we saw two Russian soldiers, with guns, passing the window. They came in and turned out to be Estonians, one from Tapa the other from Tallinn, saying that they were keeping to the rear in order not to be killed at the very gates of home. We went on eating all together and made a further plan. They offered to take us as prisoners to the Tapa prison camp for that was the order of their superior officer so that the prisoner would not be robbed on their way. That would give them reason to keep to the rear. We came out of the farm as prisoners. Then we passed Väike-Maarja and met the Russians. There was a barrier right across the road and a Marussa in uniform9 lifting the barrier. The nearby soldiers wanted to take away our boots. Our escorts pointed their guns at them and told them there was an order not to rob prisoners on their way to the camp. So we went on, talking pleasantly and if we became hungry we went to some farm to get fed. Our protectors were one from Tapa, the other from Tallinn; we were two from Pärnu, the two others from Viljandi and finally we had to part. We said goodbye, exchanging addresses; it is a pity that they all have got lost. Near Türi, the Viljandi youths left us. So, the two of us kept on going towards Pärnu. Reaching Vändra, we came out of the forest. In the evening we came to the village of Orge; it was an exceptionally warm and beautiful autumn. There was a small yellow house with a well in the yard and we decided to go and ask for water to drink. A young woman came out of the house and told us that we would get nothing from this house. We saw another, bigger farm across the fields and decided to try our luck there. I looked back towards the house to see that the woman was standing in the doorway, a Russian officer by her side and the woman was pointing at us. What she was doing was apparent. Two Russian

Heinrich Uustalu

85

soldiers were sent to fetch us and we were brought to the bigger farm. So we became real Russian war prisoners; this was not a game any more. In the morning when the sun had just risen, we were taken to town. They took us to the local slaughterhouse where all the remains were left behind, giblets and muck and everything, all untidy after finishing work. During daytime we went to work at the airfield, all full of shell craters. On the second day we were all lined up between the slaughterhouse and machine plant, there were about a thousand of us. They counted and counted us but could not get the exact number. People were all standing in crowds on the pavement, soldiers holding them back. I was standing near the crowd, so I edged myself on until I could disappear into the throng. There was a hole in the fence just behind me, I slipped into the garden and went through a raspberry brush, straight into the first small house I saw. I was lucky; there were a mother and daughter in the house, women who had no intention to turn me in. I am very grateful to those women who organized everything for me. In two days my sister came to fetch me with a horse cart, we dropped in at the community centre and I got valid documents. Now I saw my daughter who had been born in the meantime and that was what counted. In a week I got an order – our new saviour was organizing a mobilization. Behind the commission’s table there was a militiawoman in a fur coat, who had come back from Russia in 1941 to build a new order here. I also learnt that if a mark would be made on the document concerning you with a blue pencil, you could count yourself as mobilized. A grey mark meant work, a red one – momentary arrest. They wrote something in Russian in big letters with a red pencil on my document and everything was clear now. On the evening of October 28 at 8 p.m. they came after me: two soldiers and a local man. I left my wedding ring into the child’s clothes when saying goodbye to her. Off we went to Pärnu, to the KGB cellar at Ringi Street 44. In a week I was taken to the Pärnu prison. Upon reception at the prison we were all searched thoroughly. We had to take off all our clothes and bend down and then they peeped into our anuses – I wonder, how far they saw. All the buttons were cut off, belts and any kind of rope taken away and then it became very inconvenient with the trousers, as they had to be kept up with both hands. Then the clothes went to the ‘lice-hell’, as the heater was called. When we arrived at the Patarei prison in Tallinn, all its windows were broken. We were housed in a smaller type of cell. During the Estonian Republic there had been 12 men in a smaller cell and 24 men in a bigger cell, all on bunks. Now there were 60 men in a small cell and 120 men in a

86

Between the Cogweels

big one. The rooms were packed full and the interrogation machinery started working. By day it was all quiet in the cell, only some people were brought in if there was room. At night the interrogations started and some people were taken out. When eight months had passed I was called in front of the investigator for the first and last time. This elderly major was rather polite; I have nothing bad to say about him. Neither had he any demands from me. He asked if I had worked at a post office during the German occupation which I did not deny for I had to work somewhere. It seemed to me, they had not found anyone who would have lied about me. They needed two at that time. Nobody cared if it was all true what was said. Having spent a few days short of a year in prison I was taken to town one morning early, they said to the Pagari Street.10 There were about twenty of us and we were told that we would be taken to the court. There was a big cellar there, separated in two by a net, a guard standing in front of it. We were like apes in a cage. Then they started to discuss our cases one by one, some got 10, some 15 years. A small room with a table in the middle, a soldier of Colonel’s rank sitting behind the table, a man looking like a Major to his right, sleeping, head on a stack of books; a woman and an interpreter, to his left. The Colonel took two sheets of paper with identical texts. It was written there that I had taken part in battles against the Red Army, as someone had told. When it had all been read to me, they took a sheet of paper from between a book and the sentence was there: paragraph 58, point 1a11 – 15 years of hard labour in Siberia. In December 1945 off we went to Russia. First we went to Vologda [where] we were taken off the train and sent to a re-allocation station. I was in an old monastery in the town. One day we were gathered to the monastery yard with all our belongings. Then we were taken out of the town along a road going to Archangelsk. At a distance there was a twostoried white castle or villa. We arrived behind its gates and saw a double wall and dogs running between the two walls. Barbed wire was on the top of the wall. We arrived there by the end of the year. The following happened on February 23, 1946, the eve of the Estonian Republic’s anniversary and the birthday of President Päts. About 12 at night we got an order to come out with all our belongings. We were taken to the prison office and a staršina12 told me that a special commission in Moscow had looked my case through and found that my punishment was too hard. So my sentence was changed into 10 years at a labour camp plus 5 years plus another 5 years. That meant 5 years without the right to vote and 5 years in Siberia. I had not sent any appeals or asked for anything. It seems that sometimes the Estonian decisions were looked through in

Heinrich Uustalu

87

Moscow and changed. The officer asked, why I did not say thank you. I answered that there was nothing to thank: it was you who made the decision and you who changed it. Next morning we were taken to the distribution station at the monastery. So my time as a convict was over and the time of reforming me started. On the same day we were taken to the station and we went towards Leningrad, being set down at the station of Seksna.13 We set off on foot; the camp was at a distance of less than 3 kilometres. This was my first labour camp; it was called a stationary colony. This was where prisoners with poor health were kept. Maybe it was due to the fact that during my stay at the prison I had been almost dying every month, suffering from kidney stones; it hurt when the stone had grown big and was coming out. Then I lay on the floor suffering from great pains; it seems this was also put down in my file. There were some other Estonians in the camp. One of them was the son of parents who had immigrated to Russia some time ago. He was doing his second ten years in prison. He says: ‘Come and work with me at the smithy.’ So I asked to be sent to work there. There was a roof overhead, so we did not have to think about the weather. For a couple of months I kept hitting pieces of iron the blacksmith was holding with a heavy hammer, then my hands and feet swelled up. I was able to let my people at home know about my whereabouts and to send them my address. It was all right at the time at home. I started to get packages, I got them all, and nothing was lost. Then I started getting better but very slowly. The head of the smithy saved me: he was a Russian with a big white beard who was not a prisoner. He found me work at the warehouse where axes were packed into crates. He said that I would have to stay for a month and get better; until that I was allowed to do nothing. So I got better, continued my earlier work for a while and became a blacksmith later. It was good, for it was wise to learn some job in those ten years to earn my daily bread with if I should become free. So this was how my life turned out. It was in June 1948 that a medical committee came to our camp to pick out workers. They did nothing else, but felt our backsides. They found that some fat had gathered on my bones. I had clothes from home on and my trunk was full of dry food – this was what now became almost fatal for me. Next morning I was already at the station, there were about 50 men there. I alone was an Estonian. So back we went to the monastery at Vologda. We were at once taken to the sauna; they had built a wooden sauna in the yard meanwhile. The guards were all praising the sauna, this made me wonder why they praised it so much. Everything became clear soon. We went to the sauna, and were given liquid soap. They poured it into our hands and told us to smear it all over our bodies. Otherwise it

88

Between the Cogweels

would have dropped on the floor. We went to the washing room and there the guards could enjoy the final phase of their joke. There was no water in the sauna. When we came out of this hell we had to get dressed as we were. Then we, about a couple of hundred men, were gathered into a big hall and now robbery started. This had been organized by the distribution station. The guard let four men in with prearranged tasks. All we had on or with us had to be taken away. They even threatened [us] with a knife; I tried to struggle but this was senseless, they would have killed me and that would have been that. That same night we were put on a train and off we went towards the Komi Autonomous Soviet Republic. We were taken to a camp near the Komi capital Ust-Vim.14 This was in fact a complex of 22 camps where the prisoners worked as loggers. There were double cots in the barracks with bare boards. We were given blankets and that was all. You could not leave your blanket there when going to work for when you came back it was gone. Here a principle reigned: you could keep what you had on you but only in the case it was no better than the things of the others. With speaking Russian it was so: when you got fed up of [the speaker] you could hit him and then you were rid of him. For then they felt so much respect that they never touched you again. Near the camp there was a sawmill: they cut boards, logs, and railway crossties; my task was to cut crossties. I was much depressed after the robbery at the distribution station. Why should my people try to help me, send things for the Russians to rob them? I was unable to defend myself against it for it would have been senseless; they would simply have killed me and no-one would have said a word. I decided not to let them know where I was, to disappear, for I thought I would never keep going here for ten years. So let the end come earlier, not later. In half a year a letter arrived and a package. My wife had got my address somehow. She reprimanded me in her letter. That gave me strength to go on living and I promised in my answer never to give up again. I had heard that there was one camp in this network of camps where they repaired cars and trucks and where there was also a smithy. I applied for a transfer to that camp. I was transferred in a few weeks. The camp was at a distance of 20 kilometres. It was called Sarm and there was a big smithy there, a foundry, a power station and maintenance shop. I got the job of a blacksmith; there were men in the camp and two barracks full of women with syphilis. Then, at the beginning of April 1949, I got a letter from the Urals, Ufa. It made me tremble for I understood what it meant. It was true, my wife had thrown the letter out of the carriage window and some kind person had posted it. My family had all been deported to Siberia: my sister and

Heinrich Uustalu

89

her six and seven year-old children, my wife with her children of five and six, my father and mother. At first I did not even know where they had been sent. In a couple of weeks a letter came from the region of Novosibirsk, district of Maslyaninski, a collective farm called ‘Kuibyshevo’. Once you become a victim of history, you surely get hurt. The head of the smithy was a war-time German pilot. For some reason he was with us, other German prisoners were elsewhere. I never asked him about it; he was an expert of everything. I became again a blacksmith; there were five or six blacksmiths and several hammering men. In addition to the smith’s tasks I also worked with the big press. With that press I made nuts of cold metal for all kinds of wrenches up to a 22 mm one. This was listed as handwork. As soon as some high committee arrived, I was ordered to lock up the door and keep quiet inside. I did this work for a couple of hours every day not to break the norms of handmade items. Then, in March 1950 when the hardest frosts were over, I had to make bars for three carriages. There was a railway branch that belonged to our working zone. When the bars were in place a few days passed and then I was among those prisoners who were put into the carriages. Off we went to even bigger expanses. We rattled on and on: Kirov, contrasts, trolleybuses, and an ox-cart. Further on we approached the Urals and understood that we were on our way to Siberia. However, my family was there already, this meant almost home, so I was not very sad and Siberia was so big. Could we not breathe here more freely? We moved on until the station of Tatarsk. From there on we turned towards the South, to Central Kazakhstan, to a town called Ekibas-Ugol which did not exist yet. There were 200–300 prisoners there when we arrived. Then prisoners started to be brought in daily and in two months there were 9,500 of us. We started to build the town, it was all surrounded with a barbed wire fence and the construction work began. We built houses, schools, shops, and nurseries. No help from home came now. The whole family was starving in Siberia as I learned from the letters. No way to help anyone. I had twice got my health back with the help of my family. More than a half of the time was over. ‘Now you have to make it to the end’, I told myself. My first job was in a part of the town where a nursery, a school, and a shopping centre were being built. It all was made by hand, no technique, only a shovel, a cart, and a crowbar. There were enough people there but the management was poor. We had to make everything again and again; today you built, tomorrow you knocked everything down again. It was all so ridiculous. I would like to describe one occasion here. We had a schoolhouse and a shopping centre almost ready. The two buildings shared a common sediment basin. The shop was a hundred metres away from the

90

Between the Cogweels

sediment basin and the sewage water had to go there. The ditch was ready but the drains were not in there yet. Then a kind of committee arrived, about ten important men, they looked at the ditch and give an order to fill it up. So the men came quickly and did it. In a few days an order came to put drains in place – but there was not a ditch to put them into. Now we had to dig the ditch again but it was spring already, the soil was all thawing and the banks of the ditch kept collapsing. We reached the wall of the shopping centre but the wall kept cracking. So we quickly set in the drains and filled the ditch up; the cracks in the wall had to be patched up somehow. Then it happened that we read from the local paper how brigades of the young communist league were fulfilling the schedule of building the town. There was the name of our brigade leader in the newspaper, so accordingly we were the young communists. Then I became a smith at the building of a lumber mill. Later I went to work at the building of a power station four kilometres out of the town. I became a supervision locksmith, my task was to take care of the machines to keep them going and repair all smaller break-downs. This was a big construction site covering 22 hectares of land. I had to walk around all day and watch the machines, if there was a bigger fault I was to call the repair brigade. I managed well, there was even spare-time left, and the main thing was that I did not have to do anything difficult myself. At this construction site I had a workroom of my own that could be locked up. I also had good tools, a table drill and an emery grinding wheel. There was plenty of spare time, for I had put a good man on every machine and taught him where to do what when necessary. So I could make all kinds of things in my free hours, like rings, locks, handles and metal corners for suitcases. It became a habit to work with the hui s nim attitude.15 Among us, the prisoners, but later also when free and this made one think. What folk was it, had they not promised to reform man? Yes, that was a new type of man indeed. Then, in the winter of 1951, I got a letter from my wife, telling me that she lived now with the foreman of their work team. The man had a wife and three children. It all had happened so: my wife had been the overseer of horses. When she was taking the horses to drink to the opening in the river ice, one horse had fallen in and drowned. The foreman promised to save her on condition that she slept with him, otherwise she would have gone to the prison. She let herself be scared or who knows what it was, and I was unable to do anything about it. Did she have to tell it to me, to add it to my load?

Heinrich Uustalu

91

In the middle of May [1954] a committee looking through all charges started work. In the mid-morning of June 3 we were told that we had done our time and were soon to be free. Free from the next day, June 4, having spent 10 long years in the camps – it was even hard to believe. On June 4 I was released from the camp, accounts settled and my wooden suitcase, luckily, ready. Most of the prisoners had let such suitcases be made in time, whenever a possibility opened. I also got money from the camp 670 roubles as it was by the rate of the time. During my stay at the camp I did not touch the money and if I had died there, all this would have been left to the state. And so onto a truck and off we went towards Pavlodar. 20 kilometres before Pavlodar we were loaded onto a barge and we went on the river. This was when I saw greenery again after a long time. When the trip ended we were taken off the barge and put into a prison, so it was prison life again. However, the next day we were put on a train, into a prisoners’ carriage. We did not know where we were going; they said that we’d see when we were there. We were taken off the train in Omsk, a black prison truck called ‘the crow’ was waiting again. The next day we were again put on the train and we went in the direction of Europe. By now we would have been glad to be taken towards Siberia. We were taken off again in Petropavlovsk. In the afternoon of the next day ten prisoners were gathered and taken to the town commandant’s headquarters with only one guard with us which was very strange for I had been used to guards following us like hunting dogs. On Sunday morning at 09.00, then a soldier came with the rank of a major, and introduced himself as the town’s commandant. Then he started interrogating us one by one about our nationality and how long we had been in the camp. I was the last and when he heard that I was an Estonian, he took a half squatting position and said: ‘You have to be kept in that position, we must never let you stand up with your knees straight.’ It seems he had met other Estonians in his life and got a real impression of the encounter. He told us that people would come later to offer us employment and then we would be completely free except that we had to come to the office on the 1st and 15th day of every month to show that we were still there. We were glad that they did not want to check on us every day. The future would show; on those great expanses one can go far in fifteen days. Then the employers came and we did not have much choice. Together with a Russian from the Crimea, Volodya, I got work at the town’s building trust and its brick factory located two kilometres out of the town. Volodya became the chief mechanic and I a surveillance mechanic. We shared a room at the hostel. There was a woman with us too; she became the manager and the saleswoman at a shop. We decided

92

Between the Cogweels

that as we had a pleasant company, it would be better to be harmonious. Of the workers of the brick factory a whole settlement was formed. Then work started and I managed my machines well. There was also a small smithy there and as there was no smith among the workers and I knew the work, I made everything myself if necessary. The mechanic calculated the salaries and he was also my only boss. Nobody disturbed us from the centre. On Saturdays we went to town, to the sauna and sometimes also to sit under a palm tree. There was a café in the town where there stood a big palm tree in the centre of the hall. In summer there were about 30 workers in the factory, the majority of them came from the town. They were mostly also former prisoners. There apparently were no Estonians in the town either, I met none. There was only one Ingrian, a woman from the Russian environs of Narva who had worked as a handywoman in an Estonian farm and knew some Estonian. So life went on. I kept constantly thinking of how I could join my family. The locals told me that no one had left the place so far; I answered that I would leave but at the moment I did not know how. Everybody advised me to keep on living and to accept my fate, but I am the fool who does not do that. In February I had a thought to go to the local prosecutor. It was a woman, I explained my situation. I said that the whole family had been deported but could not be together. I explained that we had lived separately already for more than ten years and that was how long since I had seen my family. She said that, yes, there was a law that if the status of the people was equal, the family had to be united. She wrote a letter to my employer and gave it to me, saying that it would help me. It did not help that time. Then another stroke of fate came as if predicted. It was in the first days of April [1955], when I got out of the hospital. I went to the commandant’s office at once and took out my documents. Everything went smoothly now, it seems that they had decided to let me go. I was given a small paper telling that I had to appear at a certain date at the Maslyaninski militia station in the Novosibirsk region. From Tatarsk onwards everything was unknown but the knowledge that my family had passed here and was waiting, that I was going home, nothing to be afraid of, helped me. We had cots for sleeping and that was good; the train was moving when I slept. Had it been the other way round, had the train not moved until I slept, I would not have slept a wink. In Novosibirsk we changed trains and from now on moved towards Barnaul, getting off at the Tcherepanova station before Barnaul. We arrived at the station, I got off, and it was afternoon. I started asking around how I could get to the Maslyaninski centre and learnt that I had to go to a certain road and start

Heinrich Uustalu

93

hitch-hiking. So I did and at last a truck took me along. A couple of hours of rattling along the road and there I was. I slept this night in a kind of rooming house. In the morning I set about asking questions; I learnt everything from the hostess. She told me that the collective farm of Kuibyshevo was in the Nikanovo village 25 kilometres from there. She also told me that there was a regional convention of tractor drivers at the village club that day. Going there I would meet the people from the Kuibyshevo collective farm. Being thus well informed, I first went to the militia station, registered myself there, and was told to report on the 15th and the 30th every month – that was a foolish demand, for I was at home now, where should I go? Then I went to the machine and tractor station,16 was employed at once, told them that I would visit my family first and would come to work in two weeks. It was now April 1955, and I saw my new home from afar. The landscape seemed beautiful although it was winter. Beeches, and hillocks bigger than in the South Estonia. I thought, it must be a big country, so the hillocks are also big. Why is it that everything is so big here? Big prison camps. Big hunger. Big carelessness. Vast steppes. Endless foolish management despite being the biggest in everything in the world. Then the meeting with my family that had been waiting ahead, how many times I had thought it could never come true. Eleven years had passed. My parents, both mother and father had somehow become smaller, my wife and sister had wrinkles they did not have before. The children understood everything in their own way; the communist education at school had had its effect. Their father was a traitor just out of prison. They say that a person’s character is formed at the age of four or five. My children were twelve and thirteen; maybe I could change something if we could get away from there. The Stalinist education at schools had raised fighters for the leader’s great undertaking who followed gladly all orders from above. My wife was kind of shy and sad, as if waiting for something. I remained hesitant too and decided to wait for what she would do next. At the collective farm they started to convince me to come and work as a smith there. They had no blacksmith and the smithy was a ramshackle building: push it once and it would fall down but everything could be rearranged. The family had a small house, one room only, one third of it under a big Russian stove. Nine people living in there, I was the tenth now. In a few days the head of the collective farm again wanted to meet me, offering now much more. The farm had several big granaries of thick logs built by the kulaks which now were standing empty. They promised to give one of them to me. I agreed but asked them to ascertain the value of the granary so that I could buy it. I left the machine and tractor station and

94

Between the Cogweels

accepted the work of a smith. For I saw here a possibility to earn aside from the collective: there was a shop in the village with about ten horses at its disposal and a dairy also with ten horses and they all needed shoeing. I could do this in the smithy of the collective farm and get money every month. There was nothing to be expected from the collective farm before autumn so I took the risk and accepted the smith’s work of all three institutions on myself. If you are afraid do not expect profit. I had the granary transported to our house, and working day and night the smithy was ready in two months. We had also a cow, some hens, a dog and a cat. The collective farm started to pay 3 roubles for a ‘norm’ day and our family got 2.5 tons of wheat. There were three people working in the family: I, my wife and my sister, my parents stayed at home. Now I began thinking more and more of how the family that was all together now could somehow go back home, to Estonia. The new government seemed not to be so strict; it was not now as before – šag pravo, šag levo, strilait budu.17 With my wife we also got along somehow. We were alive and lived better than the local people but all this fertile soil seemed to burn under my feet. I could not live that way. I think my wife thought I had not got that letter she wrote me to the prison camp. It was not a good idea to touch the theme; what had happened could not be undone but it was better to let it lay. It hurt me constantly. At the same time I felt myself guilty before my family and I feel guilt even now when I am old despite the fact that I have done my duty to them, done everything I could. One day in that winter I went to Maslyanino, the district centre. I did not go to the public prosecutor’s office but went to the district party secretary. I explained everything this way and that, so that he would understand if he was able to understand anything. It seemed he did; he promised to help and I thanked him saying that the local power was all his. In two weeks time a paper came allowing us to go to Estonia after putting everything in order at the place of work. We were told to appear at the militia station where we would get our passports and after that we could go. Our plan was that at first my sister, her daughter and my mother would go, my sister’s son had gone earlier. We had the house, the cow, and the wheat to sell and to give the smithy over to someone. We could not hand over the wheat; we had to sell it at the market which was 25 kilometres distance from the village. We managed to sell the cow together with the forage and that was easy. However, it was more difficult with the house; the collective farm would not let us sell but wanted to take it from us. So I had been right to pay for the granary. The house had been bought too just like the granary, which I had also built into a house. What right did the collective farm to take it from us? We had also a buyer who lived in an

Heinrich Uustalu

95

earth house by the river and had the money I asked for the house. I went to the local delegate of the Supreme Soviet who was a reasonable woman. So I succeeded in selling the house. This winter the frosts were exceptionally severe. In the middle of February I took a part of my family to the district centre despite the cold. The rest of us started at the beginning of March. The queue for the tickets at the railway station was long; the militia was keeping order and said that those who were travelling farther had the right to be the first in the queue. As no-one was going farther than Tallinn; I was the first in the queue when the ticket office was opened. We could buy the tickets right to Tallinn; had only to have them stamped in Moscow. Then the slow rattling started – it took a long time but in the end we arrived in Moscow, at the Kasan station. Towards the evening of the next day a train would start towards Tallinn via Pskov. It is impossible to describe our feelings when the train crossed the Estonian border. Suddenly Estonian songs sounded from the loudspeaker. Tears came to our eyes that could not be stopped, being home again after 13 years had passed. We got off at Tallinn station and went straight to the place of my father’s twin brother whose birthday was that day. It was March 19, 1957. We celebrated the birthday and next day set off towards Pärnu by train. We went to my wife’s home and got a small back room there to live in. Then I started to look for a job. I had read in a paper that the Construction and Repair Board wanted a smith and quickly. I went there and was employed at once. I worked there for 27 years. During the Estonian Republic, the Audru schoolhouse had been built on the land of my wife’s brother. For that purpose a piece of land was separated from the farmlands. At that moment a married couple was living there, having a flat in the schoolhouse; the wife as a cleaning woman and the husband as a furnace man. Then an accident happened in their family; their daughter got drowned in the ditch near the schoolhouse when she was two years old. Then they asked us if we wanted to take their jobs and the flat. They said they did not want to live there any more. My wife took the cleaning woman’s job, father managed with the furnace, I worked in town. My work was hard, everything had to be done by hand, as there was no machinery but I was not afraid of difficulties and I earned well. This was necessary for we had to start from the very beginning, get everything we needed for living. The apartment we had in the schoolhouse was jobrelated; we were allowed to live there for four years and then were told to move out. Then [there] came the idea to build our own house. I had a year to get it ready and I managed that. I am now living in the house; I have been retired for 18 years. I also keep working; I do not know how to live without work. I have not got my farm back; there is nothing to get back

96

Between the Cogweels

anyway. Only brush around it and boars walking around. The buildings all empty, only four walls standing, the roof still intact. The farm was small, only 18.5 hectares all in all, but it was kept in such a good order that it earned the mark of a kulak18 for me. Everything was carried off right after we were deported: one took this, another that – it all belonged to a people’s enemy and could be taken. I have been thinking that those who at that time took other people’s property have not been lucky with it. Most of them are so poor that they evoke pity but I have everything I need for living. However, there was nothing good for me in that either. When I came back from Siberia I bought a motorcycle soon. In two years I bought an old car, mended it and used it for driving around. In the fourth year the house was ready and then I got an order to appear in the SORVVO,19 I went and met a young man who started interrogating me. How had I got it all? I advised him to go to Siberia for a while and learn how money could be made there. I brought back three full cement bags of chervonetses;20 half a bag was still untouched. So he did not ask any more questions. He said I could go and I asked if I would be asked to come another time, he answered it was not necessary. So I thought I should be careful anyway not to be caught between the clogs of fate any more. There is a saying: ‘Toil at something, work hard and then SORVVO will come’. Now, in 1989, they started saying that farms had to be restored [to their owners] but this was going to be hard. If it were only a few years that things had stood undone but half a century – this was a different thing. For one thing, where do we take people who would be able to think with their own heads? For the man who has grown up during the collective farm period and is used to that kind of working style cannot keep a farm. A farm needs thinking with your own head and acting accordingly. The Estonian has learnt it once: you toil and put it all in order – and off you go again to Siberia. It would not be so frightening for me; I have lots of acquaintances waiting there.

Heinrich Uustalu

97

Notes 1

2

3 4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11 12

13

14 15

16

17

The life story was written in 1988–1989 in response to the first public appeal to write life stories and stored in Estonian Cultural History Archives fond 350. The story is translated by Kersti Unt. EPT – in 1961 a state corporation called Estonian Agricultural Technology was founded at the Ministers’ Council of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. The corporation had 12 district sub-corporations and 11 departments. The founding of EPT was a stage in the reforming process of the machine and tractor station (MTJ) system. Akin to a modern attic conversion Политрук – ‘political leader’ in Russian, military commissar in the Red Army. Winter War – (November 30, 1939 – March 13, 1940) war between the Soviet Union and the Republic of Finland. Cursing matj and matj – cursing rudely in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. ‘Our boys’ – a hint at the Russian word свои (‘ours’ in Russian) often used by the Soviets in speaking about themselves. Red bottle of liquor – a hint at the ceremonial asking of a girl’s hand from her parents: it was an Estonian folk tradition to bring a bottle of vodka dyed red with burnt sugar on that occasion. ‘Marussa in a military uniform’ – in the Red Army traffic wardens were usually female soldiers generally called Marusyas; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Pagari Street – local NKVD (since 1946 Ministry of Interior) headquarters and detention centre at Pagari Street in Tallinn. See note 23 in Aleksander Loog’s story. Старшина – the highest non-commissioned officer among conscripts in the Soviet Army, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Seksna (Шексна) – Vologidskaya Oblast – author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Устьвымлаг (Ustvymlag) – author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Хуй с ним! – (in Russian) a rude expression meaning indifference and resignation; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Machine-tractor station (masina-traktorijaam (MTJ) in Estonian) – a stateowned institution in the Soviet Union that rented heavy agricultural machinery to a group of neighbouring collective farms and supplied skilled personnel to operate and repair the equipment. The stations were instrumental in the mechanization of Soviet agriculture. Шаг вправо шаг влево - стрелять буду! (No step to the left, no step to the right – or I shall shoot!, in Russian) – a traditional warning of a military escort. Author’s adapted spelling unchanged.

98 18

19

20

Between the Cogweels Kulak – in Russian кулак, meaning ‘fist’ – denoted in Soviet political slang as a wealthy peasant seen as a people’s enemy. SORVVO – Department of Combatting Against the Theft of the Socialist Property. Chervonets (червонец) – 1922- 47 bank note in the Soviet Union in units of 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, and 25 chervonets notes; 1 chervonets = 10 roubles.

My Life in the Twist of History1 Reinhold Mirk, born 1918 I, Reinhold Jüri’s son Mirk, was born on February 12, 1918 in a suburb of Pärnu called Raeküla, in a fisherman’s family. I had a brother and two sisters. Raeküla was at the time a rather large and poor fishermen’s village, not a suburb. Almost every household had a 1–3 hectare patch of land and the families had to pay the town for the right to use it. We had a horse, a cow, and a pig, and also a hen, a cat and a dog. At that time children were taught to work from an early age, so that they could cope with life later on. I remember I was 7 when mother woke me at 5 in the morning. It was my duty to bring the horse away from the pasture to harness it to the cart, to wash the dishes and the parts of the cream separator, to tidy up, to prepare food for our two pigs and give it to them at midday. [I would] make lunch for myself, something I liked: pancakes, milk soup, or simply to cut a slice or two of black bread. Put a thick layer of sour cream on the bread and add some sugar and a nice meal was ready. In addition to that, I had to weed and water the garden. My task was also to make butter of sour cream once a week. On September 13, 1926 I started my studies at the Raeküla six-year Primary School. From the first school day I remember that several mothers prided themselves in the ability of their son or daughter to read. My mother could not say that. I knew the letters and that was all but studying at school was not difficult for me. I graduated from the primary school on May 31, 1932. On June 18, 1937 I graduated from the Pärnu Gymnasium for Boys. Studying at the gymnasium, my closest friends and I started training ourselves purposefully in light athletics. We built a sports field on a pasture where there was a common landing pit for high jump, long jump, and pole vaulting; places for shot put, discus and javelin throwing, and a marked running track. We clubbed [our] money together and bought a shot, a discus, a javelin and a pole for pole vaulting. We made the high jump setup ourselves. My favourites were high jump, pole vaulting, and javelin throwing. I came first in those several times. After graduating from the Gymnasium at the beginning of July I started my compulsory service in the 9th Special Infantry Battalion. Of the gymnasium graduates who had come from the Pärnu-Viljandi military district, two 30-man squads were formed where the training of young soldiers lasted two months; for the others it was three months. The regime was very strict at that time and following the commands without a mistake demanded great efforts from young soldiers.

100

My Life in the Twist of History

When the first training course was over and we had given the military oath, entrance examinations took place for those young graduates who wanted to go to the advanced courses at the Tondi Military School. Many boys wanted to go. I graduated the advanced course in the infantry class of the military school on June 11, 1938 with the speciality of a rifleman. After that, 60 men from the course were sent to practice leadership in the 1st Infantry Regiment of Narva. We were received by the Regiment’s Duty Officer who chose 6 young men, me among them and said: ‘Take your luggage and go to the Oru Castle!’2 The garrison of Oru Castle consisted of two rifle and one cavalry squads. The training drills took place from morning till noon. We, the six postgraduates, took turns at being a squad leader, subaltern, and troop leader. Off-duty men built a road from the beach to the steep bank in the afternoons. When the President3 passed the road builders at work he used to greet us with the words: “Good afternoon, sons!” On September 30, 1938 my compulsory army service was over. By that time I had understood that it was not in my character to be a cadre officer and I gave up that idea. In civilian life it soon became clear that it was not very easy to get work as I had no special education. I worked, changing jobs, until the end of June 1939. Then I decided to go to work on the railway. For the first three months I worked as a transport worker. After passing a conductor’s exam I became a conductor. When in the Republic of Estonia a conductor’s monthly salary was 90–100 crowns then during the Soviet occupation it was really small. That is why I left the service of the Tallinn Reserve of Conductors in May 1941 and went to work as a steward at the Government’s Residences. A steward’s monthly salary was 400 roubles and in addition to that I got a free apartment of 25 m2 which consisted of one room. Early in the morning of June 22, 1941 Germany declared war against the Soviet Union. I learnt about it by midday. This news frightened me. Something like a fever seized me and I had all kinds of ominous premonitions. The words ‘war…war’ kept pulsating in my head. I do not know about the others but I felt that war was something very terrible. Not thinking any longer, I decided that as a young man my lot in this war would be to kill others or be killed. Mobilization into the Red Army started in the first days of July with the calling to active service of all conscripts born in 1919–1922; men born in 1907–1918 were taken on July 27. I was among them. Thinking it all over, I could not decide: to go or not to go? After some thought, I decided to fulfil my duty as a citizen. Our ancestors, our fathers had all warred against our old enemy, the Germans, so it was my duty to do the same and fight against the German’s successors to keep my honour.

Reinhold Mirk

101

What is more, my feelings towards the Russians were more favourable for historical reasons. In the atmosphere of the capital [Tallinn], in summer of 1941, it was not realistic to avoid mobilization and, simultaneously, spare the members of one’s family; at least it was so in my case. After having been mobilized into the corps of soldiers and non-commissioned officers, the reserve officers of the Estonian Defence Army living in Tallinn received an order on August 8, 1941 from the War Commissariat to gather at the mobilization centre with dry food for five days, a change of underwear, personal belongings, passport and military card. At noon of August 8, a rather diverse company gathered at the Tallinn hippodrome:4 reserve officers, about thirty railway workers, all clad in different clothes, with all kinds of backpacks and bundles. We were a bunch of strong young men brought up in different homes and different conditions who were now to start their journey into the unknown. We spent the mild August night in the big halls of the Estonia Theatre. It was late at night when the doors were opened and we were told to get out of the theatre with all our things. We were lined up on the street by fours and the column started towards the port. At the quay of the commercial port a cargo ship called Tõnu was moored, gangplanks ready. Several of us looked at the ship with frightened eyes: they had never been on board a ship before. Everybody understood what was waiting for us at sea: minefields, enemy aircraft, torpedo boats and the possible attacks of submarines. When all the men were on deck, an order was barked: ‘Off we go!’ In the afternoon of August 11, there was a gathering on deck. An intelligent looking political commissar with fair hair made a speech. The idea of the speech was clear and understandable: the fascists will never win because the Red Army is stronger in both its arms and morale. We were only temporarily retreating, to win time. At the end of his speech the commissar said that as reserve officers we were being taken to the rear, deep in the Soviet Union, to train young Estonian draftees who knew very little Russian into soldiers. Hearing those words I felt great relief as if a rock had fallen from my heart for it is the hardest of all for a man to get used to the unknown. A representative of the Red Army could not lie, could he? In the morning of August 15 when the sun had risen quite high, Tõnu arrived at the St Petersburg quay. Having stepped down from the ship I felt how good it was to stand on dry land again. I felt safe by-and-by, and there was no feeling of danger any more. At first we were marched to a sauna in a tent. At one end of the huge tent filthy men went in, and from the other end clean men with red cheeks came out. Late at night we went to the railway station. We were put on a train consisting of passenger cars with hard seats. Everybody made a bed on a bench or a bunk; no one was

102

My Life in the Twist of History

left without a place to sleep on. Soon the engine gave a whistle and we were leaving. By the evening of August 17, at dusk, we arrived in Kirov. We saw that war with its restrictions and laws had not yet reached that place. There had been not a single black-out in the town; nor was there a card system for food. Kirov was well lit and one could buy bread from the shops, even white bread and candy. In spite of the late hour we were taken to a canteen to have warm food. In the morning of August 20th when the sun was high in the skies, the echelon5 arrived in Yekaterinburg. The station, overburdened with military machinery and trains transporting evacuees, received us with whistling engines, rattling buffers and a chorus of voices. It was late at night when we got permission to go on. When the train arrived at the station of Irbit in the grey light of early morning we got an order: ‘Take your belongings and get out of the carriage.’ With repeated stimulating shouts: ‘Quick! Quick!’ they tried to show that we really had to hurry. We gathered on the square in front of the station where the representative of the Irbit executive committee received us. He divided us into two groups quite haphazardly and said: ‘This group will stay in town till tomorrow. In the morning you will continue on foot.’ The rest of the men were taken to the local factory to work. It was only now that we began to have forebodings. However, we still did not understand that we were an unnecessary mass of people whom they were sending in small groups to the Urals to be destroyed by hunger and hard work. I was struck dumb with amazement and due to my little experience could have asked: ‘Why are we not forming into national regiments like they promised on deck of the ship at the Tallinn port?’ Late in the next evening we came, very tired and hungry like wolf cubs, to our destination. In the centre of a wood clearing a big one-storey log house was standing with a hostel for about 40 people at one side. In the morning of August 23 we were formed into a working unit resembling a labour battalion.6 Unlike a labour battalion however, we had neither number nor a military structure. Our boss was a private individual [a private contractor] and we paid for our food. Our first task was to build a latrine. Five days later we left the log house and went to timber rafting work. By the evening we arrived at Glutch, a very ordinary Russian village with houses lined on two sides of the road, which was wide and overgrown in places with grass. Our boss accommodated us by threes and fours at the villagers’ homes. Our new working place was 4–5 kilometres distant from the village at the local river called Nitsa. The task of the Estonians was to push the logs from the right bank of the river into water with boathooks

Reinhold Mirk

103

and to push free some logs stuck at the bank, so that they could, floating with the current reach Irbit before winter. This work was hard and we were not used to it. The overseer, a Ukrainian looking almost fifty, was understanding and kind at first. He did not curse us, nor did he threaten to put us into a camp but allowed us to work as we were able to. However, that comfortable working style was not to last long. About the 10th of December our boss was changed. The new overseer was a tall strong Russian with a cruel face, a concentration of cruelty, brutality and injustice. With the change of authority came profound changes in working style and catering. We now had a seven-day week. The workday was 11 hours, not including the time for going to or returning from work and not including the time queuing up in the canteen. The norms for the daily portions were greatly diminished; we now got 600g of bread a day. We now also worked 6–7 kilometres away from the village of Glutch. Thus we worked from morning darkness to evening darkness, not thinking of salaries and expenditure as if we were some ancient fire watchers. In its brutality such a repressive power is even worse than a prison. Nobody took care of you here. We had no clothes to go to work in; the summer clothes we had had on when we started from Tallinn were torn and worn. We also had very little food, too little to keep us going. It often occurred that at dinner we were fed only with unpeeled potatoes, salt, bread and hot water. Breakfast was no better: two or three spoonfuls of gruel. The soup we ate in the evening was so poor that when we had drunk it, the plate was clean. The men used to say: ‘Looking through this soup, you can read the newspaper put in the bottom of the bowl’. The early winter of 1941/42 was exceptionally cold and snowy. In the middle of November the temperature was often minus 35–40 degrees and even lower. We had to work in very difficult conditions, which we were not accustomed to. We lacked winter clothes and felt boots, so necessary for working in the hard Northern winter. The more difficult and hopeless the situation became at the [war] fronts, the scantier became our food, the harder our life and the fiercer the fight for survival. Although not guarded by armed men and not surrounded by a barbed wire fence which would have made our location into a prison camp, we felt like prisoners for we did not have identification documents, freedom of movement and any connection with the world around us. We also had no information about the real situation at the Soviet-German front. What would become of us? Why did they not trust us Estonians, why were we repeatedly deceived, why were we sent to this hell to starve and to die? Those of us who were able to think, at all, had all these and other painful questions constantly in mind. Neither the director of the Volkovo logging centre nor the foreman ever told us that we belonged to the Red Army and were needed at the

104

My Life in the Twist of History

front. For we were all strong young men with good military training who were badly needed to supplement the ranks of the regiments at the front. The situation at the Soviet-German front was extremely complicated and stressful, and there was no possibility to foresee the final result. Nevertheless there was a thin thread of hope that we would all soon be called to the army and sent after a short training period to the front to fight the fascists, as were all the sons of freedom loving nations America, France, Great Britain, and others. It seemed to me that the only faint hope to get back home was through the front. The crucial moments of life arrive sometimes with extreme simplicity, be they expected or unexpected, good or bad. On midday, January 13, a telephone message came: all male Estonians of the ages of 18–45 were to be sent by the morning of January 14 to the war commissariat of Irbit. Those people who have never felt such hunger as us cannot understand how irresistible such an order can be if it is backed by a steaming cookhouse where everybody can eat as much porridge as he possibly can. In the iron cold morning of the next day when the dawn was yet far off we climbed one-by-one onto a truck with boards for sitting across it, and were rather excited. The foreman, the girls who cooked for us and about ten locals had come to see us off. Our boss told us to be heroic defending our homeland and fighting the fascists and to have a happy homecoming after we have beaten the enemy. After that we stood up, caps in hand, and started the Estonian anthem: ‘My motherland is my happiness and joy …’. We all kept singing from the depths of our souls, loud and free. And when we had sung the last verses of the anthem, the truck motor started loudly. This was our second time of going to war, this time back to Europe from Asia. The first stop was at the Volkovo logging centre where we got our pay. I was struck dumb by the news that I would get nothing. According to the bookkeeping, I owed 139 roubles to the centre although my partner and I were listed among the best workers. Now we went on towards Irbit by train. A group of bearded Estonians entered our carriage. Like us, they were so poorly clad that they looked like real scarecrows. They were overworked and exhausted, pain and despair looked back from their eyes. The same thing happened at several stations where Estonians entered our carriage. In the morning our train arrived at Yekaterinburg. When we had read the last short announcements of the Soviet Information Bureau from the wall, we learnt that during the first two weeks of January nothing noteworthy had happened at the front. When all the Estonian boys were together, a Russian officer with a black moustache and of Captain’s rank lined us up into a column and this bunch of scarecrows started to go

Reinhold Mirk

105

towards the headquarters of the military district of the Urals. In an hour and a half the columns stopped at the entrance to the club of the railway workers. The club hall was a big and comfortable room with pictures of the Communist Party Political Bureau leaders, slogans, and appeals on the walls. The representative of the local railway branch greeted us as future soldiers of the Red Army, wished us luck in our hard and dangerous work, victory over the fascists, many orders and medals and a happy meeting with our nearest and dearest. A concert of amateur singers and dancers of the local railway branch followed. Every song, orchestra piece or declamation earned loud applause from the listeners. We spent the night in the warm rooms of the club, smelling of cleanliness. Waking in the morning I felt I had slept like a log. We took a streetcar to the headquarters. At the headquarters a special committee was working whose task was to receive the mobilized Estonians and send them to their national division. Having arrived, we were lead to a big room where behind a long table covered with a red cloth were sitting members of the commission, speaking Estonian, of whom I knew no-one. The head of the commission greeted us upon our arrival and read a directive of the Head of the State Defence Committee, Comrade Stalin, about the formation of the 7th Estonian Artillery Division. Having done this, he expressed a hope that we would become brave soldiers in beating the enemy and liberating our homeland from the German invaders. However first, he said, we needed training in order to know how to fight the fascists and beat them. That is why we would be sent to a military training camp to prepare us. After this, everyone was asked several questions: name and family name, patronymic, date of birth, address, education, occupation; occupation of parents, party membership and membership of Defence League or Pro Patria League.7 They also wanted information about any former military career in the army of the Republic of Estonia: when and for how long? What military educational establishment you graduated from? Military rank, orders and medals? Everything was put down. Then they checked everybody’s military knowledge and skills to determine the men’s abilities for future service. Finally everybody had to sign a paper expressing a wish to fight in the Red Army against the German invaders. At the end of the questioning, the secretary gave everyone a card for a free dinner at the officers’ canteen of the Urals military district. I did not even remember how milk or butter or ham or sausages tasted. I had also forgotten the smell and the taste of real coffee, not even to speak of candy and biscuits. The food was delicious, the service polite, the canteen clean and all this made me feel that from now on I was again a human being in the direct sense of the word.

106

My Life in the Twist of History

We arrived at the Jelansk station on January 19 [1942]. It was early morning and the weather was iron cold. At daybreak a young officer with Lieutenant’s insignia came and called out: ‘Are there any boys sent to the Estonian division?’ The sun was again stuck in the pine tops when we at last arrived at the location of the 354th [Estonian] Rifle Regiment. Ahead of us there were oblong buildings, half built under the earth. Mud huts, or semljankas8 as soldiers used to call them, stood all in a long row side-byside and parallel with each other. They reached as far as we could see under the pine forest. In the low triangular gables reaching out of the earth we saw low doors. From the wide snowy road numerous paths lead to the earth huts as into foxholes. The Regiment’s Headquarters was in a small earth hut. We were received by the Chief of Staff and a few other officers who were sitting and warming themselves around a stove made of a big petrol tank. They gave us preliminary information about the rifle regiment that was being formed. There were only about a hundred soldiers and officers present. It turned out that the formation of the regiment had only just begun. This impression was most depressing whenever newcomers arrived, who came from labour battalions, logging or building camps. They were hungry, in rags, suffering from all kinds of diseases and very shabby. They were clad in all kinds of strange clothes. At the beginning of February, the formation of the Regiment’s Companies began. We spent the first days repairing the earth house which was in very poor condition and improving our living conditions. By the entrance of the semljanka, the company chancery was built, in the farther end we set up a Red Corner. To make the bunks a bit softer, every soldier made a mat of the thinnest beech branches. The entrance was festooned with pine branches and garlands. A slogan of the day was hung above the door. In the middle of the month the Regiment got new uniforms. This event brought the first lift in the soldiers’ spirits. After getting the uniforms the drill started of those men, whose military preparation and values were very different, in order to make real soldiers of them. To achieve that aim every commander and political commissar had to make a continual effort to work patiently and hard, because the severe life in the labour battalions had made the men suffer a lot. In addition to that, the knowledge that all connections with the men’s families had been cut, did not improve the men’s mood. At first the theme of the training was drill, learning the internal regulations, disciplinary rules, and field service regulations, and political consultations. The square in front of the earth house or some other place was cleared of snow and there every day a practical drill lasting a couple of hours was made with wooden rifles and machine gun maquettes. Supplying each unit with artillery, mine throwers

Reinhold Mirk

107

and horse transport went considerably slower than manning the Companies. Long and often very tiresome expeditions in deep snow and hard winter cold like in Suvorov’s times seemed senseless to many soldiers. Men participated in them very begrudgingly. However it was highly necessary. The long and hard expeditions of the Estonian Rifle Corps at the end of 1942, through the deep snow and blizzards on the roads of the Kalinin front involving weeks of continuous hard fighting in the frosts of Velikiye Luki at night by the light of burning houses were to prove. A memorable event was the day of giving the military oath – March 14. After giving the oath every soldier went to a table covered with a red cloth and signed the oath in writing. At the beginning of April the weapons were handed out: rifles, automatic rifles, and machine guns. The men admired their new gleaming rifles and were proud of them. Those weapons won our first battle for us – the battle of our hearts, especially for those who had strived to maintain self-belief in the meantime. The preparations of the [Estonian] national division for going to the front was attended closely by the representatives of the military district of the Urals, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia, and the Council of the People’s Commissars of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. They visited our unit frequently and lectured the soldiers. On May 5, the level of our military training was demonstrated to the State Defence Commission under the leadership of the Marshal of the Soviet Union Klement Voroshilov. He had a tactical training exercise organized and found serious shortcomings in the tactical readiness of the units. The results of the inspection raid were analysed at a parade that took place after the training. When Voroshilov had left, Major-General Lembit Pärn became our new commander. On August 12, the regiment received an order to move towards Moscow. This long awaited order brought about a lively bustle in the camp. My best friend and I, from the formation days of the Regiment, were excluded from the list of men allowed to go to the front as cannon fodder. We were considered untrustworthy for some social or political reason. We were sent to the 1st Estonian Special Reserve Corps. This depressed me a lot because I knew nothing that might have caused me to be left behind. We were lucky not to be officers ‘with a past’ who were arrested at once and sent to a prison camp. Untrustworthy officers like us arrived at the Reserve regiment from other national units and eventually there were lots of men there. As I heard later, many of them disappeared and no-one knew where. At the beginning of December 1942 fierce and long lasting battles began to destroy the fascists’ besieged garrison in Velikiye Luki and to

108

My Life in the Twist of History

liberate the ancient Russian town of invaders. The [8th] Estonian Rifle Corps, part of the 3rd Army of the Kalinin Front, also participated in this assault. On December 30 a rumour started circling in the Reserve Corps about the formation of new infantry companies to be sent to the front. In the evening the rumours turned out to be true. The Company Commander received an order from Battalion headquarters to start forming an infantry company immediately. The chancery of the Company started at once to make a list of those going to the front as the compilation, coordination, and affirmation by the military hierarchy required a lot of time. In deciding the fate of every soldier, sergeant, or officer the chancery had the power of veto in addition to senior military commanders. As a rule, the name of a candidate was crossed out because of his social background or for some other reasons. In place of men considered unfit as cannon fodder the Company commander had to present new candidates. Sometimes it even happened that only at the third attempt was a suitable replacement found. The first days of the New Year [1943] passed in endless line-ups, roll calls, and inspections, as always happened when infantry companies are formed. At the dawn of January 20 the troop convoy stopped at the terminal of Veliko-Polye. Here no traces of battle were seen but we saw destruction and bomb craters with uneven edges everywhere. Unloading went quickly for none of us had more than a big backpack with us. We lined up by squads and companies and headed for our final destination on foot. The soldiers were tired and weak, in fact totally exhausted, when we arrived by moonlight at the location of the 921st [Estonian] Rifle Regiment on the cold winter evening of the January 22. The surroundings of Velikiye Luki were depressing at first sight; it was like a ravished and dead clearing. No houses, no trees, animals, or birds. On this lifeless snowfield only burnt ruins could be seen and some still standing chimneys looking like dead men. The men who had not seen war before but sensed its horrors eyed this recent battlefield with anxiety and curiosity and the everlasting fear of threatening death. The Regimental Chief of Staff, Major Paul Liitoja told us that the bloody and fierce battles under Velikiye Luki had ended on January 16 and that the unit was now in a defensive position in the second line of the front line. I was included in the 6th Rifle Company within my squad. The first night at the front was very cold. Our felt boots and greatcoats were wet but we had no possibility to dry them. Green branches burnt badly and yielded no warmth. Smoke and fumes spread throughout the low hut, making eyes ache and water, and causing us to cough and sneeze. We sat cross-legged, back against back and could not get any sleep. When the soldiers were lined up the next morning to go for hot food, they all

Reinhold Mirk

109

looked horrible. The front was more active that day. The German long distance artillery shot at our defensive positions periodically but without result. The shells went over our heads or exploded before reaching our trenches, throwing up sooty, greyish-black puffs of smoke, snow and frozen pieces of earth. In the late afternoon of January 26, our Regiment left the defensive region with all its supply trains, going to the rear of the front line. A hard journey through snowstorms and frosts lasting weeks followed, with open air camping at night in the snow or in a wood, for the Germans had burnt all the villages when retreating. When in the morning of January 31 it dawned in the east and everything started to become lighter, we arrived in a pine forest near Seelitche village about 12 kilometres north of the town of Toropets. After taking care of the accommodation, regular training exercises started. The focus of attention was on tactical training, trying to avoid all the mistakes made in the Velikiye Luki battles (like the lack of equipment, poor intelligence, poor preparation of snipers and anti-tank teams) and on introducing the newly obtained experience. The spring and summer of 1943 were quite peaceful at the Kalinin front, the most important battles taking place along the Kursk Arch9 in the Ukraine. This period of quiet were used by the front commanders for building reserve positions, repairing roads, and building new airfields in the front line area. The 921st [Estonian] Rifle Regiment took part in building the defensive positions. Working conditions were exceptionally hard. The ground was very hard and sometimes stony and there was a lack of entrenching tools like spades, crowbars and picks. We had to bring material for lining [the trenches] from a forest about a couple of kilometres behind our lines, and we also lacked horses to transport the wood. The weather was equally bad for work and rest. Actually it was inhuman. Early in the morning on July 27 the Regiment departed from the Seelische region in full battle equipment with supply trains. Late at night the next day, in fact about midnight, we arrived dead tired near Nazimovo station. The weaker men were so tired that they could not move their hands and legs any more. In the morning of the next day, the construction of earth huts and other camp buildings started. However, the carefully built, warm and comfortable earth houses had to be left one snowy November night because the 249th [Estonian] Rifle Division was repositioned for defence near the Nevel road, south from Velikiye Luki, and started marching towards the front. We arrived in the region of DavydkovoPeschanka and Anreikino-Bulygino about 6–8 kilometres south from Velikiye Luki. Now the battle front was only 10 kilometres distance from us. The last great event of 1943 was the festive presentation of the Regiment’s Colours by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet

110

My Life in the Twist of History

Union on December 31. The flag was presented by Lieutenant General Lembit Pärn to a general delegation of 140 men formed of smaller delegations of 3–5 men and lead by the Regiment’s commander LieutenantColonel Mullas, his political assistant Major E. Avaldi, and the Chief of Staff Paul Liitoja. This extraordinary and long ceremony was an event every member of our regiment came to remember all his life laying on the men’s shoulders a heavy burden and great responsibility. The Colours, a symbol from time immemorial of the fame, honour, bravery, and daring of a unit became from this day on the regiment’s guide in everyday life, in training, and in battle. So we arrived into the New Year, the year of 1944 under our Colours. The soldiers of our regiment were all deeply convinced and believed that the year of 1944 would bring fulfilment of our greatest wish: going back home. It did not take very long for the wish to be fulfilled. On January 14 the troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov front started a decisive onslaught. During hard and bloody battles the German units in the regions of Ropsa and Novgorod were encircled and destroyed; the ancient Russian town Novgorod liberated and finally the St Petersburg [Leningrad] siege that had lasted for 900 days was broken. The victory at St Petersburg [Leningrad] generally influenced the fight against the German invaders. The blow given to the German Army Group Nord brought about a favourable situation for liberating the Baltic states. As a result of the successful battles at the Leningrad front, rumours spread in our Regiment that we would soon be sent to the front. In the afternoon of February 8, having eaten hot soldier’s soup, we marched with all our equipment to a railway station near Velikiye Luki where people were ready to receive the 2nd Rifle Battalion. It is not easy to describe in words the mood we were all in. One has to experience something like that to understand the desperate wish of a soldier who has spent many years in a foreign country to reach home. On February 6 our convoy stopped in St Petersburg [Leningrad]. We looked with curiosity at this city upon the River of Neva – the cradle of the Great October Revolution. What we saw was all dismal and bleak. We understood that the pressure of the Germans had been very strong, stronger than we had thought. Everything was in ruins. There was chaos everywhere – and silence. Only women were moving along the streets full of debris, alone and in groups. Before dawn, in the morning of February 9, we came to Koporye where we could rest in empty deserted houses. However, in the evening, we again took our heavy backpacks and went on. Next morning we arrived at the village of Pillove which was our next place of accommodation. To learn more about the defensive system of the

Reinhold Mirk

111

fascists and to be able to break through their lines, the Regiment’s officers decided to build a training ground. In two days and nights the defensive position of a German rifle company was built with all its necessary elements. After that, long tiring training exercises at the Divisional and squad levels started, from before sunrise till after sunset. In April our Officers decided to create a reserve defence battalion along the general line of the Luga River. The work of building the field fortifications was given to the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps. The spring of 1944 was like any spring: with bright sunshine and cool winds, frosts and downpours. On July 2 we left our camp and moved 28 kilometres towards the west with all our belongings. In the evening of July 9 the artillerymen and gunners of the Regiment started moving towards Narva to participate in liberating the city. After liberating Narva on July 26, the designed frontal onslaught of the Leningrad front got stuck in the region called Sinimäed (Blue Hills). As a result of this, the plan to take the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps to the [fight in the] battle remained unrealized. The Corps was again placed in the reserve and stayed there waiting for new orders near Kingissepp. By the end of August 1944 the troops attacking from the direction of Pskov reached the Emajõgi River along its entire length from Lake Peipsi [Peipus] to Lake Võrtsjärv. The situation became favourable for breaking the flank of the Germans’ front, which relied on the Gulf of Finland, and for liberating coastal Estonia completely from the enemy. In the forenoon of September 12 we came to the eastern shore of Lake Lämmijärv where Lake [Peipsi] narrows [between the northern and southern ends] into a strip [of water] with a width of only a few kilometres. On the other side of this narrow strip we saw our homeland for which we had been yearning in our sleepless nights – a generous payment for all our pains and sufferings. Our craft crossed this 3 kilometres strip of water in a quarter of an hour. We landed on the western shore of the lake at Mehikoorma and then stepped excitedly onto the ground of our homeland. Three long years separated us from the day when we had left our homes. Now we were again standing on this ground, discoloured as it is in autumn. Many men knelt and kissed this ground, tears of joy in their eyes. The moment was sublime, solemn and will be remembered by every soldier till the moment of his death, just like a first love. It is impossible to describe what we felt at the moment; something like this must be experienced. It was harvest time. People stopped work, left their rakes and pitchforks at the haystacks and listened to our singing in Estonian. Then they came running to the road, alone or in groups of two or three, looking at us as if we were a miracle, because during the German occupation it had been written in the newspapers and repeated over the radio that there were no

112

My Life in the Twist of History

Estonians left among those who went to Russia. It was told that they had all died in the Siberian forests and been buried there. However, a soldier’s free time was scarce and we had no time to talk for long. The Emajõgi River was waiting ahead. On the evening of September 15 the Regiment received an operational order. According to the order, the Regiment had to force the Emajõgi River in the second column near Kavastu Manor and then to move to the front from behind the left wing of the 7th Rifle Division and follow the enemy through the forests and mires in the direction of Sookaldus-Torma. The night before September 17 was beautiful, warm and windless. At 7.30 sharp the morning silence broke into a thousand pieces. On the northern bank of the river hundreds of shells and mines were bursting, throwing great fountains of earth into the air. During the preparatory fire of the artillery, the Companies of the Regiment moved to their initial positions of the onslaught, into the woods about 600–800 m south of the river. At 8.10, on the 40th minute of artillery fire, the Companies of the first column of the 7th Rifle Division got out from their trenches, took floating craft from hiding places and started to force the river in boats and on rafts. At 8.21 the soldiers of the first column of the Division were already attacking the Germans’ defensive positions on the northern bank of the river. As soon as the 7th Rifle Division [had crossed] the pontoon bridges and the floating craft were available, the Companies of the second column moved to the southern bank and crossed the river. The picture we saw was depressing and horrible. The defensive positions of the Germans looked horrible after the shelling from our artillery. In all the collapsed trenches and passages, the dead were lying with swastikas on their sleeves, with their faces down, kissing the earth, bloody in their rifle pits, burned nearly to heaps of ash. Our Regiment continued the onslaught. We had to hurry in order not to give the retreating enemy time to take breath, arrange their disordered troops and positions and restore their fighting spirit. Early in the morning on September 20 the regiment continued the onslaught as the vanguard unit moving towards the northwest. The strong resistance of the Germans had been broken. However, for the soldiers of the Corps the war was not over with liberating Estonia from the German invaders. The order from the army command that arrived at the beginning of February 1945 – to go to the front – was not unexpected by the soldiers of the Estonian Rifle Corps. Now the final aim became clear – the Second Baltic front, the Kuramaa (Courland) ‘pocket’ in Latvia. The commanders of the Second Baltic front prepared to give a punch in the centre of the front – towards the the towns of Auce and Saldus.

Reinhold Mirk

113

At mid-day on March 17, a foggy day, the Companies of the Regiment started an attack against the Germans’ defensive positions. The enemy defended every piece of land, every former manor. The manors were actually the Germans’ main defence centres. March 22 was, despite great strain and difficulties, a rather lucky day in my life for I might have been seriously wounded or even gone to live with Archangel Gabriel. The Germans were shooting at us with a six barrelled mine thrower. One shell fragment cut the knot of the strings on the top of my winter hat, another grazed my right earlobe. It is horrible to think even now how close a man’s shave may be in wartime. April 2 was our last day at the front in that long-lasting and bloody war. The men marched silently and were looking down in order not to fall. It was all more or less all right until we came to a path over a mire. Defying, with some inner rage, all those impossible difficulties of hardship and rain, we arrived at a new camp site before evening. During that long day we had walked only 13 kilometres. Eating the thick and fatty pea soup, one of the men said: ‘This time we survived’. Yes, we had survived and we were still in a unit. After a few weeks of battle only eighteen men out of a hundred were still alive and uninjured! No comment … as they say in such cases. Next morning it was somehow strange to get used to the thought that those fierce battles where there were so many victims and so much blood, were over now for a while and that under those trees we could walk without being afraid of the enemy’s bullets. In general, I had gained the experience in those battles that it is not easy to stay calm under heavy fire and do what you have to do. In the evening of May 7 an order came to take the whole 8th Estonian Rifle Corps to battle. In the morning of May 8 the troops of the Corps, including the 921st Rifle Regiment, moved again to the front to bring to the end the destruction of the Kuramaa ‘pocket’. We marched quickly all that long and hot day, taking a short rest only after a while. However, while the soldiers rested, the meat chopper of war was still working at top speed. All the men of the 3rd Battalion knew the combat mission of the next day: to go to the battle as a tank dessant. Thus in such an atmosphere, the victory at early dawn of May 9 found the tired soldiers of the 921st Rifle Regiment in the Kuramaa ‘pocket’. The soldiers were again woken by fierce firing. ‘Have the Germans really broken through our defence lines?’ Still sleepy, the soldiers seized their rifles. No one knew where to point them because the shooting sounded from all sides; and there was no officer to be seen who could shout orders. Then we heard that Germany had surrendered unconditionally and the long awaited victory had come, the soldiers of our Company joined the victory celebrations.

114

My Life in the Twist of History

In the evening of June 7 at about 22 p.m. we again stepped on the ground of our dear homeland, near Ikla. We approached a triumphal arch made of young budding birches with a big slogan: ‘Welcome to the liberated homeland!’ Reaching the arch, the Company started a song: ‘Stay free, Estonian sea, stay free Estonian ground...’10. Using an improvised tribune the representatives of the Communist Party, the republican government and the leaders of the local soviets greeted us. All that happened later is, despite the years that have passed, still a vivid memory. We marched in a great mood, singing, spring flowers and lilacs in hand, through the springtime villages and towns of Estonia where triumphal arches of young birch trees and people on both sides of the road were waiting for us. I have never in my life heard such kind words coming right from the heart. This was a party for those who had survived. In connection with the demobilization of the 249th Rifle Division in summer 1946, I was transferred to the 7th Rifle Division. I, as a 1st Lieutenant, received a proposal to continue in the army with the rank of a Subaltern, as there were lots of Company commanders with the rank of Captain or Major. I was insulted by that proposal and preferred to retire. Thus I was demobilized from the Soviet army in summer 1947. I started work at three Tallinn secondary schools as a teacher of military training. Although I liked being a teacher, I quit this job soon. On a Saturday in January 1951 I was summoned to the war commissariat of the Kalinin district in Tallinn and was told, without asking, to continue my army service in a newly formed Estonian Division with one Rifle Regiment accommodated in the Juhkental barracks. I remembered quite well all the difficulties and disappointments of becoming a civilian (I did not belong to the Communist Party) and I did not want to become a spare wheel of a cart, although army service provided me, financially, with a much better living. Besides, I had started to study a correspondent course to become a teacher of physical education. The Stalin repressions against the Estonian nation and the former soldiers of the [8th Estonian] Rifle Corps had killed my last trust and hope that anything could become better. This was another reason for not wanting to have anything to do with the army. I started my service as a unit commander, this time in the training company where the graduates from the secondary school were trained to become future reserve officers. It was very difficult at first, as the old wartime weapons had meanwhile been replaced by new and better ones. All regulations and instructions were classified (with a notice ‘секретно’11 on the first page). I remember how the beautiful curly hair of one squad commander became grey overnight because one of his soldiers had lost a Kalashnikov cartridge case at the Männiku shooting range. The whole firing line was searched with mine detectors but the cartridge case was not

Reinhold Mirk

115

found. The squad commander was in danger of being tried by the war tribunal but finally the investigation was dropped and he remained unpunished. After the graduation of the first, and at the same time also of the last, year of reserve officers and a successful graduation of the Company Commanders attending refresher courses in St Petersburg in 1953, I served as a Company Commander and a Chief of Staff until the summer of 1956 when all national units of the Soviet Army were dismissed and the officers discharged, including me. After leaving the army I worked again as a teacher of military training in Tallinn until the summer of 1962 when military training in secondary schools was finished. Then I moved to Pärnu together with my family. I went to work at the chipboard plant of the Pärnu Production Corporation Viisnurk (Five Pointed Star). At first I worked at the ‘crusher’. Later I was made a shift master. I worked at that post until 1984 and then retired. For my good work I have been awarded many certificates of honour, souvenirs, and an order of the Badge of Honour’.12 Now, being old and looking back at my life, it seems that we, the former soldiers of the Estonian Rifle Corps have suffered, fought, and shed blood in vain. Let me give just one example: at gatherings of freedom soldiers our state leaders and ministers speak and praise their heroic deeds, but at the gathering of the Labour Battalions there are no state leaders present. Some former communists even call the Corps’ lads, occupiers. However, let us recall a piece of history. Young men who had lost their state went to serve in the armed forces of one or another totalitarian power. The 8th Estonian Rifle Corps was formed during the hardest times for the Soviet Union – in 1942 as a national army formation fighting against fascism within the Red Army in the joint front of Europe. We fulfilled our duty to homeland with honour, demonstrating in battles liberating our home from the fascist occupants that we knew how to handle firearms. The units of the Corps never did anything against the Estonian nation, did not participate in punitive operations against the ‘Forest Brethren’ or in deporting innocent people to Siberia. Although 50 years of Soviet power has brought only deceit, trouble, and misery to the Estonian people, the claim of some very naïve Estonians that we – the soldiers of the Corps – are occupiers is very insulting. We came, arms in hand, to drive out the German occupiers and we did it in all sincerity. We did not understand in those days that Stalinism masked its real aims during the hard years of the war, to hide its aggressiveness and inhuman character, because only a free nation is able to defend itself unsparingly against the attacks of an enemy. I remember someone once said that cruelty can only be defeated by love. A cruel war is always won by

116

My Life in the Twist of History

those who love their people and their homeland. So we may conclude that the course of war is not decided on the battlefields but in the hearts of people. In conclusion, this war was senseless fratricide in the name of homeland and home. In fact the aim of us both – the soldiers of both sides – was the same: to restore the freedom of Estonia fighting against fascism or communism. In the face of history we are all guilty of fratricide. I can assure you that men on both sides of the front were fighting for Estonia and if they had had an opportunity to do it in an Estonian uniform, they would have done it. The aim of an Estonian soldier has always been an independent and free Estonia! However, the men had no choice: they had to fight either with the Germans or the Russians who were both actually fighting against them, they both wanted to destroy the Republic of Estonia. Notes 1

2

3

4 5

6

7

An abbreviated version of a life story preserved at the Estonian Cultural History Archives, fund 350. The life story was written in two parts in 1997, in response to a popular life writing competition ‘My Destiny and Destiny of Those Close to Me in the Labyrinths of History’. The story is translated by Kersti Unt. Oru Castle was the Presidential summer residence located in the coastal village of Toila. The retreating Red Army destroyed the building in 1941. Only the formal gardens remain. The President of the Estonian Republic, Konstantin Päts who resided in the Oru Castle. Hippodrome – horse race course. The word ‘echelon’ has been used in the place of a mechanized column or ‘troop convoy’ Labour battalions – a general notion spread in the Red Army about the work units subordinated to the Red Army and the NKVD during World War II, used behind the Soviet frontline and in the immediate vicinity of the front. Defense League (Kaitseliit) – a voluntary organization of defence formed behind the frontline in 1918 in the War of Independence to defend the Republic of Estonia and public order. Later several services, such as the Border Guard and prison administrations developed out of it. In pre-World War II Estonia, the Defence League had a notable role in the fields of military training, education in national defense, societal and sport life. In 1927, the Woman’s Auxiliary (Naiskodukaitse) was formed as a branch of the Defence League; in the second half of the 1930s the youth organi-

Reinhold Mirk

8

9

10

11 12

117

zations Noored Kotkad (Young Eagles) and Kodutütred (Nation’s Daughters) were also formed. Pro Patria party (Isamaaliit) – a league founded in 1935, after the abolition of all political organizations working with the support of the Estonian government. The purpose of the Pro Patria was to consolidate the forces supporting the government, making national propaganda more effective, organizing action against the opposition and forming the new political elite. Step-by-step membership of Pro Patria was made obligatory for all state and self-government officials. Mud hut, from the Russian землянка; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Kursk Arch was the front line between the Soviet and German forces at the Battle of Kursk July 4–20, 1943. ‘Stay free, Estonian sea, stay free Estonian ground...’ – Jää vabaks Eesti meri, jää vabaks Eesti pind, in Estonian – a popular marching song of the 1920s sung by Estonian soldiers on both sides of the frontline during World War II. Cекретно – classified in Russian. Order of the Badge of Honour – high award of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union since 1935.

Hope of Staying Alive1 Boris Raag, born 1918 When the war with Germany started, all the comrades went to Russia of their own will. There were also those who were made to go ‘of their own will’. Indeed thousands of men, born to and brought up by Estonian mothers, were mobilized and had to go against their will. There were also those who were forced to go as convicts against their own will. The fate of those people was the saddest. They suffered the worst living conditions, hunger and derision. In the labour battalions the conditions were almost the same. But there were neither barbed wire fences nor prisons there. One could move around freely. I have heard of several men who fled to the woods to avoid mobilization. But where were the woods that would have accommodated thousands of men, men lacking firearms and food? Those who went to the woods had some support from outside. Thousands of men were taken under the pretext of mobilization to hundreds of places all over Russia. The initiative was all in the hands of Joss.2 If God has given you life and a razboinik3 wants to take it, one needs resources to keep the soul within the body God gifted. If those resources are not given, one has to take them. So we thought that it was not a sin to deceive, to lie, and to steal. Nobody wanted to die of hunger under the Soviet power. It was so senseless to become simply one of the victims of either the ‘Za Stalinu, za rodinu’4 or the ‘Heil Hitler’ regimes. So you needed to manoeuvre, to get out of the situation with as small a loss as possible. Those in power kept stressing that everything belonged to the people. So, being one of the people, everyone had a right to a part of the riches. When dividing the resources was inadequate or directly wrong, one had to get their share through lies and deceit. Taking someone’s personal property is wrong. I have not sinned in that sense: have never taken or even desired anyone’s bread, tobacco, or anything else. Everyone has their own destiny; everyone has their own path, walking or running, marching solemnly on the spot or limping on. My path may seem to some people rather like a film or even utopian but I have told the complete truth. If anything has not turned out quite right, it must be explained by gaps in my memory. For the distance between what was and the present is more than half a century. ‘Borka, wake up, and look at the Sprat Town5 for the last time.’ Still half asleep, I feel that I am on my side on something hard and everything is in some strange way rattling and trembling around me. Hearing Erka’s words it all starts to dawn on me: we are climbing stairs, no, climbing onto a boat. We are going to Russia. It is war and mobilization. Me and Erka, we had been working at the Tallinn Industrial Trading Centre. Mobili-

120

Hope of Staying Alive

zation was on Sunday, July 27, [1941]. On Saturday I had asked Erka, what was better to do, to flee to the woods or go to Russia. Erka said that it was not a good idea to go to the woods. For then we would cause trouble to the members of our families and that there would be some bread and tobacco in Russia, too. Then I said that we should go home to take some food in an ‘Affe’6 with us. We had been told to take food for five days. But Erka did not want to go home, saying that that he would not tolerate weeping women. I decided to go! Erka asked me to go to his place, take his ‘Affe’ and bring it to town. My brother-in-law was hiding in the woods already; he hid himself in several places and had recently even been living quite daringly on the upper floor of the house he lived in, in someone’s pantry. He had been peeping out of the pantry when they [the Soviets] came for him. His friends had promised to come from the woods and fetch him and said that they would then go into the Mahtra mire. I decided that if my brother-inlaw was still there, I would go with him, if not, I would go to Russia. So it happened that his friends had come for him during that week; he went to the woods, I went to Russia. I went home to take my ‘Affe’. Mother baked a white loaf, big as a poor man’s hand mill, and also fried meat and eggs. I also took bread, butter and sugar. Nothing very special, no nightingale’s tongues as a popular saying goes. Leaving home was very sad. That was what Erka had been afraid of. The train for town left early. When I started to go to the station my younger sister was still sleeping. Mother woke her and asked her to come and see me off. I did not want them to come. So they stayed standing on the stairs. I composed myself, looked back and waved my hand. They were standing on the stairs and crying disconsolately. I felt anxious and deeply depressed. So, we get on the train at the station and off to town – to Nõmme – we went. I was at the same time living at my cousin’s rented flat, without paying any rent. From there I took some cans of sprats I had put aside earlier and some savoury army biscuits. Now the first line-up of this war began. There were eight men in the line. I, Erka, and Kolla who had been a car locksmith at the Trading Centre, and his friends were all in one line. Then our trip to the port started. There were many people to see us off. Some women were carrying the backpacks of men they were seeing off. The port was surrounded by a fence which had not been there before the Russians came. A big boat ‘Имени Сталина’7 was waiting. Hundreds of men had climbed up the gangway onto the ship, hundreds were still coming. Hundreds or thousands of men were all accommodated on that ship. How many? Classified information!

Boris Raag

121

Now back to the beginning. I woke up and saw that the town was disappearing into water, into the early morning dusk. Good bye, home! The boat was great. The Russians had managed a truly ‘great thing’ here, otherwise it would not have been dedicated to Stalin, or so we thought. Look at that! Under the captain’s bridge, just above our heads, was a big board in Latin letters telling that the boat had been made in Holland. When there is a war, defence must be good. 4–5 anti-submarine boats were constantly circling us throwing anti-submarine bombs from time to time. Suddenly an announcement from the loudspeaker: ‘Everybody to their cabins!’ We all had life-savers, a bicycle tyre filled with air, twisted into the shape of the number eight, around our waists. If necessary it would have helped us to float. Finally we were in Lenin’s town. Strange, there were no people in the port as if a state holiday had been announced on the occasion of our arrival. Some people were moving but only in the distance. We marched on along the almost empty streets of Leningrad. Animal wagons were waiting ahead [at the train station], [similar to] those that were [used to] transport deported people. Only there were no bars on the windows [of these wagons], the doors and the windows were all open. The carriage jerked once and the train started moving. The engine puffed and sighed slowly at first, then quicker and quicker. The landscape resembled the landscape at home. Our train often had to let the army equipment trains, naphtha, and ambulance trains pass, as they had to move quickly. We had enough time, for in Russia hunger is always waiting. We keep moving on, ever and ever, towards the ‘eastern latitudes’. Damn it, but when did this train change its destination towards the ‘northern longitudes’? If we continue that way, we can soon see the ‘bristling ice and snow’8 We were moving along the Urals. We passed breathtakingly beautiful places: looking at them made us gasp. Then we entered a town, and stopped in front of a station building. I managed to read the name of the town from the station board – Krasnouralsk. Then we got an order to take our belongings and get off the train. We were accommodated in a log house, used as a school. Once in the house we got an order to line up because we were going to have a meal. The man who gave orders was called Mitt; he wore an officer’s belt and a shoulder strap on a white blouse. Shaggy boys were constantly moving among the men. Then the other phenomena of this paradise started to become apparent. Our men were used to keeping their wallets in the back pocket of their trousers. They behaved there as at home, forgetting that they were in ‘paradise’. They remembered where they were when they put a hand into an empty pocket where there had once been a wallet. There

122

Hope of Staying Alive

was no general work for us at the beginning. They offered plumbing and Erka and I took that job. There were four of us. Erka got acquainted with three men: the brothers Kats and Villu, the third man was called Allik. When I met them they were already planning a change of place. So we adopted a decision of public importance to see the wide world. Our final destination was a foreign country close by – Afghanistan. When carriages with foodstuff arrived, they needed loaders and we volunteered at once. We only took what belonged to us and left the things of other people alone. We took only one of the five axes we had been given as future loggers. There were too many kitchen knives in the kitchen, so Allik took one of them. And an empty mattress bag also got in our way, sorry. Thus we were economically well off. But the technical equipment was poor as there was no watch and no compass. Only a pocket map of 1 dm2. And our knowledge of Russian was also very poor. As it turned out later, this proved useful. Without courage there is no victory, add luck and a bit of cleverness – and there you are. There were others who had left before us. They tried to use the railway. And there were those who got away but also those who got caught. There was only one solution to deal with such cases: in a while an announcement was read to the men in line about how the deserters had been caught, sent before the war tribunal and, sentenced to death according to the laws of war and been shot. A similar announcement was also read concerning our flight. We heard about it when we met men from Krasnouralsk in the Estonian Corps in February [1942].9 When it became dark in the evening, we took our backpacks to the woods and at dawn we went and collected them. And then straight towards the south; we did not use the railway. The weather was fine and warm and it was very quiet in the woods. We made plans for the journey. First we made walking sticks of juniper. They would be handy should the need arise to hit someone with them. We had four backpacks and an axe. One of us kept moving 15–20 metres ahead with the axe. When he noticed something, he made a sign with the stick and the rest of us, carrying the backpacks, took shelter. We went mostly through woods of fir; we did not find any blueberries, however, for the woods were so dense and dark in places under the trees that you might have met all kinds of fiends there even by day. From the top of the mountain we could take our bearings. Down the mountain, then a short distance back around the end of the lake and then straight towards the south where...10 There were also cloudy days with slight rain. As we had agreed, in the case of such weather we tried to reach a meadow where hay had been made and was already in haystacks. We

Boris Raag

123

scraped a hole into the leeward side of the stack to sleep in. In the morning the weather was better. We had also been able to get more potatoes. We cooked them and ate some meat and bread too. Thus we got the energy to continue the journey. But despite our Number 1 economy regime, our supplies were drying up quickly. Then we noticed by the appearance of the undergrowth that there were people nearby. We found paths. In the afternoon we came to the edge of a field where rye had been cut and put into stacks. The field was immense and seemed to end at the edge of the world. Allik went to look what was beyond that edge. Coming back, he told us that there was a wood at the other end of the field and a big village. But right beyond this field was, God bless it, a big potato field of the collective farm – all ours. We ate some grain to while time away until we could go to the potato field. It never became completely dark. It was full moon. So we had to go. We cooked more potatoes to take them with us the next day. We lay beside the fire until morning came. The nights were becoming colder. Before noon we came out of the woods and to a riverbank. The river was winding this way and that. We went along the road and saw woods again, young trees and clearings. After a bend of the road we ran into a deeduška11 who was coming with his grandson, a wooden pitchfork on his back. Our watchfulness had slackened a bit. We were at the moment discussing how to get bread and the man who was to move ahead was not in his place. We had decided that we would try to buy bread when we reached a village. We found a small house with a sign ‘Магазин’.12 We went in. The store was very simple: a counter and empty shelves. There were a few toys and some rag dolls on the shelves. The only usable thing here was a box for bread. You had, naturally, to pay money to get bread but also to hand in a piece of paper – a food stamp.13. It meant that you could not get bread without that stamp. Then two men approached us, both in leather jackets and caps despite the warm weather. The men demanded our documents and an explanation of where the other two men and backpacks were. They had been informed of visitors coming. So that was that, no festive reception by the local authorities. There were about ten men with guns outside. They were even so obliging that they carried our backpacks – were we not their dear guests? The collective farm centre was the best house in the village, so the most suitable for receiving guests. There was a long bench along one wall made of a single log. The bench reached from one end of the room to the other. We were offered a seat on that bench. Next to the wall opposite, there was an enormous Russian stove. All the office furniture consisted of two big cabinets, two tables and – three

124

Hope of Staying Alive

chairs. In the evening the collective farmers came home from the fields. No, they did not have homes, they lived in houses.14 It was dark already now. The windows were opened so that the peasants could see the tšjortova nemetses.15 Seeing a nemets after a long tiresome working day was a worthwhile sight and was supposed to make them work more. In the evening a militiaman came and took away our knives for the knives were considered weapons. We were guarded carefully. It was done by ten stronger collective farmers, a surplus of the army, armed with the famous Beretaka breech-loading single-loaders made in Tula. The men with guns surrounded the house to guarantee our safety. Before the militia came, we had given our axe and our mattress bag with potatoes to the housewife who lived behind the stove. In the morning the housewife cooked those potatoes for us. She motioned us to sit behind the table, put the potatoes on the table and then brought some salt on a plate. We expected her to bring knives and some sauce as we were accustomed – but no. She saw our embarrassment and set us an example. She took a potato, and then peeled it very skilfully and quickly with her thumbnail. Then she dipped the potato into the salt and popped into her mouth. The example was contagious. The housewife watched, sneering – what bunglers. They seem to have eaten potatoes unpeeled all their life. Then she said: hleba net.16 Show us bread stamps or no more bread. But despite all that hard life there was electricity in the village. An uncovered bulb was hanging from the ceiling. Then the convoy appeared. No pošlii rebjata!17 The militiaman was not afraid that we would run away or take his life. Sometimes he walked in front of us, sometimes followed us. With our scanty knowledge of Russian we managed to explain that we were Estonians, not Germans and that we had come from Tallinn. He seemed to be the first to believe what we said, especially when he had got a couple of packets of Georgian tea. The road went through the collective farm. There were private plots of the collective farmers along the road with all sorts of things growing in them. The militiaman went to a pea field and started to munch peas, beckoning us to follow his example. We went and ate peas and stuffed our pockets full of them. Then we heard a car coming along the road. A Zil 5 was proudly coming with a load of logs or planks, I do not remember which. The militiaman stopped the car. Without saying a word to the driver, he commanded us to climb onto the load, threw an armful of pea stalks he had taken from the field onto the load too, and climbed on himself. Ну ребята, кушайте,18 he said generously. So we did, for we were really hungry. Finally we arrived at the local town – Pervouralsk. At the militia station the officer on duty barked at us to take a seat at the wall. Ne razkovarivatj!19 Such a reception was amazing. The station

Boris Raag

125

officer went out from time to time. During those intervals we could discuss things: we worked out a version what to say if asked where we came from and who we were. After some discussion we managed to make something up. In the evening we were told to go to the classroom where the local superiors and a lady with a dog were waiting. The lady was well dressed, wore heavy make-up, lots of jewellery and rings. A wealthy lady! We were asked who we were, where we came from and whether we had any documents. I handed them my Estonian identity card. The lady read ‘Republic of Estonia’. She asked if we knew any German. Kats knew some, not well but could hold a conversation. So they started to discuss things. The lady, a Jewess, was from Riga. She corroborated our story about being Estonians. Then they started to look for an interpreter which took them a couple of days. So for those two days we repeated out story which was the following. We had been evacuated and were going to the rear. In the train we drank some vodka but that was soon gone. So we had to get some more. At a station it seemed to us that the train was going to stop for some time. We went to the store to get some drink and some food but got nothing. When we came back to the station, the train had gone without us. We had lost all our clothes, underwear, coats and other things. Somehow we managed to explain to the stationmaster what had happened but he told us he could do nothing about it. He told us to go to the next town. He thought that perhaps it would be possible to do something about it there. He did not tell us how we would get there and so we simply started walking when suddenly we were arrested as Germans. On the day we had been arrested we had eaten some baked potatoes. The next day a farmer woman boiled some potatoes for us that we ate with salt, and later we also ate some peas. Now we did not know when the next meal would be. Next day a militiaman asked us if we wanted to eat. Do we have money? Sure we did, sure we had. He lined us up and off we went – Šagom marss.20 In the canteen the militiaman drove some people away from behind a table. We got our food without having to queue up. We were brought soup, porridge, tea, and even bread. The next days the same thing happened, only now our audience had grown. Then the interpreter arrived. We told our heartbreaking story one by one, regretting repeatedly our lost property. Thus the interrogation ended, because everybody understood how we had come to that place. In Russia there is a good custom to make all state business classified. So nobody knew here that there was a labour battalion somewhere from which people could escape. After the interrogation, the typewriter kept rattling half the night to put on paper what we had told them. And then everything was fine. We boarded a train to go on with our journey.

126

Hope of Staying Alive

Two militiamen had come to see us off, not to escort us, but to hand us over to the evacuation centre as evacuated men. And stranger yet, they were carrying our backpacks. In Sverdlovsk, where we went, everything was arranged quickly at the evacuation centre. The militiamen got a signature to prove that we had been handed over and we gave our signatures to the militiamen to prove that we had got our backpacks from them. We got the stamps of evacuees in our documents. I had my Estonian identification card, Erka had a driver’s licence, Allik a trade union membership card, Villu a certificate of a sports referee, and Kats had also some kind of a certificate with a stamp on it. And so we were good guys again! Then one of us looked into his backpack – razor netu!21 The militiamen had taken our razors to commemorate helping us. So I and Erka grew beards. When we were discussing the new circumstances, a fine tall guy approached us and greeted us in Estonian: ‘Hey, lads! Are you from Estonia? I come from Leningrad. My name is Aher.’ We felt as if we had been sent an interpreter and a good companion from Leningrad. So we went on discussing where and what. A sneaky kind of man approached us and asked if we wanted to work at the plant he was representing. We asked what work it was. He said that we would get work according to our profession; all we needed was to go there. He told us that there would be a car waiting for us at the station. He bought us dinner and train tickets; so we were ready to get on the train soon. Then another man came offering work. He also promised work according to our different professions. We told him that we had been employed by that other man. The new man was a Jew. When he learnt that we were Estonians, he laughed. He said that we were fools to go to work at that place. And he added that he expected us back in two days. He was sure of it. He said he would wait for us and that then we would talk. We went towards the west. When we went through Pervouralsk we felt superior! Alighting from the train at the station we started looking for the car that we had expected to meet us. Not a sight of it. Aher went to the station to make an enquiry. They laughed and told us that the ‘plant’ we wanted to go to had one old jalopy of the GAZ-don’t-hurt-me type22 which they did not dare to use for a journey of 20 km. Now we remembered that other man. It was night, morning was soon to come. We had been able to get some sleep on the train and so we started walking in a lazy line. On the train a Russian had joined our company. He was the adventurer kind, a real pradjaga.23 He got into the carriage thanks to us. He was an experienced traveller and a thief. That Russian had a white bundle with him which he did not have when we started the journey. He then untied the bed sheet and there was a three litre can with peas in it. He said he had found it in the train and nobody had claimed it. Right, he found it – from

Boris Raag

127

amongst someone’s possessions. Aher had a knife to open the can with, we all had spoons and the Russian had a kind and open Russian heart. We arrived at noon. We were shown the way to the office where we learnt about what work there was: logging, cutting firewood, loading firewood, covering with sod, and burning into coal. The cheapest and dirtiest task in the world. We asked to be fed before signing the papers, because we had not eaten for almost twenty-four hours. We kept arguing for some time. We had agreed that we would eat and then leave. Finally when we had insisted long enough, we were taken to a canteen. Dinner over, a foreman came and said: ‘Now let’s go to the office and sign the papers.’ But we said: ‘No, now we go back to the station.’ And so we did. To go back, we bought four tickets for six men. The train stayed in the station for some time, so we managed to get on the train, hand out the ticket to the others and they got on the train too. Pradjaga went to the heart of the country together with his big Russian heart. In the morning we arrived in Sverdlovsk and went to the evacuation centre. It seems the Jew knew we were coming and he was waiting for us. And now he repeated his earlier words saying that we were not fools. The other man who had employed us was also there. Seeing us, he wanted to get away but we caught him. But we did not hurt him. Only shook him a bit. The Jew’s offer was better. We got a dinner and train tickets. A man called Aleksei from Vasknarva who had really been evacuated came with us. This time we went 60 kilometres towards the north. A big factory for aircraft was being built there. Many workers were needed. Erka became a driver. He had a driver’s licence with him. On the licence issued by the Republic of Estonia was the stamp of the car inspectorate of the ESSR with writing on it in Russian. Allik and I became loaders, Villu and Kats got the posts of locksmiths. The main work was to transport gravel from the nearby Lake Marinski from where an excavator was digging it. As I have said already, they were building an aircraft factory. More than a hundred metres was ready but digging of the foundation ditch was still continuing. We lived in a barrack where there was a passage down the middle and double cots on both sides of it. We had three meals a day. In the canteen there were unpainted square tables and benches of raw wood. Soon the benches and, a short while after that, the tables became rickety and then started falling apart in this warm room. Then we often ate standing, saluting communism. The temperature was below zero; it was autumn and winter was coming. Autumn made everything very colourful. It was really beautiful around us. We asked for winter clothes. They said: Завтра будет.24 Then it was zavtra every day and no winter clothes. We had left home in summer clothes for we had been taken to join the army. The linings of my

128

Hope of Staying Alive

jacket sleeves were all frayed. I tore the ragged ends away. When sitting on the truck platform, the wind blew through so that I felt sick. Then we decided to run away as we had done in Krasnouralsk, where the soup had become water. Here the food was much better. For it was a war factory. But winter was coming and so we decided to go looking for a warmer place. They were selling tickets at the station only when you had a spravka.25 Aher went to the station to look how the trains were moving. Then we discussed it all thoroughly – how and when. We took into account that it would be a payday on November 6th and that on the 7th the lunch and supper would be more substantial.26 The 8th would be a free day and nobody would be looking for us that day. However, before that Allik fell ill. He was put in the hospital. We went to visit him there. He told us not to change our plans because of him. He thought he would not be able to come for some time. Next spring I met him in Cherbakul. He had passed a driver’s examination. It had been easy for him for he was in fact a driver. He then started work with a 5 ton truck and became a Stakhanovite worker.27 He learnt Russian more or less and was pleased with his life. At night when everybody was sleeping, we left the barrack silently one by one. When we were all out we left the place. We had established before how far the next station was and when the night train would be arriving. At the next station the sleepy station master sold us tickets asking nothing except for money. In the morning we were in Sverdlovsk. What a migration wave it was! When the allies, America and England, had reached an agreement, the anglo-saxons28 demanded that the Russians would release the Poles, whom they had deported, in order to defend them from Hitler. Among the Poles there were many Jews. Now they were free and were going towards the south, to warmer places. That is why the railway junctions were all under heavy pressure. There was a custom in the station that at 04:00 or 05:00 in the morning, the station was cleared of all people, except mothers with children. Then they washed and disinfected the floors. It was cold, minus 15–20°C. The snow crunched and it was extremely unpleasant to go outside. To protect myself from cold, I had only shoes, worn socks, cotton trousers, underwear, a shirt, and a jacket with sleeves without the lining and a cap I had got from a Russian at Verkh-Neivinsk. That was the dashing clothing of us all. Erka had lost his driver’s licence or maybe it was stolen. Luckily Aher had a document of someone called Erka Haikelainen with the stamps of the evacuees. So Erka became Erka Haikelainen, a Finn from Leningrad. We stood in the ticket queue in turns; the queue was very long and it took a long time to stand. We were afraid that our money would be gone

Boris Raag

129

before our turn came. Once Aher went somewhere, came back and said: ‘It was nice to be with you. You are great guys but I have met my friends from Leningrad and I will change my team. Farewell.’ We were very sad to lose him. From now on all business was on the shoulders of Aleksei. From outside, he seemed lazy but he was smart. He walked around, looked and listened and knocked on some doors. He made contact with a man who advised to buy tickets to a station about 100 km towards the east. From there it would be easy to get tickets to the south. Aleksei came back with three tickets but... It was forbidden to smoke in the waiting hall. It was very cold outside and therefore people tried to do it inside anyway. Erka and Kats also tried that. But the watchful Soviet militia saw them – they were taken away before Aleksei arrived. So we had lost quite a portion of the group to the Soviet railway. But we had to go. According to an earlier agreement we were to wait for them at the next junction. Going from Sverdlovsk to Bogdanovich was rather a nice journey. There were not many passengers going to the east. From Bogdanovich we got tickets to Tashkent. Then we arrived at the next junction Tchelyabinsk. In Tchelyabinsk we had to change trains going on with the Sverdlovsk-Tashkent train, having checked our tickets before that. We were again queuing up, but it seemed we could manage in a couple of days this time. There was a big black board in the waiting hall where they wrote the departures of passenger trains because they did not fit into the general time-table. I was watching how the arrival of a train was wiped off and a new delay was written up instead, when I spotted something familiar from the corner of my eye. I turned my head: ‘Hey, here you are, fugitive!’ We were indescribably glad to see each other again. Erka and Kats had caught up with us. Erka said: ‘Let’s go outside. I could do with a cigarette. It is forbidden to smoke in the station hall.’ Then he told us how they had got away from the militia. When we had rattled on for a few days, Kats went out at night and came back with good news: ‘Guys, it is warm outside’. The farther we moved towards south, the warmer it got and the more we met people offering food at the stations. And the food became cheaper all the time. Before reaching Tashkent we were told: the train will not stop at Tashkent. Tashkent was overcrowded with evacuees. So the train went through Tashkent which fact made us happy. We went through Samarkand and Kata-Kurgan to Kagan. At Kagan we saw a strange echelon standing. The majority of the men were in civilian clothes and some had English greatcoats. Those men were also smoking English cigarettes. From their language we understood that they were Polish. But we were very surprised when one of them came to us and said with a slight accent: ‘Hello,

130

Hope of Staying Alive

Estonian guys.’ When we asked how he knew Estonian he answered that he had worked as a farmhand in Estonia for three years. When the Russians invaded Poland after driving out Hitler, he had been on the Russian side and was sent to Siberia. Now he had been called to join Anders’ army29 and was to go across the border to the south. He said we could go with him, advised us to talk to his superiors; he thought that maybe we could then escape from the Russians. But he also said that all nationalities were being organized into national contingents. Hearing this, we dropped our decision to join the Poles in the hope that an Estonian contingent would be organized; we expected to get English coats, cigarettes, boots, and a uniform. In Kagan we boarded the Dushanbe train. There was no conductor in the train and nobody asked any tickets from us which we did not have. The carriages in that train were peculiar. The benches were set along the walls and in the centre there was room for those who stood, so that they could keep stepping on the toes of those who were sitting. Along the whole length of the carriage there was a stair-step outside where you could walk while the train was moving, holding on to the carriage wall. The railroad was not going straight to the south. Until Tashkent, we went to the southeast, from Tashkent on to Samarkand towards the southwest, and from Samarkand on to Kagan to the west. From Kagan we went towards the southeast and then again to the southwest until Kerk, where we saw the Amu Darya River. Amu Darya is a broad river. The river, the border and the railway all run side by side here. From the railway to the river the distance is more than a kilometre. On the other bank of the river there is Afghanistan. How close our goal now was! But it was impossible to reach the river in daytime across the flat steppes. There was no stop between Kerk and Termesh. So the friendly foreign country was locked shut for us. From Kerk, the railroad went zigzagging towards the east until Termesh and from there on towards the northeast to Dushanbe. But we did not reach Dushanbe. We were driven off the train because we had no tickets. All in all, sixteen Estonians were taken off the train. The five of us, a man called Sommer and ten conscripts. They wanted to make those young men into real soldiers to support the Red Army. But the boys did not know the language, did not obey the orders, left the train often, drank a lot and did all kinds of nasty things. They sang beautiful marching songs with dirty words; when their superiors understood that, they were separated. So those young men were scattered all over the Soviet Union and ten of them became our companions. Now they got an idea to make collective farmers of us and so it happened.

Boris Raag

131

We were made to pick cotton. There was nothing to pick except some tufts which remained when the leaves had fallen. We were given the norm of picking, apparently the same norm the pickers had in winter when the bushes were all white with cotton tufts. This daily norm could not be picked even by sixteen men. There was no canteen at that place. They distributed dry food that had to be cooked somewhere. The soup was strange but edible. We were also given bread. It was not quite enough but still kept us from starving. We discussed between ourselves when we would leave this place. We decided to do it on Saturday. Nobody would have started to look for us on Sunday and by Monday we would already be far away. We made preparations for our escape quietly. On Saturday evening when we were about to leave and were saying goodbye, the other guys became angry. They did not like to be left behind. We explained that we had been together before and met them only because we were driven off the train together. We said that we had come together and were leaving together. The next stage of the journey was Kagan, a station in Bukhara. When the railway was being built the Emir did not want to overburden his capital with machinery. In Kagan we went to the evacuation centre where we spent a couple of days, including the journey to Bukhara. The house where the evacuation centre was had been built in honour of the Russian Czar when he visited the emir of Bukhara. Oh what a place it was! A mini mafia, one of the Russian wonders. The evacuees spent a few days there. When you got an order to go to work you had no business in the centre, neither you nor some odd traveller in the search for a night’s rest. But all kinds of scoundrels were walking freely in and out. It meant that the doorman was their man in fact. When a thief appeared he took something and ran off. Nobody paid any attention. The workers, however, who tried to enter the centre during daytime, were all checked when entering and permits were asked for. You could get out freely, however. The thief was given time to get away. We could not get tickets in Kagan without a paper that proved we had allowed our clothes to be processed to destroy lice. We did not allow our clothes to be cleaned and have them all rumpled-up. To avoid trouble, we went to the next station on foot where there was no lice killing demanded. We walked along the railway in order to leave our traces in the sand of the Kara-Kum desert. The next stop was in the town of Chardzon that had been built on the crossing of the railway over the Amu Darya River. We had a look at everything that was in that town. Empty goods wagons were standing by. Erka and I thought it would be nicer to sleep in a wagon. I do not remember now where the others spent the night. When we met in the morning at a cotton-wool stack, they had already cleaned themselves

132

Hope of Staying Alive

somewhat. We found a place to eat in, had some food and set out. We knew when the train would come. We had a clock now and Saks carried it. We did not know how far the next station was. When on our way we again left our tracks in the Kara-Kum sand. Now we were at a kind of crossroads. The ship mechanic from the Baltic fleet wanted to go to the sea. Saks proposed to go to Krasnovodsk where we would have that possibility. Before the station of Karakul where we had to get off to go and work in the collective farm we had been sent to from Kagan, Erka said that he and Iand Saks would travel on. He said that it was not possible to make ends meet if there were so many of us. So Aleksei, Villu, and Kats with whom there had been a slight misunderstanding, left us. They went to a farm where karakul sheep were raised. I never got to know what happened to them. So we went on to Ashabad and from there to Krasnovodsk. I went to the port to get some information about how it would possible to go to the sea. I was told to go to the militia because we needed documents. At the militia station I got no result. They said it was a forbidden zone and told us to go to Ashabad. We would get passports there and be welcome. The lice-killing technology was yet unknown in Krasnovodsk and we got our tickets without any problems. Towards evening we were already on our way to Ashabad where we arrived the next day. In the capital of Turkmenistan we went to several offices, again with no result; we became only more confused. We stayed the night in Ashabad. We did not have to worry about a place to sleep in. A number of goods wagons were waiting for repairs near the station. At the next station after Ashabad, we took the Krasnovodsk train where we arrived the next day, December 31, at midday. We went looking for a passenger car between the wagons where we could spend the night. There were no passenger cars, however. We found a cotton and cottonwool wagon with a door that opened easily. It was hot in there and we sweated profusely. The temperature was 20°C at daytime and 0°C, or slightly more, at night. In the morning we came out of the wagon like two polar foxes. After eating in a restaurant which was closed early on the 1st of January we went to the cinema to while the time away. The train was to leave before midnight. I went to look over the station. When I arrived at the station, I saw the train leaving, red lights on its tail. So we had to while away one more day. We did not know that this was our last day in those surroundings. In the evening of January 2 we boarded the train from Krasnovodsk to go again to Ashabad. The distance between those two cities is more than 550 km. Next day in Ashabad we enquired where the local NKVD was, only to go on a senseless journey the next day. We had thought to spend the night in a sleeping wagon. We wanted to enter the wagon but the door would not

Boris Raag

133

open. Neither did the next door we tried and the next. We thought someone was playing a trick on us. At last we found a wagon with doors open. And there were many visitors waiting already in that wagon and more to come. We lay down, relaxed, and sank into oblivion. Then someone shouted we had to let our tickets be checked. We understood now why all wagon doors except one had been closed. That wagon was a rat trap to catch deserters. A bunch of militiamen told us to form a line and to march to the war commissariat. Nothing came, however, of this marching in line because none of those men cared about marching in line or discipline. This was a diverse bunch of people. Some were limping; some had sticks to support themselves with. All these people were then divided into groups: some were free to go, some got arrested. We tried to go in, all three together. The commissar said, however, come one by one. Then Saks explained that we were Estonians, people from a neighbouring foreign country. The commissar said that a man of the name of Raud had been sent to the national corps a few days ago. We now remembered what the Pole had told us about the English soldiers’ overcoats and English cigarettes. We were given accompanying notes, tickets, a paper to get food with and a closed envelope for the Tashkent centre. So we were learning constantly at the so-called Russian university of life but had been walking around for more than half a year, dirty as most uneducated and poor people. In Tashkent we at least could take a shower and our clothes were taken to a lice-killing factory. What a blessing it was to wash ourselves! More than 60–70 Estonians had gathered in Tashkent. We were housed in two passengers’ cars from the Estonian Republic. What a company it was! We were dumbfounded. Almost all the men here were the heroes from militia or from the destruction battalions. Some of them kept boasting about their ability to destroy, to burn or to kill. There were also those who thought it a good thing to help in having people from their home village killed. But there were also nice people among them. The chief of that variable bunch of people was a man who had graduated from the Military School of the Estonian Republic, a serious man, Lieutenant Välja, a real Estonian. He represented us bringing us food products. He always had someone accompanying him, sometimes even two men. But there were only few volunteers because it was already cold outside. I always went with him when there was nobody else going. For an active person always finds something. I went in the hope I would get something to eat. Some sausage or a buhanka.30 At last we arrived at Elansk. Now I remembered the English soldiers’ greatcoats, cigarettes, and boots. All this had been got as irrecoverable aid. Later we saw some of those greatcoats and boots but not a single cigarette. The greatcoats were a disappointment. They were not warm. And the

134

Hope of Staying Alive

boots were still worse. We were accommodated in mud huts where they also started to differentiate us. Almost all the war-time Russian contingent lived in mud huts. A mud hut is a great achievement of Soviet building. In the far end of a mud hut there was a brick stove on a foundation of wooden blocks, which did not have any flues, only the hearth. On top of the stove there was a chimney that went straight out. So part of the warmth was to be returned to the woods for the firewood it gave us. Several companies of men were housed together in a mud hut. I do not remember their exact number. A couple of hundred of men came here from Krasnouralsk. They lined us up and asked if there were any snipers among us. No answer. ‘Any machine gunners?’ Silence! Nobody wanted to volunteer for anything. What the hell are you then? One man raised a hand. ‘What are you?’ [He was asked.] ‘A cook.’ The men who came from the labour battalion were so hungry that even lice died of hunger on them. Everybody wanted to get nearer to food. Then we found a potato cellar, the door of which was open and all the potatoes frostbitten. We cooked the potatoes which became rubber balls after that. We also met some acquaintances. We were greeted as ghosts: ‘Hey, dead ones.’ We did not understand: ‘How so?’ They explained that when we had gone away, the men were lined up a few weeks later and it was announced that we had been caught, court-martialled, sentenced to death for defection and shot. We thanked them politely for that information and expressed condolences to each other on the occasion of our deaths. My boots were very shabby and I was neither sent to work outside nor to field training. That is why I had time to turn my attention to tobacco, sugar and soup. But that time ran out in a couple of weeks. The men from our mud hut were formed into a marching company and sent to Tcherbakul. I was given new boots the day before going. The wagons were suitable for oxen but nobody asked a soldier whether he liked them or not. If you are glad open your mouth and praise the party and the government. If you are sad, keep your mouth firmly shut, do not wag your tongue. In addition to bunks there was a stove called ‘burzuika’31 in the wagon. We had to get firewood for the stove on our own. This was a really Spartan education – chop wood, get wood, steal wood. Thus my new boots became also victimized to that Spartan education and chess player’s wits. With a chess player’s foresight I had kept my old boots. Erka went to show the new ones to the Russian peasants, to demonstrate what could be done with them. For this demonstration he got some bread, some potatoes, money, and some tobacco. For that demonstration he got food but for the food the new boots had to be given away. I was not very glad when Erka brought those tobacco stalks. But the old boots were better than the new ones. With the new ones I would have had to go to field training and

Boris Raag

135

whenever I was ordered to go. Those old parkas32 served me well. As I was barefoot, I was not made to go outside. We went to Sverdlovsk, passing the station of Elansk, then to the Tcherbakul camp near Tchelyabinsk, where the Second Estonian Division was formed. We stopped for some time in Tchelyabinsk. We arrived at Tcherbakul in the dark. The distance from the station to the camp was 4–5 kilometres. We stood in a –40°C frost in front of a mud hut and were divided into subdivisions with great care. It was very cold in the hut. Men chopped up bunks for firewood. I climbed onto the stove where I soon became warmer. Our food was brought from a Russian regiment and was not very bad. When we got our own kitchen and food, the menu changed radically. The proportion of water in our soup became so high that there was nothing much to add to the kettle. But the bread was good. The norm was 800 grams. In summer, field kitchens were brought. In those stoves pan bread was cooked, 1200 gram a loaf. So we got two loaves for three men. It was the worst in spring when the roads became impassable. On the clayey, soft and slippery roads vehicles could not move. The hungry horses were not able to pull carts through. With great difficulties food was brought on horseback from the division storehouse near the station. There were no problems with hygiene. If you wanted to wash yourself, you went out, took some snow and rubbed yourself with it. Snow replaced both, soap and water. You could clean your teeth with snow too; you had only to let it melt in your mouth. The bristles of my toothbrush were getting shorter and shorter. When two of the last bristles broke, I threw my toothbrush over my shoulder, so that I would not ever find it again. In summer, when it was warm, our komanda34 was sent to work at the division storehouse. I was made the chief of that commando. The boys worked hard and everyone got some rye flour as a bonus. I got several kilograms in a bag. When back in the camp, I put my mess-tin on the fire at once and cooked a kettleful of porridge. There was no salt. I invited Jaan Uudam to eat with me. Jaan was always doing some business in the nearby village. He had not forgotten me. Now I could pay him back. We were given new uniforms. So we became krasnoarmeejetses.34 While we were waiting for the others to come, our political leader Reiljan, excited because of the new uniforms, started to sing a Soviet song. I sang along. As they say, when in a wolf-pack, howl with the wolves. But Reiljan was not a man who got excited only when hearing a Soviet song. He was a mild, complaisant and sympathetic man by character. Now that we had uniforms, field training started. We had pea-sticks instead of the illustrious Russian vintjovkas.35 But the most important part of the training was the political lessons, then tactics, drill, and regulations.

136

Hope of Staying Alive

We could not, however, learn the parts of a rifle on a pea-stick. I was nominated the squad leader. Three years had passed since I was in the training company of the Estonian army and I remembered more or less what I had learnt. After breakfast the subunits were lined up by the accompaniment of a signal and were made to march to the so-called central square. There, before the training we got all kinds of orders, distributions and the like. When this was over we got a command: ‘March, singing!’ The squad, the company – all had their own songs. What hubble-bubble that was! At first we all sang what songs we remembered but the guys started revising the songs, making them answer the situation. So, instead of singing – ‘stay free, Estonian sea’36 we sang ‘become free Estonian sea’. Then all Estonian songs except ‘Postipoiss’ (The Stage Coachman) were forbidden. Now when we all started to sing this song, the hubblebubble was even worse. There was no limitation to Russian songs which we of course sang in Estonian. The regimental commissar, Aava, kept walking around to see who could be made a people’s enemy and then punished. Colonel Lepp, our regiment leader was like an elephant. He never hurried but moved constantly. He had a strange walk, staggering, as if drunk, as if going to fall over at any moment, not knowing to which side. So he stayed upright. Lepp came from the opposite shore of Lake Peipus.38 He spoke neither Estonian nor Russian well. July 16, 1942. The war had not ended; neither had ended the year when the glorious army would not provide for us any more. At a morning line up eight names were read out, Private Raag, Anton’s son, acting as the squad leader among them. There were only eight names from our company and eight more men from the rest of the regiment, all in all 16 men from the 917th. We were told to go to the warehouse and give back to the regiment all we had on, a hundred per cent. Then they pointed at a heap of rags, these were clothes taken from the men who had come from the labour battalion when they were given uniforms. These clothes had been sorted for several times by now to sell the better clothes at the nearby collective farm. I found boots of canvas that seemed rather good. I wondered why nobody had taken them so far. I think that was because of their light colour. I also found trousers that were rather good but somewhat tight. They were from an English soldier of World War I. The sovetski38 national garment, a padded parka coat, was a wonder. When I had two buttons buttoned and the holes in the shirt were in the right place, I could see how lice were crawling across my belly. They had to get rid of us quickly. Such shabby persons did not fit the glorious regiment. So they put us into a cattle car and sent us to the labour

Boris Raag

137

battalion. They were thinking, serves them right. So I was separated from Erka for four years. The snitch was a young communist from Narva called Klimov. He never participated in the conversations around the campfire, only listened and remembered and reported. He did as much alone as the rest of the regiment’s snitches together. So there were 8+8 which equals 16 altogether. Later I met a guy from the 917th regiment who told me that when going on an assault near Luki, the snitch had shouted: ‘За Сталина, за родину’.39 It seemed he wanted to get a medal or something. To support him in his great task of fighting for Stalin and fatherland, someone helped him so well that he stumbled and fell. Thus he did not survive, due to his poor health, a rifle shot from behind. Our new place of accommodation was not very far from Tcherbakul judging by the Russian standards; the place was called Ursumka, two kilometres away towards the west from the frontier post between Asia and Europe. Part of the Tula military plant had been evacuated to Ursumka, where automatic flack cannons were made. The majority of the workers were brought from Sladonsk, a distance of 20 kilometres by a special train and then the other shift was taken back there. We were brought to Ursumsk to build barracks for the workers. The building brigade had a sawmill with two saw frames and a slakabeton40 station with all necessary branches. One branch was a nail factory, one of the most modern factories since the Middle Ages. One section of the nail specialists cut lengths of wire from a big ball. Another section made the heads for the nails using bench clamps, simply bending the ends of the nails. The length of the workday was 10–12 hours. When you lagged behind there was no fighting with the saw frame any more. The old man behind it kept cursing but I did not understand what he said. And that was good. He called us loafers and from his tone we understood the torrent of curses. He kept adding words in Russian reviling our mothers like the Russians do. From the number of the word ‘motherfucker’ we understood how viciously he was cursing. We got a rest when the belt snapped. Mending the belt went with the accompaniment of a cursing dialogue. The belt had more joints and patches than a rock orchestra has drums. Every mended spot had its own sound when the belt was in work. We were paid just as much that we could buy our footwear, but we owed the state our bread and the pigwash they called soup. To pay for those, we would have had to work 24 or 25 hours a day, then we would not be in debt to the state and a danger to the Russian economy. When I finished at 2 a.m. the man who was sleeping beside me woke up and proposed to visit the cabbage field of the nearby collective farm about 5–6 kilometres away. I agreed and off we went with our backpacks.

138

Hope of Staying Alive

Then new men came to our labour battalion. The regiment was preparing to go to the war, but before that they cleaned their ranks like before the long holidays. No heretics could be in the ranks of the nobles, which would paralyze the will of the fighters. And that might be decisive for the result of the war. The cleanout was so complete that the sinners were sent away in great numbers. What was the saddest thing about it all, those men kept coming in uniforms, and apparently they lacked rags for them. One very quiet day I stayed near the saw-mill after work. I do not remember any more what I was doing there. A specialist in making nails came to me from the slack cement station. He asked if I was a courageous guy. I answered that it depended on what the measure of courage was. I said that to keep the soul within the body one had to have some courage. He said, ‘let’s go then’. And he explained his plan. There was a long freight train standing at the station to let the trains, in the service of the war god, pass. About 100 metres from the station, near the end of the train, a window of a car was standing open and there was flour in the car. ‘Do you have a bag to put the flour into?’ he asked. I answered: ‘Is the flour un-bagged?’ He said: ‘No, in bags’. Then I said: ‘You have a knife with you, cut the bag; then you scatter some flour out of the bag and then tie up the mouth of the bag. And that would be that.’ We went into action. Behind the saw-mill there was a heap of sawdust. We buried our booty in this heap. There were problems in Russia with just distributing the scarce and poor food. The stamp system, supposed to help to do it, was in some places so complicated that cheating became very easy, like it did in VerkhNeivinsk. In Ursumka the cards were distributed daily for breakfast, lunch and supper – they were pieces of paper made on a typewriter. I do not know how, but in a few days false cards were already spreading about. More cards came to the kitchen than were issued. One evening the kitchen door was opened, after a knocking, for the boys of the 917th regiment who had been invited to a festive dinner. Comrade, I mean, Mister Krassman who was one of us and worked as a cook, had said that he had some soup left over, soup, not the swill we usually got. That soup had little water but lots of potatoes and noodles in it to stimulate our superiors and organizers of working victories. The soup was left over because those men had all gone to a gathering with red flags, to receive praises for their good work done by us for so little money that we were constantly hungry. After being praised they were also reprimanded, demanding more work and still lower net cost from them. Now! Something more about the card system of the Soviet Union [is necessary]. Again there were smart guys who improved the production of bread cards. Those false cards could be used in the morning and in the

Boris Raag

139

evening. The lunch cards were of veneer, decorated by three red stamps. Near the saw-mill there was a small house built by four specialists. Tammeaed or Tammeõu, I do not remember the name correctly, was a saw sharpener and mounter. Oopkaup was a locksmith. Johannes was a man who could do any work. He also made bread cards; he was the man who had had that idea. Mõtus was an educated man, an agronomist who could also do locksmith’s work. They all were skilful men but nothing could be said about their drinking habits. The theme of alcohol did not interest them. I visited that house quite often. I do not remember how it happened that we came to like each other. I often told them about my travels in Central Asia. We also talked about going away. But we needed money for that, to make the journey easier. I used very little of flour, I tried to get money for it, just in case we went on that journey. Now that I had flour, I could do business. I sold flour cheaply. Near the slag cement shop there was one more Russian workshop. Near that stacks of boxes stood with files in them. The men thought there might have been millions of files. Our men sold the files belonging to the state, to the workers to work for the state. Those were files of unquenched steel. Our men, those four, but especially Naaber, made knives, mandrels, hammers and other things of them. When the false cards came on sale, the flour business changed. A glass of flour bought one card. I sold the card. Breakfast was 30 roubles, supper 25 roubles. There was a hundred grams less bread in the evening. The business was doubly profitable – the saw-mill specialists did not have to give out money and I earned more money with the cards. There were very few bread cards, because those who lived in Barracks could not manufacture cards. So there was almost no risk with the bread cards. Now our talk about leaving became more concrete. It was time to act. Johannes organized stamps on six sheets of paper and August wrote texts for five men and one common ‘letter of consignment’. August could speak and write good Russian. With him was a man called Keller, a lawyer from around Viljandi. Johannes had a farm on the Island of Muhu where carpentry and smithery was done. Mõtus was an agronomist. He had practised in Denmark and Germany. He had also been in the French Foreign Legion. But he had fled from there before the contract ended. I was taken into the company as a man who had been to the south earlier, because of my knowledge. It was now high time to act for winter, with its cold and snow, was already coming. Men started dying. We stored up as much of the provisions as possible. I traded the cards I had for the last of the flour for bread. We took along a mess-tin full of porridge (three litres). Now we had a problem: how to get on a train.

140

Hope of Staying Alive

Without a ticket – no train! Without a paper – no ticket! I told the others about the trick we had tried: to go at night to the next station and to do it on a Saturday night. By Monday morning, when it was time to go to work, we would probably be a couple of hundred kilometres away from Ursumka and closer to our goal. On Saturday evening we gathered in the small house near the saw-mill which had become our headquarters. We left when it was the first hour of Sunday morning, anxious and afraid, thinking about what would await us. We were also afraid that someone might have seen us leaving. Having walked some time, we looked back. Ursumka was lit up; we saw the silhouettes of houses, the station building and the light from Slatoisk from the background. We said goodbye to it all and that was that. A hard wind was swirling dry snow. We went in a hurry to get warm. It had been the same leaving Verkh-Neivinsk, although a couple of weeks earlier. Moving on we felt better both in body and in soul. So we went on, all five of us. Our names remained in the labour battalions; we had chosen new names to conceal our identities: August Anijaago – Johannes Naaber – Eevald Mõtus – Jalmar Keller – Boris Raag –

Kristjan Laur Jüri Nuut Eevald Malmgrun Jalmar Semiskar Karl Toomla

We had climbed out of our real names like butterflies from their cocoons; to seek the Promised Land. Having walked a couple of kilometres, we were again in Asia. A couple of hours more and we reached the station. And we got tickets to Tashkent – the town of corn. According to the schedule there was not much time until the arrival of the train but when exactly that would be, nobody knew. But it came… Notes 1

2 3

4

The original life story, consisting of 180 pages, is stored in the Estonian Cultural History Archives, fond 350. The story has been sent in response to the public life writing appeal ‘The Impacts of War in the Life of Me and Those Close to Me’ in 2005. Here, a shortened version of one part is published under its original title. Translated by Kersti Unt. Joss – a popular name of Yossif Stalin. Разбойник – a robber, in Russian, a metaphoric hint at the Soviet power; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. За Сталину, за Родину – For Stalin, for the Motherland, in Russian.

Boris Raag 5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 13 14 15

16 17

18 19

20

21 22

23 24 25 26

27

28

29

141

‘Sprat Town’ – metaphor used about Tallinn born from a popular fish can called Tallinn Sprats. ‘Affe’ – a popular name in German for a cloth sack carried by a strap over one shoulder and usually containing food; soldiers’ jargon. ‘Имени Сталина’ – ‘Bearing Stalin’s name‘, in Russian. A boat of that name took people from Tallinn to Leningrad. ‘On a wide field bristling snow and ice’ (Laial luhal säravad jää ja lumi vastu, in Estonian) – words from a popular Estonian children’s song. In February 1942 Boris Raag joined the Estonian Corps where he met other people from the labour battalions. ‘Moving south where Egypt lies’ – words from a popular Estonian children’s song. Дедушка – grandfather, in Russian, here meaning an old man; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Store, in Russian. A similar idea to ration cards. A hint at the polysemy of the Russian word дом. Чёртовы немцы – damned Germans, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Хлеба нет – no bread, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Ну пошли ребята – Let’s go, guys, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Eat, boys, eat, in Russian. Не разговаривать – no talking, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Шагом марш – march on, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. No razor – mixed Estonian and Russian. ‘GAZ-don’t-hurt-me type’ – GAZ AA, product of the Gorki truck plant, production ended in 1936. Брадяга – tramp, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. Tomorrow, in Russian. Справка – permit, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchanged. On November 7 was a red-letter day for celebrating the anniversary of the October revolution. Stahkhanovite – a socialist working hero, participating in the so-called Stakhanovite Movement – a campaign urging workers to emulate this and other alleged feats of super-productivity. Anglo-Saxons – a slang word used in common for the U.S.A and Great Britain coming from the Russian англосаксы. Anders’ Army – Polish military unit created in 1941—1942 in the USSR under the command of General Władysław Anders and fighting later together with the British. The soldiers were Polish citizens mostly released for this purpose from Soviet POW and other camps. Together with many Polish civilians, the Anders Army left the Soviet Union in 1942.

142 30

31

32

33 34

35 36 37

38 39 40

Hope of Staying Alive

Буханка – a big loaf of bread, in Russian; author’s adapted spelling unchaged. Буржуйка – small potbellied stove, in Russian; author’s spelling unchanged. Парка – winter coat, here it means army boots; author’s spelling unchanged. Команда – commando, in Russian; author’s spelling unchanged. Красноармейцы – Red Army fighters, in Russian; author’s spelling unchanged. Винтoвка – rifle, in Russian; author’s spelling unchanged. See about the status of this military song in Mirk’s story, note 6. ‘Lepp came from the other shore of Lake Peipsi’ – Colonel Lepp was an Estonian from Russia. Советский – Soviet, in Russian, author’s spelling unchanged. For Stalin, for the Motherland, in Russian. Шлакобетон – slag concrete, in Russian; author’s spelling unchanged.

Wonders of Living1 Ailo Ehamaa, born 1922 I am a third generation Tallinn citizen on my father’s side, born in December 1922. My grandfather Martin Eihelmann who was born in 1847 came from Harjumaa, Kiisa. He moved to Tallinn at the end of the 1890s where he married Leena Handschmidt from Läänemaa who was born in 1857. Grandfather was 47 when their first child, a daughter, was born. My father Paul was their third child born in 1898. My grandfather was a carpenter. Later I saw a wardrobe and several shelves he had made at his home. Later my father changed this family name in 1937 to an Estonian one, Ehamaa. Grandfather died twenty years before I was born. After becoming a widow my grandmother started selling fish at the nearby fish market; she got fish from certain fishermen whose catch she always sold. It seems she did quite well for she managed to earn lots of money. The Czarist money became worthless after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. I often played with those notes when I was a child. Grandmother died at the age of 81 [in 1938]. My father graduated from the Commercial School and worked after that at the Tallinn Baltic Shipyard as a clerk. Father was also a sportsman and a member of the Kalev sports club. He skated, went in for field athletics and had a rowing boat at the fishing harbour. When the War of Independence started, father registered as a volunteer and went to the war with the Kalev Battalion consisting of sportsmen. That unit took part in all battles in 1918–1920. At the end of the war Father went to study medical courses and graduated as an Army Surgeon’s Assistant. Since 1924 father was an active member of the Defence League. In my childhood he worked at the Estonian Landbank until the 1940 coup d’état. With the beginning of the Soviet period my father was immediately sacked. After that he had odd jobs, as a bookkeeper somewhere. In 1941 father was mobilized into the Red Army. On August 23 the group of mobilized men was sent from Tallinn to Leningrad on board a ship. As a result of an air attack by the Germans, the ship, my father was aboard, Eestirand, got hit and was towed to Naissaar island where the men spent a couple of weeks. When the Germans reached Tallinn they got away from the island and so father remained in Estonia. My grandfather from mother’s side, Jüri Kannelaud who was born in 1861 came from Kabala in Viljandi County. He was not the first son of his family, which is why he had to go to serve in the Russian army. The length of service was six years then and I have heard that he served in a regiment where he was an orderly. I remember a book from his library Tervishoiu käsiraamat (Handbook of Health) and some others. I have no

144

Wonders of Living

idea how grandfather ended up after his military service in Laeva parish, Tartu County. There he became acquainted with a young widow Maria Kablitch, four years younger than him, who had two daughters. In 1893 my mother Helmi was born in Laeva. Soon the family moved to Käsmu, where grandfather got a gamekeeper’s job. I remember that as a gamekeeper he wore a white coat and a green cap and had often a hatchet in his hand which he used to mark the trees. He lived at one end of the village at the Käsmu gamekeeper’s farm where he had a special room for taking account of the forests. Grandfather also had several domestic animals. He had four dairy cows, and had bought a cream separator and a butter churn. Grandmother was the one who daily skimmed the milk and made butter. There were good opportunities for selling butter in Käsmu. When Grandfather (my maternal one) turned 70, he moved to the Tartu district. His son Julius had, like his father, been taken into the Russian Czarist army and had also graduated from the Military School of St Petersburg. Both Grandfather and Julius had in 1918, like my father, gone to the War of Independence as volunteers. Julius got wounded and was given farmland for his participation in the war. Here, in Ilmatsalu parish, Grandfather and Julius started to build up the Eha farm. Julius with his land surveyor’s education was a kind of artist and he made the designs of the farmhouse himself, according to which a beautiful two-storied house was built. In this light beige house with a roof painted red, Grandfather lived from 1931 till 1947. Unfortunately the deeds of the farm had been made out in the name of Julius’ ex wife, and when she was evacuated in 1944 to Germany, the farm became property belonging to a citizen of a foreign country and was accordingly appropriated. As a result of all this Grandfather and Grandmother were driven out of their own farm in 1947. They found shelter in the Posti farm in the same village and soon their daughter took them to Käsmu where Grandfather lived till the age of 94 and Grandmother till the age of 95. Since my second year of life, I lived in Käsmu with my mother; in 1932 we also went to the newly built Eha farmhouse. Later we mostly spent the first half of every summer near Tartu and the second half in Käsmu with my aunts. There I could enjoy the pleasures of the sea and bathing. I remember that Käsmu was visited by Estonian warships and that the naval officers visited a schoolmate of my mother’s. I, still a boy, looked at those nicely tanned officers, in white uniforms with golden epaulettes as people whom I would have liked to resemble. I graduated from the Tallinn 17th Primary School and studied onwards at the Tallinn Realschule in 1934–1941. At school I was greatly interested in sport; I played baseball on the school sports field, skated in winter on a skating rink made on the same field, played ice-ball and icehockey. Every

Ailo Ehamaa

145

week I watched students’ competitions in the cellar gym of the Kaitseliit (Defence League) building opposite Kaarli Church and sometimes participated in them myself. In addition to the tradition of sporting activity, literary activity was popular in the school. We had our own journal called Realist. My class teacher was the teacher of National Defence, Lieutenant Voldemar Oja. He imposed military order on the class. When he entered the student on duty had to report: ‘This class has x students in its lists, x are present, x are missing, reported by student x.’ In such a way he tried to teach us a love of order. He said that boys had to wear their hair parted in the middle and not to comb your hair with your fingers and think that this would be nice. The parting had to be straight and the hair tidy. When I was in the last class of the pre-gymnasium, Oja who was by then a Captain became a teacher at the Tallinn Military School. He had graduated from the Law Department of the Tartu University as an extern. In 1941 the Tallinn Military School was evacuated to the Soviet Union. At the beginning of 1940 I was at grandfather’s Eha farm together with my mother. From there I saw how Russian military supply trains kept moving towards Tallinn along the road through Tartu County. I watched them with fists clenched, so to say, for I had been taught that any stranger was an enemy. I really hated the Russian troops. I had had a principally patriotic upbringing. My father was a volunteer in the War of Independence, and became a member of the Defence League after the 1924 rebellion.2 I had participated in the meetings of the Defence League while being a scout. In June 1940 I felt really depressed, and I was only seventeen. As much as I know there were not very many participants at the demonstration on Freedom Square in Tallinn.3 Of the members of my family, only an aunt participated who was a spinster and very much interested in all kinds of gatherings and demonstrations. She told us later that people in strange, un-Estonian like clothing had been there who had shouted ‘Hurrah’ when needed and clapped their hands. The rest of the onlookers had all been there out of curiosity, like my aunt. It is certainly possible that among them there were some supporters of the new regime but not many. On that day in June I could do nothing else but watch and wait in enmity. I went from Tallinn to Käsmu, but here dual powers reigned. Every night both the national anthem of Estonia and the ‘Internationale’ were played. Käsmu was a so-called captains’ village where wealthy Estonian families with their children lived. It seemed very weird that at that time a strange youth appeared in Käsmu. He was said to be a Westholm lad. And when the Estonian anthem was being played, he looked aside, paying no attention whatsoever. When, however, the ‘Internationale’ started, he

146

Wonders of Living

stood at attention and sang along. Then it turned out that a close relative of his lived near Käsmu in a rented hut. Whereas other houses in Käsmu were painted and looked nice, this hut was shabby and probably that is why that lad was in a proletarian mood. I heard later that when the war started, he had joined an NKVD Destruction Battalion. It means that there were people like that who felt that it was their turn now to seize power. But we, others, stood at attention while the Estonian anthem was being played and sang along. Such a situation lasted for about a month. I graduated from the Tallinn school in the middle of June 1941. The last school day was on Saturday, on Monday I went to work as father’s financial situation had changed radically after the June coup d’état. As he had been working at a bank, he was immediately sacked and in addition he had to pay some bills he had guaranteed with his signature. Money had to be paid at once. So I had to sell my bike; we were selling all kinds of things to help father to get through this all. So I had to go to work at once, and this is what I did. I got work at the Tallinn Registry where I and a classmate of mine started making house design projects for appropriated private houses4 if the former owners had not given away their plans. I collected the necessary data and my classmate made the drawings. He went later to Canada where he became a teacher of architecture. Two weeks later a directive was issued by which all men born before the end of 1922 were summoned to the Soviet Army. Had I been born a month later or in January of the next year [1923], my fate might have been different. Schoolmates and classmates born in the next year [1923] did not come under that directive and their fate was different. There were 20 graduates in that year, and now the wheel of fortune started whirling. Two of us were deported to Russia even before the June terror of 1941. In 1941 two classmates went to Germany in the course of a late evacuation. For being partly of Baltic German origin they had an opportunity to do so.5 So, by the summer of 1941 the score was 2:2, two to Russia, and two to Germany. One boy from Rapla attempted to participate in the battles of changing powers and got killed. Seven went to the Russian army and eight to the German army. Two of those who went to Russia died of hunger and hardship in labour camps – their fate was especially hard. Of those on the German side there are now classmates in Canada, Sweden, and the United States. Only six remained in Estonia, spent the wartime here and came out of it alive. Right after the war there had even been a gathering of classmates for by then five years had passed since graduation. I lay wounded in a hospital at that time. Now about my own fate at the beginning of the war. On July 3 [1941], we were taken to Leningrad by boat having spent the night before that at the Tallinn Song Festival Field. I remember that Father came to see me

Ailo Ehamaa

147

off, and brought so much food that my backpack was chock-full. There was no room for the full loaf of brown bread and so I had to leave half of it behind. When later feeling hungry in Russia, I often remembered that half. When we were taken to the army we went straight to the port. Receiving the call-up, I had thought that we would go from Tallinn to the Narva border by train and I would have an opportunity to get off. That means I took the call-up (so that my family would not suffer because of me), planning to get off the train between the two stations. Being sent straight to the port was a hard blow at first. When the boat was leaving from Tallinn harbour, I thought for a moment that I might jump in water for I was a good swimmer. But fortunately I stayed reasonable – the border guard would have caught me. From Leningrad we were taken to Ulyanovsk by train. Estonians were divided into groups of 500 and every group was sent to a different direction: some to the east, some to the north, and some to the south. The group I was in was put on board a ship and we went towards the south on the Volga River. This was a magnificent trip; this was a paddle boat, and I had money for I had been given a whole month’s salary from my working place instead of a salary for two weeks. We could buy all we needed from a refreshment bar and we could enjoy the beautiful shores of the Volga River, sunbathing on the deck. We passed Saratov where the Autonomous Republic of Germany earlier had been. All the signs even now were written both with Russian and Latin letters. Our boat was usually a passenger boat and so local people, the Volga Germans, got on too. We spoke German to them, as much as we knew. Then some Asiatics got on but they called themselves Turks and spoke Russian which we did not know. We passed Saratov and about 150 kilometres before reaching Stalingrad we were taken off the boat and directed towards the west by train. We were taken to the Boroshino military town where they started to drill us for the Russian army. We really had a rough time there, especially because we were not very willing to listen to the young Russian officers commanding us. I remember that our squad leader was a guy of my own age who had graduated, but from a seven-year school plus three years of military school which means ten years all in all. I thought him less educated than I was myself. To prepare us for the front an Estonian Ensign and an Estonian 1st Lieutenant were asked to help as interpreters and mediators. One of the squad leaders was a man over thirty, a Mari by nationality, who was absolutely illiterate. His assistant read us the Russian military regulations, doing it very poorly; his literacy was far from perfect. There were also problems with giving the military oath, as Estonian men did not want to do it in Russia. We asked to be sent Home so that we could fight the Germans there. Nothing came of it, though, and those who had

148

Wonders of Living

been more active in their demands, two schoolmates of mine included, simply disappeared. I was reasonable enough to understand that it was senseless to fight the inevitable. So I signed the text of the oath, not writing my name ‘Ehamaa’, but following in the Latin alphabet – ‘Eianna’.6 The Russian understood nothing, it was all the same for him for the name began with an ‘E’ and ended with an ‘a’. We stayed in this unit till the end of September. Suddenly we were gathered all together, our military uniforms were taken away, the clothes that we had worn at the moment of being mobilized were handed back again, plus an old army coat and a garrison cap – and suddenly we were free from being combat-ready troops. What had caused such an action? Later it turned out that instead a body of Estonian national troops, the 22nd Territorial Corps, had been formed and sent to fight the Germans7 on the other side of Lake Peipus, along the Porkhov line. Because of the strong German offensive, many men were either taken prisoner or gave themselves up. More than 4,000 men went over to German side. The Soviet State Defence Committee or the Minister of Defence had issued an order after that to call all Estonians away from military service, and that is why I was sent away from the unit. We were sent to areas east of the Volga River where we helped to gather the equipment of evacuated factories, to load them into containers and to store them. Finally we went to the region of Pugachev, about 150 kilometres from South Kazakhstan. Here we participated in building the railway along the banks of the Volga. We worked day and night in shifts. Our task was to prepare the railway embankment, moving all the time towards the Volga. This work was exhausting. As a result of it all I got scurvy by the beginning of November, my gums were bleeding, and I also had slight fever, so I was not able to go to work any more. But the railway construction continued onwards and so ailing men like me, and also some boys with very big feet for whom there were no boot of the right size, were left behind to live in the local collective farm. Here our task was to work at the collective farm: to finish the threshing and to bring fodder to the farms. We lived with the farmers. I lived with a family where there was and an old housewife about 65 years of age, her daughter-in-law and her daughter who was 10 years of age. The house was the typical one-room Russian house, the main part of which was the huge stove where hot food was prepared. On that stove slept an older Russian woman evacuated from the western districts. In one corner of the room was the elderly hostess’ bed, in another corner a bed was made of felt for her daughter-in-law and her daughter. In the third corner slept two kulaks, who had been freed from prison and now worked for the collective farm. I had a long bench, along the wall, to sleep on and I was treated as a

Ailo Ehamaa

149

military man. Every worker got a certain amount of dry products from the farm. I gave mine to the hostess and thus ate at the table with the family. The two kulaks and the evacuated woman did not sit at the table; they had their own food. When the weather became colder, a newborn calf was also brought to the house. There was no lavatory in the house; all activities of the kind had to be performed in the cow stable in the other end of the house. I tried to be useful for my hostess, going after the end of the workday at the collective farm to the river close by to bring some better firewood from a grove on its banks. This was in fact forbidden. There was a general lack of firewood in that place and the people used dried manure to heat their stoves. As I wore that frayed Russian army coat, I was considered to be a military man and so nobody said anything when I carried firewood home. My hostess enquired how I had lived in Estonia. I told her about the new farmhouse of my grandparents where there was a toilet on each floor. The old woman understood the difference of our standard of living. In fact they had also been in the collective farm for no more than five years. Working in the farm and eating together with the family I started getting better. In January 1942 a message came for the Estonians working in the collective farm that national Estonian contingents were being formed and that was why we had to go and give ourselves at the disposal of the Urals military division without delay. The journey there was not very easy, all the transport was overburdened, the journey lasted several weeks and we were harassed by lice. I arrived at the Estonian National Contingent at Kamyshlov in February. Here we were sorted and I was assigned to the anti-tank battery of the 354th regiment. Now training started, which meant exercises with wooden guns and long nightly hikes. A hike started in the evening, was thirty or forty kilometres long and ended in the morning – so life was again very exhausting. The training lasted through the end of the winter, spring and summer till August. My companions in the regiment were all Estonians and also some indigenous Russians from the shores of Lake Peipus, and even one Jew who belonged to our battery. I was in a regiment with horse-drawn field guns. So we had to take care of the horses, to comb and brush them, to feed them, and that is why our day began at five, or an hour earlier than it did for the others. After that hour at the stables, the usual drill started. In August we again got on trains and were taken to further training near Moscow, at the town of Yegoryevsk, where we were accommodated in farmhouses. I remember that in the collective farms near towns they were digging potatoes in August and September and it seems that the farmers left lots of potatoes in the earth on purpose. We used any opportunity when free from training to take along a mess-tin, pick potatoes from the field and make mashed potatoes which

150

Wonders of Living

tasted so good and homely. We were surrounded by vast juniper forests and I ate juniper berries, not even knowing that they had lots of vitamins in them and were thus very healthy. In August [1942], we got an order to get on trains and go to the west, to the Kaliningrad district. Here, at a temporary stopping place, we had to build earth huts and wait for the next order. Then the order came: to board the train again and go towards Velikiye Luki. Unfortunately we could not go on by train very far; the front was close and the Germans had blown up the railway tracks. Repairing the railway took a long time and our food supplies became scarce. Once, when we had been without food for two days, the Regiment’s officers decided to use our supplies of soap. Soap seemed to be rather rare in the villages and thus we succeeded to exchange it for cereals. The collective farms were poor too, having just lived through the German occupation but we got some food and could at least eat millet porridge. Repairing the railway took time and we had to go on a 120 kilometres hike through Russian winter towards Velikiye Luki. That was hard because we were already weak due to the poor quality food. We had the horses and the field guns with us and had constantly to pull them out of holes on those muddy roads. By the beginning of December [1942], we arrived near Velikiye Luki, where we had to replace a Russian regiment and accommodate ourselves in the earth huts they had built. And next day we were meant to go against the Germans with no time to prepare for the battle. The Germans had been here for months and knew the landscape; they had shot at the Velikiye garrison from all angles, and not a man of ours could get through unharmed. The Germans had good snipers watching from atop all of the chimneys of the destroyed villages, who were after our soldiers. By the way, among those snipers there were many who were not German at all, but for example Belorussians. At the beginning of January [1943], our attack started. We were led by the Regiment’s commander, Podpolkovnik [Lieutenant Colonel] Pehk, an Estonian from the Soviet Union. He sat on horseback, a revolver in hand and shouted at the top of his voice: ‘Move on! Charge! Charge!’ – he had apparently taken encouragement from vodka. Right on the first day, our battery commander and three of the ten men were killed. The Germans’ fire was hard and I could only shoot until there was no ammunition. The gun stopped, because it was not possible to bring up a new supply of ammunition. I was dead tired and supported my head against the gun’s lock – a steel shield above the Gunner’s head. But I was so tired that I thought, I will leave for a moment and lie down. And the moment I had taken seat I heard a thunder clap and the shield was gone … Such things happen in war!

Ailo Ehamaa

151

We moved on with difficulty between ruined houses, from one to another. At night we hid in a cellar and under the cover of darkness food was brought for us in thermoses. We tried to eat as much as we could. Once I went out at night to pee and the sight I saw was horrible. Bumps in the shell craters were dead bodies, some with a raised hand, some with a head. Nobody had taken the bodies away. The situation was depressing and I felt that I would not come out of it alive and I accepted it. In the morning I stumbled on. In the battle something hit me in the back and I felt that my back became all wet. I had been wounded by shell splinter. I fell and remained lying down. I was dragged to the road farther on and sent to a first aid station in a tent. Two companions helped me and they had now a good opportunity to keep away from the battle. The wound was not very bad, it was bandaged and I was evacuated towards Moscow by train. By the middle of December I arrived at a temporary field hospital in a mansion about 30 kilometres from Moscow where I stayed until the end of March [1943] which means for more than three months. Compared to the former living conditions [at the front] life at the hospital was pure luxury. We slept between sheets, got enough food, and a lump of sugar daily; there was also some porridge and American canned meat, and, by the way, tobacco. As I was not a smoker, I could exchange my tobacco for bread. There were several Kazakhs at the hospital and as they did not eat bacon, I could exchange my bread for their bacon. We were also visited by the Soviet Estonian government members and helpers from some Moscow institutions. So life was nice there and I got better at the hospital. The war continued and in spring 1943 I went back to my regiment. The regiment had borne big losses, about 80 per cent of its men were dead or wounded. Now we had complementary forces from the Urals, among them Russians and Estonians from the Soviet Union. Until then there had been only boys from Estonia. Then a son of a Tallinn textile factory owner came, a Dutchman by nationality, called van Jung. Apparently he was partly Jewish, although neither he nor his father had been touched by the Germans. It seems that the Germans might have killed them in the end and so the guy came to the Russian front. He had studied at a Swiss university. Thus we had a group of ‘aristocrats’ in our battery: one guy from the Gustav Adolf school, one from Westholm, one from the Realschule,8 and van Jung. We formed the so-called educated group. Our regiment was kept in reserve and not sent to front until we approached Narva. In June 1944 the [8th] Estonian [Rifle] Corps was very close to the Estonian border. Now the battles at Narva started, heading in the direction of the River Emajõgi, with the final aim being Tallinn. Coming with the Red Army actually meant coming home. Hatred of the

152

Wonders of Living

Germans had been heated up. We had been told that the Germans were destroying houses in Narva, blowing them up one after another. We did not know that it had been the Russians who bombed Narva. At Narva the 8th’s artillery units were the only Estonians present; there was no Estonian infantry. In contrast to the situation at Velikiye Luki, we had now time to study the enemy for a week, to determine all their firing positions through binoculars and to learn where all the cannons and all machine guns were. We mapped and described everything. There was no reconnaissance information; we only knew that there were terrible machines of destructions on the other bank of the river. We wanted to get rid of them as soon as possible and get home. When the attack started we would have an opportunity to destroy every firing position. But then we heard a song from the other side of the river: ‘Life can turn out lousy...’ The song was pessimistic but clearly in Estonian. We knew nothing about the Legion boys.9 One of them swam over to our side; later it turned out he had had a misunderstanding with the Germans. Then the shooting started; there was no resistance, the Russian troops simply crossed the bridge and into Narva. But I did not even make Narva for we were sent to some place near Oudova in July [1944]. There began a landing across Lake Peipus. We prepared the artillery and arrived at Kallaste on barges. Kallaste is a town where mostly Russians live10 and when we reached the town, the reaction of the local people was strange – these are again Estonians. Estonians on both sides, everywhere, they are not to be got rid of. On September 21 an advance party of 1,000 men was formed of our 354th regiment which consisted of about 4,000 troops; the advance party was given a unit from the tank regiment and one anti-tank gun. I was the commander of the machine-gun team. We were loaded on trucks and in the evening of September 21 we got an order to break through the frontline and to liberate Tallinn from the Germans. We were at that moment about 120 kilometres from Tallinn. The front was crossed at night near Tamsalu; they say, however, that at that time there actually was not a continuous frontline. In the morning of September 22, at about eight or half past eight our advance party reached Assaku on the Pirita River. Someone shot in our direction. Our tanks returned a few shots and – no resistance any more. Actually there was no resistance from the units that had remained there; the so-called Pitka men11 had probably dispersed at once. Our group approached Tallinn along the Tartu Road. I had been away from here more than three years and now I saw my hometown again. I noticed major destruction, when entering the town along the Tartu Road, entire Quarters of the city were empty and ruined. Our truck reached the Drama Theatre and we stopped for a moment: there were very few Estonians about on the streets. Hearing us talking in

Ailo Ehamaa

153

Estonian a man stopped at our truck. He asked wondering: ‘Are you Estonian boys?’ ‘Yes’, we answered. The man was very glad to hear that so many Estonian men had come back home who had been thought dead: he took an egg out of his pocket and offered it to me. Then we started moving towards Toompea, turned to Liberty Square and at about eleven o’clock were near the Kaarli Church from where we could see Toompea. I was happy to see the Estonian flag on the Pikk Hermann tower. There were no people on Toompea and the Commander of the advance party, Colonel Vassili Võrk from Saaremaa started organizing the replacement of the Estonian flag with the Red Flag. Võrk had lived in Russia since 1917, served in the Russian army and had now become the Commander of our advance party. I could do nothing else but stay as far from their group as possible. But some men – I remember their names even now, Lieutenant Lumiste and an Estonian from the Siberia, Nagelmann – started taking the Red Flag up to the tower. Nagelmann, the Siberian said later, giving an interview to a journalist that we took down a flag of the fascists from Toompea. He had never seen the Estonian flag and had never known what the blue-black-and-white meant. Our artillery crew stayed on Toompea and was accommodated in a small garden house in the grounds of Kaarli Church. Now an opportunity presented itself for me to go and see my people at home. There was a lot of destruction in that part of town too, but when I came to my house I saw that it stood intact. I opened the front door and went up the stairs to the door of my home. I knocked and rang the doorbell but nobody answered. The inhabitant of the apartment opposite ours heard me, recognized me and told me that my father worked in the German medical and sanitary centre housed in the French Lyceum. I went to look for him. I went in and saw that Father really was sitting there. He was in civilian clothes, with a coat on but he wore German military boots. We embraced and I asked about what had happened to him and mother. Father had been mobilized into the German army in 1944 due to having the profession of an Army Surgeon’s Assistant and so he had been working all the time at that medical centre. Father said that mother had been ill at the Hiiu Lung Diseases and Tuberculosis Sanatorium since 1941. I could not go that far at the moment, but later I did go to Hiiu. Then I saw my mother for the last time and she told me how she had been praying for me daily. Mother died in November 1944; I was in a battle at that time. After about ten days the war continued for us. The Saaremaa battles lasted till November; the resistance of the Germans was especially robust on the Sõrve peninsula.12 I would like to tell about the battles of the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps in March 1945, while destroying the Kuramaa [Courland] pocket13 of the

154

Wonders of Living

German army. The enemy had managed to organize a good defence; tanks dug into the earth served as good firing positions. It was dangerous to go through the forest because there were the so-called ‘cuckoos’ in the trees who shot at our soldiers when they passed. Then the battles for the nearby Kaulač manor started. My field-gun took up a position about ten kilometres from the manor house. During the night we dug shelter for the team and the field-gun and were ready to attack in the morning. I was leaning on the edge of the dugout and watching the movements of our attacking infantry. The Germans resisted fiercely. I saw a soldier of ours being hit and staying down. Suddenly a shell exploded. Just beside our dugout there was a tree and a shrapnel shell hitting it exploded, the fragments flowing into our dugout. I felt my right leg was not supporting me any more. Another fighter had an arm broken; the third got wounded in the face. My leg started bleeding profusely. As I was among my comrades, they put a tourniquet around my leg to hold back the bleeding. However, a tourniquet could not be kept on for more than an hour and a half at a time; then you had to loosen it for a moment. I looked and saw that my leg was attached to my body only by the muscles and the skin. I lost lots of blood. Occasionally I lost consciousness. It was impossible to take me away while it was light; so I had to try to survive till midnight. Finally I was taken on a stretcher to a nearby medical centre in a tent. As I had lost lots of blood they first gave me a blood transfusion and then started operating on my leg. The leg hurt terribly and before going to the operation I looked at my leg for the last time. I did not believe that the leg could be spared. After waking from the anaesthetic, I did not dare to open my eyes at first and see what had happened to my leg. I thought for a moment that it was possible to live without a leg. And I wanted to live! Then I started opening my eyes carefully. And what did I see!! My wounded right leg, all in white bandages, was supported on a frame higher than my body. I was so glad! And I must say that it was a great wonder that in such a situation a surgeon did something like that, while there were wounded people coming in constantly. It would have been more likely that when such a soldier is brought in whose leg is attached to his body only by muscles and skin, the surgeon makes the final move, cutting the skin and the muscle through, and sends the soldier to hospital. Later it turned out that the fragment had cut out a two and a half centimetre splinter from my thighbone. The surgeon apparently saw that it was the strong bone of a sportsman, saw that I was still young, spared me, and risked the operation, so I still had my leg. So that was the Kuramaa pocket. Later I spent some time at the Riga military hospital, then at the Kirov Medical Academy Hospital in Leningrad and finally in a hospital in Tallinn. As it had been a serious wound, the setting back of the pieces of bone and growing them together

Ailo Ehamaa

155

was a long and complicated procedure. It failed at the first attempt, so the bone had to be broken again. So I was anaesthetised on three occasions over a short while. It took a whole year and I was finally demobilized in February 1946. Now I was free from the army and had the certificate of an invalid of the second group of the Great Patriotic War in my pocket. I waited for a while for my health to get better and then started preparing to enter the economy department of Tallinn Polytechnic Institute. I studied the subjects for the entrance examinations, even went and talked to the Rector of the institute. My entrance seemed probable. Meanwhile, in May, I went to see my grandparents in Luunja. Grandmother would have liked me to stay at the farm and help. But I could not have done so because of my health. Ploughing was not very easy with my leg; the plough kept coming out of the earth all the time. I helped my 85 years old grandfather to do some work in the fields, so they would be able to grow potatoes and grain. I also went to the community centre and asked them not to be unjust to my grandparents. I got a promise from them, but soon my grandparents were driven out of their home. At the end of May [1946], I returned from the Eha farm to Tallinn and started preparations for going to the Institute. But then, just as the entrance examinations began, my leg got worse and I learnt that I had chronic bone inflammation. I had to go to the hospital instead of the examinations. Meanwhile my father had found an advertisement in a newspaper that courses would be organized to prepare people for organizing agricultural co-operatives. The courses lasted for twelve months and the stipend was good – 500 roubles a month. In addition to that I got my invalid’s pension which was 375 roubles a month. Father took my papers to the courses and I was accepted. After finishing the courses I was directed to work at the Tallinn Central League for Dairy Associations as a department leader. At those courses I studied together with my future wife Aino. And after graduating in 1947 we decided to start living together. We had no wedding, we only registered our marriage. We also had the rings, but then, when I was carrying a Christmas tree at the following Christmas, I met the vice-head of the Dairy Associations. He was an old party member, a communist, and he said angrily: ‘You have a ring on your finger? Celebrating Christmas and having a ring ...’ Then I took that ring off and put it back in my finger after my wife’s death in 2002. I worked at the League till the middle of 1950 when the reorganization of the dairy industry started. Instead of the former system of produce of dairy cooperatives and creameries originating from the Republic of Estonia, an all-Republican butter producing Trust was formed. In that Trust, subordinated to the [Soviet] Ministry of Meat and Dairy Industry my situation was different. During the March deportations of 194914 the

156

Wonders of Living

kulak parents of my wife were deported to the Krasnoyarsk district. My position had become considerably worse as I was now a person related to a suspicious ‘element’. The Trust did not find me a position; I was no longer a respectable invalid of the war; I was not to be trusted. I continued at the Central Base of butter production as an engineertechnologist where my task was to prepare freight wagons for sending butter to Russia, from Estonia. I even had a motorbike to keep in contact with the railway stations and for finding wagons. I worked at that base for only three months as I did not like the post. In the towns, life became poor; we could not get food from the country any more and we also had a child … so I started thinking about going to live in the countryside. I had good connections in the Trust; the Director was a former Corps’ man. While still working in the League, I had visited all the creameries in the country and seen what the situation was like in those places. And now I had an opportunity to choose myself a manager’s post in one of the creamery and I chose Lustivere, near Põltsamaa. This was one of the biggest and best creameries and so I started working there from October 1 1950, as the creamery manager. My salary was at first a hundred roubles more than I had got earlier in Tallinn. I also got some land, 0.15 hectares, for cultivation and I grew potatoes there; I also had a hog, hens, ducks, and rabbits. So there was enough food. I got milk and butter from the dairy, as much as I wanted. The stores in the country were all nearly empty: only bread and vodka were available. There was no work for Aino at first, so she stayed at home. Then an opportunity became available [for the Central Base] to get a horse for private use and with that the post of a stable worker who would take care of the horse. The salary was poor but Aino got her years of service up and running. Life went on; opposite the dairy there was a cooperative store and Aino was a member of the voluntary auditing commission there. When the old manager of the store left, my wife became a saleswoman. That meant our situation in Lustivere was rather good financially. There was also a darker side to life in Lustvere, however, for our second daughter was born deaf. In Lustivere, I had again a wish to go on with my education. I had not managed to study at the Polytechnic Institute; now I decided to go and study agronomy on the correspondence courses of the Estonian Agricultural Academy. I graduated from the school cum laude in 1966. After a couple of years I went [enrolled in] to the postgraduate courses, which for a correspondent student lasted for five years. Meanwhile my elder daughter Marje had graduated from the local eight-year school and went to study in Tallinn. Then I had a thought to stop working in the country, to use my chosen speciality and go to work in Tallinn. My wife was already working at the accountancy office of the Tallinn Department Store. I got a

Ailo Ehamaa

157

job in an institution called the Inspection of Plant Quarantine. This institution was directly subordinated to the Agricultural Ministry of the Soviet Union and I did not like working there. My boss was a Russian, many of the agronomists checking the ports and airports were also Russian, and also all the documents had to be in Russian. However, there was no other opportunity to get alternative work and thus I became an inter-regional inspector. My family was already in Tallinn but we had difficulties with an apartment. When going to Lustivere, we had lost our former apartment. At first we found accommodation in a private house in the Merivälja Quarter. The apartment was small and we were not registered. By law we should have had 12 m2 for every family member; in our flat where we shared the kitchen with the owner, we had only 32 m2 all-in-all.15 I wrote an application to the Executive Committee of the town asking us to be registered. ‘No’, answered the Head of the Accommodation Department: ‘According to the law you do not have the right to get an apartment here’. So that was that ... I then went straight to the vice-chairman of the executive committee with whom I had served in the same regiment. He was not a very good acquaintance of mine, a man who had come to Estonia from the Soviet Union … but still … [he was] an acquaintance. So I was put on the waiting list. The Commission for distributing apartments gathered and I said that I was an invalid of the war who was among the first to march into Tallinn, but look, now I have no place to live here although I was born here. At the same time, I had read in the paper that someone had come back to Estonia from Sweden was given an apartment right away. I added that I had been helping a collective farm meanwhile and had no apartment while someone who comes here from abroad gets an apartment the very minute he appears. And then the commission decided to give me an apartment. We only had to wait till the two room apartment was ready in the Mustamäe Quarter in 1967 and we could move in. In 1968 an opportunity became available to get work at the newly created Republican Helminthology Laboratory in Saku, near Tallinn. So I used the opportunity to work there. I worked at the laboratory for 25 years, as the main specialist and as the Director. I quit in 1993, retiring at the age of seventy. Now a few words about my academic activities. In 1970 I had an opportunity to go on a professional trip to East Germany. Three scientists, one from Moscow, one from Belorussia and one (me) from Estonia formed the delegation. We went to Berlin and were also shown the historical cities of Potsdam, Brandenburg, Schlesswig Holstein, and Rostock. We visited institutes and laboratories and talked to German scholars. I must say that their attitude towards us was very kind, even,

158

Wonders of Living

adulating. I also noticed that the meat portions in the diners were considerably larger than those we got in Estonia. Every member of the delegation got 500 marks for which I bought shoes for my wife and daughter and for myself. We also socialized with several German scholars, like Dr. Schtelter, visiting their homes. I also remember that a Russian, who had been working in Germany for a while, warned us that when visiting Germans at home we should pay attention that they economized on sugar. Apparently demand for sugar was greater than the supply and therefore its availability was limited. And it was true, when visiting Germans’ homes we were offered coffee to drink but the spoon in the sugarbowl was very small. Following the advice I put only one spoonful of sugar into my coffee. Later I corresponded with Dr. Schtelter who asked me to send my works for him to read. By the way, when I defended my PhD dissertation, I had to have recommendations about my work from twenty different scientific institutes throughout the Soviet Union. In Estonia, my supporting and supervising institute was the Institute of Zoology and Botany. I got the necessary quantity of positive references. Here I should point out that the most authoritative among them was a reference from Kiryanova, an Academician of the Soviet Union. By the way, when two years later her two-volume work ‘Nematology’ was published, my dissertation was among her bibliography. That is it about my academic research. I tried to fit into Soviet society. I had gained living accommodation and my life was relatively normal. But when in 1988 the Plenary Session of the Creative Unions started, and formation of the Popular Front began,16 I decided at once that I would start to wear a badge, a small Estonian flag on my lapel. Naturally I participated in the Baltic Human Chain17 and followed all the arguments about the Estonian language.18 But at first Soviet power continued and Inter-front19 was assailing Toompea. I listened to the radio in my summer cottage and heard that help was needed. At once we, Aino and me, took our car and off we went to Tallinn. The sight on Toompea was overwhelming, a very big crowd of people had gathered. Inter-front had given up their intention of hoisting the Red Flag on top of Toompea’s Pikk Hermann tower and they were leaving, passing the Estonians standing in line on both sides of the street. The Estonians were shouting: ‘Shame on you! Shame!’ And then it all started. I participated in as many actions as possible, in anything that supported the Estonian mindset. On August 20, 1991 I was in Liberty Square20 where people kept shouting: ‘Freedom!’, ‘Estonia independent!’ and on Toompea the Supreme Soviet decided the fate of the people. Yes, and what had to come, came at last – the Republic of Estonia was restituted. And that was a big wonder, for the Soviet Union had been invincible! That was the happiest day of my life!

Ailo Ehamaa

159

Now I keep watching everything that happens in the newspapers, on the radio and the television. I do not agree with extremist patriots. At this time of the Republic of Estonia the activities of the Rifle Corps are no longer appreciated. What should I say about that? I understand that during the Soviet era, the men from the Corps were held in esteem. I have never been to the Bronze Soldier, it was Russians who went there but I participated in the gatherings of the Corps’ men. I well understand that we were praised before and those who fought on the side of the Germans were not. Now it is simply the other way round and they also get praised. Meanwhile there were birthday greetings over the radio, only to them; now the Corps’ men are also congratulated. I have a great respect for the men who fought in Finland; they were real warriors. But with those who were in the German army, it is this way and that. For example in the flat above me, lived a man born in 1927. He was mobilized to the German army in April 1944; he belonged to the aviation support personnel and only worked at different airfields all over Estonia, until September [1944]. But now he calls himself a fighter for freedom. So all this is very relative. I absolutely do not hate the people who served in the German army; I look at them as people like me who because of the complexity of fate were taken to one side or another and have had to bear the mark through all their lives. They have all suffered but time has gone on and every man can end his earthly journey without hatred. It seems that those who fought on the German side are more against reconciliation; the Corps’ men saw enough of horrible things in the war. What should I say at the end? In my life there have been two great wonders. One was that I did not lose my leg, although I got chronic inflammation from it. During those sixty years that have passed from getting wounded, the wound has remained open and I have to take care of it daily. But still a bigger wonder is that Estonian managed to restore its independence. There was no hope that a small republic, incorporated into a totalitarian giant that was threatening to destroy the whole world, would have an opportunity to become free. This really was a wonder and it was worthwhile to live to see it happen. Several dreams that I have always had, have now come true: I was born in Free Estonia and now I can die in Free Estonia. This is the greatest wonder of all, and I thank God for it.

160

Wonders of Living Notes

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Ailo Ehamaa told his story to Aili Aarelaid as an interview, which later has been formulated as a written narrative upon his consent and comments. The record of the interview and transcription are preserved in Aili Aarelaid’s personal archive. The story is translated by Kersti Unt. ‘The 1924 rebellion’ – an armed conflict on December 1, 1924 in Tallinn during which armed groups with communist views tried to capture strategically important places and to initiate a coup d’état. The attempt failed and as a result vigilance in national defence grew: one of the results was the formation of the Defence League. ‘The demonstration at the Freedom Square in Tallinn’ – demonstrations on June 21, 1940 in Tallinn initiated from Moscow. As a result, the government of the Republic of Estonia and all its institutions ceased to exist in a matter of a few weeks. One of the first economic reforms carried out by the Soviet occupational administration was the nationalisation of industry, commerce and the larger apartment buildings. All factories employing more than 20 workers and all-mechanical workshops employing more than ten workers were nationalised in the autumn of 1940. Shops, restaurants and hotels were also nationalised, and the process was completed in June 1941. See ‘Nachumsiedlung’ in January 1941, in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. Outside similarity of two words, ‘Eianna’ expresses unwillingness to sign the oath. Russian militaries who did not know Latin spelling did not understand the pun. See ‘Formation of the 22nd rifle (infantry) corps’ in September 1941, in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. Gustav Adolf Gymnasium, Westholm Gymnasium and Realschule were elitist schools in Tallinn, the graduates of which received an excellent education. The Legion boys – a reference to the troops of the Estonian Legion of the German Waffen-SS. The town of Kallaste was founded by the Old Believers escaping from Russia in 1720 who first founded a settlement called Красные Горы (Red Hills). Pitkapoisid – a group formed by one of the leaders of the War of Independence Admiral Johannes Pitka (1872–1944) in the end of the 1944 summer to make the last stand in defence of Tallinn against the Red Army (see August 25 1944 entry in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume). Ailo Ehamaa has not thought it necessary to describe the hard battles on Saaremaa (Öland) that lasted for several months and where the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps bore heavy losses, as nothing very bad happened to him

Ailo Ehamaa

13

14 15

16

17

18

19

20

161

during that time. Later he learned that at the time his mother had died of tuberculosis. See March 17 1945 entry in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. March deportation – see Loog’s story, note 20. ‘We had only 32 m2’ – a normative limit of a Soviet living space often used as a cause for refusing an address registration. The Joint Plenary of the Estonian Creative Unions took place in Tallinn on April 1–2, 1988 at which a number of important national political demands were presented. About a week earlier the first group of the Popular Front formed, according to an idea expressed in a radio broadcast by Edgar Savisaar, an Estonian social scientist. The National Front saw itself as an oppositional force against the ruling Communist Party. A joint action of the citizens of the three Baltic states on August 23, 1989 during which a human chain was formed starting from Toompea, Tallinn and ending in Gediminas Square in Vilnius. The purpose of that action was to demonstrate to the world visually (as seen via satellite) the oppression of the Baltic peoples by the Kremlin powers. The action took place on the anniversary of signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and was meant to demonstrate that the fate of the Baltic countries was decided according to a secret agreement between two totalitarian states on the eve of World War II. ‘Arguments around the Estonian language’ – a reference to the journalistic debate in 1988–1991 concerning the possibility of making Estonian the only official language in Estonia. Inter-front – an extensive mass movement initiated by local Russians in Estonia, and directed against the attempts of national self-determination by Estonians. Inter-front organized several demonstrations of power in the form of public riots. The most dangerous of them was an attempt on May 15, 1990 to take down from the Toompea mast the blue-black-and-white flag symbolizing Estonian independence. The leader of the people’s National Front, Edgar Savisaar called on Estonians to defend Toompea in a radio broadcast. ‘Freedom Square on August 20, 1991’ – a hint at the events in Tallinn following the Moscow putsch denoting the beginning of the disintegration process of the Soviet Union. Using the vacuum of power the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic announced the Republic of Estonian as de facto restored on August 20, 1991 a few minutes before midnight. The situation was troubled as the people’s envoys were working in a building at a distance of only a couple of hundred metres and tens of thousands of people gathered in the town centre were demanding restitution. A danger of a military attack by Russians immediately after that was great; partly this was what happened during the following days but due to the developments in Moscow the Russian tanks left Estonia soon.

Born Under a Lucky Star1 Lembitu Varblane, born 1923 My ancestors all came from the West of Estonia and were mainly farmers. My home was in Lihula county, Laulepa village. My paternal grandparents had two sons. My maternal grandparents, in the neighbouring village of Meelva had two daughters. My father’s parents wanted to give him a better education because his mother thought he might become a parson. So he was sent to Lihula Orthodox Parochial School. But, because his character was not right for the school, his Mother’s wish was not fulfilled. However, the education he did receive came useful in other occupations. My mother was educated at the village school. She was a hard-working woman by nature and very good at taking care of the farm animals. Ekaterina, my mother, and Jaan, my father, married in 1921. At first they lived the so–called ‘separated’ life. Father did construction work and mother worked where she could and had two sons (Lembitu was born on August 13, 1923 and Vambola on March 25, 1926). When I was five, my father inherited a 33 hectare farm from his maternal grandfather, which had recently been separated from the Matsalu manor estate. The farm was in a poor condition, the buildings shabby, the coastal fields of clay soil were too wet; the pasture was uneven and half a kilometre away there were 11 hectares of greenwood, which were also too wet. All our energy went on improving the farm. In ten years, [ditches were dug around all] the fields. The pastures and meadows became cultivated grasslands. Fishing was not necessary. Bread and other food came from the fields. Everybody worked as hard as they could; even we children had to work from an early age. All of the farm’s income went into buying agricultural machines and into new buildings. The farm gave all and the farm took it all. We had to economize constantly. Breeding cattle and raising good horses of the Tori breed were also important activities. The main income came from the dairy cattle and growing barley for making beer. In 1938 the farm was recognized as an exemplary new farm. Father was a social man by nature and a village councillor. He was the head of the Water and Peat Society, a committee member of both the Milk Society and the Firemen Society. He read a lot, especially political literature and was able to foresee quite well what was going to happen in Estonia and in the world. He, somehow, managed to be everywhere; he played in the orchestra for the folk dancers, at weddings and at village festivities; on Sundays he wrote appeals for the village people and advised them on any matters that might come up. Otsa Jaan was thought of as a clever man. He made most of the farm tools, erected the farm buildings and everything necessary; in winter he mended and tuned concertinas and

164

Born Under a Lucky Star

accordions. Mother who led a domestic way of life did not like his sociable habits and occasionally there were arguments in the family. The farm life has left pleasant memories. The unique shores of the Matsalu Bay, its wetlands, meadows and wooded meadows shaped my attitude towards nature. After graduating from the local basic school I continued my studies by correspondence. Fortunately the post-Independence development of the central part of West Estonia was sufficient for a private school to open in Lihula, which later turned into a Gymnasium. I passed the necessary test and entered the school. Now the eve of World War II was already near. Russian military bases came to Estonia. Motorized military units and tank columns were located near my home. The local administration made my father a contact man to communicate with them as he could speak Russian. Our family therefore were in contact with the ‘comrades’ more often than anyone else. Through father, their Russian commanders presented demands to the community. But the ‘friends’2 never remained within the borders of an agreed territory. They tended to move around and organize field excercises in the pastures and fields of the farmers. I recall an incident caused by our electric fence. During a field exercise outside the agreed territory, a soldier got a shock from an electric fence. At once an alarm was given and the Russians by following the barbed electric fence came to our farmyard. The farmhouse was surrounded and we were all told to gather in the yard. The privates had rifles ready and their leaders had their revolvers ready. Sabotage, what else! Their angry glances remain in my memory till today. Fortunately father came home and explained the electric-fence to the Russians. Their political leader (the politruk) apologized and announced condescendingly that in the Soviet Union there were naturally many electric fences but that nobody had expected to see one in such a poor country as Estonia! Soon the Finnish war started. Hurriedly an airport was built on the northern side of Matsalu Bay, at a place called Sinalepa. From there the ‘Red Eagles’ of the Russian airforce started bombing Finland. For some reason, they had a habit of circling above the bay. With other village boys, I used to count how many planes went and how many came back. The wings of several planes had shot full of holes over Finland. We were all depressed as the intentions of Russia were quite clear. The summer of 1940 was eventful. The Estonian Republic was occupied and the government overthrown. The villagers became worried. It was especially hard for Father who now, as a representative of the community was only able to compromise with Russians’ demands with great difficulties. Their demands had to be met and that was that.

Lembitu Varblane

165

Then the first ‘free elections of the working people’ took place. The Soviet propaganda machine was started. This was reflected in school life where ‘red winds’ started to blow. In February 1941 I did something illconsidered. I wrote a note where I called my classmates to gather on the eve of the Republic’s anniversary at the monument to soldiers killed in the War of Independence. That note fell into the hands of the authorities thanks to a young communist informer. Fortunately I was not very severely punished. My social behaviour mark was reduced to 2 out of 5, but I was allowed to continue my studies. Father said: ‘My son, such an act will not be of use to anyone but can do a lot of damage. Think before you act!’ Father was not a man who liked moralizing, in the case of a wrong deed or thought he only said briefly what he thought of it. Father was very depressed by the 1941 June deportations. Soon afterwards, Hitler declared war on Russia. The war approached Estonia very quickly. A general Soviet-Russian mobilization took place. Those men who were afraid for their families turned themselves in, others hid in the woods or marshes. As Father was among those being sought, our family fled to the Pärnu region. I stayed stubbornly at home to protect the cattle. One night father appeared; he had come for me through the front-line, and we joined the rest of the family. We lived in Uulu, at the farm of Laadi for several weeks. When we returned we saw a ravaged farmhouse, dead cattle, unmown hay fields. Fortunately the horses had survived for we had escaped with them. Despite the war, we were able to do something to restore our home. Everyone somehow had to get over the wartime difficulties. My schooling continued at Lihula Gymnasium. The Germans wanted to hear nothing of Estonian independence. And soon the luck seemed to be on the side of the Russians. In spring 1943 a German mobilization order arrived. So it was time to choose: to serve in an SS-unit or in the police battalion. I chose the first option. Yet I got an extension to graduate from school and to do the spring farm work at home. The situation at the war fronts indicated that the Germans would lose the war. I decided not to go into the German army. I hid and worked at my aunt’s farm. The villagers knew where I was but a wise village family will never have anything to do with their neighbours’ affairs. Finally the German authorities came after me. I was caught but fled again. Now I left the environs of home. I hid in Tallinn, in Tondi quarter, Oksa Street and at the gamekeeper’s of the Pirita estate. I was looking for an opportunity to go to Finland. It is so depressing to recall those days when I lived in one room with the gamekeeper’s wife who was ill with tuberculosis. She was coughing blood and had a high fever. There was a note on the door ‘a TB patient’. German officers came almost daily to get salmon fishing licences

166

Born Under a Lucky Star

from the gamekeeper (the German love of order, Ordnung muß sein!). A German would not open the door of a room where there is a TB patient, the gamekeeper said. I was depressed by the fate of that unfortunate beautiful woman. The confessions and thoughts of this dying woman will forever remain a sad memory of my youth. Finally I found a way of going to Finland. For this I owe a great deal to an old couple of the name of Heisla from Oksa Street. The man who was a baker had connections with people who took refugees across. The flight started in the night of October 8 [1943]. Everything necessary was in my backpack and in a suitcase when I walked carefully to the appointed spot by the road. After a short wait a tarpaulin covered truck came by and collected me. There were others like me under the tarpaulin. We were told that if the Germans stopped us, we had to say we were going to logging work. If we were arrested, we were advised to get away in the dark, one by one. We arrived successfully at the Viimsi coast. We crouched in dead silence among the big stones and juniper bushes. The boat was supposed to come soon but did not show because of a strong wind. Half of that night and the following day we spent in hiding in an empty summer cottage. We waited for the wind to cease. Fortunately the wind did cease and so we crept to the appointed spot by the sea. There were basically young men in the group but there was also a doctor’s family with a small child and a few girls who had stayed near their sweethearts. The dark autumn sea was restless and a bleak moon shone between the clouds. Finally the boat arrived — it was an open motorboat. The boatman, a sturdy Finn looked everyone over and gathered his pay: gold coins, butter, smoked meat, coffee and other things. I gave him two czarist gold roubles and put a pack of butter in the bottom of the boat. The pack of butter must have been too small because the man mumbled something and told me to go to the strake and keep the tarp in front of me in case a wave should roll overboard. He also gave orders to several other men, about where to sit or how to bail out water. The swell was not very heavy, quite usual for an autumn sea. Although the wind was getting stronger again, the sea did not become stormy. A German guard–ship saw us and swept a searchlight over us but we turned to the west and lost ourselves between the high waves. Then something happened to the screw of the boat and we had to change it. It was not easy on a billowy sea. In the end everything went well. When the skies started to get lighter, we saw the first rocky islands of Finland and we landed on one of them. We were dripping wet and very cold. We dried and smoothed our clothes and arranged our luggage. The kind lady who lived on the island made a warm drink and gave us biscuits. After that we were interrogated by the border guard and in the afternoon of October 10, we arrived at the

Lembitu Varblane

167

refugee camp at the Jollas Manor. I decided to apply for the navy. A few days later, I started a journey to Turku. In the Heikkilä barracks of Turku I stayed in training till October 31, 1943. This was a training drill that the boys did not like much. But I can recall some really good friends from that time. One day I was summoned to battalion headquarters. It seemed to me they were interested in my knowledge of the Finnish language. They said that I would manage with the language and that they would send me to the torpedo fleet. I thought, all right. One older Finn thought that this was not good; one might be hit by a bullet or a fragment of a shell or sink altogether. I did not think anything; for a soldier an order is an order. So, a journey towards the east started. The Depot Ship and the torpedo boats were anchored in the Bay of Viipuri and Uuras. I was chosen to serve on the boat of Commander Ovaskainen, a Noble Knight of the Mannerheim Cross and the Commanding Officer of the ‘Taisto’ group. He said simply: ‘Welcome, volunteer from Estonia, from November 1 you will be in the corps ready for the front. I hope you will get along with the men.’ The Motor Torpedo Boat flotilla consisted of the Depot Ship Von Döbeln and fifteen torpedo boats, among them six ‘Taisto’-boats (based on the Italian ‘Baglietto’ design, improved in Finland and built in Turku). The length of a ‘Taisto’ was 17.75 m, the width 4.6 m, and the depth of the side 2.2 m. Its hull was mainly made of waterproofed veneer. It was armed with a 20mm Madsen machine-gun; on its deck on the left and right side were the torpedoes, in the stern were the facilities for making smoke. The boat could also lay floating mines. There were 11 men in the crew, three of them working in the engine room. I was well received on the boat. The men paid me a lot of attention because I had a Gymnasium diploma and was thus called ylioppilas [the student]. I performed all the tasks of a sailor. At battle-stations I and a Finn called Parjo were the ‘Madsen-men’. Soon Ovaskainen gave me an additional task: I had to supply the crew and their commander with food during the combat missions and to keep his cabin in order. Thus I had more work to do because there was a kitchenette with a small primus stove and kitchen utensils where it was possible to prepare warm food for the crew. I tried to give my best as an amateur cook. The others were pleased with me. Both the Depot Ship and the torpedo boats were carefully concealed. If detected, a Russian air raid would have followed at once and this would have meant destruction of the torpedo flotilla. The torpedo boats were active mostly at night or during the day when it was heavily cloudy. The Russian fighter planes were a great danger. Twice or thrice a week we had to go on intelligence, defence, or attack missions. The crew of the main

168

Born Under a Lucky Star

boat was more heavily loaded. All areas between Lavansaari, Penisaari, Seiskari, and Kronstadt were within our operational area. To discover a Russian ship and to destroy it was perhaps one of the most tempting tasks. To fight against a Russian torpedo boat was not very pleasant. Their numerical superiority and slightly greater speed did not make us very happy. Fortunately our 20mm ‘Madsens’ had a greater firepower than their 18mm machine-guns. On a couple of occasons a serious torpedo attack against enemy ships did take place. Such an attack was not easy for the guns of Russian ships shot rather precisely. And soon their torpedo boats would arrive. The Russians also used rather often boat models as decoys and attacking those by mistake meant many expensive torpedoes were lost. The end of 1943 was coming. At the end of December, the weather was mostly cold. Along the coast some areas of the sea became covered with ice. This meant the end of the activity for the torpedo boats. One day when the skies were heavily clouded, the journey of the flotilla to the West began. The Depot Ship ‘Von Döbeln’ went ahead with the torpedo boats like ducklings in its wake. We arrived at Helsinki. The torpedo boats went in to the dry dock and the crews to further training. We were accommodated in the Katajanokka barracks. The training was mainly theoreticalpractical (about torpedoes, guns and mines). Passes were given to everybody who did not have ‘black marks’ in their service record. Estonians volunteers were sent to farms to have a rest. I was taken on by an owner of a large farm at Loimaa. I accompanied him when he went to the meeting of the parish council; we also visited several of his relatives and friends. I remember differences of opinions between myself and my host – he didn’t like that I lent a hand with the threshing, he employed two farmhands, one of whom was a war invalid, and they were threshing corn in winter! Other differences were my delight with dancing with the girls at the village kuppila [inn] and when skiing my use of both the alternating ski stride and the double pole stride. Class distinction and rigidly formed principles were really fixed. Ten days of rest gave me an opportunity to see Finnish village life and broadened my knowledge of the life style of our kindred people. I also tried to learn as much as I could about Helsinki and to see the art sites of the city. I even managed to listen to lectures on architecture at the University of Helsinki. To earn pocket money I sold sugar lumps at the railway station. Every day I put a part of the sugar portion aside and thus managed to get enough money to go to see the pictures. I also witnessed and survived the bombings of Helsinki on February 6th, 12th and 26th February 1944. Every time the air raids lasted more than ten hours. Katajanokka barracks suffered heavily. We were evacuated to a schoolhouse farther away from the city centre. Generally the Finnish

Lembitu Varblane

169

capital was well protected against air raids: only four to five per cent of the bombers reached their target. The number of casualties was also small, as all the inhabitants could be housed in rock shelters. It hurt badly to watch over the Finnish gulf when the ‘Red Eagles’ bombed defenceless Tallinn on March 9th 1944. I can recall an incident from the fire extinguishing and rescue work in Helsinki. Expensive tableware had been brought out of a burning house. They all lay scattered in the snow. I found a box and started to gather the tableware into it to protect them from being broken. Suddenly an angry marine appeared and accused me of attempting to steal. Seeing that I was an Estonian, he called every Estonian, especially me, a thief and a ruffian. ‘It can be only a Finn who is so stupid that scatters expensive tableware in snow,’ I muttered angrily in answer. He promised to shoot me for disobedience although I was not disobedient. I was terribly offended. It seems that there are fools even in the best army. Some war episodes from the summer of 1944. The spring of 1944 was early. The ice in the Finnish Gulf thawed and our stay in Helsinki came to an end. The torpedo boat flotilla (the Depot ship and the torpedo boats) went back to the east. Our base was from now on Virolahti. The locations of the Depot ship and the boats were carefully disguised. The commander of our ‘Taisto’ was Ovaskainen, as before. He also led the group of the ‘Taisto’s consisting of six boats. At sea we mostly acted in pairs. Ovaskainen was a good commander – wise, calm, and just. He treated me as his own son. Compared to the summer and autumn of 1943 the situation at sea had become much more difficult. After the lifting of the Siege of Leningrad, the Russian fleet became better supplied. The Russians built quicker torpedo boats than ours. The enemy had complete air superiority. In flying weather you had to sit tight and not show yourself. Our torpedo boats mostly acted at dusk and at night. We could not go far into the enemy’s waters with boats of the ‘Jymy’ and ‘Hurja’ type. The six ‘Taistos’ sometimes undertook farther scouting trips. We felt very awkward when dozens of the Russians’ fast craft appeared on the horizon moving straight at us or trying to encircle us. Our 20mm ‘Madsens’ and the Russian 18mm automatic guns opened fire. One single tracer bullet would have been enough to destroy us for all our boats had four tons of fuel in their tanks and two torpedoes aboard. A loud blast – then death and funerals all together, the boys used to joke. Of all those experiences, including the sinking of our ‘Taisto’, the memory that hurts most is that of a beautiful northern evening and night at the beginning of June. The Russians had torpedoed a large warship of the Germans. The site of the shipwreck was apparently somewhere on the

170

Born Under a Lucky Star

longitude of Narva Bay (but I may also be mistaken here). We received an order to save the people. So we hurried at full speed to the place of the incident. The evening skies were rosy, the smooth sea was all glimmering in a haze. On the horizon we saw a cloud of smoke born of the explosion which by now was already diffusing. Coming closer, we sensed the smells of oil and burning. There was a huge splotch of fuel oil at the site of the shipwreck, in the middle of which were men in life vests and on bits from the ship. At the other end of the oil splotch a speedboat of the Red Fleet was circling. They were apparently looking for the German Captain and the officers. We drove the speedboat away and started the rescue work. Coal black oily human shapes in water were crying for help; the wounded were groaning and screaming. The heads of the dead were in the water and their bottoms strangely high out of the water. The frightened men did not understand that we were Finns who had come to save them. What joy it was, a hope of being saved! We drew the oily slippery men, hypothermic from the cold water, onto the deck. Every man of ours acted bravely and without thought for their own safety. Those who have not had an experience like that cannot imagine how hard it is to heave a wet oily man on deck. We were soon as oily and dirty as them. Groans and hysterical screams sounded all around, and words of thanks were said. An officer had an open fracture of the thighbone and a wound in his head. I tried to console him in German. He looked at me with appealing eyes, showed me his pistol and asked me to … for the pain was unbearable. We tried to help the saved men as best as we could. We could not take the drowned for the living needed help quickly. A summer night is short; it was quickly getting lighter. Soon the Russian planes might appear. We went at full speed towards the Finnish coast. We were depressed but also pleased — we had saved many people. The Russian army was moving quickly towards the west. The Americans and the British were also planning big operations in the summer of 1944 to beat the German army. Soon a great offensive also started at the Finnish fronts. On June 9 the war became more active both on land and at sea. On June 10 explosions and blasts were heard everywhere. It all lasted for almost a month and and a half. The Russian Baltic Fleet was free after the the lifting of the Siege of Leningrad and became active in assisting their ground troops. A landing operation was being prepared on the western coast of Vyborg Bay and operations to seize the islands of Vyborg Bay were supported. Finland had to bring all its reserves into the battle to impede the arrogant attacker. Independence or destruction — these were the only choices. The torpedo boats were in battle almost every night and with low clouding at daytime too. Taking magnetic mines to the narrow straits between the islands of Vyborg Bay was especially dangerous. It

Lembitu Varblane

171

was extremely risky to fulfill those tasks in a strait a couple of metres wide and under the cannon fire of the Russians. I have read several descriptions of those defensive battles in June and at the beginning of July. There are dismal episodes in those descriptions but also memoirs of a courageous fight against an overwhelming enemy. Unfortunately there are mistakes in those memoirs. Time has changed them. In my story, the memory is connected to the day when our dear ‘Taisto’ was destroyed. It was a wonderful sunny June morning, a great day for making hay. Two ‘Taistos’ received an order to prepare for a combat mission. We went first towards the northeast, then towards the east. Soon we saw two tykkivenes [gunboats] were moving at full speed one after another towards Vyborg Bay. A few guard-ships were escorting them. Apparently those World War I boats used steam engines for thick black smoke was coming from their funnels. Our allies the Germans were guarding the boats with two or three gun-barges. Our torpedo boats had to take up a position where the fight was expected to be the hardest. Should a bigger enemy warship appear, we could create either a protective smokescreen or attack with torpedoes. Above such a battle unit a couple of fighter planes should have been circling but there were none! The guns from the Finnish and German boats spat fire towards the enemy’s landing units that tried with all their might to invade the islands of Vyborg Bay. A sailor of the name of Karlsson from the gunboat ‘Uusimaa’ has described this scene well: ‘You see, fellows, the men from headquarters want to parade with their museum boats in front of the enemy to make them die of laughter. That way we can economize on cartridges.’ Whatever the case, soon the ‘Red Eagles’ were roaring above our heads and their torpedo boats were approaching from the south. I remember that during the first attack forty airplanes were moving towards us, mostly of the IL-2 type and also some destroyers. They struck, shooting from the guns and dropped small bombs on us, flying low. It was hell. We fired back with all our might but the forces were not equal. The gunboats, especially the ‘Uusimaa’, suffered a lot. One plane disappeared, trailing smoke, towards the southeast. Our ‘Taisto’ had bad luck. When we appeared from the smoke-screen, the ‘Uusimaa’ shot at us by mistake, taking us for an enemy boat but missed fortunately. Then some small Russian ground–attack fighter planes decided to take us on seriously. Right and left pillars of water were rising from gunfire and the falling of small bombs. We moved at full speed, turning to the left and to the right. A constant flow of fire ran from our ‘Madsen’ towards the attackers. Me and Parjo, we did whatever we could. Flying very low, an Il-2 was coming towards us and dropped a few small bombs at us from a height of about

172

Born Under a Lucky Star

thirty metres. One of the bombs fell on the rear part of our torpedo boat, right into the engine room. We all heard a deafening blast. I saw a bloody head through the broken hatch of the engine room and a column of fire coming from the petrol lines of the engine. The three men in the engine room were instantly killed. The rest had to leave the burning boat immediately. Fortunately our ‘Taisto’ sunk quickly without making much noise. The other ‘Taisto’ at once picked us up. In a book of war history I found the following: ‘Acting as a safeguard to gunboats, torpedo boat ‘Taisto’-1 sank on June 21, 1944 being hit by a bomb and after the explosion of the petrol tanks towards the south from Oritsaari.’ Luckily what has been written about the explosion of the petrol tanks is not true. That is why all eight men on deck survived the incident. After a few days when the doctor had checked my memory and general health, I remembered my mother’s name instantly but could not say the name of my father. ‘Rest a few days and you will remember everything,’ the doctor consoled me humorously. And so it really was. However, from this misleading information, legends were later born. One of them describes my supposed fate. A sailor who participated in the Vyborg battles recalls: ‘We received an order to go to the spot where ‘Taisto’-1 had gone down. There were a few pieces of the boat floating on the surface and some bodies in lifevests. We pulled the bodies onto the deck with boat hooks. The hook had torn a wound into the hip of one man. The wound was bleeding. So we decided that he was not dead but in a deep coma. We took the man quickly to the hospital. Later we learned that the man had been an Estonian, a volunteer who had been called Braveheart by the crew.’ It was intriguing but wrong. I never lost consciousness; no-one pulled me, half dead, out of water with a boat hook. Since ancient times seamen have had a habit of adding a bit of spice to their stories, sometimes even of making them up completely. Unfortunately the postwar situation in Finland did not favour investigation of the war events very thoroughly. And decades later it is not very easy to be accurate. For me, the sea war in Finland had not yet come to an end. Several replacements were made in the crews of the torpedo boats and I found myself again in the service of my former commander. Our main task from now on was supporting the troops, fighting in the environs of the Vyborg Bay islands. The sea forces also had to prevent the landing of Russian troops on the islands and the western coast of the bay. The enemy’s onslaught had to be stopped at whatever cost. That is why very risky orders were often given. To be at sea in clear weather meant being a good target for the enemy’s fighter planes. Often we even had to act under the fire of the enemy’s artillery and automatic rifles. The Russians gathered landing

Lembitu Varblane

173

crafts in great numbers into Maksalahti. From there landings were planned on the islands of Teikari, Tuppura, Melansaari, and Suonisaari. The enemy outnumbered us completely and their firepower exceeded ours several times. We undertook diversionary attacks with fast-boats in pairs, shot at the enemy’s landing craft and created protective smoke-screens. Protected by this artificial fog, we could take our wounded to Viloniemi under the enemy’s fire. Later it turned out that we had brought an Estonian, Nikolai Arbus, badly wounded in the head from Teikari back to Viloniemi. I remember that because I helped to carry him. I learnt only later that Estonian seamen were also fighting on Teikari. Several of them were killed or wounded. Soon the Russians’ attacks calmed down on all the Finnish fronts. The enemy felt that the victory would not come easily. There were peace negotiations going on. It was more profitable for the Red Army to concentrate all its powers in the direction of Germany. Small Finland became unimportant now! Russia wanted a bigger portion of Central Europe and Germany and that is why they started to withdraw troops from the Finnish front. The landings of the British and French troops on the French coast had been successful. Thus the last act in the world’s military theatre had begun. Despite the closeness of the war front, all farmers worked hard in Finland. The worker thought about food for his people. It was important to finish haymaking soon for harvesting time was already beginning. Old men and women could not work alone because all able men were at the front. So the soldiers were asked to help. I volunteered for farmwork on my days off. It was a refreshing change after those spiritually hard fighting days. On the farm where I went there were three people – an old grandfather, the housewife and her daughter. This was a wealthy farm, in good order. Our torpedo boats were anchored at an islet near Virolahti. At eight in the morning a rowboat came to take me to work, at six in the evening I was brought back. I worked hard and ate good farm food. I can remember my fellows’ jokes when sometimes the pretty girl from the farm came to take me over! The evening when I told [them] about my plans to go back to Estonia all four of us understood how close we had become. On my departure day the girl and her mother came to see me off from Kotka. I still remember the mother’s words: ‘You were like a son to us. My daughter loves you very much. Thank you for being a gentleman. May God protect you!’ Even in war there are human incidents and unforgettable moments! Back home. It was in the end of June or in the first days of August when a rumour spread that the Estonian volunteers could go back home. To think, that the Germans had forgiven the Finnish volunteers!? In

174

Born Under a Lucky Star

Finland, we knew very well what the situation was at the Estonian fronts. We were here and the enemy was invading our country! It hurt. To be once again amongst our relatives and friends – who would not want that? It is not right to stand by when battles are fought in the name of freedom at home. From now on everything went quickly. We could really go home. A notice about that arrived at the torpedo boats. On August 16 I said goodbye to my friends. I was awarded a Medal of Liberty and sent to the Helsinki naval base. I met there a friend of Commander Ovaskainen who tried to convince me that returning home was senseless. But I held my ground, I had to go! I walked around in Helsinki and met some friends. I heard that some JR 2003 soldiers going from Hanko to Estonia on board the [German steam-ship] ‘Wartheland’ on August 19 were not able to leave decently, making a laughing-stock of Finland when drunk. Mannerheim had taken the President’s obligations on himself. On September 2 a truce was made with the Russians and on the same day about thirty volunteer sailors had set out. I met a ship captain I knew who was going to Tallinn. He kindly promised to take me with him and also bring me back if necessary. I may be mistaken but it was a foggy morning on September 5 when we left Helsinki. By midday we were already in Tallinn, in the so-called mined harbour. The ship was to stay in Tallinn for five hours and to take on board some Finns who had been working in Estonia. I hurried to my relatives who lived in the quarter of Kopli on Niidi Street. Uncle Kask, an old ship mechanic, and his wife were surprised to see me. This man, experienced in the ways of the world, did not think that a Finnish volunteer should return home. He said straight away that the Germans were losing the war and that the Russians were coming and returning home meant senseless death. I also visited the Heisla family in Oksa Street, in the Tondi quarter, who had some time ago helped me to go to Finland. They were also surprised to see me there and thought that it was wrong. Tallinn left a very desolate impression. Ruins, devastated people, profiteers, and haughty German soldiers were everywhere. I thought it over and decided to return to the ship. But at the harbour there were German ‘chain dogs’4 standing in front of the ship. Everybody had to show their documents. I showed my papers of a Finnish marine. But one gendarme who knew Estonian understood from my name that I was an Estonian. So they said that the documents were faked. And so I was trapped. It did not take them long to find out that I had deserted from the German army and fled to Finland. I was taken to Pagari Street for interrogation. There were different people there. Some of them interrogated me and were arrogant; others wanted to know about the situation in Finland. I spoke about the truce and the political situation in Finland.

Lembitu Varblane

175

One friendly officer, an Estonian, said that I would be sent to the Paldiski camp of deserters and from there onwards to Germany. The situation was complicated. The officer advised that I try to approach the most senior officer and promised to prepare the meeting for me, advising me to regret my former behaviour and express a wish to fight for Germany. I thought very carefully about what I would say because I had some difficulties with the language. That grey-headed officer [the most senior officer] listened to me, grumbled a bit and then became exalted. At last, a young Estonian man understood that it was only Germany that could save Europe from the Bolsheviks! And I was saved this time. I was sent to Klooga where I walked around for a few days. I even went as far as the barbedwire fence of the German prison camp. And I saw miserable famished prisoners who offered their children from behind the fence… One afternoon I was taken together with three or four men to the Kehra training camp of the 20th SS Division. Nobody needed me there as a soldier, or so it seemed to me. I decided to go over to Admiral Pitka’s unit and succeeded in doing so. I hoped to get a good gun and to go to the front. But the fate of Estonia had been decided already. The front at Sinimäed and on Emajõgi River had collapsed. The Germans were going and the Estonians were needed to cover their retreat. Russian tank columns were moving towards Tallinn meeting almost no resistance. Nothing came of the plan of Admiral Pitka and the recently formed Estonian National Committee to pronounce Independence and make a truce. The Germans acted in such a way that no national government could be formed in the areas they were leaving. I was in Tallinn two days before the Russians invaded the town (September 20 and 21). The Pitka headquarters were in Narva Road opposite the present-day Pedagogical University. We were mostly used for keeping order in the town: we had to prevent the Germans from destroying factories and manufacturing plants. I went to the power station a couple of times. Armed men from the Tallinn Omakaitse (Home Guard)5 claimed that they could prevent the Germans from destroying the power station. In Tallinn great confusion prevailed. One could see drunken soldiers in the streets. The people were fleeing from the town. Everybody was seeking an opportunity to go to Sweden. On the morning of September 21, an order was issued to see if the Germans had left any artillery guns and ammunition in Iru power station. So we went towards Iru along the Narva Road. Suddenly we heard bullets whistling and shots. There was a skirmish on the road between the Germans and Finnish volunteers. The men who had taken courage from the battle started to take arms away from the Germans. There were other reasons for a fight. Nobody knew anything about the artillery guns. In

176

Born Under a Lucky Star

such a situation it was wiser to go back to Tallinn. In front of the Pitka Headquarters, however, machine-guns were rattling. A German unit was attacking the building. We sought shelter in the houses in the street that lead towards the harbour. We saw how in the yard of the Headquarters, men attempted to escape but were hit by the Germans’ bullets. Among those killed was Lieutenant Pärl from Lihula. Nice brothers-in-arms! Captain Laamann and Admiral Pitka had left earlier. It was told that the German attack was caused by taking down the swastika flag from the tower of Pikk Hermann and hoisting the Estonian national flag. Then a message arrived that we had to gather for confirmation classes in the Pühavaimu (Holy Spirit) Church. I did not manage it. On my way I met some schoolfellows of mine, Finnish volunteers K. Soodam, A. Valler, and E. Pärtel. We were discussing the situation, our life and fate, when an air alert was given. And soon the Russian bombers were there. We hid in a cellar in the town centre that had been rebuilt into a shelter. We were downcast and even took a drop from the bottle, then dozed off for a while because we were very tired. It was soon getting lighter. We crept out of the shelter. The smell of burning was everywhere and the town was almost deserted. We learnt that Russian tanks had been seen on Lasnamäe. We tried to get out of the town, moving along the side streets. A truck of refugees took us along. We went to the west, stopping cars on our way. We saw groups of Estonian soldiers who tried to organise resistance. But this was already senseless. To go against tanks with guns and grenades! My idea was to go home and from there, on to the coast. Perhaps there was a possibility to escape to Sweden. In Risti, on the Kasari Bridge and in Lihula, Estonian troops who gathered together retreating soldiers were in action. At the head of those groups were active young non-coms and even some younger officers. I asked if Admiral Pitka or Captain Laamann had been seen, but did get any trustworthy information. I came home during the early hours of September 23. I met my mother and we shed tears of joy but were also worried, sad and irresolute. Mother knew nothing about my father and brother. I was hungry, ate home baked bread and drank milk. I wanted nothing else. I will not describe the feelings this bread awoke in me. I was dead tired and fell into bed, to have at least some rest. I was very sorry to leave Mother alone behind. In the morning I took my bike and rode to the shore of Saastna and Mõisaküla. The shore was full of civilians and soldiers coming from the fronts. There were gentlemen, farmers with families, old people and children, and members of the coastguard regiment, the SS division, the police battalion, the Finnish volunteers and also the Pitka’s men. Everyone sought an opportunity to escape across the sea. But it was already too late.

Lembitu Varblane

177

The last seaworthy motorboats had left the day before. In some places soldiers were trying to repair old and rotten rowing boats. From the viewpoint of a coastal dweller, going to sea in those boats meant certain drowning. It was told that the Russians were in Tallinn and that tank columns were moving towards Pärnu and Haapsalu. People were irresolute and oppressed. Military horse-trains and families with their scanty possessions on horsecart tried to stay away from bigger roads. Nobody knew when the ‘victorious troops’ might arrive and run them over. The farms gave all their spare clothes to the soldiers. In some places the military uniforms were dyed and remade in a hurry. Questions were asked, predictions uttered, thoughts expressed. It was real chaos. There were arms, ammunition, foodstuff, cigarette packs and other items of military equipment everywhere. Having lost hope, the people left the seashore. I also returned home. The first squads of the Red Army were expected at any moment. I hid carefully all the arms, ammunition, and my military uniform. The machine-gun and the revolver went into the ditch, to be handy if needed. I harnessed the horses to the plough and went to the field. I decided that I would not let them take me alive. Maybe I would succed in fighting them off and then escape along the bottom of the ditch. Escape where and for how long? I was convinced that in the nearest future nothing would change. Events had taken a favourable course for Stalin and for years to come. The Allies were all victorious and exalted. The western radio stations broadcast the Russians’ victories; the German stations played marches and praised the heroism of the Germans in fighting the Bolsheviks and beating the English and the Americans. I felt the force of the following sad truth: Estonia was facing hard years of bolshevist dictatorship. That is why all my future life and fate seemed dismal. There were only two choices: to be killed while resisting or to suppress all hatred hoping that my future life would not be the hardest. My great-uncle who had suffered much in his youth (was taken prisoner in World War I, etc.) understood what I felt. ‘David got Goliath with his cunningness, do no do anything thoughtless! Stay calm and see what will happen,’ he advised me. In wartime everything happens fast, the situation may change in hours, even in minutes. And so it was now. The following day the vanguard of the Red Army was there in two trucks. Shooting into the air with machineguns from the back of the truck and shouting victoriously, they drove towards the seashore. I kept ploughing calmly: this was all done to frighten the people. Suddenly a fierce gun fight started. From behind the Liustemäe stone fences someone started shooting at the vanguard group. In about ten minutes the trucks were back. Curses in Russian were heard

178

Born Under a Lucky Star

and bullets were again whistling above me and the horses’ heads. The trucks stopped for a while in our village, at my great-uncle’s gates. ‘Show us all the Fascists here, or you will be shot!’ the Russians shouted. A good knowledge of their language helped great-uncle to calm the soldiers down and the village was left untouched. Blood was dripping from the truck. We did not know whether anyone was dead or wounded there. Rumours spread that an officer in German uniform and his wife had fired at the vanguard unit and been killed. In fact the shooting was by a young man from the village who had served in the German army. Wise farmers knew how to divert the Russians’ anger from their home village. It could be surmised that this incident would cause the combing of all the surrounding landscape by bigger forces. Fortunately that did not happen. The people were frightened of the robbers, thieves and rapists hiding from the Russian troops who were moving around. The solution came with the arrival of a unit of the Estonian corps into the village. The robberies ceased. The men from the corps soon understood that there were men hiding in barns, sheds and forests. They advised them to move unarmed towards their homes, for soon the NKVD troops would come, who would start looking around and combing the landscape. From now on life became calmer. The boys from the Estonian corps gathered hay for their horses, flirted with the girls and prepared for the Saaremaa battles. The new civilian power was by-and-by starting to organize life. For a while the Lihula parish went under the leadership of Jüri Kuusik who was appointed by General Pärn. That man had for a while also been the assistant of the parish elder during the German occupation and knew well both Russian and German. During that short period of his being the parish elder, Kuusik managed to supply many men with temporary documents. I also got a certificate in Russian with the parish stamp showing that I was a local. In the corner of the document was a quadrangle registering stamp. I had to show this document repeatedly to the NKVD units. I had decided to face my fate and was hoping for the best. No complaint, no judgement. In October I received a letter from the parish headquarters. I was summoned to the mobilisation committee. So there I went. They looked into my mouth and my eyes and measured me from all sides. I was attested liable for military service. We remained waiting for a march to the Risti railway station from Lihula and from there on to the training camp of the reserve units. Suddenly the inspector of the educational department of the region appeared who had been the head of my school in 1940 and knew about me. The inspector was looking for men with secondary education who would like to start working as teachers. Seeing me, he was greatly surprised. He wished me to hand in an application. Everything else

Lembitu Varblane

179

was left in his care. I wrote the application. I could not tell if it might be useful or not. Soon we were on our way towards Risti. It was exciting to watch those men. I saw men from the forest, men from the German and Finnish units. A man’s recent past was very apparent from how he spoke or moved his hands and feet. I thought to myself: what of being now in the Russian army if I have already been in the Finnish army, the German army and the Pitka unit. The more confused it is the merrier. I also watched with interest the Russian soldiers in the convoy. In the train, we squatted on the benches of the cattle cars telling obscene soldier jokes and waited for what our destiny had in store for us. Suddenly my name was called. It was called by a Russian who could not pronounce it properly. I kept silent. Finally someone said my name in clear Estonian. I responded. One officer, an Estonian by nationality, shouted at me, ordered me to stop playing cards and to come out. I was put into the back of an American Studebacker where there also were many Russian soldiers. We went to Haapsalu. There I received an extension from mobilization, and then I had to start work as a teacher. From among several offers I chose a school close to my home. I thought that in some other place there might be more interest in a stranger than at home where it was generally known that I avoided the German army. And only a few people knew obout the other facts of my life. On the first day I went to my lessons in the trousers of the Finnish navy. My first teacher’s suit was of dark blue home made cloth, sewn by a village tailor. To pay for his work, I threshed flax for two days on his farm. Here my war adventures end and my life in occupied Estonia starts. There was a general lack of teachers. That is why I had to teach several subjects. Soon I concentrated on natural science subjects such as chemistry, biology and geography. I did everything to teach those subjects close to nature and connected to a practical life. The biology cabinet of the Matsalu School was held to be one of the best in the region. I gave a talk to the teachers of biology in Haapsalu and Tallinn about how I had founded and furnished my cabinet. I also managed to continue my education, studying part-time. In autumn 1948 my brother Vambola returned from the prison camp. At the same time we received a sad notice about Father. His friends from the Siberian prison camp wrote that Jaan Varblane had died on November 1, 1947. So his life had lasted only 44 years. Somehow we managed to pay all the taxes and meet the high quotas put on our farm. Mother regained her mental balance. Both her sons were alive and well! We had to go on living and worry less. But it was difficult to predict the ways of the Stalinist dictatorship.

180

Born Under a Lucky Star

The story of deportation. It was midnight of March 25, 1949. There were only a few passengers in the Tallinn-Väike railway station. Five or six NKVD men were walking to-and-fro on the platform. On the street, full of deep holes because it was springtime, some trucks and cars were moving. It was the school spring vacation. The examination session of part time students at the institute came to the end. I was mentally tired and wanted to go home in order to rest for a while before starting teaching again and to put some things in order at home. Susla – that was how the narrowgauge train was called – rattled confidently towards Virtsu. I was dozing in the cold corner of the carriage. Passengers came in and went out. Dawn started to break. In one station two women came into the carriage who whispered about deportation. The older woman sighed and started to cry. In those years such stories were frequent. I did not hear who had been deported or when. When I stepped to the platform in Lihula, an excited girl from my home village ran to me. She said that trucks were moving around in the villages taking away whole families. The Ots family had also been taken and I had been sought for, questions had been asked about me. How terrible! This girl had specially come to tell this to me. She had heard that there were barred cattle wagons at Haapsalu and Risti where those unfortunate people were being taken. It was as if something hard, unbearably oppressive had settled on me. I sat on a bench in the waiting room and tried to sort out the situation. Angry and sad thoughts were alternating and I was not able to think about it all rationally. So, methods used in Russia to subdue ‘people’s enemies’ were now applied here, in Estonia! What else could have awaited our family! Father as an enemy of the Soviet order had been in prison camp, by the decision of a war tribunal, and had died there. One of the sons fought in the Finnish army and the Pitka unit, the other reached the Czech hell with the German army, was taken prisoner by the Russians and had been allowed to come home only a few months ago. So naturally such people had to be deported! And then me – unpunished this far! About my activities at the time of the German occupation, my official CV said the following: 1941–1943 student of secondary school, from summer 1943 till autumn 1944 hid from German mobilisation in my home region, in Tallinn, Pirita and other places. It was a wonder that the KGB had taken no interest in me during those four years, not even demanded explanations. Several people like me were already imprisoned, several were dead, some lucky ones even free from war imprisonment. But now punishments for the enemies of the Soviet order were being made more severe and I had only to wait until

Lembitu Varblane

181

being sent to a prison camp for 15–25 years. I reached a difficult conclusion: to go and report on myself. I had only one wish: to be allowed to go together with my mother and brother. It was better to be deported than to die slowly in some prison camp. There was no hope whatever that the situation would change. Estonia had been left in Russia’s hands in the process of dividing Europe between the great powers. So, I set out towards the town centre. Along the main street military trucks were moving, women, children and older men sitting on the platforms with their bags and bundles. And also soldiers with guns, all going towards Tallinn. Then I reached the headquarters of the deporters. A group of trucks was standing in front of the building, apparently waiting for their next orders. In the ante-room it was generally calm, from the room farther off talk in Russian sounded and shouts. At the door, an NKVD man with sergeant’s epaulettes met me and asked what I wanted. I told him my name and that I had been looked for. I said that here I was and that I wanted to go together with my family. I only asked time to go home and take clothes and everything else I might need. The sergeant told me to sit on the bench and to wait. I waited nearly half an hour with no answer. Soldiers of various ranks went in and came out of the door. I also saw a participant in the campaign in civilian clothes. Finally an officer came out of a back door and asked why I waited. I told him about my wishes. The man looked at me attentively, then foolishly and told me to get lost. He said it was not a place to play the fool. He put my name down in his notebook. I walked towards home along the winter road, splashing in the water. Spring was to be felt everywhere. At that time Matsalu woods were a genuine wooded meadow – one of the most beautiful man-made habitats in Estonia. The willow catkins were white, alder catkins and aspen buds heralded spring. I had been along this path hundreds of times: on foot, skiing, by horsecart but never in such a mood. The forest ended. On the coastal expanse, a bit farther from the village, the tiled roofs of the Otsa farmhouse and cow stable were gleaming. And then home. Cows, sheep, and horses all loose in the farmyard, pigs squealing and grunting in the barn, hens walking around freely. I kept walking around and calling all the animals by their names. A cow was pressing against my side, licking my hand, her teats dripping milk, waiting for the housewife to milk it. I caressed its head. There was a dismal mess in the rooms. Blankets, pillows and better clothes had been taken along; what was worse quality lay in a heap on the floor. It seemed that food had also been taken along in boxes, bags, and buckets. Distress, distress and anger. Better not to look at it all any more!

182

Born Under a Lucky Star

I went towards the schoolhouse, the distance being less than one and a half kilometres. Never in my life have I felt such despair in my soul, in my whole body. I repeated and repeated: take yourself in hand, man, take yourself in hand! All the teachers were apathetic and in shock. The director, an Estonian who had come from Russia, was smoking nervously. He had seen seen all this in Russia; his own sister’s family had been deported. We all appreciated him. He was a just and clever man – taught us to keep our mouths shut and defended his staff. It is a pity he liked alcochol too much. Some pupils living near the schoolhouse had noticed me coming and came to say hallo as a sign of sympathy. One of them had a package of food – his mother had sent it so that I could take it along when they came after me. I managed to stay calm somehow and told everybody how I had visited the NKVD headquarters. The others had nothing to say about it, the director shook his head and said it was a rash act. And then a surprise came. In the presence of two teachers, the director gave me a medal with Stalin’s relief ‘For Good Work during the Great Patriotic War’. He said he had wanted to do it in a ceremony but things had gone otherwise. Me … and such a medal!? We exchanged meaningful looks. It was wholly natural. It was written, [the director said,] in the anketa6 that you went into hiding from the German mobilisation and you have worked well even during the war in 1944/45 despite your youth. The proposal was accepted! I was amazed. I thought he had heard something about my life. Why did he do this? However, it became useful to me. I started to put my things calmly together for it was very probable they would come after me. I thought it all over carefully. I thought dictionaries and reference books would be of use. In the end the load was rather heavy; I could lift it on my back only with difficulty. Everything went as I had thought. About ten o’clock a military truck stopped at the schoolhouse. Soon armed NKVD-men were standing in my doorway. They asked who the three people in my room were – perhaps some relatives. The director and two teachers introduced themselves. Then a decision about my deportation was read in Russian. A man, who had a strong accent, translated this into Estonian. I was given an hour to pack my things. Then they started rummaging in my bookshelves, in the drawers of my desk; my mattress was lifted and they asked if I had any arms with me. Then they found two cartridges for a Russian automatic rifle in my drawer. Where did I get those, why had I not given them to the militia? Fortunately they did not find my wartime diary. My packages were all opened and it was checked what was inside them. Why take books, the officer wondered. One soldier found the medal I had got only

Lembitu Varblane

183

recently. A medal owner and in the list of those being deported?! They made a phone call from the school office to the headquarters. Asked what they should do. It seems they were told – bring him along. Soon my room was all searched and there was still time. I said goodbye to the inmates of the aquariums and terrariums of my cabinet – a work of four years. There were fish, tortoise, white mice, a blindworm and others, which had lived their lives in the care of children and were surprised to be disturbed at night. My armed guards were full of wonder. The officer leading the operation talked to the head of the school and shook his head sadly. It seems something touched his soul. I lifted my bundles up onto the truck, said goodbye to the others and off we went. We stopped in front of the village Soviet and the officer made a telephone call. On the way, some more people with their bags and bundles were taken along. They had probably been brought from far off places in the woods and brought to the road on horsecarts; they had apparently been caught later than the others. No one spoke; all were cowering by themselves, oppressed, desperate and downcast. What were those men with guns, those nondescript gray shapes thinking?! On the bridge over the Tuudi River another truck ran straight into us. The road was closed. The trucks stuck to each other like angry bulls. The people were massaging their aching limbs, some were crying. Finally the trucks were separated and could move on. When we arrived at Lihula, the sky was becoming lighter in the east. I was taken to a locked room with all my bundles. Soon a farmer was also brought in. His wife and children were already in the cattle truck. The man had been working on the peatfields and had been brought here from there. The man asked to be taken to his family. His wish was fulfilled, he did not come back. I also repeated my wish. Time went on. I tried to sleep but could not. From the cell window I could see light. I was reading Friedebert Tuglas’ prose-poem ‘Sea’. I knew it by heart from school and from teaching it to children. My rushing thoughts were political. I had read Le Bon, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Spengler, Carnegie; I could cite passages from Coudenhove-Kalergi’s ‘The Totalitarian State against Man’ by heart. All this made me think that dictatorships were not overturned; they died off slowly. There was no reason whatever to expect that the Western countries would soon destroy Russia. Europe was tremblig before Stalinism. This was the sad truth: Estonia was face-to-face with long oppressive years of bolshevist dictatorship. Thinking of it all, my life and fate seemed bleak, not to speak of the fate of the Estonian people. At the same time I saw my ravished home. Can my brother support mother when she loses her mental balance? … I remembered my pupils, colleagues, home village and people there,

184

Born Under a Lucky Star

childhood, worries and good memories. A girl in whose room we spent time cosily and platonically before my leaving by train. How could I forget to let her know about my fate! And then somebody turned the key in the lock. Two officers came in. My bundles were again searched, all the books thumbed through. A taxonomic guide for identification of plants was confiscated. Then I was taken to an interrogation. This and that was asked, all from my past. I saw that they had some starting points but they were not quite right. I was blamed for my father’s enmity towards the Soviet order and that he brought up his sons in the same line. Like father, the sons have now to take responsibility for their actions. I repeated my wish to go with my family. My actions were to be judged in a tribunal! And back to the cell. I put my unpacked things in order, did some exercises to get warm in the dank room and waited what would happen next. Another interrogation followed. I was told that they knew about my service on a Finnish submarine. They demanded the name of the boat and data about the actions of war. I answered cockily and indifferently that if they had such good informers who gave them such foolish information, they might be wiser themselves. For an ignorant and untrained boy like me could be used in a submarine only as a cork fender between the quay and the boat, not as a member of the team. This sent the interrogator roaring with rage. He leapt up and nudged my head and neck with the barrel of his revolver. The informer had not been at all wrong. A boat is a boat! So they played their games with me till the afternoon of March 26. I only repeated the facts of my life that were written in my anketa and biography. They were especially interested in whose place I was hiding when I was in Pirita. I knew that the man had fled to the West and thus I could tell them all kinds of stories about my life in his family. In fact I was in Pirita for one and a half weeks while I waited for an opportunity to go to Finland. Answering the questions I used delaying tactics. I told them a lot about people who were already in prison camps or who had fled from Estonia; this made it possible not to speak about those who were still free. I repeatedly asked for something to drink, my throat was dry and my voice hoarse. ‘You should recall how people like you tortured Soviet people with hunger and thirst during the war!’ That was my answer! During my last interrogation the tone was softer and the talk friendlier. I was even given water in a mess-tin. Strange, my throat was convulsing, I could only swallow with difficulty. They asked what subjects I had taught at school. They were especially interested in what I had been teaching at the Russian department of the school. They said they had heard that I worked well at school, that I had made no ideological mistakes. They had got information from somewhere that was useful for me. Finally they said

Lembitu Varblane

185

that my deportation had no good reason. So they thought I could go and continue teaching, although this was a question for the civilian powers to decide. They said that my mother and brother would do well in their new place of living and said that sometime I might visit them. I had to sign a document that all my papers had been given back to me and that I had no hostility towards my interrogators. They had not taken from me anything more than my passport and a book. I did not get them back. They promised to send them to my address. They said that the officer who had my things was away. To hell with them! I was so fed up with it all. I had eaten last in the evening of March 24 in Tallinn. In the meantime I simply could not eat. Now I was suddenly hungry and my stomach was aching from the cold water. I took my bags and bundles and carried them to the building of the schoolhouse. Then I took a look around to find someone who would go to Matsalu. Luckily my great-uncle was transporting cream at the time in Lihula. Our joy at meeting each other was great. I heard that my passport had been dropped on the floor by the deporters at the village Soviet. So… no worry about that. We sat beside the cream containers on the horsecart, took my bundles from the schoolhouse and went along the bumpy spring road towards home. Great-uncle had food from home with him and a bottle of vodka too. All this went in a moment. I was sad and angry. My future was indefinite but I had still to hope. If you want to live you have got to get over everything!… Notes 1

2

3

4 5

6

The original life story was written in 1999 in response to the life writing campaign ‘A Hundred Life Stories of the Century’, and stored in the Estonian Cultural History Archives, fund 350. The story is translated by Kersti Unt. ‘Comrades’ and ‘friends’ – an ironic reference to the Soviet military men and the respective soviet phraseology applied to inter-ethnic relations throughout the Soviet period. JR 200 – Volunteer Estonian Infantry Regiment 200, Estonian volunteer regiment in the Finnish army. See February 8 1944 entry in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. ‘Chain dog’ – the German military police patrolling the streets. Omakaitse (Self Defence) – Home Guard, see note 16 in Aigi RahiTamm’s interpretation of Loog’s story. Anketa – an official autobiographical document (CV); a form that had to be filled out prior to employment or application to institution of higher education. The crucial feature of anketa was one’s political biography which in Varblane’s case was his activity during the German occupation.

My Youth in the Turn of History1 Boris Takk, born 1925 One hot summer day in June 1940 a procession went by with red banners and slogans: ‘We demand work, food, and freedom for the working people!’ First came an orchestra playing loud brass music and after them about 100–150 men and women in the column.2 As much as I learnt from the talk and attitude of older people, they were all annoyed. And then very strange times came. Goods disappeared from the shops, especially women’s clothes, including better quality nightdresses. Later we heard that on festive occasions, at banquets, some officers’ wives had appeared in nightdresses... But soon it became worse. At first some but then more and more people were arrested (most of them disappearing forever). Several of the local Russians who were married to Germans managed to escape to Germany. Those who stayed were soon ‘cleansed’. In the evenings they started showing films in the square where now the Viljandi choir stand is. At first some of the films were rather interesting but as basically films about the revolution were shown, they soon became boring. There were also many political gatherings. Every time when people applauded, the military orchestra started playing the ‘Internationale’. And all this started to seem like a big circus even to us, young boys. The older people became somewhat quiet and did not talk much. And with time, we, boys, also started to understand something. The school began as usual, on September 1. But here a surprise awaited us. There was no morning prayer any more. For the first time there was a brass band in the school hall that played marches. Oh, that was nice! The head of the school was also new; luckily he was a nice man and stayed at the head of the school until about 1950 when some resistance group was discovered in the school and the director was made to leave. We also had a new subject – Russian. Divinity lessons were also gone. The former Lieutenants in Estonian military uniforms gave the military training lessons, only there were new quadrangles on their collars and the epaulettes were gone. Otherwise everything was as usual at school. Soon, when school was over, a new unexpected thing happened. One evening all the [drivers and their] vehicles were told to gather in the yard of the present consumers’ cooperative. The families of the drivers were worried and came to see them off. Father told me to be a good boy and gave me a shaving razor and a brush. Then he said quietly that he would not let himself to be taken to Russia, he would rather drive the car into a ditch and take flight. In the morning we learnt that there had been a great deportation during the night.3 Without any judgement people had been taken from their homes. Children, old people, adults. Many schoolmates

188

My Youth in the Turn of History

and girls from the neighbouring school were also gone. There was a train at the station where the deported were sitting, carefully guarded. No-one was allowed to approach the train. I could not take myself to look at it all but many friends did. They said it was a terrible sight. I remember three boys from our class who were among the deported. My father was very much depressed later that he had had to drive the NKVD men. When the war started everything went strange quickly. First there was the formation of the Destruction Battalions. Several boys from our class who supported communists were among them. But soon the movement of the forest brethren started and in some places the life of the communists was rather ‘hot’ around the community centres. One morning three or four townspeople were driven out with spades and picks to dig anti-tank trenches. So we wondered: they were daily blaring about the victories of the Red Army but now suddenly the front was approaching Viljandi! And one day shrapnel were exploding above the town. Then, at night, at about 03.00 there were ten louder explosions from heavier cannon. And then silence… At about 05.00 we went out to look at the town. The bank was on fire. The theatre had been burnt a day earlier. In the direction of the railway station we saw one more fire. Then we saw people breaking the signboards of the Soviet institutions. The German troops were at first met with great enthusiasm. The horrors of the red regime were over now. Many men, especially those whose family members had been killed or deported, went into the German army of their free will. They wanted to take revenge on the communists. The common dream was to restore the Republic of Estonia. The blueblack-and white flag was again honoured. Everything seemed to go well. Bloody battles for Tallinn and the islands were far from Viljandi. The German soldiers were all nice men. We, boys, liked their behaviour and their discipline. There was no wandering along the streets or delaying with greetings. Everything was so correct but at the same time free and effortless. The first blow hit us in August, I think, when I saw with other boys how two men from Home Guard units went with guns into a small green house on the corner of Väike Street and soon came out with Mrs Kramer (a local Jew whose husband was a businessman and had fled to Russia). Mrs Kramer was taken away. I have never seen her again. Other boys knew that all Jews were shot! That broke something in me. Mrs Kramer was a good acquaintance of my mother’s and I knew her well. She was such a kind woman! And now ... from our yard a man who was taken away, and disappeared forever. He had joined the Communist Party, although probably to ‘fulfil the plan’…

Boris Takk

189

In Viljandi, and its environs, there were several concentration camps, three, if I remember correctly. When autumn came and the weather became cold I felt sorry for all those prisoners. Their living conditions were terrible. We went for a few times to peep at the camp by Riia Street. The hungry prisoners in shabby summer uniforms looked really miserable. This is a right moment to think of those poor boys who were torn from some far-off Russian village, torn from their lives and traditions, no matter how poor or shabby it was. They were taken and brought into that chaos. They were not communists but simple boys brought to that massacre by the ‘powerful’ of this world. At school everything was like it had always been. We were naturally now taught German but teaching Russian went on also. National defence was in the curriculum only for the first year. I had by that time got five years of military training. It was in that summer that I came to like the German Arbeitsdienst as a school of teaching the young how to work and to discipline them. It was also publicly known that nobody would succeed in avoiding it. A minister’s son was working with a spade in the company of a shoemaker’s son. The spade was taken care of as if it was a gun and all exercises meant for training to use a gun were made with spades. Thus Hitler managed to train the nation into one and those who went to serve in the army had got their first training. From January 1, 1942 stamps to buy food were distributed. The norms were generally rather small but you could for example buy 230 grams of butter a week. In cooperatives where salt was sold, it was dyed red, so that people could not salt meat with it. All meat had to be sold to the state. But if you had connections you could get salt from a lower layer [of the container] where it was clean. As studying in some technical school and practicing in workshops, the danger of being mobilized was smaller, I decided to go to the Tartu Technical School after graduating from the 8th year at school, in autumn 1942. It was naturally very difficult to get food in Tartu and it was only rarely that I got additional food from home. So I learnt to ration my food and stick to that ration. It certainly demanded firmness of character but one learns from hardship. Such an experience served me well in my future life. From the Tartu days I recall some fierce fights between the Estonian volunteers and the Germans. One time the ‘chain dogs’4 even shot a couple of Estonians and a Finn during a fight. Analyzing that conflict I reached a conclusion that Hitler used Estonian men in his army but wanted to hear nothing of an Estonian army and thus also about the Republic of Estonia. So that was another occupation! There had also been several misunderstandings at the front. Estonian volunteers were very angry at the

190

My Youth in the Turn of History

Red Army and all that and they found it unbearable that the German units sometimes left their positions too easily… During the Tartu period all cinema-going records were beaten. The choice of entertainment and musical films was really wide. For young romantic boys like us they were really welcome with their interesting events, beautiful music, dance and certainly happy love. It is very probable that those films, [indeed] the entire German film production kept our spirits up because the war had in reality taken a bad turn. People needed to forget about the war for a moment. For my future life one fact was especially decisive. Several men I knew who some time ago had volunteered to join the German army now started to think of deserting. This was probably because they were disappointed in their hope of restoring the Republic of Estonia. And certainly they had understood that Germany would not win that war: our men (I mean those who were on the German side) had to kill men who were driven to the front from the other side, men of whom I have written already. And it was clear that on our side the strength would fade sooner. The other side got help from America, just as much as to enable them to crush our side. One could kill those red soldiers out of a hatred of Bolshevism but not their ideologists, their leaders. Those, however, were outside our reach. They were sending those simple boys with encouraging speeches to be massacred, [for the leaders] to come then and take the victory over their dead bodies. It seems I was taught very thoroughly and as I took the teaching seriously, I survived in the end. The main thought was: men, try to survive in this Hitler-Stalin scramble, Estonia may need you later. But the mobilization came unexpectedly despite all that, just like a bolt from the blue. The information was a secret to keep men from escaping. Mobilization was announced on November 2, 1943. We had a farewell party with some girls we knew at the sports hall of Lutsu Street. In the morning of November 3 we were already in front of the medical commission. I was sure I would not be taken. I had great papers. But to my surprise the papers were all taken away and after passing the medical commission, food was distributed and a pass written! We had to be back that night. I took the bread I had got back home to mother who had not had such good bread for a long time, went to visit all our relatives and then it was evening. At the schoolhouse we were counted; there might have been about 100–150 boys, we were lined up and sent to the railway station, singing. We were led by men in black uniforms, with pistols at their waistbelts. At the station we said goodbye, got flowers, tears were shed ... If we had known then how many boys saw Viljandi for the last time!

Boris Takk

191

We were taken to the Kopli freight station and were accommodated in freight cars. In both ends of the car were bunks and an iron stove in the middle. The bunks were covered with straw. I do not remember how many cars there were but what I saw was a guard for every two wagons on both sides of the train. We saw them every time the train stopped. In Latvia and Lithuania we did not see the guards so frequently and when we reached East Prussia they were gone. In Germany, everything was clean and even the sun was shining! Like there was not a war at all. But in Poland the picture was different. We saw instantly that people there were poor and depressed. The Poles all had a yellow cloth badge on their chests with a letter ‘P’ (meaning Polen). We felt very badly about it. We felt guilty in front of those people. We arrived at our destination, the Kachanovka station (near Dębica) in the afternoon of November 17. We got off the train, lined up and were put straight behind a barbed-wire fence behind the station building. Enormous gates were guarded by armed SS-men. They explained that this had been a training camp for Polish cavalry but was later built into an SS training camp, the so-called Heidelager. I remember that I was in barrack number 36; on the front there was a decoration from the times of the Estonian Legion5 and a name ‘Kindergarten’. There were 120 men for every 3 barracks (one company). The very first morning we got a surprise – a visitor, a Viljandi man named Paul, who was a volunteer, had just come from a school of noncommissioned officers. We got lots of useful instructions about the life in the camp. We also learnt about the danger of the Poles. Yes, we had all seen how they had treated the Poles in their own home. It was clear that their character resented such behaviour strongly. There were cases when an SS-man standing on his post had simply been killed with a knife. The training started while we were still in civilian clothes. Then we all got a real taste of it. I have often thought that our young daring men would need training and discipline like that. How many young men behave like the world was all theirs, who have adopted that soviet lifestyle, whiling time away, doing nothing except all kinds of foolish things, hands in pockets, cigarettes in mouth. A few months of discipline and training and we would get a real man! One day when some boys did not have a complete uniform even, the whole unit (the 33rd training and reserve SS-grenadier battalion) was taken to the training ground and lined up, forming a quadrangle. It is hard to say how many men there were. In the middle of the quadrangle Sturmbannführer (Major) Alemann, the Commanding Officer of the unit, an interpreter, and all officers gathered. Alemann delivered an address. At first he greeted us as volunteers. Yes! SS was a voluntary military organization

192

My Youth in the Turn of History

and accordingly the Waffen-SS where we belonged was voluntary too. So we were greeted as an Estonian unit that had voluntarily joined in the common fight of all Estonian peoples against the red Russia, our common enemy. When he then said, speaking about history that the friendship between Germany and Estonia had started a long time ago, someone shouted: ‘Yeah, at Võnnu!’6 After a medical check-up, part of us, 500 guys were taken into a special unit. At first we also expected to be taken but the unit was complete before they reached us. Lucky again? Later I heard from a schoolmate of mine that all those 500 who were taken into that special unit were a supplement for the Narva battalion7 of the ‘Wiking’ division. That battalion was very famous, was fighting at the time in the Ukraine and was a great ‘headache’ for the reds. The supplementary soldiers were told that they would get uniforms somewhere in the Ukraine. But upon arriving they had already suffered an unexpected attack and later, due to a too short training period, the losses were big. On one occasion, they had had to swim a river in December to save themselves and when they were gathered later, in my schoolmate’s group there were only 23 guys who had survived. In any case, at the parades in Tallinn on March 20 [1944], 173 men were marching out of the [original] 500! This was a hard blow for men born in 1925. For the rest of us, training continued. The food was more than modest. Quite often we saw a nice white worm on the table when cheese was given. We were forbidden to drink the water from the tap; the Germans seemed to be afraid that the Polish workers might poison the water; there was, however, very little mineral water. On December 23 Christmas was celebrated in our company. We sang Christmas songs and felt good. Next day I felt ill. I thought I would shirk from the drill for some time and went to the ambulance – it turned out I had diphtheria! I felt so dizzy that I hardly understood anything. My temperature was 41ºC. And at the hospital I also caught jaundice. The doctors and nurses and also the medicines were good. I got so used to injections that since that time I think I am able to inject myself. We could not hear the Estonian radio there. One evening, however, the Königsberg radio broadcasted an Estonian piece. After some talk there was music. Before that there were rumours that the Russians had somewhere in Lithuania cut away the passage along the roads and that maybe we could not go home any more (luckily those rumours were farfetched.) There were more than 20 Estonian boys at the hospital. We all sat on our beds and listened to the broadcast, deeply moved. When we heard the song ‘Cruel fate me brought away from home...’ I must confess that my eyes were in tears. Other boys also looked down. I remembered

Boris Takk

193

the woods around my home farm Rebase... Even now when I hear that song I feel deeply moved. From the hospital I went to a new unit, my own having been sent to Belorussia, to fight partisans.8 Those who came from the hospital were all included in the remaining units. After a shooting test where I got a very good result, I was included in a machine-gun squad. There were about twenty men there. This was also lucky for me for the technical part of the training with MG-34s and MG-42s took place indoors while the others were drilled outside, in the woods. We were not completely spared, but for us it was easier. Now young German boys also drilled with us. They had arrived at the camp in the meantime and I think they stayed there instead of the Estonian units, for in the middle of February it was announced that we would be taken away. Before the 20th of February, we were ready to leave and were marched off to the railway station. The train consisted of 88 carriages and of many platforms for vehicles and other equipment. Looking at the men at the station I felt strangely pleased: we were brought here in civilian clothes, most of the boys had never stood in line, walked like farmer boys, hats pulled down over the eyes; now, after some months of drill they had totally changed. Those were soldiers, this was an army! Commands, quick movements, soldier’s bearing ... Just like they said at the camp: tsak-tsak! On February 24 we were greeted by Estonia. The journey had lasted for 5 days and nights. We were in Tallinn by the evening. Arriving the next day at Klooga, the train was pushed through the camp of the Jews which was a byway.9 This was a very dismal sight. We were accommodated in a two storied stone barrack. In a few days a team was formed of five men, lead by a German called Werner. As the secretary of the company was Juhan, a guy from Viljandi and also my classmate, he took three guys from Viljandi into his team. We were to go to Berlin to bring document forms for 10,000 mobilized men (it seemed a new mobilization was to be expected). Arriving in Tallinn, we made a phone call to Viljandi to tell everybody we were coming through Viljandi (although in fact we should have gone through Tartu). It seemed that the news travelled quickly and all connections were working: there were so many parents, relatives and acquaintances at the station to meet us. When we had already left Tallinn, we met Valdur at the Liiva station who was seeing off his mother. We were very glad – yes, we even shed tears! Had we only known at that time that it was the last time we saw Valdur. The train stopped in Viljandi for 10 minutes. At Ruhja we changed trains, went from a narrow-gauged train to a broad-gauged train and after all kinds of adventures, going through Riga, Taurage, we reached Berlin. In Berlin we saw to our great surprise that all houses during our journey

194

My Youth in the Turn of History

till the first intact station were in ruins. The houses were mainly burnt, only walls were standing. We had to see Berlin on our own and we could do it only in the town centre during one day. Settling business things went quickly: first under a gangway, then to the military posts. Formalities over, we got ten heavy packages from one yard. In the evening we got on the Berlin-Dresden train. Werner warned us that if anyone should ask we were to say that we took that train by accident. He explained he had a girlfriend near Dresden whom he had not seen for a long time. In the Dresden railway station we went to the military quarters and occupied some benches; Werner went his way. When at noon we opened our food packages, our ‘Affe’s (as they were called) and started to eat, drinking good beer that was sold at the station from jugs, we became objects of general interest. During the stay of three days we saw the town. It was intact; a well preserved and beautiful town. Why was it so heavily bombed by the English the next year? Finally we also got ‘caught’. They were checking the station. We said that we were waiting for our superior and that our papers were all with him. When Werner came we jumped quickly on the train and waved goodbye to his bride. She was a very beautiful girl! We planned to return through Viljandi, to spend a few days at home. But in Riga it was announced over the loudspeaker that all passengers travelling to Tallinn had to take the direction of Valga. So there was nothing to be done. In Valga, however, all was quiet. So we went quickly to Viljandi. We could spend two days at home. Arriving at Klooga again, we had no time to rest for in the evening ‘Christmas trees’ were seen from the direction of Tallinn. A bombing raid had started. This was March 9, 1944.10 We watched that terrible sight for half the night. In the morning at 05.00 we were all woken up and taken in trucks to clear up the greatest of messes. The picture we saw was frustrating. I shall not tell about it all for there have been many descriptions in the press. And what was there to be cleared up? Houses were on fire and finally it became so hot that we had to leave. I remember very vividly one detail. Near the present cinema Sõprus [Friendship] a man was standing, leaning against the wall. A few hours later I saw him again – still standing there. Everything was on fire around him, it was very hot. I spoke to him. He looked as if he had woken up suddenly. ‘I went to work in the morning and left my family at home, there (and he pointed towards Harju Street). Where are they? I know nothing about them.’ The man retreated a few steps, leaned again against the wall and was still standing there when we left... All my experiences in life have taught me that one ‘saviour’ does not differ from another. All those regimes founded on their ‘wonderful ideologies’ were absolutely anti-human. Now, being eighteen, I understood

Boris Takk

195

this fully. In fact, my decision was made even earlier – to act so that as many as possible of the members of our small nation would survive the war, as my experienced friends had taught, in that Hitler-Stalin massacre. The more people who survived was the better for our country, because our common aim was [to save] the Republic of Estonia. In discussions between the soldiers it was often asked why those ideologists should drive people against one another, why do they not fight if they want to! Give both a knife and let us see who wins. The soldiers tried to guess who would then be the winner. Some thought, it would be Hitler as he was a younger man. But the majority were convinced it would be Stalin – an old experienced and brutal robber from the mountains. On March 17 the officers from the front came to take us away. At first those who had never done it had to give an oath to Hitler. I had not been that ‘lucky’ before but this time I was packing my things and could not do it either. Then I was again sent to the Wache car. We, the four Viljandi boys had agreed before that we would go home before going to the front and catch up the others in five days. In Viljandi I met Helju, a girl I knew from childhood who worked as an interpreter at the Commander’s Headquarters (Ortskommandatur). She eyed me with suspicion. Next day she came to visit me suddenly and said resolutely: ‘Boris! This is serious. I know that you are not here on vacation. I do not want to see you dead. Now you do what I tell you!’ In short, next day she took me to the town’s commandant. I told my story carefully, motivating my being in Viljandi with a claim that I was not yet well from jaundice and had come home to cure myself. I was then sent to the ambulance. They made analyses and what a wonder, I really had got jaundice. Then I was immediately sent to the hospital. I started taking medicine at once, especially coal tablets. Next day my friends came to take me along. But I could not go with them for my documents had been taken away and my treatment was not finished. And I knew that when we caught up with our squad, they would not be very kind to us but that I would get good and ‘serious’ papers from Viljandi. So the guys went and I stayed. Let it also be said that when they arrived nobody reprimanded them but they were told that the machinegun men had all been killed by snipers by Monday night. This was a question of too short a training and lack of experience. Was I lucky again? When I got out of the hospital, I was sent to the Valga distribution centre. But before that I spent 10 days at home. Then I faked the date on my papers and went to Valga. Now I felt myself really well. From Valga I was sent to Klooga and from there, the whole group was sent to Paldiski, into the Genesung [convalescence] company. Here I met several old friends and school-mates who had been brought there from various hospitals and became friends with a lad from

196

My Youth in the Turn of History

Viljandi, Heinrich, who had been in the war for several years. We fitted together well and were later together in several places. One day we were lined up and 100 men were chosen to whom arms were given and who then were taken on a train. Off we went to Lithuania. There a mobilization of horses was to take place and we had the order to bring them from there. In Lithuania part of our group was accommodated in the Vidukle village in a Jewish synagogue. We slept there on straw for a few days. Then we were sent away in small groups. I was made the leader of one group. A man with a horse and a cart came and off we went. We did not use the horse and the cart to get transported, the man was more of a guide. We spent the night at a farmer of German origin and had a drinking party. In the morning the appropriation of horses started. Naturally the Lithuanias did not like it. Our boss, a Wehrmacht Major with a couple of other officers, the village chief and other village leaders were sitting in the room of the village chief and drinking. I was also asked to join them. They were drinking raw spirits and eating a lot, so it suited me well. When evening came, however, and everybody was quite drunk, the assistant of the village chief took me aside, behind an outhouse and asked if I wanted to perhaps join the partisans with my men and the horses? This made me quite sober suddenly! I had to be careful here for this might have been a provocation. Anyway, I pretended to be dead drunk and not to understand what he was saying. As the leader of our group I was allowed to sleep in the house. Thus I had time to think it all over. We were in the middle of big forests, the distance to the railway station was great and we had to move along forest paths, so we had to be ready for anything. If the assistant of the village chief made this proposal seriously, it was possible that the Lithuanians would try to attack us. But I did not want to frighten my men in vain, so in the morning I said only that they had to load their rifles and be ready. I also told them to keep close to one another, so that we could communicate by shouting. Thus we set off in the morning. Imagine: 30 horses and 9 men. Pieces of rope for harness, in a noose around the horse’s neck! You sit on a horse but then, do what you will, they start eating grass, refusing to go on. We had 30 km to go. But we did it, although one guy got finally so angry that he broke his gun-butt while striking a horse with it. Later, when on a train, everything was fine again. At both ends of a car the horses stood; a strong bar separating them from us in the centre where we were sleeping on hay bales. Our food was good. At every bigger station there was a so-called Ver[p]fle[g]ungstelle, a place to feed passing soldiers. The soup they gave there was very good and free of charge; indeed such service became habitual. I shared the car with my neighbour, a boy called Raimond. One night I told him about how they had asked us

Boris Takk

197

to join the partisans. He got very angry! ‘Damn you, we could have been out of this war!’ But I stuck to my opinion. Friend, not out of the war but waging war on the side of the communists! Thank you, no! At Paldiski, I met Olev, a schoolmate from Tartu who had been badly wounded but had survived. Then potential drivers and motorcyclists were chosen from the Genesung-company and sent to school. I became a driver, Heinrich a motorcyclist. At first I was sent to Klooga where there were the freshly mobilized men in the barracks. We, the old-timers, got one wooden barrack and we spent a few days, 40 men in two big rooms. The food in the camp was not very good, some soup in a mess-tin from the kitchen and a bit of something else. But we were still hungry. Once the guys brought the soup, as usual, it was a soup with groats and potatoes. Suddenly one of the guys shouted: ‘Hey, there are worms in the soup!’ Some of them ran outside and threw up. But I was so hungry! I thought that if I threw the soup away as the majority of the boys did, I would be still hungry. Some guys still ate the soup. And I followed their example! The stomach was full and as you see – I still live. In a few days the drivers were sent to the Kehra driving school. There, the examination of the former course was going on. I was placed in the examination car, an Opel-Blitz, to be an interpreter. The examination was taken by the head of the school Untersturmführer (SS Lieutenant) Januska. He was a young and very nice man, an exemplary officer, a Hungarian by nationality, a former engineer of the Opel car plant. He stood on the step and kept knocking on the bonnet with his whip, making young drivers nervous. Sometimes the examinee got his share too. After the examination, the driving school was moved to Alavere, 14 kilometres from Kehra. I was at once given to the disposal of the Oberscharführer (a senior non-commissioned officer) Bade. He had a Volkswagen, an amphibious version. Before that they asked, can you drive? Although my skills were at first not so good, I answered, yes, I can. Now I had a post. At first they shouted at me a lot but Bade taught me and I tried with all my might, so soon I managed quite nicely. In Kehra, at the division shop worked five merry drivers, from them I got technical advice. And this was as much as there was of my driving school. I and Bade lived in the country, on a farm. Mainly my task was to go and buy eggs in the car. Naturally we drove around in Kehra every day and sometimes went to Tallinn. Once we had to undertake a longer train journey. The Commanding Officer of the Division, Augsberger11 had a Fiat. Bade and I were sent to bring its spare parts from Warsaw. I recall now that in Warsaw there were concrete dugouts, constantly manned, in front of every house where the Germans were living. Most usually there were whole living quarters meant

198

My Youth in the Turn of History

for the Germans which were surrounded by barbed fire fences. In the trams which had two or three tramcars, the first car was always meant ‘only for the Germans’. Once when we were in the tram, a middle aged man entered the car. Someone shouted: ‘Get the Pole out!’ I did not see any yellow cloth badge on his chest and the man did not pay any attention to the shouts. Then Bade made a sudden move with his hip and the man flew out of the door, landing on all his fours. It can be imagined how terrible I felt. But Bade said: ‘Did you see how he flew?’ Another incident happened in the evening when we came from a pub with our local guide. I do not remember now whether civilians were forbidden to move about at night but soldiers were forbidden to appear on the streets after dark without special permission; from 10 pm if I am not mistaken. Strange, is it not? But resistance was then in full swing, the Warsaw rebellion,12 it seems, started in little more than a month. The whole town was lit at night. The street we passed before ten was dark, however. Suddenly we saw approaching car lights. The local soldier [our guide] hurled himself down by the fence and told us to do the same. When I, ‘a world conqueror’ in uniform and a black tie, tried to resist, I was simply pulled down. The car passed. The guide explained how it often happened: a car comes, stops beside the soldiers, a man comes out and asks for documents. You show the documents but from behind him someone shoots you. Partisans. It was impossible to guess which the right patrol was and which was not. For the sake of safety it was better to hide. From Warsaw we went to Königsberg. I was carrying the driveshaft on my back and a suitcase with other details in my hand. In Königsberg I was accommodated near the station, in the so-called Soldatenheim (a hostel for soldiers with business orders). Bade had invited his wife from Baier and they lived somewhere in a house. So that was a rather nice week. On the first night I went to the cinema by tram. Suddenly someone seized me by the hand (at that time I had a blue-black-and-white coat of arms on my sleeve and the legion’s badge, a letter E and a sword on my collar). A good looking blonde said in very good Estonian: ‘Hello, Estonian boy!’ It turned out that, being a Petseri girl, she had quarrelled with her parents because of an SS-guy from Königsberg whom she had wanted to marry. The lad was killed, however, and his mother invited her as her daughterin-law to live with her in Königsberg. She got work as a clerk in the SD. Being almost a local now she showed me the town which was intact at that time. I was also introduced to her so-called relatives. Then a strange circumstance became evident: in a few days the wedding with the groom who had been killed two years ago was to take place! This was an order for the brides of SS-men and after that they had the right to some privileges, I do not remember which. I was naturally invited; unfortunately

Boris Takk

199

we had to leave a day before the wedding. And this was the end of the romance. As all vehicles of the Division were repaired at the Kehra car repair shop, we were sent together with other drivers we knew well to take the repaired vehicles to the front. There was also one truck in the vehicle column, its platform full of gas tanks. On our return we had an order to bring gas from some place near Kohtla-Järve. It was clear that the front, that means the Narva River, was not far as we saw a number of men in camouflage suits and nets on their helmets. Why those vehicles were needed, remained a mystery to me till the end. Then we had an unexpected order – to take ten amphibious vehicles with drivers to Tallinn. A special mission! It did not matter that my mother was coming to see me the same day. Again the drivers consisted of those five men from the repair shop and a couple of additional drivers, among them a veteran from the Narva Battalion, Evald, and me. We were armed with MP machine guns. The Commanding Officer of our group was Januska. To Kehra, where our column was assembled, fifteen German lads with rifles were brought from a nearby school for non-commissioned officers. When we arrived in Tallinn, at Toompea, we parked our vehicles under the trees by the Cathedral. We could not leave this place although I knew that just at that moment my mother was getting on the Kehra train. We were waiting. Here I suddenly met my Tartu schoolmate Elmar who arrived on a motorbike and was also a soldier. I was very glad to see him (although this was sadly our last meeting, as Elmar was later killed during the last retreat). We waited for a couple of hours, and then fifteen men from the Narva Battalion appeared on trucks. Now there were 40 of us. Off we went and nobody knew where. Finally we stopped in Tartu. We were told to park our vehicles in a closed yard just by the house where I lived while going to school. That house was gone; only two end walls were still standing. We were accommodated on the first floor of the Health Museum; on the ground floor, the evacuees from Petseri lived. Life was good there. The food – cheese, butter, white bread was even better. Black bread was not even taken from the storehouse. Next morning when lined up in front of the vehicles three strangers appeared – an SS Obersturmführer (an Estonian, I heard later that his name was Laak13), a rather fat SS Grenadier, and a man from the Home Guard units, a officer from farther away. And off we went. The next stop was by the Torma Church. Here I saw a ‘chaindog label’ on Januska’s breast. As an SS officer, he had special rights. A short speech and the cars went their way. Where? To hunt people. Yes, that was a hunting squad! Every vehicle group was lead by someone who knew where to go. On the first day we arrived at a farm where on the porch

200

My Youth in the Turn of History

between sheets lay a former soldier, who had been sent away from the army because of tuberculosis. The porch windows were open. We were apparently in a hurry, other men went to some other place and I was left to guard the dying man, to see if he was only pretending! I sat in the doorway between the porch and the living room for a few hours; the soldier’s old mother was doing something in the kitchen. Once the man opened his eyes, looked at me, seeing apparently nothing, turned his head and slept on. I felt indignation. At that moment I was repugnant with myself. When the cars came back I was released from my task. After consulting some papers it turned out that the sick man was innocent. Next day I heard that there were already those who had been arrested and some men had been shot, too. Somewhere a farmer’s son and a Ukrainian war prisoner who had been working at the farm as a farm hand, who were both avoiding mobilization, had fled through the window. They were shot at, and killed. One day we left the vehicles on the road with alders growing on both sides. The men went searching again. I wandered to a farm close-by and saw a few soldiers sitting in the farmyard. One of them looked strange: he had no hat and his uniform jacket was all open. When I came closer I saw that the man was my old Heidelager comrade Puusta. He regretted having gone to visit there as he was living somewhere farther off. Now he had been arrested and his family did not know about it. He had taken some ‘time off’ without permission. As there were many prisoners, we went to Tartu in the meanwhile. The prisoners were taken away and we were free to go for a couple of days. But one morning we were again on the vehicles and driving towards Torma. We went to several places and then I heard again about people having been killed. One evening we were well fed at a farm and then told to go to sleep although it was still light outside. They told us to drop off at once in order to be able to get up early. When it was still completely dark, we were woken up. Silently into the vehicles and off we went again without lights. As it was very difficult to drive in the dark, we kept moving slowly, especially when the road passed through forests. Then it became getting lighter and we stopped on a spot on the road in a forest. We understood that there was a village ahead. One of the boys, who had hurt his leg, was left to guard the vehicles; the others, including the drivers started moving on in a single file. I did not understand in the dark where the others went but when it was light enough we found ourselves with a small group, about eight guys, amongst the houses in the village. We sat for quite a while, and then suddenly somewhere a battle started. We had been given an order to move towards the shooting if something like that should happen. We saw from afar that there were many men around three barns. When we arrived there were three bodies on the

Boris Takk

201

ground – forest brothers. There were also three prisoners, two of them wounded, held up by our men. Apparently it had been known that there somewhere forest brothers were in hiding. In the course of the general combing they were found in one of the barns. As the men were armed (some of them also wearing German soldier’s coats), shooting had started. I do not know whether they shot back, but Laak was very angry and said: ‘If one of our men had been hit, I would have had the whole village burnt down!’ The flames that began in the two endmost barns, where the men had been hiding, showed that he meant what he said. One of the prisoners was a young boy, about my age, a former driver, who had been trained under Januska. He was wounded in the elbow which he held with the other hand. I felt very sorry for him but could do nothing. The other man, at least thirty years old, wearing an army coat, was not wounded. The third was even older, a man who had organized the Home Guard units. He was wounded in several places, although not heavily for he could walk. Near the vehicles, a little farther from us, they held a drumhead court martial, the three leaders acting as judges. I do not know what was said. My heart, however, was aching for that young boy. When I met Januska at the vehicles, I asked if that boy would drive a vehicle again in a couple of months (for I had heard that those whose sins were not so serious were sent again to the front after a few months in prison). Januska pointed up, towards the skies, and said: ‘That is where he will go and drive!’ I could still not believe that. When the vehicles finally came out to the bigger road, we made a stop. Now there were more prisoners, a woman among them. The older wounded man was in my vehicle. He looked frightened and I tried to calm him. I was a fool to still have some hope. When the column started moving, I saw a spade on the leading vehicle, in the gun-holder clamp. The road was not far from the Lake Peipus beach, the only place names I remember are Pala and Sadala. I do not remember exactly which villages there were. Less than an hour later we were stopped again. All drivers were summoned to the leading vehicle and an order given: prisoners off the vehicles... Something broke in me then. I went to my vehicle and said: ‘You were told to get off.’ The man seemed to have awaited that order. He said: ‘Yes!’ and got off rather quickly. Several dark bloodstains were left on the vehicle seat. ... Those three men were ordered to get in line. Laak gave an order: ‘Right face! March on!’ And so they went, escorted by a young boy from the ‘Narva’ regiment. We took a seat. After more than a half an hour a gunshot sounded. In a few minutes another. Then three shots at short intervals. In a quarter of an hour the two men came back and we went to

202

My Youth in the Turn of History

Tartu. In Tartu the man who had acted as an escort told us: ‘The men were taken into the woods, the wounded men sat and the third man dug a hole, not very deep. Then they let them smoke a cigarette. The first to stand on the edge of the hole, with his face towards it, was the young man. Then Laak shot him in the back of his head. The second to be shot was the older man, he had been praying quietly. The third was the man who was not wounded. He had to be shot three times before he died...’ The hunting commando ended its activities because of the lack of gas. Coming back to Alavere, we heard that the driving school would be shut because of the lack of gas. What a pity! The men were given their licences and we dispersed. I was sent to an encampment in the woods near Kehra. There a happy meeting took place. Heinrich was already there. We put up a tent together at once. We stayed in this camp for almost two weeks. The camp was located right by the railway. We noticed that the cargo of the trains going towards Tartu was quite unusual. There were even small boats on the platforms. So it became clear that Tartu would be a front-line town soon. At the station we met the boys who had been in the Finnish army; they told of their experience in Finland. Soon we heard that they had been sent to the Tartu front. Trucks also started to go daily to Tartu from Kehra. One day a number of ‘volunteers’ were brought from the Patarei prison. We had to train them and we noticed that many a man was gone by the morning. But of the rest a unit was formed and I do not know what happened to them. I kept asking about Puusta but nobody had heard about him... Then an order came and a small group of us was sent to the Divisional Headquarters at Kuremäe. On this last evening we took a long walk with Heinrich having some kind of dark foreboding, especially after Heinrich said: ‘You know what, friend! They will not be able to defend Estonia for long. If they want to take me along, I will not let them! However, there will be no place to go anyhow. I will retreat and retreat, into the sea if necessary, but I will resist those Russian swines till the end...!’ And then we parted. I never heard of him again. We drove on to Jõhvi and from Jõhvi on to Ahtme. From Ahtme a small train which also supplied the front took us to Illuka. Here the railway parted. One part went to Vasknarva, another towards Krivasoo. There was a stop near Lake Konsu. There were many bunkers along a ridge, among them the bunker of the Commanding Officer of the Division, Augsberger. I was assigned to be the driver’s assistant of an Opel-Blitz. As the driver had nothing to do because of the lack of gas, our main pastime was playing cards. Russian currency had been valid all that time but people tried to get rid of the Russian money and collected Ostmarks. Had they been wise, they would have behaved the other way round. We

Boris Takk

203

slept under the trees in a small hole near the top of a hillock, under a tent. We had to be on guard quite often. At night it was an interesting sight when a Russian ‘gamekeeper’ plane (PO-2) started circling over our heads. It often dropped a light bomb with a parachute: it glided down, sometimes just over our heads. There were many bunkers on both sides of the road and a few tents. They certainly tried to see from the plane but the camouflage was too good. We hid ourselves under the trees. We had a strong desire to take that monster of cloth down with a gun for it flew quite low but we had strict orders not to betray our locations. This visit usually ended with ‘laying an egg’ somewhere on the mire and then the plane was gone. The weather got cooler, especially the nights but we did not want to go to the bunker because of the danger of lice. For some time I slept on the truck platform under a cover. News from the front hinted that the battle zone was moving towards the north from Tartu and that the danger of being surrounded was real. I thought it over and understood that I had to get out of here somehow. Once in the sauna I saw a man who had scabies. I scratched him quickly and then myself! I did not wash myself after that. On September 12, I became 19 years old. One evening it was my turn to be on guard. I met a man who was from some small town near Berlin. That Goebbels propaganda did not differ much from the Soviet one. That man explained to me during a few hours how our troops were very skilfully pretending to retreat and letting the Russians wear themselves out shooting at us! I interpreted the whole situation just the other way round. Next day I learnt that the battle line had reached Tabivere. Now it was clear! We were being surrounded! I had to get away! Like a gift from heaven I felt that I started to itch all over and saw small speckles all over my body. I took a paper from the company and went to the Illuka Manor where the nearest bigger hospital was. At Illuka I got a paper and went on to the Jõhvi hospital. When I returned to my squad before that, the others heard about my going. Viljandi boys brought me letters to be taken home. Somehow they were convinced that I would not return. At the Jõhvi hospital they gave me an ointment and in two days my body was clean. Now I started to think that they might send me back to my squad. I saw from the window that the trains going towards Tallinn were very heavily loaded, having even big cannons on their platforms. When we asked, we were answered that no train was going to the east, only to the west! In the morning the Red Cross buses were waiting at the doors and everything was loaded on them. We were taken to Rakvere and accommodated in a schoolhouse near the castle hill. By then everything was a mess. There were two nurses for two floors and no doctor. There were very many wounded; some lying, some sitting on mattresses. Here I met a Heidelager

204

My Youth in the Turn of History

companion of mine, Paas who had got wounded in the head at Luunja. Right next to him a German boy was groaning whose feet had been blown off. They were both hungry. We broke down a door covered with sheet metal – there were arms in the room. I changed my gun for a brand new carbine. Then we broke open another door and found food. Nothing else, however, just bread and artificial honey. We took more bread but also put honey into our mess-tins. Repugnant or not, it was food. We were sent to a distribution station in Tapa. In Tapa, where everything was a mess too (all rooms full of papers, all floors too), we got a document for a secret mission written in pencil – one non-commissioned officer and fifteen men had to go to Kehra. Luckily the train was still at the station and we found seats on the fieldguns. Forward! This non-com was a modest man from Halliste, so I took the leading role. All the men had unanimously decided – we will not go to Germany, we will stay in Estonia. We thought that if we got off the train in Kehra we would be taken to Germany for sure. So in Kehra we erased the name Kehra from our document and wrote Viljandi instead. And on we ‘sailed’. At about 10 pm we arrived in Tallinn. The train stopped at a semaphore. We climbed off, formed up a line, put on our helmets and went off marching, the noncom guarding, in the middle of the road toward the Tallinn-Väike station. At a street-corner two Streife’s came running, lit us up with a torch and ran on. It seemed they were chasing someone. We dispersed between the carriages. Some boys got in through a carriage trapdoor and the others after them. Big wooden crates showed that there was some factory equipment in them. Such things are not left behind, we thought. I fell asleep. When I woke up the carriage wheels were thumping rhythmically. It was day outside. Smokers were already smoking near the trapdoor. One of the guards on the braking platform noticed them. At the nearest station he appeared at the trapdoor with his gun and started shouting at us in German. The guys stuck a gun into the opening and answered: ‘Tut-tut!’ The man only said ‘Gut, gut!’ and disappeared. From the station of Lelle the train went towards Pärnu, four men, including me, got off. Some of us had disappeared earlier, some went on to Pärnu. In the afternoon an empty train came from the direction of Pärnu and turned towards Türi. In a while we were in Türi. There was a long military train standing at the station, so full of soldiers and equipment that it was impossible to get on. At the station they said that this was the last train. Here we all separated. I succeeded in getting on a buffer. At dusk the train started moving. By the road I saw heaps of vehicles, all burning. This was the end! It was rather late when we stopped to wait at Olustvere for a train from the opposite direction. At last it arrived – open platforms full of evacuees with their packages. Before Viljandi the train again stopped at a semaphore and I got

Boris Takk

205

off. Now I loaded my carbine and went on. My iron-bound soles kept clanging on the street but there was not a soul about. Luckily I had the key of my home with me. So I opened the door. Mother was not home but suitcases in the hallway showed that my people had not been evacuated. Then I went to my father’s apartment where he lived with grandmother and my aunts. Everyone was home but father. They were very glad to see me. At first I ate as much as I could. While I was eating, mother came. Oh, those tears! Now I felt very tired and I fell asleep with the last food in my mouth. I slept on a couch like a log. At night I felt how father came and patted my cheek. He had also come home. In the morning I was not allowed to go out, it was too risky. We heard constant explosions: they were blasting rails. The women came home with news: everybody should leave the town because it would all be blown up. Father talked to our neighbour who had a horse. We put necessary things on a dray, grandmother sat on the load, all the relatives and acquaintances, 10 to 15 men and women, walked around the dray and off we went to relatives who were living in the country. When we arrived at the Tuisu farm we were all accommodated in a big barn. My military uniform and all things originating from the army were taken away and mostly burnt, I am afraid to say. And next day they came in a ZIS-5, full of red fighters, out of the woods. The moment I saw a grey military coat, I felt great aversion – look, here you are again! Four or five of them came into the farmyard and studied a map but it was obvious they were not very good at doing it. Father showed them our location and then they eyed him with distrust. By the way, their map was very accurate, even the Tuisu farm was a marked on it. Then we saw smoke from the direction of the town. It turned out that the army of ‘saviours’ had started to quench their thirst from a liquor store (that is: to loot the store) and set it on fire. Thus several quarters of the town burnt down. Looting the distillery, they had flooded the yard with alcohol and part of it had flowed into the streets. The gutters were all sticky for several weeks. People said that two soldiers in uniform had been caught dead drunk in a room or yard. This must have cost them dearly. Then I got a job at the highway department. But I could only work for a few weeks. Then I got a call-up – mobilization. Now that made me really angry. Now they wanted to force me into the Red Army I hated so much. But nothing doing. I had to appear before a medical commission. I went with my schoolmate Väino. The doctor checked us and decided we were good enough. At 06.00 in the morning three days later we, 80 men, had to start towards Tartu on foot. We just managed to slip past the war commissariat and saw how men were being lined up. We had discussed

206

My Youth in the Turn of History

everything at home, we seized food that had been packed ready and started to walk towards Tallinn. In Tallinn we registered ourselves again as if the Viljandi incident had not happened. At first we, Väino and I, got work at the shipyard. Our task was to transport vegetables to a storehouse. The picture was rather dismal at the port – the coastguard speedboats were constantly moving about. So we could not even think of getting away from Estonia. But one day Väino contacted some men who said that there were three boats going to Finland. As the first one was already gone, I decided to go home and tell them not to wait for me any more. We took ourselves off from work saying that we would volunteer for the army and went to Viljandi. There were three of us. Väino did not come with us. When we returned to Tallinn we learned that the first boat had got through but the second one where Väino must have been was taken. Now we did not dare to risk it. So I did not go in the end. Was it an irony of fate or what – the third boat went through. At first we knew nothing about the fate of those who had been caught. Later, after 10 years, I met Väino in Viljandi; he had spent more than 10 years in Siberia. Now we had to make new plans. I got work on the railway where I could work in Türi, which was nearer to home. There were two of us, me and a former volunteer named Hugo. We found an apartment in a private house in Türi. Our life was poor, my mother helped me a lot bringing food with a backpack, walking all the distance. Although life was hard, we managed to go dancing sometimes and I got acquainted with the niece of my hostess. And it happened as it always happens when you are young – we fell in love. From those times, I am not able to forget an incident that older Türi people might also remember. On New Year’s Eve there was a dancing party at the local club. Exactly at 12 p.m. the l head of the local executive committee appeared on the stage to say his ‘red’ greetings to the people. But he could not say but a few sentences for all the people started singing the hymn of the Republic of Estonia. The people sang all three stanzas very devotedly. That man was only standing on the stage, a hand on his hips, demonstrating his disagreement with the mood of the people. After the hymn he tried to say a few words again but nobody heard him because of the noise of the New Year greetings. But this was the last time in this period when the hymn was sung in public! For then a long, long night began...

Boris Takk

207

Notes 1

2

3

4 5

6

7

8

The 205 page manuscript of Boris Takk’s story, written in 1993–1996 and sent to the life writing campaign ‘My Destiny and Destiny of Those Close to Me in the Labyrinths of History’ (1996), is stored in the Estonian Cultural History Archive, fund 350. This is an abbreviated version of one of its chapters; translated by Kersti Unt. The author hints here at the coupe d’état on June 21, 1940. See the respective entry in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. The author bears in mind the first soviet mass deportations of June 14, 1941. See the respective entry in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. ‘Chain dogs’ – see note 5 in Varblane’s story. The preliminary formation of the Estonian Legion started on August 28, 1942. On October 13, 1942 the first 113 men arrived at the Dębica training camp from the eastern battalions. Parallel to training, the actual formation of the legion started. The first battalion of the legion had to be ready for battle by the end of February, 1943. See the August 28 1942 entry in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. ‘At Võnnu!’ – a hint at a battle of the War of Independence (1918–1920) at Cesis in North Latvia on June 19–23, 1919 between the Estonian troops and the Baltic Landeswehr which ended with the retreating of Landeswehr and taking of Cesis by the Estonians. The Baltic Landeswehr embodied the Baltic German aristocracy for the Estonians who had governed over them since the 13th century; that is why Estonians took them as their historical enemy. To raise the readiness to fight, the high command used at the War of Independence a popular picture of the 700 years of slavery of Estonians under the Baltic barons. In 1934, the victory at Võnnu was made a national festivity – Day of Victory, using the memory of the victorious joy that seized the country in 1919. As the day was dedicated to the national independence of Estonia, its political and symbolic meaning was equal to the Independence Day on February 24. Battalion ‘Narva’ – an SS motorized grenadier battalion of Estonian Volunteers formed on March 23, 1943 on the basis of the 1st battalion of the Estonian SS-Legion (Estnisches SS-Freiwilligen Panzergrenadier Bataillion ‘Narwa’), which was added to the 5th SS tank division Wiking and sent to the Ukraine. In July 1943 the battalion participated with great losses in battles against the attacking Red Army which became the basis of a legend about the ‘Narva’ Battalion. See the entry April 4 1943 in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. In November 1943 the Estonian brigade formed on the basis of the Estonian Legion was sent to the front in the Nevel district. In January 1944 the brigade was supplemented by new men sent there from the Dębica training camp – this is what Boris Takk bears in mind. See also the

208

9

10 11

12

13

My Youth in the Turn of History

November 1943 entry in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. ‘Camp of Jews at Klooga’ – a prison camp (SS-Arbeitslager Klooga), founded in autumn 1943. In summer 1944 there were more that 2,000 prisoners in the Klooga camp, the majority of them Jews. The prisoners were murdered on September 19, 1944 when the Red Army was approaching. Beside the camp there was a military base, founded in 1939 within the framework of the Estonian-Soviet agreement about military bases. At this base the reserve and training regiments of the 20th Estonian Armed SS-Division were accommodated. See note 11 in Aleksander Loog’s story. ‘Commanding Officer of the Division, Augsberger’ – Franz Augsberger, since October, 20, 1942 the Commanding Officer of the 1st Regiment of the Estonian Legion, here the Commanding Officer of the 20th Armed SS Estonian Volunteer Division (renamed in January 1944) formed on the basis of the Estonian Brigade. ‘Warsaw rebellion’ – an uprising of the Warsaw underground organization on August 1, 1944, which lasted for 63 days and ended on October 2, 1944 with demolishing the town. The author bears apparently in mind Aleksander Laak, a former Lieutenant of the Estonian Army who during the first years of the German occupation led a Home Guard regional unit (see note 5, Varblane’s story) and later until autumn 1943 was the commandant of the Jägala camp. Then, until the end of the German occupation Laak acted as the prison governor of the Tallinn Central Prison. In the autumn of 1944 Laak fled from Estonia and resided later in Canada.

An Islander’s Life Story, Along with Interesting Things that Happened to Him1 Ylo-Vesse Velvelt, born 1926 On the 26th of August 1926 in the city of Kuressaare, on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia, a boy was born to the family of Aleksander and Maria Velvelt. He was christened Ylo-Vesse. The first name Ylo came about because Father’s good friend, the linguist Johannes Aavik thought that in Estonian the letter Y should be used instead of Ü.2 The child’s middle name was an honour indeed. Vesse had been the leader of the Saaremaa men in the famous St. George’s Eve uprising in 1343.3 I was the second son in the family; my brother Endel was six years older. Born 25 July 1920 in Kuressaare, Endel graduated from Saaremaa Central High School in 1938, and went on to enrol in Tallinn Technical University, where he studied until 1941. My father, Aleksander Velvelt (born 1897) was the son of Jakob and Leena Velvelt; Jakob Velvelt was the game warden at Loona, in the Püha parish of Saaremaa. In 1913, Aleksander graduated from Kuressaare City School, and worked for the rest of his life as a bookkeeper. In 1917, and again from 1919–1921, he was a delegate of the County assembly and the County government, and from 1919–1921, a Kuressaare town councillor. In 1919 he was elected to the Constitutional Committee of the Republic of Estonia. He was the publisher and acting editor of the newspaper Meie Maa and was active in many associations and organizations. My mother Marie (nee Allik) was for most her married life a homemaker. In the 1930s, she was also business manager of the Kuressaare Estonian Society, and supervisor and chief cook of the dining hall there. The most interesting period in my life began when I was six years old. I remember the summer of 1933 very keenly. Kuressaare was a resort town, with a marina that rented out rowing boats and canoes. The square building on the pier, topped by a slender tower, was known to the public as Cod Church. Every spring the city government sought a tenant for Cod Church, who would oversee boat rentals. For this, they organized a public bidding: The person who offered the highest rent over and against the city’s bid would be appointed to run the marina that summer. In 1933 there was no tenant on the horizon. Given this fortunate circumstance, my father asked my brother whether he would be willing to step in and take charge of the boat rentals. He was to turn thirteen in the middle of that summer. Just turned seven, I became the assistant to the ‘captain’ of Cod Church. Among our duties was selling lemonade: when my brother went to replenish the supply, I would stand in for him at the lemonade stand. From morning till night I was at the waterfront. At the beginning of the

210

An Islander’s Life Story

summer I could barely swim the dog-paddle, but by the end of the summer I had mastered the crawl. At the end of that summer, we moved from our two-room apartment to the Kuressaare Estonian Society’s [KES] building, which was the hub of the city’s social and cultural life. The KES needed a business manager, and my mother took on the job. There was a cinema and a theatre; choir practices were held there, and there was also a gym, where they organized wrestling and boxing courses and played table-tennis. All of the Republic’s major newspapers and magazines were available to read. I would sit in the actors’ dressing room as they put on their makeup for the next performance, and in the evenings I would watch the bridge players, and so I learned the game, surely the youngest person in Saaremaa who knew how to play it. I never had to buy a ticket to the movies, and saw all the first-runs; among my favourite actors were Robert Taylor, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Nelson Eddy. When ‘Tarzan’ was playing, starring Johnny Weissmuller, I started in on the ‘Tarzan’ books, and read my way through all of them, thus perfecting my reading skills. At school I was a restless sort of fellow. With the first four grades of elementary school behind me, I was sent to pro-gymnasium at the Saaremaa Central High School.4 My favourite subject was recess,5 but I also liked physical education, where we could play ball, do straddle jumps over the pommel horse, and tricks on the parallel bars. Our physical education teacher, August Elmik, demanded discipline, and taught us the basic rules of politeness. Several times a year, we had to bring a hat along to physical education class and practice greeting people in the street. Elmik would stand in the middle of the gym; five steps away from him you had to take your hat off and look directly at the person you were greeting. Passing on the right, you took your hat off with your right hand; on the left side, with your left. There were some teachers at the pro-gymnasium with whom I did not get along who teased me and had their own pet students, but there were those whom I highly respected. When Juhan Valgma came from the mainland to teach us Estonian language, we had to write an essay for him on the first day of class, and I got a ‘5’ for that essay. He even thought it was good enough to read out loud to the class. I continued to get good grades for my writing. I had nothing against foreign languages, but the trouble was I had no interest whatsoever in grammar. Once the Latin teacher called me up to the blackboard and asked me to decline the pronoun hic. I knew it only in the singular. Since the boys couldn’t whisper me the answers, the verdict was ‘Sorry, the grade for the semester is still a 2’. As I put the chalk down, I muttered, ‘Sic transit gloria mundi.’ The teacher heard that, and asked me what I had said. I translated: ‘So passes the glory

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

211

of the world.’ I liked sayings like that very much, and had copied them out of the ‘Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases’, so I rattled off a whole string of them. The teacher asked me to translate Vitae, non scholae, discimus, and Sic itur ad astra. When I answered ‘We study not for school, but for life,’ and ‘So we aspire to the stars,’ he commented: ‘You can’t reach the stars without grammar.’ He concluded that even though I had no idea about grammar, I had earned a ‘4’ for the semester. We waited with even more anticipation for the school year to end in the spring. My mother and father would say that my work was schoolwork; the summer was for resting. Once I was grown up there would be no more rest. I was a boy scout, and the scouts’ sailboats were kept in the yacht club’s marina, so we would often take them out to sea. We swam a great deal, since the warmest seawater in Estonia was in Kuressaare Bay. We always looked forward to the ten-day scout camps which took place at the beginning of July. I was seven years old, and not even a cub scout yet, when my brother took me along to the Kuusiku forest camp near Püha. The last camp I attended was in 1939 on the island of Abruka. At the time, there was still some virgin forest left on Abruka, which you could only hack your way through with an axe; perhaps no human had even set foot in the place for decades. The legendary Harri Haamer, scoutmaster and pastor, was the leader at many of these camps. The outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939 affected us very little at first, but the base treaty had more of an impact. Our lives would soon be turned upside down. One of the Russian bases was on the Sõrve peninsula, and one gray autumn day we watched long columns of Red Army soldiers making their way there. Miserable-looking old trucks were packed full of Red Army soldiers in rat-gray greatcoats, sitting like stone statues with their bayoneted rifles between their knees. A few decades later, when working in the mines, a Russian who had been along on that journey told me that the politruk6 had issued strict orders not to look around and not to let oneself be misled: everything they saw such as the shops and people’s clothing, was a big hoax, and in reality life was poor and miserable. I asked him whether he had believed the politruk. The man replied that it had seemed a little strange: had people deliberately dressed up on the occasion that they were passing through? What he had believed at the time was that the shops were full of goods, but that the people had no money to buy them. The trucks kept on coming, and it remained a mystery, how they could all fit on that narrow Sõrve peninsula. Mother looked on, crying, and said this was the end of the Estonian Republic. The actual day of the takeover of the Estonian government in June 1940 was an ordinary quiet summer day in Kuressaare. If it were not for

212

An Islander’s Life Story

the radio and newspapers, we would have had no idea of the change of government. By–and-by it caught up with us: minor local officials joined forces with the new regime, and soon there were demonstrations everywhere, complete with red flags and banners. I saw a demonstration for the first time in Valjala, when I was riding through on my bicycle. On a makeshift podium wrapped in red cloth, some men stood who introduced themselves before making speeches. A tall man with glasses introduced himself as Aleksander Mui. He had sat in prison for fifteen years because he had fought for the rights of the working people. In prison they had fed him nothing but salt fish and cabbage leaves, and there were no political rights; the guards had mocked and humiliated the prisoners, and often put them in solitary confinement where they had to go hungry for two to three days. With a booming voice he demanded punishment for the capitalist oppressors and their followers. The other man was Johan Ellam. In a quiet voice he told about his family, all of whom where revolutionaries fighting for the cause of working people’s rights. In the course of the struggle, the ‘clique government’ had murdered his sister and two brothers. He himself had done eleven years of forced labour. Now the time had come to bring all those who killed and oppressed the working people to justice. His voice rose and became very loud and angry towards the end. At the end of his speech he cheered Stalin, Voroshilov,7 Kalinin,8 and several other Kremlin characters. That cheering seemed funny to me, but soon we all had to get used to it. Then a man with a thick crop of dark hair introduced himself – the writer Aadu Hint. He began calmly talking about what he had written, and said that he had always felt closest to workers and poor farmers. In the end he, too, got very agitated and worked up. As a climax he pulled off a very narrow belt from his trousers and shouted: ‘Look at this … during the “clique government” life for the working people was, as tight as this strap.’ Demonstration fever soon hit the town. People were given red flags, banners, and pictures of the men in Moscow, and the procession set off for the park. There would always be a travelling cinema on the back of a truck; revolutionary songs were broadcast from there during the demonstration, followed by films when it was over. The screen was a white sheet hung between two trees. The films were about happy life in the kolkhoz,9 and there were also films from the ‘golden hits’ list of Soviet cinema: ‘Happy Friends’, ‘Circus’, ‘Volga-Volga’. The most patriotic one was ‘Tractorists’. According to the new regime, the police was a tool of the oppressors, and so it was replaced by the Rahva Omakaitse (People’s Self Defence).10 They wore an armband with the letters RO. Those people who had only 4–6 grades of education and no occupation were now in charge; they replaced the former police officers, and were assigned to shops as

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

213

‘commissars’. These new commissars knew nothing about business, and had difficulty with the simplest arithmetic. (My father, who in addition to his main job, worked as a bookkeeper in two shops, told many anecdotes about the commissars’ stupidities.) ‘Speculators’ were discovered everywhere, even in places one would least have suspected. When cafeteria managers who did not do any of their own baking bought pastries from the bakery and sold them for one cent more, this counted as ‘speculation’. Strict orders were issued to put an end to it: if rolls were bought from the bakery at five cents apiece, they also had to be sold at the same price. But one thing was actually pleasant, for schoolboys at least; they were no longer required to shave their heads. Up till then, the ‘turnip hairdo’ was the only thing allowed in elementary school on up through the end of high school. I also liked the fact that the Soviet schools did not require school uniforms. During the period of the military bases [agreement] the Red Army stayed on the base, but after the change of regime there were many of them in town, mainly officers. Soon their wives started to arrive from Russia, their lips brightly coloured. Their officer husbands began to notice the bad appearance of the women, and began driving to Kuivastu to meet them with new clothes they had bought for them. More than once I saw Russian women walking around town in nightdresses. They had no idea that these were not summer dresses. The officers had a special interest in wristwatches and bicycles. Apparently bicycles were a rarity in Russia, since many of the pilots did not know how to ride them. During the school holidays in 1941 my brother and I went to Tallinn. We were waiting for the bus at the bus station when a row of trucks carrying men, women, and children drove by, along a Tallinn street. With them in the back of the truck were NKVD men with blue hats. Many families had been taken away from their homes during the night. The people who had come to the bus station knew some of the names of the deported; I heard the names of many of my classmates, girls and boys: Kaju, Varest, Hõbenik. All of this seemed unbelievable, and struck us speechless. In Virtsu we heard that the same kind of deportation was taking place across all of Estonia. That shocking day was the 14th of June.11 Two days later I saw the train of deportees in Tallinn. In the freight station there were cattle wagons standing on the railway tracks. The doors were open a crack, and from the doors and the barbed-wire-covered windows people called out for water; they were thirsty. But the NKVD men guarding the wagons would not let anyone approach. They tore the buckets out of people’s hands and threw the bottles on the ground; those who wanted to help were chased away from the train with the butts of rifles. Soon the train pulled out of the station. People in the cars started

214

An Islander’s Life Story

singing, ‘Estonia, your manly spirit, has not died yet!’ People outside looked on, many of them were crying. The beginning of the war made us happy – at least now we would escape being sent to Siberia. When trucks were ordered to assemble in front of the militia headquarters in Kuressaare on the evening of the 30th of June, we strongly suspected that a new deportation was in store. Father thought there was nowhere to hide. We stayed home, and I fell asleep quite calmly. At 02.00 in the morning the banging on the door began. One of the deporters was an Estonian whom we did not know, who said we were being evacuated, and that we had twenty minutes to pack our things, 20 kg per person. The allotted twenty minutes dragged out into three hours; it was morning when the truck, carrying ten men and women, pulled up and we were loaded on. Not all of those in power knew who was being deported. I later heard that Sepik, chairman of the executive committee, had not been informed that my father, the city’s chief bookkeeper, was being taken away. When he came to work in the morning, he finally heard that the chief bookkeeper had been deported. Many days later he reportedly said that he had had a clash over my father’s case with the NKVD boss, Riis,12 and the chief of the militia, Mets,13 but all to no avail. From the stories Father had told I knew that Sepik was a smart communist, not like Riis, Mets, and Mui.14 We were taken to Roomassaare harbour, and then we were off to Tallinn. In the Patarei prison we were all put in a large room with barred windows. Out at sea, almost right under our windows, there were military transport ships, and those who were better informed said the largest of them was the frigate ‘Kirov’. Eighty men were put in the room with their bundles. Twice a day we were taken in groups to the toilet, and there we also had a chance to wash. The food was thin soup, served with a piece of bread, but since we had brought along food from home, no-one suffered from hunger. When we had lazed around for ten days like that, the men began to be called out one by one. I was the first one in my family to be called out. Escorted by guards, I was taken through many long corridors to a little cell, where a Russian NKVD man was sitting at a table and next to him a woman in civilian clothes, the interpreter. Through the interpreter, they started questioning: How wealthy were you? Where did your father work? Did you employ people from outside the family? What did Father and Mother discuss among themselves? And so on. Two days passed, and then all the boys under eighteen years of age were called out of the common chamber, and were asked to bring their bundles with them. One guard whispered softly that we were being taken to our mothers. And so it was; we were transported in trucks to the Harku prison. Our mothers and

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

215

sisters, it turned out, were at the nearby Harku estate, where they did gardening and field work. Of course they were all very happy about our arrival. The Harku prison was a much more humane place than Patarei. The prison was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and there were bunkbeds in the cells. A few days later we, too, began to go out to the fields to work. But the front was drawing nearer. At the beginning of August we were told that there had been a ‘mistake’ and were being sent back home. We were taken to Virtsu and from there to Orissaare Harbour. There we were met by the chief militia officer, Mets, along with three militiamen; Mets was waving his machinegun and screaming that he was not going to let any old scum into Saaremaa. The NKVD captain, who had been escorting us, a Russian, got angry, and shouted, ‘Do orders issued in Tallinn mean nothing in Saaremaa?’ That local show of force shows how bloodthirsty the local powers were, and who the real deporters were. My brother Endel also came home. He and ten other men had been released, but where Father and all the other men were, he did not know. And thus the deportation story for the three of us ended happily, like an exciting adventure. But it was not so for Father. He and all the other men were taken to Russia, where they were sentenced to years [of hard labour] by the NKVD troika. Father got ten years for counterrevolutionary activity! Soon after the Germans came they discovered the horrible crimes committed in Kuressaare Castle and in the cellars of two houses nearby. Over 80 people had been tortured and murdered there. Among the murdered was a good friend of our family, the Director of the Maritime Academy, Captain Julius Teär. The murders in Kuressaare Castle were not the only ones in Saaremaa. Surely the deportations and the brutal murders were the reason why political prisoners were treated mercilessly, and many were shot. It is quite possible that the victims were those whose only offense was working in a position of responsibility in a Soviet institution. The chairman of the city executive committee, Sepik was also executed, though he certainly had not participated in the deportations. Of the deporters they soon nabbed Mets, Mui, and Ellam,15 all of whom were executed; Vassili Riis was skillful enough to hide, and rose to power again after the war. If for all those summers I had been a free man, then during the German regime I had to work: to go to school in the fall I had to present the required work certificate. In the third summer of the war, in 1944, no summer work was required of schoolboys, apparently because the German situation on the eastern front had drastically changed. Since I was a former boy scout, and had attended adult camps, the local leader of the Estonian youth, Elmar Sääsk, asked me whether I might want to go to a youth camp

216

An Islander’s Life Story

being organized in Poland. A few hundred boys from Estonia were slated to go. The Estonian Youth was an organization established to replace the Boy Scouts and Young Eagles. I was not a member, but the camp might turn out to be interesting. The youth camp on the banks of the Narew River in Poland was nothing like we had imagined. It seemed to be something like preparations for going to war – we were issued gas masks and other equipment needed by a soldier, were given wooden rifles made heavier with iron weights, and then the drilling began. A few times we were allowed to go swimming in the Narew River. By the beginning of July 1944 it was clear that my birth cohort, those born in 1926, was about to be mobilized. Whoever had connections and money fled to Sweden; our family only had a choice between bad and worse. The lesser evil seemed to be the Air Force, and so I decided to join up voluntarily. On the 2nd of August 1944, I became a member of the Luftwaffe [Air Force] in Tallinn. The training camp was held at Sauga airport in Pärnu. There were no airplanes there, and the cement runways were our artillery range and drilling ground. There were no Germans; the Ausbilder (military instructors) were our own boys, a year or two older than ourselves. Our group leader was Fred Kraav, who had a good sense of humour, and our unit commander was Matsi; marching songs were taught by the commander of the second unit, Peedo, who had been a schoolteacher in civilian life. The marching drill and the training were something else altogether different than they had been in the youth camp in Poland; there was no joking here. In Pärnu I celebrated my 18th birthday. As the front drew closer, some of the boys deserted, going home instead of going to Germany. I had to decide whether to stay in the homeland, flee with my parents, or try to get to Germany by sea, and endure the danger of air raids and submarines. Every man had to choose for himself. There was no way I could entertain the thought of staying in the homeland, as I had no interest in seeing the sights of Siberia as a deportee. On the 21st of September we marched into Pärnu harbour. The ship pulled out at midday. The antiaircraft team and the scouts did not leave their posts for a second, but no attack came. Our voyage ended in Königsberg, from where we were taken by train to Frankfurt-am-Oder. The relaxed life in Frankfurt came to an end in the last days of October, when it was announced that we were going to Denmark, where they would train us to be parachutists. In Denmark we were surprised by the abundance of food, and for the [Danish] krone we were paid, so we were able to buy ham, eggs, sausage, cream, and pastries. It was unbelievable that all of that was available in an occupied country. In Denmark, the food

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

217

stories were replaced by stories about women. There were plenty of Don Juans among us, who had extensive experience with beautiful women. At the beginning of December it was announced that plans had changed, and that we were going back to Germany. That was not happy news for us, nor for the Germans accompanying us. Leaving Denmark was aus allen Himmeln16 fallen. When the train crossed the border into Germany, we saw the traces of air raids. Ruins were everywhere, especially in the area near the railroad. The trains moved randomly, depending on the speed with which the devastated railways could be restored. The longer our train trip through western Germany lasted, the more oppressive was the view that presented itself from the carriage window. Nothing but ruins. The trip ended late one evening at a small railway station. We were ordered out of the carriages, and ahead of us was a foot-march that would last all night: fifty minutes of walking followed by a ten minute rest. The length of the trek might have been forty kilometres. When we arrived in the morning, we learned that we were now in Dortmund. Now we had to look forward to anti-aircraft training, the air raid defense of the city of Dortmund, and life in eternal garrisons. What we had to master was firing the anti-aircraft cannon (flak). The Americans were bombing Germany by day and the British by night, but they flew over us or around us, at a distance, and there was no point in firing. Every day we had training on the cannons without firing, and there were lectures introducing us to the types of enemy aircraft. But soon the bombs also started falling on Dortmund, and our anti-aircraft cannon had lots of firing to do. While in Dortmund we started receiving the Estonian newspaper being published in Berlin, and one day I found my mother and brother’s advertisement: they were looking for me. Their address was included; they were living in the town of Rathenow, about eighty kilometres west of Berlin. Not in Sweden, as had been planned. I sent them a letter immediately, and since Christmas was near, I also sent them some cans of syrup from Denmark. In the second half of December, the Germans surprised us by launching a major offensive in the Ardennes, but the Führer’s Christmas gift to the German people, as that offensive had been called, faded as if it had never even happened. At Christmas we all marched into town to go to church. We were struck by the fact that there were still some sections of town that were in pretty good shape, and the church was intact. Our march through town, accompanied by songs, such as ‘The Drums are Rolling and the Pipes are Playing,’ ‘On the Northern Coast’ and ‘Kalle Kusta’ attracted attention, and folks were at their windows watching. Our Ausbilder liked display. When he saw a pretty girl at the window, he

218

An Islander’s Life Story

would shout ‘Lied aus! Die Augen – links’ and then to us ‘Was sagen die Truppe’” at which we would roar, ‘Guten Morgen, nette Puppe!’17 Then came the orders, ‘Ein Lied!’18 and the song would continue from the point we had left off. The ‘flak’ cannon was programmed (direction of fire, angle of barrel, position of fuse) by radar, and the members of the team only had to follow the orders. We made a deal with the boys that we would not execute them, and so our shells burst either lower or higher than the planes. In the last days of March, 1945, when the Allies ended their long standstill, it was announced that our mission with the ‘flak’ cannon was finished, and that we were going to Hamburg. We were not given a reason. Marching teams of ten to twelve men were formed, a leader who held the marching orders was chosen for each group, and we were told to go as fast as we could. No-one knew what date we were due to arrive in Hamburg. Provisions were issued for three days. Getting from Dortmund to Hamburg was complicated, but finally we did arrive. A little before arriving in Hamburg, there were two attacks on our train by low-flying planes, and the fire rained down on the [carriage] roof but did not break through. Sometimes a train trip would be like a game of cat and mouse between the conductor and the pilot. When low-flying planes appeared, the conductors alternated between speeding up and braking, which would send us sprawling. This, of course, did nothing to save us from the aircraft’s guns, but it did help avoid the bombs, which were sometimes dropped by the planes. In Hamburg, we met up with our Luftwaffe Hilfsdienst boys, among whom was my cousin Heiki. Some of the boys were very young, thin from the bad food, and pale. We made it clear to the boys that they were very lucky, since they were being sent to Denmark, where there were no air raids. They would be able to eat their fill there, because there would be no Russians, and soon they would be in the care of the British and the Americans. And so it went. Years later I heard that my cousin Heiki was quite a wealthy man in Australia. We were told that we were being sent to Sudetenland, as reinforcements for the Estonian Legion. That was sorry news: the war was ending, but they were dragging us right into the Russians’ lap. Germany was in major chaos, but the military police and the SD19 were even more active. We arrived at our new location. The April sun had painted the flat heights green. Here we met up with the men of the Estonian Legion. The Legion itself was at the front; here there were very young boys, who were assigned as our field instructors. The camp belonged to the Germans, but our immediate superior was an Estonian, Major Prees. On the 4th of May we were lined up on the drilling field and our commanding officer, a

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

219

German Major announced that Adolf Hitler had died a hero’s death in the defence of Berlin, that he had appointed Admiral Dönitz to lead Germany, and that under his leadership Germany would continue the war to a victorious end. Apparently out of old habit, he ended his speech, ‘Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil!’ And so we were told what we already knew. One of the boys had a radio, and he had already heard about Hitler’s death from London a few days earlier. It was weird that the Germans took Hitler’s death coldly, even though they had idolized him. For us, things were unclear. The solution came on the 7th of May. Prees assembled us and announced that on orders from the German we were to begin our march to the front at noon the next day to join the Estonian Legion. He said that of course we were not going there, but that the Germans were not supposed to find out. The plan was as follows: drag things out as long as possible, then at nightfall, to head for the woods, where we would spend the night. We would see in the morning what would happen next. Prees also gave an overview of the situation at the front: the Russians were in Berlin; there was an uprising in Prague; according to reports from London, Schörner’s army group ‘Mitte’ had begun its march west, to surrender to the British and the Americans, but the Czechs would not let them through. When it was getting dark, we turned off into the woods. After midnight the rumbling of cars was heard from the road, and that meant a large detachment of troops. Prees and a few boys went to check things out, and soon returned. On the road were the boys from the Rebane Battalion,20 along with some Germans; they had heard the news of the German capitulation; the war was over; those units which had been at the front were on their way west. We of course got up right away and headed back the way we had come at full speed. The goal was to go west. We arrived in the town of Hirschberg. As soon as we were out of the middle of town, Prees shouted, ‘Dismissed!’ saying that our military service was over, and now it was every man for himself. He wished us all luck and we scattered. I kept close to Prees and a Hilfsdienst boy named Georg Larka. They were older, and it seemed safer to continue in their company. The men from the Rebane Battalion had left their legendary mark by the side of the road, their battalion number, ‘86’. It was hard to figure out why the Rebane men were dragging heavy artillery along, but the Germans too, hauled their own cannons along. More and more abandoned vehicles could be seen by the side of the road. I supplemented my provisions with whatever I found in the cars, so food was not a worry. When we got to the bridge crossing the Elbe River, we saw that on the other side there were Czechs, barricaded behind sandbags, with their machineguns aimed at us. At short intervals we were instructed through a loudspeaker to drop our weapons by the side of the

220

An Islander’s Life Story

road, and cross the bridge in groups of 40–50 men. Many of the Czechs wore sand-coloured uniforms. The Germans said that was the uniform of Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Apparently the Czechs had taken their clothing from the German warehouse. Everyone was searched individually, to make sure no-one was armed, and then we were lined up three deep, and men with armbands bearing the letters RC escorted us to a nearby schoolhouse. There we were lined up single file, told to take off our shirts, and hold our hands behind our heads. SS men had their blood type tattooed in their armpit. SS men were murderers! Whoever had the SS tattoo was punched in the face and dragged out of the line with abundant swearing. I have never understood why they didn’t make a distinction between the SS and the Waffen-SS, and seldom do so even today. If at the beginning of the war admission to the Waffen-SS was selective, according to height and Aryan race, then after the Germans began to be beaten, all those mobilized from Estonia were accepted. The Czechs did not make such distinctions, and so my classmate who had been mobilized, was also pushed out of line. The men with the blood-type tattoos were taken to a smaller building in the school courtyard, and we unmarked men to a long shed. The next morning we were chased out of the shed, lined up five deep, and the Waffen-SS men were brought out. It was a horrible sight. Many of them had been beaten to the point where they were unable to walk, and the healthier ones supported them. The most injured, about 15–20 of them, were ordered to the head of the line, and we began moving, escorted by the RC. With my eyes I sought out my classmate, who luckily was uninjured. We were marched through downtown Prague. The people looked on in silence, but there were plenty of those who swore, brandished their fists, and threw whatever they could lay their hands on. The march ended at the Prague stadium. There we were handed shovels, and taken a little distance away to the main road. There we found out what work we had been assigned. The men who had been beaten had been shot in the meantime. When the bodies had been dragged together, we had to dig a grave by the side of the road for 16 men. The ground was rock-hard. The guard said that if we did not bury the dead before nightfall, things would get dangerous, and the people would demand that we be shot. Finally we were told to throw the corpses into the pit, and quickly cover the grave. When we got back to the gates of the stadium, the guard wiped the sweat from his brow, and said we were insanely lucky to have escaped. We slept that night on the benches of the stadium, and in the morning they divided us into groups of 30 men and sent us off to work. Our job was to fill in bomb craters in the city streets. After we had finished this, we were locked into a shed in a courtyard. In the morning, Larka was given some kind of paper with which we were to go to an assembly point.

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

221

In the street there were RC men who guided us to a large market square. At one end was a high pile of earth, at the other a pile of boots and German army backpacks. The commander ordered us to line up and announced that we were to be shot. Larka started demanding an explanation. We were not criminals, neither were we really SS men, many of us were not Germans at all, but Estonians who had been mobilized. Larka and Masing, who knew Russian, showed the blue-black-and-white insignia on their sleeves, but no amount of explanation helped. It probably would have ended with our being shot, if a Russian major had not happened to walk into the courtyard. Larka and Masing again explained how we had got here, how all of the Estonians had been mobilized by the Germans, but now they wanted to shoot us all. Upon hearing that many of us were Estonians and mobilized men, the major said he knew that, and told the Germans, who were already barefoot and prepared for the mass grave, to put their boots back on. When they saw this, the Czechs gathered around the major and said, these are fascists, we can’t let them go. The Russian accompanied us to the gate, with himself last. Whatever Larka said to the major, in that long speech, remained incomprehensible to me because my knowledge of Russian was not good enough to understand. Later he said that what had probably had an effect was what he had said about the drunken mob whose retribution shamed the liberating Red Army. We walked on for a few kilometres to a small house. There the major gave Larka a paper, which was supposed to be a document of free passage to his own unit, located a few hundred metres from the road. Cars were parked underneath the trees; there was a field kitchen and about twenty men. Larka showed his document to the lieutenant who stepped up, who said хорошо,21 and sent us off to work in the kitchen. There were fine Ivans there who said we had to chop firewood, peel potatoes, and carry water from a little farther away. But first we had to eat! We were there for one night, and then sent on, unguarded. There was nowhere to escape to. When we arrived, we discovered that the assembly point for prisoners-of-war was a bare field, and we slept under the open sky. In the morning we were off again, escorted by Red Army guards, and in the afternoon arrived at our destination. This was a large prison camp with barracks, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, behind which there were high watchtowers armed by Red Army guards. We quickly found out that there were Estonians there. Talk of our being sent back to the homeland made us thoughtful. I was together with other Estonians, we were to be sent back to Estonia, but there we might have to face deportation again: besides, my mother and brother were in Germany. I decided to stay among the Germans; maybe there would be some chance of escaping to Germany.

222

An Islander’s Life Story

At the beginning of August there was news pertaining to us, from Larka who had been assigned as interpreter to the camp headquarters, since he had a good command of both German and Russian. He said that the camp would be dissolved in the near future, and all non-Germans would be sent back to their homelands; the German POWs would be sent to Russia to repair war damage. To make sure that everything was clear, another written questionnaire would be distributed concerning nationality and homeland, and then we would have to leave the camp. I talked the possibilities over with Larka. I didn’t want to go back to Estonia, but I didn’t want to go to Russia, either. I decided to declare myself an Estonian: better to go to Estonian than to Russia as a prisoner of war. Seeing from the lists composed at headquarters that no-one had declared to have come from Luxembourg, Larka decided to write that as his nationality. If one could be sure that no-one would check, one might as well write down that one was Australian! Towards the end of August, people began returning home. The first to leave were those headed west, including the ‘Luxemburgian’ Georg Larka, to whom I have a heavy debt of gratitude. The Estonians left the camp together with the Latvians and Lithuanians. In Dresden we were put on a train to Berlin. Our letter of passage was sufficient for all the document checks, and no questions were asked. In Berlin we had some time to explore the city. I saw those responsible for dividing the city into four quadrants: a large sign marked the boundary of the American Sector. A jeep filled with ‘Yanks’ passed by; two men were lying on the back seat, feet over the edge, and a black soldier peeled a banana and threw the peel onto the street. I gazed at the American Zone sign for a long time and considered whether to head for it. After all, I very much wanted to stay in the west, and now the chance presented itself. It must have been exhaustion and a sense of group spirit that made me fail to follow through with my return to Estonia. The rest of the journey went without a hitch; our letter of passage from the camp was valid as a ticket. Of course, our German uniforms attracted attention, but no questions were asked. Then we were in Valga, and I was back in Estonia. The date was the 21st of September. This was the same date that I had left Pärnu aboard a ship a year earlier. As we rolled on toward Tartu, I thought about what I might be facing. Two of us went on from Tartu, while the other boys stayed behind. In Tallinn, I said farewell to my former Ausbilder, and went on to Kopli where I had some friends. My arrival was a surprise to them; there were plenty of questions, but I was fed and then went to sleep. I was horribly exhausted. I went to bed at six in the evening, and awoke at four in the

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

223

afternoon the next day, having slept through without waking for twentytwo hours. That was the longest sleep of my life. The next morning I felt like a new man, and was ready to head for the train to Virtsu. I thought that, if not before, then certainly on the other side of the strait in Kuivastu, I would have dealings with either the NKVD or the border patrol. And so it was. Having presented my letter of passage, I was summoned to the border patrol headquarters and put on a truck between two armed men, on my way to Kuressaare. There I was taken to a familiar house, once the home of a local baker. There was an NKVD man there, an Estonian, who read the letter I had been given in the camp and asked questions. Where was I from? Where was I going? He wrote everything down, gave it to me to read over and sign, and then: ‘That’s all. You can go now.’ But where to? The NKVD man looked at me in amazement: ‘What do you mean, where to? You said you had relatives in the country, and that’s where you’re going.’ It was a surprise that they were letting me go just like that; I had not reckoned with it [being so easy]. My arrival was a surprise to my relatives. After I had told them my story, I also heard about how my mother and brother had left for Germany.22 In the fall of 1944 they had attempted twice to go to Sweden, but the weather had been stormy, and the leaky boat was filling up with water. They had turned back. After that they had gone to Germany in a larger ship. A new period of my life began. I did not dare stay on Saaremaa. Even though none of the ‘bloody’ deporters were still alive, Vassili Riis, the former NKVD boss, was still there as were other fervent communists from whom one could expect nothing good. I wanted to recover a bit, and to look into some opportunities to learn a trade. In order to continue my studies, I needed a place in a dormitory and a scholarship. When I read in the newspaper that Tallinn Technical School for Earth Sciences was about to open its doors and that they had both a dormitory and a stipend larger than anywhere else, my decision was made: that was where I was going. While I was living in the country, my greatest joy was receiving a letter from my father. He was in prison camp in Norilsk, and was working as the camp bookkeeper: life was hard, but the important thing was that he had an indoor job. That was why he was still alive. What remained was the hope that he would hold up. In January 1946, I went to Tallinn and took the entrance examination for the Tallinn Technical School for Earth Sciences with maximum results (all 5s), but I did not find my name on the list of those accepted. I heard that the credentials committee had weeded me out. One of the entrance requirements was a CV, and I did not dare leave my trip to Germany out of it: if they were to check and find I had hidden it, things would be far

224

An Islander’s Life Story

worse. I called the Air Force, the Air Force Hilfsdienst, which I had been forced to join, and then taken to Germany: I had come back to Estonia as a repatriate. There was a chance that no-one would do a background check. The chairman of the credentials committee was the Komsomol first secretary, Viies, and I was told I would have to go to him if I wanted to find anything out. Comrade Viies was away from the office; instead I was sent to someone named Lehe. The way he twisted the Estonian language was something awful. It was also unusual how often he spat: the floor was shining with it. He called me a fascist, and said that school was out of the question: I would have to redeem my many sins through hard work. That would have been the end of the story if Viies had not entered the room just then, and he began asking me questions. I had to lie, saying that I knew nothing about my father, my mother, or my brother, that they had disappeared during the time I was away from Kuressaare. What I said about Germany was the same as what I had written in my CV. At the end of the interview, Viies took a piece of paper, wrote something on it, put it in an envelope, and told me to take it to Directress Gorbulina. Having read Viies’ letter, Gorbulina wrinkled her brow, drew on her Belomor cigarette, and said that I was accepted into the technical school on a three-months probation, and that meant three months without a scholarship. The students at the Technical School were a motley crew. There were young boys just out of high school, as well as older men, who came mostly because of the high scholarship, and the technical school was a temporary stopping point for them. The Technical School had high standards, and besides qualifications in earth sciences, it also provided a general education. After graduation there was no problem with admission to an institute or to university. Many of the instructors were the same as those who lectured at the Tallinn Technical University. I did not have problems with studying; boyhood pranks, which had complicated my elementary school and pro-gymnasium days, were over. My main problem was financial. The scholarship was quite high: in the first year 320 roubles a month, and 360 roubles a month in the second and third year. As long as I lived at the dormitory, there was enough food, but I wanted to go to the theatre, concerts and dances, and there was not enough to spare for that: I had to skimp on food and find other ways to get more money. The only way to get extra money was to sell the loaf of bread I got with my bread ration card at the market. My bread, as well as the other boys’ was marketed by a boy from Võrumaa with business inclinations; from the sale of each loaf he would pocket 5 roubles. Sometimes when I was almost broke I would visit my friends in Tallinn, and usually they invited me to dinner. The best dances were at the youth centre on Lai Street, and before the dancing began there would be concerts.

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

225

While I was in Tallinn, I came to think that the NKVD had lost interest in me, since there were no marks against me as someone ‘suspicious’. But the athletics camp in 1946 showed that I had not been erased from their list. I knew that the credentials committee, which had been active the whole time, observing people and weeding them out, had found its way to me on the very last day. My elimination remained on my mind. When years later they tried to send me back to the Earth Sciences Institute for further study, I refused. I was sure that the NKVD had not forgotten me, and that they would start checking into things again, trying to figure out what kind of a fellow I was. In the second year there was practical work experience at the Kukruse mine, and I had my first chance to observe work underground. The work in the mine was primitive; the main tools were shovels and axes. Not a trace of conveyors nor of any of the machines we had learned about at the Technical School. The knowledge of the electrician-locksmiths was poor, and often they would turn to the German POWs working there for help. There was a POW camp at Kukruse, and some of the Germans worked in the mine. The next work experience was in the coal mines during May and June 1948; I and another group of boys were assigned to Gukovugol, 60– 70 kilometres away from the city of Gukov. We took some photographs there, and all of a sudden an old man in a felt jacket turned up, carrying a rifle, who ordered us to walk ahead of him single file to the town, where he turned us over to the militia. When we asked whether taking photographs was something suspicious, he replied that for many people it was and that passport and wedding photos were taken by a professional photographer. Other people don’t, except for spies, of course. That was news to us. It was the year 1948. My time as a schoolboy ended with the defence of my research paper, and I became a certified mining specialist. When I was given a choice of jobs, I chose Mine No. 2 in Jõhvi. I was to begin work at the end of August, and so had the summer off. Since my two uncles and their families had been deported from Saaremaa in the deportations of March 1949, I did not dare visit my home island. I continued to live in the dormitory, went to Pirita beach to sunbathe and swim. One Sunday I saw Raimond Valgre there. He was well-known and very popular musician. I had watched Valgre play in the orchestra, and at the market in front of a circus tent, attracting people by playing the accordion. Now I saw him walking along the riverbank in a wrinkled suit, his face sickly and pale despite the summer sun. On the 22nd of August, I was registered as Mines Master at Mine No. 2. Soon I was promoted to Assistant Department Manager and then to Department Manager. It soon became clear that besides what I had learned

226

An Islander’s Life Story

at the Technical School, there was much more to learn. The main thing was relational skills, how to communicate with people. It is hard to find a more motley crew than miners. If I was conciliatory in the beginning, and forgave a lot of things, for which the miners praised me, I soon realized that one could not only approach things positively, and that many people needed a harsher hand. Whatever the mess was, one had to mete out punishment, and not resort to teasing. Once I had mastered these skills in relating to people, it was an easy job; the department functioned smoothly, and the bonuses flowed in – the bonus was a whole month’s salary, and sometimes even more. I worked in Mine No. 2 from the day it was opened until the day it closed. When the minefield was exhausted in 1973, the work continued in Mine No. 4, and when that, too, closed its doors, I continued at the mine named ‘Estonia’ until I reached retirement. My bachelor’s existence ended in 1951. A year later I became a father: first my son Georg was born, and two years later my daughter Margot, followed by Jaak ten years later. I began corresponding with my mother and brother in the 1950s. They had settled in the USA in November 1949, and lived near New York. For many years they did not dare sign their own names to the letters, and I did not dare breathe a word about the fact that I was writing letters to my mother and brother; I would always say they were friends. I don’t know whether the KGB was fooled by it, but my own friends never knew I had such close relatives in the USA. I also kept up a steady correspondence with my father. When his ten years were up, he was sent to Kazakhstan for ‘resettlement’, and even there he worked as a bookkeeper, this time in a kolkhoz. He was released in 1956, and was rehabilitated on 27 December 1956. After that he lived in Jõhvi, working as head bookkeeper in the local production plant. When in 1966 my brother proposed that we come to visit them, it seemed like a far-off dream both to me and to my father – they would never give permission to such ‘suspicious’ people as ourselves. My brother was persistent, and suggested that we at least try, and when my father abandoned the idea, saying that he did not want to meet up with the KGB again, which was unavoidable in the case of a trip abroad – I decided to make an effort. I was on the good side at the mine, and all that I had to fear was a ‘no’, nothing more serious than that. After obtaining all the required permits and certificates, I submitted my application. Three months went by, and then I was called to the passport desk at the militia. I had been granted a travel permit! This was so unexpected that I sat down hard on my chair: I had been absolutely sure that I would not get it. I applied for a three month vacation and off I went.

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

227

Seeing my brother again had taken twenty-two years and one month. It was the 23rd of August 1966. I met my sister-in-law Viivi for the first time. They lived in Dumont, a nice, quiet town an hour’s bus ride from New York. We talked deep into the night. The next day our first trip was to the Kensico cemetery to my mother’s grave. My mother’s tears and worries, that had sent me off from home twenty-two years ago had been with good reason: I never saw her again, and only flowers and a handful of earth from the homeland were my thanks for all she had given me. When we visited the New York Estonian House a few days later, my brother predicted that I would meet three kinds of people there: those who came to have a conversation with me, and wanted to ask about life in Estonia; those who would like to ask, but wouldn’t, since they didn’t really know what kind of a fellow I was; and a third group of people for whom I was a blank space. That third group was convinced I was a KGB agent, since they wouldn’t let honest people out to travel abroad. My brother’s prediction was absolutely accurate. Later I realised that even two old friends from my home town had classified me as a KGB agent. Christmas Eve was my farewell party, as I would begin my trip back on the second day of Christmas. Watching New York ablaze with Christmas lights was a memorable sight. The first stop was in Amsterdam, and then came Moscow. Nobody would have had to tell us where we were: the border guards who lined the corridor leading to the airport terminal had such gloomy faces that one would think a planeload of enemies had arrived. The customs officials were not much kinder. My luggage was thoroughly searched, and when they didn’t find anything, I was asked where I had hidden things. It turned out that they were looking for pornographic literature. When I said I didn’t have any, they said, ‘Everyone has it, how come you don’t?’ I was taken to another room and asked to empty all my pockets. We had been allowed to take 30 roubles along to the USA, and I had 35 in my pocket, what was worse, there were also 5 dollars, which I had forgotten to declare. Now I was ordered to take my shoes off, and they tapped the soles, and also to take off my belt. When they filled out the form regarding the confiscation of 5 roubles and 5 dollars, a nachalnik23 came in. Asking what was up, he ordered them to give the dollars back, since it was such a paltry sum, and issued a permit to buy something from the hard currency store. But I was deprived of the roubles, which accrued to the state’s coffers. Soon after my return, my father died. Something that unexpected is hard to imagine. My father’s death was a heavy blow to me. He had been in very good form in his last years, especially for someone who had been deported.

228

An Islander’s Life Story

Since visiting the USA was rare in in 1966 I had to tell the folks at the mine about my impressions, and show them the 2x8 mm film and slides I had made there, Some people from the local newspaper attended the presentation, which made me cautious; I had to emphasize more of the negative things. The KGB was also interested. When I was summoned to the militia some time later, I tried to rack my brains for what I had said wrong. It was clear right from the start that the man who wanted to speak to me was from the KGB: it began as a friendly conversation about America, asking what I had seen there, whom I had met, how the ‘Yanks’ were doing and how the Estonian émigrés were. I said that it was revolting to see unemployed dark-skinned people sleeping on park benches in a city of skyscrapers and millionaires, and that seemed to please my interrogator. I was told to come back in two days. At the third meeting they got to the point: there was a man in our department who had visited his brother in Finland; would I be willing to talk with him, ask him how things were in Finland, and report back to them. I reported that I had indeed spoken to the man who had visited Finland, who had said life in Finland was no great shakes; even though most anything was available in the shops, the wages were low. The KGB man was surprised, and said he had heard just the opposite. They wanted to recruit me as an informer! If I helped them, they would help me, and I would have another chance to visit my brother, and they might even get me a promotion. I started to resist, saying that I was not a good choice for a spy. At first they worked on me and tried to convince me, but when I kept on arguing, the KGB man suddenly changed his tune, and asked in formal tones whether I wanted to visit my brother again, and if I did, I would have to do something in return. When I held my ground, I was given a week to think it over. When I said a firm ‘No’ after a week had passed, they did not give me much space to explain myself. They said that if I did not want to be on their side, I would have no hope of ever travelling to see my brother again, and that they would have to think about whether I was suitable for my current job. I had felt no fear during the previous conversations, but at the end of that last meeting I felt the fear creep under my skin. I decided not to tell my family a word about it. But I did tell the whole story to my Department Manager, whom I trusted completely. If I were to disappear one day, he would tell my family how I had become an ‘enemy’. And that was when I started to write my life story, so that my children would know what their father did and who he was. Things were bad in my home life; I tried to avoid a divorce only because Soviet courts usually gave the children to the mother to raise. But this kind of life could not go on forever. There was a divorce and soon

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

229

afterwards, a new marriage. From my second marriage to Milvi I have two wonderful daughters, Epp-Evely and Eda-Holle. When my brother invited me for a second visit, I was not granted a travel permit. There was no reason given. I tried three times, and was refused each time. In 1982 my brother and Viivi came to Estonia. Of course he wanted to go to Saaremaa, but was not given permission. There was also no permit to go to Jõhvi to put flowers on Father’s grave. My brother said that he would come back to Estonia again, when there was a blue-black-and white flag flying on Toompea. Times changed in the Soviet Union: when Milvi and I applied for a travel permit to the USA in 1988, it was granted. Twenty-two years had passed since my previous visit. When Enn bought me a plane ticket in 1992, I feared the worst, and with good reason. His health was very poor. Even a second operation did not help, and the illness got worse. And so that visit was a last farewell. That time in America, the last month of my brother’s life, was the hardest time in my life. Enn had always been my big brother and my role model; after Father was deported he had been a father to me. He was also a role model during the last month of his life – never any groaning, whining or complaining. I would like to be as strong as he was. I might ask myself whether I was born and lived at the right time; whether there wasn’t too little of a peaceful and normal life, whether there weren’t too many difficulties. But there can be only one answer: I lived at the right time. Life was not some stagnant pond about which there is nothing to remember. I remember life in the Estonian Republic very well; I lived through two occupations, was deported, saw the horrors of war, lived in a POW camp, crossed paths with the infamous KGB, got to travel to the USA three times, and was able to witness the return of Estonia’s independence. There isn’t much more that could fit into one life. Notes 1

2

3

The original life story, consisting of 180 pages, is stored in the Estonian Cultural History Archives, fund 350. The story has been sent in response to the public life writing appeal ‘My Destiny and Destiny of Those Close to Me in the Labyrinths of History’ in 1997. Translated by Tiina Ann Kirss. Johannes Aavik was an active proponent of Estonian language reform, a wide-ranging project which ranged from inventing new vocabulary from Finno-Ugric roots, and included a deliberate effort to erase ‘germanisms’. Vesse was reportedly one of the leaders from Saaremaa of the St. George’s Day uprising in 1343–1345, The character of Vesse was inscribed in

230

4

5

6 7

8

9

10

11

12

13

An Islander’s Life Story

Estonian cultural memory by Eduard Bornhöhe in his 1880 short novel, ‘The Avenger’ (Tasuja), a literary work that has remained relevant and in print regardless of political context. The symbolism of the St. George’s Day uprising was implemented as an element of Soviet propaganda during World War II. The ancient struggle for independence was also a popular theme in the art and literature of Soviet Estonia, as in Aadu Hint’s work ‘Son of Vesse’ (1948), which was reprinted every ten years up to 1986. Pro-gymnasium corresponds to junior high school or middle school. In the 1930s in Estonia, admission to gymnasium or high school was based on entrance examinations. ‘My favourite subject was recess’ – this is school humour, and refers to the fact that the student’s attention was not focused on acquiring knowledge, but instead on socializing with friends and schoolmates. Politruk – cf. note 4 in Uustalu’s story. Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov (1881–1969), military and political leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin’s close friend and collaborator. During World War II, he was a member of the State Defense Committee (30 Jun 1941– 21 Nov 1944). Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1881–1969), communist leader and Soviet statesman 1919–1946. Kolkhoz – the dominant form of agricultural enterprise in the former Soviet Union operating on state-owned land by peasants from a number of households who belonged to the collective and who were paid as salaried employees. Rahva Omakaitse (People’s Self Defence / People’s Home Guard) − the voluntary armed units established by the Soviet authorities in the summer of 1940; forerunner of the militia. See the entry June 14, 1941 in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. Vassili Riis – Commissar of the political police in Kuressaare, in 1940–41, head of the Saaremaa Department of the Estonian SSR People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (SARK), and head of the Saaremaa Department of the Estonian SSR People’s Commissariat for State Security (RJRK). From the fall of 1941 to 1944, Riis hid from the German authorities in Saaremaa. From 1944–46, Riis was editor-in-chief of the newspaper Saarte Hääl (Islanders’ Voice), and from 1946–48, chairman of the Saaremaa Executive Committee of Peasants’ and Workers’ Soviets. Riis’ activities during the period 1948–52 are not well known. In 1995 the State Security Police of the Estonian Republic accused Vassili Riis of giving his written consent to the arrest of 1062 citizens of the Republic of Estonian, and for their deportation in 1940–41. The case against Riis was terminated in 1998 upon his death. The Chief of Kuressaare Police Department Johannes Mets conducted arrests in the summer of 1941, following the Soviet repression policy that was more firmly established by the state of war declared on 22 July. The

Ylo-Vesse Velvelt

14

15

16 17

18 19 20

21 22

23

231

arrested people were taken to Kuressaare prison, and because of the lack of space, also to the buildings of Kuressaare Castle. Since September 1941, when the Soviet troops had abandoned the town of Kuressaare, several mass and single graves were discovered with the remains of a total of about 90 murdered people. This event is remembered as the Kuressaare Massacre. Aleksander Mui, First Secretary of the Saaremaa Communist Party Committee, is considered one of the persons responsible for the mass murder that took place in the cellar of the Kuressaare Fortress in summer, 1941. Joann Ellam, chairman of the Saaremaa Provincial Executive Committee was responsible for security behind Soviet front lines as a member of the Defence Committee of the Province of Saaremaa. Other members of the committee were Aleksander Mui and Vassili Riis. In the state of military emergency, they implemented policies of repression against the local inhabitants, in conjunction with Soviet military forces. Aus allen Himmeln fallen – to fall from heaven to earth, in German. Lied aus! Die Augen - links!, Was sagen die Truppe?, Guten Morgen, nette Puppe! – Stop singing! Look left! What does the company say? Good morning, pretty doll! (in German). Ein Lied! – Start singing! (in German). SD – Sicherheitsdienst, German Security Police. Colonel Alfons Rebane, legendary commander in Estonian veterans’ culture. A military professional prior to World War II, Rebane volunteered for the front when German troops arrived in Estonia in 1941. From 1942– 44, fought as company commander on the Volkhov front, and in August 1942 was appointed commander of a unit which was later reformed as the 658th Eastern Battalion. For the battles fought on the Volkhov front, Rebane was awarded with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. From August 1944 Rebane was the commander of the 47th Regiment of the Estonian Divisions, and took part in battles on Estonian soil until September 1944. From January 1945, he fought on the Oppeln front, and for his successful breakthrough and for saving the personnel of the regiment staff, was awarded with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. In veterans’ lore, those who served under him are known as the old lions’ battalion, or ‘fox cubs’ (Rebane means ‘fox’ in Estonian). Rebane died in Germany in 1976, and was reburied in Estonia in 1999. Хорошо – all right (in Russian). On the mass escape of Estonians to Sweden and Germany in September 1944 in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology, in this volume. Начальник – boss, executive (in Russian).

Part II Trajectories and Meanings: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biographical War Experience

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way: The Opportunities and Choices of Estonian Men during the Political Changes of the 1940s Aigi Rahi-Tamm 1. Introduction The 1940s was a critical time for the Estonian people. The annexation of the Baltic countries by the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940 under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, World War II, and the reestablishment of the Soviet rule in Estonia in the autumn of 1944 crippled the democratic development of the small country for decades and resulted in suffering, which left the population with scars that are still visible today. The analysis of the reasons, developments, and consequences of these events, which date back more than half a century, has only become possible in Estonia, as well as the other Eastern European countries (Fogu, Kansteiner, 2006, 295), in the past 20 years. In Soviet Estonia, the truthful reporting of these events was unthinkable. Political changes in the second half of the 1980s shifted the historical events that had been suppressed or distorted to the point of non-recognition, as well as concealed personal histories, to the centre of attention. The public interest in these dramatic periods in Estonian history, having passed through several ascendant and descendant periods during the restoration of independence, has now shifted from general political events towards individual experiences, in order to raise a more profound awareness of Estonia’s experiences in the recent past and to make sense of people’s behaviour during those complicated times. In the Estonian study of history, there is also a need to place greater emphasis on observing the impact of events on specific groups of people and on the society as a whole (Jaago, Kõresaar, Rahi-Tamm, 2006). An individual-based approach to history implies the need to work with collections of information or personal stories, in which memories, biographies, letters, and diaries are especially important. Just as interesting are the many documents that are preserved in the archives, such as the personal and family files of those who were repressed and various types of investigative, prosecutorial and other files that not only provide evidence of the authorities’ positions toward the accused but also have a certain added value for the historian in treating personal stories and revealing the nature of the Soviet period.1 This chapter focuses on the story of a man who was born during the first years of World War I and whose life story developed into a kaleidoscope resulting from the year of his birth.2 The decisive events in Aleksander Loog’s3 life were service in three armies –

236

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

beginning in the army of pre-war independent Estonia, followed by service in the Red Army and later in the army of Nazi Germany. This, in turn, resulted in him serving terms in a German prisoner of war camp and the Gulag, which robbed the man of a total of 16 years of his life. Loog’s story is filled with various events that befell Estonian men in the 1940s and 50s, and few were able to escape with their lives. When possible, the fate of Loog’s companions has also been comparatively described in order to indicate the various possible consequences of the events and to create a context for people’s choices in the given circumstances. Cataclysmic historical events put people in situations where there were no good choices; one had to choose between bad and worse. A comparison of various stories helps us to better understand the compromises, agreements, renunciations, and various means of survival one encounters in involuntary situations. An examination of the chronological events of Loog’s life reveals many cause-and-effect associations related to the fact that the decisions that one makes at one stage can impact one’s life at a later stage. The memories recorded by Loog,4 conversations with him5 and material from his personal files,6 were used simultaneously for writing this article, which allowed for a broader approach to his story and for attention to be paid to problems related to the criticism of sources important to historians. 2. Aleksander Loog’s Youth and Choice of Occupation Aleksander Loog was born in 1914 in the Ufa Province, Russia, where his father, like thousands of other Estonians, had moved to find work at the beginning of the century. His Latvian mother was also an emigrant. Although the family’s financial situation improved during their time in Russia, a decision was made to come back to Estonia, when the political situation in Russia changed in 1917. In 1921, the family opted7 to return to Estonia. However, they were not able to settle down permanently, as the farm they had inherited did not provide sufficient income, and so the family travelled from place to place; his father, who was a master distiller, searched for better employment opportunities. Of the family’s four sons, the two youngest – Villem and Aleksander – survived. The frail health that troubled Aleksander prompted him to regularly strengthen his body and participate in sports, which developed into a healthy habit that he continued to old age. His brother, Villem, also participated in sports. It is difficult to say what most influenced the boys’ choice of occupation – Villem chose to go to the Police Academy and Aleksander to the Military Academy. Perhaps it was the knowledge that these jobs would provide steady employment. The qualifications for

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

237

becoming a police officer or soldier were quite rigorous; discipline was consistently demanded; and, a good physical condition and a proper appearance were also important. In the young Estonian Republic, great emphasis was placed on making sure that the reputation of these occupations would be as good as possible. In 1935, Aleksander Loog first completed his compulsory military service and thereafter entered the Military Academy. By 1939, he had become an officer with the Cavalry Regiment, initially in the lowly rank of ensign bearer, which he facetiously referred to as follows: An ensign bearer is not really an officer, like a chicken is not a bird. Quite soon after, in February 1940, he was promoted to junior lieutenant. The military of the Republic of Estonia invested a great deal in an educated cadre; in 1939, there was one officer or non-commissioned officer for every three recruits and there was a fixed idea that the success of the military was primarily determined by a strong officer corps. When World War II broke out, Aleksander and his policeman bother, Villem, were in ‘high-risk’ jobs. Even before direct military action had taken the regular army personnel to the front, Estonian men had undergone a Soviet ‘purge’ that primarily affected soldiers and policemen. 3. In the Whirlwind of the Changes in 1940 In June 1940, at a time when the attention of the world was focused on the events in Western Europe and the aggressive behaviour of Nazi Germany, the Red Army invaded the territory of the Republic of Estonia. The total reorganisation of the Estonian governmental and social system began. The transfer of power started initially with the replacement of officials in the most important segments of the governmental apparatus with people suitable to the new order; all government agencies were subordinated to representatives of the USSR. Estonia’s politicians submitted to the demands of the Soviet Union, hoping thereby to protect their people and choose peace over war – a hope that unfortunately turned out to be imaginary. The concessions they made did not save their people from their ordeals. Although the Baltic countries did not mount an armed resistance, one of the first steps taken by the Soviet leadership was to take over the country’s armed forces and leadership, which also included arresting people. The first to be arrested were leading politicians (primarily former Estonian Ministers of the Interior), high military officers, national and local leaders of the Kaitseliit, a voluntary state defence organisation, as well as police officers, government officials, and others. Beginning in the

238

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

autumn of 1940, the circle of people being arrested expanded daily. If initially, the arrests were relatively unnoticed by the general public, soon thereafter, the nature of the regime became increasingly apparent – disappearances, arrests, and interrogations became topics of daily conversation. In 1940, about 1,000 Estonian citizens were incarcerated; in 1941, 6,000 were imprisoned and the majority of them were declared guilty, killed or sent to Soviet prison camps; only about 2–8% of them survived (Rahi-Tamm, 2005, 27). The Estonian Peoples’ Army was reorganised into the 22nd (territorial) Rifle Corps (Tshapenko, 2006). What became of Aleksander Loog and his colleagues? Estonian military personnel had been ordered to avoid any conflicts with or provocations against the Red Army. In June 1940, when the Red Army began taking over the Estonian forces, Loog’s unit was not allowed to return to their barracks; all units, his included, and institutions were dissolved. The Estonian units were ordered to vacate all the buildings in their use immediately (within a few hours); Red Army troops were then housed in them. Initially, the Estonian units were housed in schoolhouses that were empty due to the summer vacation, as well as in cinemas, theatres, private apartments, and even a town hospital, as in the case of one small town. Some of Estonia’s regular soldiers and conscripts who were left without shelter in the course of the evictions were sent on temporary holiday (formally to help in agricultural work), were released from service, retired, or were transferred to the reserves (Pajur, 2007, 67). In the course of taking over and reforming the military, officers and conscripts were transferred from one unit to another; Aleksander Loog was transferred from the Cavalry Regiment in Tartu to an anti-tank regiment in Võru. A cavalry regiment was not formed in the 22nd Rifle Corps (Pajur, 2007, 88). During the year, all ‘undesirable’ officers were removed from the military, and many were arrested; some of them, about 800 Estonian regular officers, were murdered before the war broke out (Laasi, 1989; Salo, 1996; Pihlau, 2003). About half (ca. 9,000) of the former Estonian soldiers remained in the 22nd Territorial Rifle Corps, and they were dispersed in various units and intermixed with Red Army personnel. All operational procedures were changed: thereafter, all operations were conducted in Russian, and addressing anyone as ‘sir’ in mutual communications was immediately prohibited; people could address each other only as ‘comrade’. Political leaders were assigned to each unit, whose assignment was ‘political clarification and educational work’, propaganda, monitoring the mentality of the soldiers, etc. Soldiers’ committees were also set up, which, under the label of ‘political educational work’ dealt with undermining the authority of Estonian officers, as well as inciting conflicts between officers and soldiers. Similar functions were fulfilled by the party

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

239

organisations created in the units, by establishing party control over the military. In his memoirs, Aleksander Loog reacts quite dispassionately to the change in power of 1940 and the dissolving of the Estonian Army that accompanied it; he states that he does not remember much from this period. It is possible that this is a mark of his training, in that it is not a soldier’s business to evaluate the decisions made by politicians; their obligation is to serve their country and follow orders. The wretched clothing of the Red Army soldiers, when they arrived in Estonia, was perhaps the only discernible comparison in Loog’s story between the former and the new period, when he comments that soon the Estonians were deprived of their good clothing. The chaos that started to cumulate among Estonian men after the deportation of Estonian officers in June 1941 (compare with Uluots, 1999), does not emerge from Loog’s story. The only commentary to provide some indication of the changed attitude is that generally, the men started to keep quiet because some people had already disappeared and the others drew their own conclusions and were careful. One had to keep one’s mouth shout and was not to complain. (P. 51.)

However, it was the deportations that ripped the mask off the Soviet way of ruling and were the turning point in the attitude of the Estonian people. Against the background of the events that occurred in the former Polish territories, it was only a matter of time before an action to eliminate ‘the socially alien element’ was also carried out in the Baltic countries. In the period between 10th and 17th June, about 10,000 people were deported to Russian camps or exiled; the men were arrested and sent to Gulag camps; women, children and the elderly were specially resettled in Siberia. A third of the deportees were under-aged children, and therefore, it is impossible to accept Soviet propaganda, which declared that they were ‘active anti-Soviet elements’. Sixty percent of the deportees died (Maripuu, Kaasik, 2006, 377–379). After the June Deportations of 1941,8 people began going into hiding and fleeing their homes in large numbers. Against this backdrop, the news of the outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany was seen as a possible avenue of escape, despite the fact that the Estonians did not trust the Germans; the supremacy of the Baltic Germans that had existed in the land of the Estonians for many centuries had not yet been forgotten.9 Or as Aleksander Loog said during his conversation with the author, Estonians had to deal with two enemies: enemy number one was Russia; enemy number two was Germany. At military school we studied both their languages just in case. Against the Red terror of 1940–41, the Germans became the ‘liberators’ from Soviet terror in the eyes of the Estonians

240

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

(Mertelsmann, 2005, 45–55). A similar attitude also developed in other areas occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939–40 (Weiner, 2001). 4. Outbreak of War and Withdrawal to Russia Along with the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR at the beginning of 1941, the desertion of Estonian soldiers from military units also began; this increased dramatically after information spread that the Rifle Corps would be relocated to Russia. It is estimated that over a thousand soldiers hid themselves in Estonia’s forests and participated actively in the anti-Soviet resistance movement during the summer of 1941 (known as the Summer War in Estonian history). On 22nd June, a state of war was declared in the western regions of the Soviet Union. A few days later, the departments of the Estonian SSR NKVD received orders to form 100–200 strong destruction battalions from trustworthy Party, Komsomol and Soviet activists. Their assignment, along with other special NKVD units, was to carry out the scorched-earth tactics announced by Joseph Stalin in his radio speech of 3rd July, which among other things, meant ruthless behind-the-lines combat with disorganisers, deserters, creators of panic, and spreaders of rumours. Thereby, broad powers were granted for battling the civilian population. Anyone who had deserted the military or was involved in ‘banditry’ in the Soviet context could be shot on the spot. Freedom was also granted to arrest the families of deserters or ‘bandits’ and to confiscate their property (Paavle, Kaasik, 2006, 473–474.) On 2nd July, the compulsory mobilisation of men into the Red Army began; many did not rush to fulfil this order and opted instead to evade, in order to avoid ending up in the Soviet Army. Consequently, a large number of very different people gathered in Estonia’s forests – passive, subconscious shirkers, as well as active fighters, who gathered their forces for self-defence and started acquiring weapons when possible. As the frontline approached, the encounters between the Forest Brothers and destruction battalions increased. Looting by the NKVD and other special units, the burning of farms and villages, and terror against the civilian population, who were treated as supporters or protectors of the Forest Brothers, created very strong anti-Soviet feelings. From June to October 1941, about 2,000 civilians died or were killed in Estonia, a large number of whom fell victim to violent attacks (Rahi-Tamm, 2005, 27–28). Actual military hostilities reached Estonian soil on 7th July when the first German units crossed the Estonian border at Ikla. When war broke out, Aleksander Loog along with the anti-tank unit that he was com-

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

241

manding was transferred to a camp in Värska. This region of SouthEstonia was quickly occupied by the Germans. Loog’s unit had to make a quick withdrawal to the rear in Russia. Apparently, it was crossing the Estonian-Russian border – being removed from Estonia and seeing the poverty in Russia – that became the impetus for Aleksander Loog contemplating escape. Judging by the battle din, the German units were already quite close when he and two companions decided to escape as nightfall arrived. In the same area, near Porkhov, about 4,500 men defected to the German side, which represented the majority of the Estonians that were evacuated as part of the Red Army. In September 1941, when the 22nd Rifle Corps was dissolved, only about 500 former Estonian soldiers were left in its ranks. The subsequent journey of these men took them to labour battalions that were under NKVD command or part of the Gulag system. Pursuant to orders issued by the Commander of Main Political Directorate of the Army on 28th September 1941, the peoples from areas occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939–40 were to be excluded from active military service. The Estonians, as people who were untrustworthy for national, social, and other reasons, were not sent to the front. Estonians began to be sent to the front again in December 1942 (Usai, 1993, 5–18, Weiner, 2001, 148). The changes that had occurred in 1940–41 had totally upset the military’s understanding of state service, order and discipline. According to historian Ago Pajur, many guardsmen and conscripts just went along with what was happening since there was no better alternative – with a greater or lesser feeling of inner protest (Pajur, 2007, 85). Initially, one tried to adapt as well as possible. Estonia was flooded with Red Army troops and Chekists, which made armed resistance equivalent to suicide. The increasing number of arrests and the deportations of June 1941 caused a change in the restrained attitudes, which was expressed in the escapes and surrenders that took place in the summer of 1941. Aleksander Loog does not reveal very much about his motives in 1940 and 1941; primarily, a wait-and-see, cautious attitude can be perceived, which was seldom formulated as conscious actions. The transfer from the Estonian Army to the Red Army also takes place with minimal commentary. As background, it should be noted that Loog was born in Russia; the mental picture of his childhood home was not very dramatic and he had probably heard stories that tended to be optimistic from his parents. His parents were financially successful and they had not experienced the situation in Russia after the Great Terror. A certain turnaround could have occurred at the time that Loog ended up in Russia with his unit and saw the conditions there with his own eyes. His attitude must also have been affected by news about his former companions in the Cavalry Regiment10 and the arrest of his police-

242

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

man brother,11 although he does not dwell on this in his story. In any case, he preferred to stay in Estonia and not to withdraw to the Soviet rear with the Red Army. 5. Imprisoned by the Germans Aleksander Loog’s successful escape from the Red Army saved him from the horrors of the labour battalions, where the men’s death rate was very high (Usai, 1993), but it did not save him from a German POW camp. German propaganda enticed Estonians to defect, but the promise of a quick return to their homeland turned out to be a lie. Germany divided prisoners of war into a hierarchy that constantly changed during the war. The English and Americans were at the top of the POW hierarchy followed by prisoners of war from the western European countries and Norway; they were followed by prisoners from southern Europe, and before the Barbarossa plan was implemented, Polish prisoners of war were at the bottom of the hierarchy. After the implementation of the Barbarossa plan, Soviet POWs were on the bottom rung of the hierarchy along with the Poles. Since they formed quite a varied group from a political and national point of view, dual screening was introduced for them. Based on nationality, the Germans, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Polish, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Finns, and Georgians were separated from the rest. They could be released on an accelerated basis and sent back to their homelands, although this did not apply to Poles and Georgians. The second basis for selection was their personal political attitudes, based on which they were divided into politically undesirable, politically harmless, and politically trustworthy individuals. The latter were treated as suitable elements for building up the occupied areas. Most ‘politically intolerable elements’ (such as Red Army commissars) were handed over to special commandos or groups, and as a rule were executed (Maripuu, 2006, 739–742). The classification of prisoners of war changed and was supplemented throughout the war based on frontline requirements. After limited imprisonment, the Estonian privates were sent back to Estonia in November 1941. The Nazis had plans for the officers, but while they clarified them and ‘picked through’ the men, they continued to be incarcerated. Aleksander Loog’s disappointment in the Germans’ behaviour was apparent. The harshness of the treatment revealed itself in the constant food shortages, thirst, and non-existent lodgings:

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

243

Our biggest worry was food. At first we were given a kind of soup made of rotten beet. The soup had an awful stink. At home, even pigs did not get such food. On the first day no-one touched the soup; later we simply had to eat it. (P. 54.)

Unlike prisoners from western European, Estonian prisoners could not hope for Red Cross food packages; the Estonian People’s United Aid was not able to start organising assistance deliveries until later. Procuring additional food was a question of survival for people battling malnutrition and disease. Under these conditions, Aleksander Loog was sufficiently diplomatic to talk his way out of the camp and get work at the army food warehouse and vegetable field, which saved him from the worst fate. At the beginning of 1942, the Estonian officers also started to be allowed to return to Estonia selectively and under certain circumstances. Some officers, many of whom had family that had been deported or murdered by the Soviet authorities, had constantly expressed a wish to go to the front, to fight against Communism. But just as the Soviet authorities did not trust Estonians on the front lines, the Nazi authorities did not trust them either. When the war had broken out between the Soviet Union and Germany, the Estonians had quietly hoped that they would be able to restore their lost independence in the new situation. The Estonian nationalist groups that developed in the summer of 1941 began to work out various courses of action (Sarv, 2006, 40–48).12 However, waging a ‘good’ war did not succeed (Judt, 2000, 294) and soon it became clear that Nazi Germany also treated the Estonians as a conquered people and not the citizens of an independent country. The units of the Estonian Forest Brothers, which were organised during the Summer War of 1941, dispersed after the occupation of Estonia. The higher German leadership refused to accept units formed on the basis of the local population, since participation in the battle against Bolshevism could have given the population a basis for demanding the restoration of independence. Only a slowing of the frontline advance and great losses forced the German leadership to reappraise their position and to allow the formation of defence battalions consisting of local residents.13 After eight months of incarceration, Aleksander Loog agreed to attend preparatory police courses in order to get out of the POW camp: they wanted to use us in the border police, in the ports and at the airports to check documents. However, Loog, who was a trained soldier, preferred local police service instead of army service, because he thereby avoided being sent to Germany and ending up in the German Army: The Germans wanted to send some of us to SS units, to a training school in Germany, saying that our training was inadequate, that we needed the

244

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

training of a German officer. But I thought that this was not what I wanted, not an SS-officer; if anything then perhaps [I would accept being] Wehrmacht but not the SS. (P. 58.)

Just as he had evaded being sent to Russia, he also did everything to avoid being sent to Germany. 6. German Service: Political Police and Wehrmacht Aleksander Loog did not really want to talk about the next stage of his life in the memoirs he had written or during the interview. Actually, it remains inexplicable why he does not say anything about his police service, making only one remark to characterise this period: That’s how the time passed. Is this because it was a path of compromise, that is embarrassing after the fact, and the content and definition of which have changed along with research on World War II (Gross, 2000, 23–32)? Or would Loog violate other people’s private sphere by providing explanations on this subject? His narrative is generally characterised by a preference to talk about things without mentioning specific names, which makes it difficult to provide a historical context for his story. Therefore, the stage of Loog’s life that is related to his police service is reconstructed on the basis of archival materials. After completing the course at the police school in June 1942, Aleksander Loog was sent to work as an Assistant in the Estonian Political Police department in Pärnu. The competency of the Estonian Political Police Department (B-IV)14 included monitoring the reaction of the population to the authorities – opposition activity, the political aspiration and activities of the churches and religious sects. Opposition was defined as any resistance to the established order, and could, for instance, include individuals that tried to incite factional animosity (farmers versus city dwellers, the citizenry versus officials, Germans versus Estonians, etc.). The definition of participation in Communist activities was also quite broad and included all of the following: propagating Communist propaganda; aiding the enemy; sympathising with Soviet rule; participating in the work of Soviet institutions; membership in the Party or Komsomol; membership in the destruction battalions, People’s Self Defence (Rahva Omakaitse),15 security organs, or militia; as well as participation in raids, deportations; fighting against German forces or Self Defence (Omakaitse)16, etc. Aleksander Loog, who had been sent to work in the Political Police in Pärnu, first worked as an Assistant’s aide and dealt primarily with organising information and maintaining the corresponding records. There-

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

245

after, he was assigned the position of Assistant, which required him to collect testimony regarding individuals accused of being pro-Communist; he did not deal with the interrogation of arrestees. Later, in 1948, he confirmed to a Soviet investigator that he did not deal ‘actively’ with witnesses, but rather helped them to avoid punishment. Indeed, a series of examples can be brought from archival documents where attempts were made to save incarcerated or suspected people with exonerative testimony.17 Co-operation with the authorities could vary a great deal during the Soviet as well as German occupations – from enthused collaborators to ‘ostensible co-operation’, which is difficult to verify and complicated to evaluate. In 1943, Aleksander Loog asked to be transferred to Tartu and entered the University of Tartu to study physical education. Apparently he hoped to be relieved of police work in this way, but his request to be released from his job with the Political Police was not granted. At the time, the precondition for admission to university was one year of service in the Reich Labour Service18 or comparable military service, which included service in the Home Guard. As Loog’s example proves, work in the police, which was important to the state, also qualified. It was easier to get into university if one could present proof of a health problem that precluded labour service or military service (Hiio, Piirimäe, 2007, 443). The alternatives for university-aged young people were quite slim and included militarily important work at home, in the Reich Labour Service, Air Force Auxiliary Service, military service, work in military industries, work as Red Cross nurses or orderlies, or even escaping from Estonia or going into hiding. The next opportunity for Aleksander Loog to be released from police work came in February of 1944, when the largest general mobilisation during the German occupation took place, involving those born between 1904 and 1923.19 Officers, military officials, deputy officers, military veterinarians, military pharmacists, non-commissioned officers, military medical and veterinary assistants, and all doctors up to 60 years of age, as well as veterinarians and pharmacists had to fulfil military service obligations, and all men aged between 17 and 60 had to join the Home Guard (Niglas, Hiio, 2005, 972). Acting as President, Jüri Uluots, the legal Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia, around whom the Estonian political centre had converged, supported this mobilisation in his radio speech. The assembly of higher governmental leaders who remained in Estonia, which included the representatives of the former political parties of the Estonian Republic, set the fight for the restoration of Estonian independence as their objective. Although the Estonian nationalists differed as to the choice of tactics, and the population’s general attitude toward the occupation

246

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

authorities was degenerating, many Estonian still believed that the only possibility for protecting themselves against the Red Army, which was reinvading the country, was to do it in a foreign German uniform. During the compulsory mobilisation of February 1944, 32,000 men were conscripted, and Aleksander Loog was one of them. By this time, normal studies at the University of Tartu had already ceased. Having been transferred from police work to the army, Loog continued to avoid being sent to Germany, which seems to have been the main principle of his wartime activities: I have already been in Germany and have very bad memories of this experience. At first, Loog tried to procure a health certificate that would have declared him unfit to serve. The commission’s decision, i.e. not suitable for the frontline, but can serve behind the frontline, did not save him. Chance meetings with former acquaintances from his day at military school convinced him to join the Frontier Guard Regiment that had just been formed of recently mobilised men, where he was offered a position as the commander of a training company: I agreed at once for that was the only possibility to avoid being sent to Germany. If I did not go to the Frontier Guard Regiment, I would become a kind of defector. In going there [to the 3FGR], no-one would be looking for me. That was an Estonian regiment formed of men from Läänemaa (Lääne region), Pärnumaa (Pärnu region), and Viljandimaa (Viljandi region). (P. 59.)

Loog actually considered the frontier guard regiment to belong more to the Estonian than to the German Army. Many of the men that fought in the frontier guard regiments shared this assessment. For instance, Juhan Vermet (Lieutenant Colonel during the Republic of Estonia), who was assigned to command the 2nd Frontier Guard Regiment, even told a NKVD investigator in 1946 that, despite subordination to German command, he considered his unit to be part of an Estonian Army fighting against the Red Army.20 Six frontier guard regiments and one reserve regiment were formed of the men who gathered to defend the borders of their country (Kraft, 2006). In a situation where auxiliary forces had to be sent to the front quickly, the training of the regiment was incomplete. There was no time to practice battlefield co-ordination or to develop the sense of solidarity that was necessary, not to mention the lack of weaponry, clothing and other equipment. There was also a great deficit of officers in the regiment, and based on his earlier training, Aleksander Loog became the head of an anti-tank company. Speaking about his battle experiences in the frontier guard regiment, Loog is more than modest; his section of the front was comparatively

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

247

peaceful, where artillery fire could be heard from time to time, he contends. Unfortunately, it must be recognised that the given description is misleading. However, as often is true in wartime, every soldier assesses the situation based on his own position. Military historian Tiit Noormets has emphasised that ‘[o]ne soldier’s description of a battle usually differs from that of the soldiers that have fought alongside him, since each is actually only aware of the action in his immediate vicinity. A “vague picture” of the battle is created by a jumble of individual and incomplete perceptions.’ (Noormets, 2003, 83; cf. Lofgren, 2006).

However, the actions of the frontier guard regiments have been quite thoroughly researched in recent times. The 3rd Frontier Guard Regiment, in which Aleksander Loog served, participated in several battles and suffered significant losses. The regiment defended the front from the northeast shore of Lake Peipsi to the Narva River. The battles fought with the Red Army at the beginning of September resulted in the retreat of the frontier guard regiments. Again, the Estonians were disappointed by the actions of the Germans; Loog summarised this situation in one sentence: The Germans retreated first, with the Estonians left as the last units to cover the retreat. His frontline companion, Helmut Luiga, recalls the following: ‘On the night of 17th September, the outermost machine gun nest reported that the Germans had left during the night. There were no Germans beside us. We went to check; we had been left totally alone. We were between Lake Peipsi and Narva. The front had already advanced across the Narva River.’ (Luiga, 1991, 117.)

The route of the units retreating from Narva was not unnoticed by the Soviets; on 19th September, the Commander of the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps gave the order to accelerate the attack (Laar, 2007, 126). The Battle of Avinurme that followed was one of the most tragic pages in Estonian history; Estonian men were on both sides of the battle line, while a multitude of wagons with refugees clogged the roads in the area. Some of the combatants have referred to these events as the most horrible scenes that I have seen in the course of my war years from 1941–1947 (Laar, 2007, 139). As a consequence of the Battle of Avinurme, the northern front in Estonia collapsed; the frontier guard regiments that should have assumed defensive positions in Tallinn lost their central leadership. The units that had been retreating in an organised manner dispersed into smaller bands,

248

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

with everyone trying to get back home independently. Aleksander Loog’s regiment collapsed and many were taken prisoner. Based on the memoirs of Lieutenant Otto Laur, only four men escaped the last besieged encirclement (Kraft, 2006, 202). Aleksander Loog was among them, and he recalls: The Frontier Guard Regiments were destroyed, there was no resistance. Everybody tried to save themselves. I took a courier, also on horseback, with me and we went towards the West. (P. 59.)

Without initially understanding what to expect, in September 1944, Loog and a courier began to flee westward. The men did not arrive at their destination of the seaside town of Haapsalu, in order to get on a boat. Actually, it is not even clear from Loog’s story if he really wanted to leave Estonia; rather he intuitively wanted to escape the centre of conflict. In similar conditions, the primary idée fixe of the men who had been pulled into the war was to get home. Loog started moving with his companions inland from the sea along side roads. In a situation, where Estonia’s road were filled with refugees, retreating Germans and advancing Soviet soldiers, along with NKVD units that accompanied the Red Army, the men searching for a way home had to be very careful, as the case of Herbert Haas demonstrates (the adjutant of the 2nd Battalion of the same frontier guard regiment). Aleksander Loog does not mention his name, but he can be identified based on Loog’s descriptions and supplementary sources. Herbert Haas, who had already succeeded in obtaining ‘proper’ documents, initially moved fearlessly along larger roads, until he was captured by the NKVD and placed among the prisoners. This time, he succeeded in escaping the NKVD’s grasp, although six months later, in March 1945, he was arrested and sent to Norillag prison camp for 10 years (Õispuu, 1996, 66). After some wandering, Loog was able to get back home. However, his wife, whom he practically ignores in his memoirs, had succeeded in escaping to Germany.21 At such turning points in life, when one must decide and act very quickly, a question inevitably arises: what were the choices and opportunities of Aleksander’s companions, and what was the fate of these men? Should they retreat towards Germany with their units, escape across the sea to Sweden, stay in Estonia and be imprisoned by the Soviets, go into hiding and try to resist, or try to melt into Soviet society again… The stories of the men who served in the frontier guard regiment at the same time as Loog demonstrate that their futures turned out very different.22 Mart Kaerma, the Commander of the 3rd Frontier Guard Regiment went into hiding until 1948 and then committed suicide to save his family from repressions. 1st Lieutenant Evald Paal, the man who invited Loog to join

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

249

the frontier guard regiment, was one of the few who managed to escape the last besieged encirclement; he retreated to Germany and emigrated to England in 1946, from where he later moved to Canada. Major Juhan Purga went into hiding in Pärnumaa, became a Forest Brother and was killed a year later, in the autumn of 1945. The regimental doctor, Harald Tuul, and Lieutenant Ants Jõe hid until December 1944 and then escaped to Finland in a sailboat. In Finland, they went to the police to obtain residence permits, but were arrested by the Finnish National Police (Valpo II) and handed over to the Soviet Union, at which time they were sent to prison camp for several years (Pekkarinen, Pohjonen, 2008). 1st Lieutenant Armil-Johannes Looga was captured on 17th September 1944 and was in a screening camp until 1946; thereafter, he was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment and 5 years of exile, eventually being freed in 1956. Lieutenant Colonel Juhan Vermet, the Commander of the 2nd Frontier Guard Regiment, retreated to Germany, In Germany, while searching for his family, he was first taken prisoner by the Americans, who handed him over to the French Zone, and from there he was handed over to the Soviet Union. A tribunal in September 1946 sentenced him to 10+5 years in prison for ‘betrayal of the homeland’. Captain Meinhard Leetmaa concealed himself for years under a false name. He finally gave himself up in 1956 but escaped arrest due to the amnesty. In 1965, he succeeded in joining his family in Germany, where he applied for asylum. In 1979, he published his memoirs there (Leetmaa, 1979). Major Paul-August Lilleleht, the Commander of the 6th Frontier Guard Regiment, concealed himself for years after the retreat of the German forces in the autumn of 1944, but was captured in 1950. He was sentenced to 25+5 years; he fell ill in 1954, became an invalid, and died a year later in prison. 7. In the Clutches of the Soviet Security Organs Following the fate of Aleksander Loog’s companions from his days at military school, in army service and with the police, one could conclude that it was inevitable that at some point the wave of arrests would reach him. Under the Soviet rule that was re-established in 1944, the repercussions of the cataclysmic events of World War II that befell the citizens of Estonia included accusations like betrayal of one’s homeland, aiding the Germans, serving in the German forces or governmental apparatus, escaping from one’s homeland, etc. (Mertelsmann, Rahi-Tamm, 2009a). Even years after the actual end of the warfare, punishment of the people who had fought on the wrong side in the war or ‘wrong-thinking’ people continued in the Soviet Union, which at some point also affected those

250

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

people who had started to adapt to everyday Soviet life, including Aleksander Loog. In 1944, by operating quietly, Loog was able to avoid ending up among the incarcerated, and his activity during the German occupation might have remained unnoticed by the NKVD since they were occupied primarily with capturing those who were actively resisting and hiding in the forests. Having secured valid documents, he succeeded in returning to university to study physical education. On 31st December 1944, he enrolled as a student, and upon completion of his studies based on an individual programme, he was certified as having graduated from university on 15th November 1946.23 Loog had been active in sports during the Estonian period, while serving in the Cavalry Regiment, and later in the Red Army, as well as in the course of his police service during the German occupation. He was very familiar with Estonian sports circles and apparently he was also sufficiently well-known in these circles. In the autumn of 1946, he remained as a teacher at the university, and it seemed that his life could have progressed at a more peaceful tempo, had his arrest not occurred. Loog himself felt very peaceful at that time: During the two years I taught at the University, nobody showed any interest towards me. I worked hard, taught lessons and went in for sports. I participated in all kinds of competitions. I had nothing to be afraid of; I had done nothing against humanity. (P. 62.)

The basis of the NKVD’s interrogation tactics was to determine as many connections as possible between people, and to identify contacts between the people that remained in Estonia and those who had escaped. As a rule, ‘conversations’ with investigators started calmly, with the person talking about him- or herself, his or her life and actions to date, as well as political views. Thereafter, the questions expanded to include the person’s acquaintances – when and where they met, what they spoke about, etc. The more a person talked, the more he or she ‘implicated’ him- or herself and others. Apparently, in the course of information gathered in this way, Aleksander Loog’s name was mentioned. Presumably, testimony about him was provided by a military school companion, a co-worker in the Political Police, or subsequent colleagues. The collected information turned out to be sufficient for Loog to be arrested on 18th April 1948. (In his memoirs, Loog recorded the date of his arrest as 1st April.) Lieutenant Colonel Batrak, the Director of the Tartu Department of the ESSR Ministry of Security, accused Aleksander Loog of four alleged crimes: firstly, service in the army of the Republic of Estonia; secondly, surrendering to the Germans at Porkhov in 1941; thirdly, voluntary service

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

251

in the Political Police; and fourthly, voluntary service in the German armed forces and fighting against the Red Army. As Loog states in his story, he did not deny anything. The investigation file confirms that his investigation was fast and the court judgment was announced only a few months later in July. Loog did not try to explain the various circumstances, the background or his actions to the inquisitor; he agreed to the charges made against him. It is possible that the nature of the investigator (a Georgian in the uniform of a Russian colonel, a large man) was so frightening that he did not want to provoke the man to anger or violence. Many political prisoners who were physically or psychologically ‘processed’ by inquisitors confessed that as a result of the ‘processing’ they would have said anything that was demanded of them. Helmut Tarand, intellectual and former political prisoner, confessed that ‘after I had been “cooked” by a variety of physical and psychological methods, my nerves were in such a state that I would even have admitted to being the Chinese Emperor, had someone thought to demand this of me’ (Tarand, 1990, 60–61).

The archival documents state that Aleksander Loog’s interrogation focused on his activities during his service with the Political Police. He was repeatedly asked to recall the people with whom he had worked and what he recalled about these people at the time. Since the Soviet interrogator had use of the service files of the Estonian Security Police, which the German authorities had not destroyed, it was not necessary to extract the names from those under interrogation, and considering the inquisitors’ great workload, a great deal of time was not spent on this. The timeconsuming proceedings were the ones in which the evidence seemed to warrant sending the matter to tribunal, but the related persons refused to admit their guilt or gave conflicting testimony. First, they admitted their ‘guilt’, but during the next interrogation renounced their statements, by accusing the inquisitors of ‘physical influence’. If we exclude the matter of being taken prisoner by the Germans, Aleksander Loog did not find it sensible to provide specific explanations in the course of the investigation: Naturally I did not tell about becoming a prisoner the way it really was; I said that I had been wounded and taken prisoner [by the Germans] (p. 63). Here, Loog placed his hopes on ‘mitigating’ circumstances or being captured as a wounded soldier at Porkhov; voluntary surrender was out of the question for Red Army soldiers, as this was the equivalent of treason (execution). The interrogators were satisfied with Loog’s explanation regarding this point. It was only later, after his harsh sentence – 25 years of imprisonment – became known did Loog submit an appeal, in which he explained the

252

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

motives for his former actions. Apparently, his fellow prisoners had told him that it was possible to somewhat change or influence the severity of the charges by providing statements and testimony, and thereby reduce the term of punishment. On 26th July 1948, Aleksander Loog was convicted of betraying the homeland (25+5), based on paragraph 58-1b of a resolution by the Leningrad Military Tribunal.24 In the period from 26th May 1947 until 12th January 1950, when the death penalty was not applied in the Soviet Union, 25+5 years was the most severe term of punishment. After sentencing, Loog decided to submit an appeal in cassation to Moscow, with a request to have his case reviewed once more. He asked that certain circumstances be taken into account, such as the fact that he did not voluntarily join the police or the German army forces, but rather that it had been an involuntary situation. We can read the following in the file regarding service in the German army forces: In February 1944, I was assigned to the SS-Legion in Klooga, where I did not appear, but hid from the German authorities until I went to the military approval commission, where I was assigned to a non-frontline position in the 3rd Frontier Guard Regiment. I was the head of a training company and did not participate in battle activities. In August 1944, I escaped from the army and went into hiding until the arrival of the Soviet Army in Estonia.25

To explain the concept of voluntary service, it is necessary to make reference to the Hague Convention of 1907, which prohibits the mobilisation of the citizens of occupied countries (Mälksoo, 2003). The authorities of Nazi Germany tried to leave the impression that they were dealing with volunteers, by demanding that the conscripts sign the corresponding statements. There was a popular saying at the time: voluntarily against one’s will. Later, during the retreat, the corresponding documentation was left in Estonia, and was subsequently what the Soviet authorities used to accuse those mobilised in Estonia of ‘volunteering’, severely punishing them for this. Thus, Aleksander Loog was punished primarily for ‘volunteering’. Loog’s request that his term of punishment be reduced was not satisfied. Even an application submitted after Stalin’s death to have the charges reviewed was rejected. Loog’s explanation that the men mobilised into the German army forces should be treated as victims of war was not accepted. The severity of Aleksander Loog’s punishment is indicated by the fact that by 1947–1948 the first men who had been sent to prison camps for serving in the German army forces were already beginning to return to Estonia; they were given amnesty. Thus, for example, Lieutenant Julius Põldmäe, who had served in the Frontier Guard Regiment at the same time

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

253

as Loog, was freed. Since he did not want to join the Forest Brothers or risk endangering his family members with his actions, he decided to surrender to the Soviet forces in the autumn of 1944. His imprisonment was limited to two years and three months (Põldmäe, 2002, 84; 111). It is often not possible to achieve any coherence regarding Soviet punishment methods or terms since the definition of the ‘enemy’ is very broad and variable; ‘enemies’ were not uniformly targeted. Punishments were implemented with varying intensity, and alternately with some cases of acquittal, from time to time the pressure diminished, only to be intensified thereafter (Mertelsmann, Rahi-Tamm, 2009b). In Estonia, the top years for arrests were 1941, 1945, with a greater intensity beginning in 1948 and lasting until 1951. Some cases of ‘implausible enemies’ became especially absurd in the course of subsequent rehabilitation, when the terms of punishment were acknowledged as a mistake after the person had already served the sentence.26 When Aleksander Loog started to actually perceive the nature of his punishment, he realised that it was not possible to serve 25 years, and to survive he would have to undertake something different. The common experience of long-term prisoners speaks of the fact that, in such circumstances, it is most important not to lose hope of freedom; the people who lost hope died quickly. I thought that I would escape whenever a possibility arose. Therefore I had to keep as healthy as possible. So I did a lot of exercise. (P. 63.) Loog’s survival strategy was quite dangerous. Those who succeeded in escaping from Soviet prison camps were rare exceptions; the majority were shot during their attempts.27 Apparently, the statement constantly repeated by the guards was embedded in the minds of all the prisoners – шаг налево, шаг направо, стрелять буду без предупреждения [a step to the left, a step to the right and I will fire without warning] (Kross, 2003, 254). At the same time, his escape preparations forced Loog to constantly keep himself in shape; he could not ‘slacken off’, even mentally. His training was probably not unnoticed by his fellow prisoners, thereby increasing their respect toward him. Already in the German POW camp, Aleksander understood the need to take care of himself: I thought that if I remained unoccupied I should soon be dead of cold because when sleeping I felt myself trembling. [---] Everything was covered with ice in the wash room. I rubbed myself all over with cold water, so that my skin became red; then went back under the blanket again. A bit of sleep, then it was cold again and the procedure had to be repeated. And so on, several times a night. (P. 56.)

254

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

The significance of taking care of oneself in extreme conditions as a mark of the preservation of the will to live has been successfully summarized by Primo Levi: ‘In such places, washing oneself daily at the filthy sink with turbid water is practically useless as far as cleanliness and health is concerned; but as a mark of the preservation of the will to live, it is extremely important and necessary as a tool for moral resistance.’ (Levi, 2004, 32.)

Unfortunately, the escape he attempted with a Belarusian and Ukrainian, the former a university faculty member and the latter a cavalry lieutenant, failed. Thus, Aleksander Loog had to undergo an interrogation, investigation and tribunal again. This time he, as a person with the proclivity to escape, had to serve the punishment term of 25+5 years in a strict-regime prison camp in the far north. Of the Estonian political prisoners who were sent there, about 8–12% survived; the majority died due to inhumane conditions (Oll, 1999, 16). After the death of Stalin, the situation in the camps finally began to change. Terms of punishment started to decrease, and gradually, prisoners started to be released, especially after the Amnesty Law of 1955, which dealt with ‘wartime collaborators’ (Adler, 2004, 22). Aleksander was not immediately released: … in 1955 the Amnesty Law was passed. People with my paragraph also had to be set free. Many prisoners were released but there was no order about me. The camp authorities wanted to keep me there for I had been starting to do useful work lately. (P. 70.)

Many prisoners and deportees have described how attempts were made to keep them longer, like Aleksander Loog. They did not want to lose good workers in Siberia, and therefore, they tried to convince them to stay with various promises; sometimes they were threatened with being sent back to Siberia. For the repressed, being able to go back home was the fulfilment of their dreams (Rahi, 1998, 119–125). After several petitions, all of which were not satisfied, the release resolution was expanded to cover Aleksander Loog. In February 1956, he was granted the right to return to Estonia: All this time I hoped that once again I would see Estonia, I never thought I would stay there forever. One had to believe and hope despite the presence of fate. (P. 70.)

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

255

8. In Summary As a 26-year-old man who was pulled into the whirlwind of cataclysmic historical events, Aleksander Loog tried to survive these times by searching for his own path and opportunities. No one voluntarily chooses a life brimming with such extreme life experiences. However, in his story, the transitions between the stages of history occur quite calmly, without great emotions. Perhaps this is a retrospect by an experienced man of his life experiences, where one is no longer fighting and one is relatively conciliatory about the past? Or has time dispersed his militarily combative style? Or should certain personal characteristics, influences based on his upbringing, be taken into consideration? There is no simple answer. However, as one who has delved into Aleksander Loog’s experiences the author presumes to say that his experiences must have been more profound than his writings reveal. He does not speak of the painful disappointments, not to mention the betrayals that befell him, but which can be deduced from a comparison of various sources. We cannot know the reasons for these and other silences; Loog’s narrative style is seldom accusatory. When answering questions in the course of his interview with the author, about the most important principles during these difficult times, Loog stressed positive thinking, belief in oneself and one’s companions, and the fact that life goes on. The poor health he was born with, which he tried to correct with exercise and self-discipline, made him into an active sportsman, also by nature, and helped him survive life’s most severe situations. For historians, Aleksander Loog’s story is useful primarily for creating a composite picture of the period, by comparing one story to another, and enlisting additional sources and specialised research. Like many soldiers of the Republic of Estonia in 1939–40, Loog would also have been ready to fight for a definite purpose – for his homeland. However, Estonian men had to live through World War II fighting in foreign armies on both sides of the battle line, whereby the majority were left questioning whom and what they were fighting for in this war. Cruel fate and necessity made brothers and friends fight against each other, left thousands in common graves, and scattered other thousands throughout the world. As in war, a person must also have luck in life; Aleksander Loog can be sure about one thing – despite his ordeals, he has also been lucky in his life.

256

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way Notes

1

2

3 4

5

6

7

8

9

10

The combined impact of simultaneously using various sources (for instance, comparing memories with records in archival documents) often raises a lot of questions and reveals conflicting testimony, thereby placing the historian in an extremely complicated position as an arbiter of the past. On the one hand, we must always consider the selective nature of memories, the specific person, and his or her memory; while on the other hand, we encounter conscious topic choices, as well as various kinds of ‘coverups’ and fears, which may have very different causes. At the same time, the peculiarity of Soviet-era archival documents cannot be ignored – the bias, embellishments, denials, non-objectivity and such. Therefore, drawing broad conclusions from personal stories requires a critical approach and a comparative analysis of sources. Research in preparation for this paper was supported by the target financing project SF0180050s09 and the Estonian Science Foundation Grant 8190. Name changed. Estonian Cultural History Archive, fund 350. Aleksander Loog sent his life story in answer to the ‘A Hundred Life Stories of the Century’ campaign organised by the Estonian Life Stories Association in 1998. The author’s interview with Aleksander Loog took place at his home in Tallinn on 29th October 2008. Loog’s personal file is located in the Branch of the Estonian National Archive (ERAF), in fund 129SM. Based on the 1920 Peace Treaty between Estonia and Russia, Estonians could return from Russia, and Russians living in Estonia could resettle in Russia. In the course of this process, which lasted roughly two years, about 100,000 people came back to Estonia, and approximately the same number decided to remain in Russia. (Baron, Gatrell, 2004, 1–9.) See also June 14 1941 entry in Noormets’ Estonians on World War II. A Chronology in this volume. Compare to a similar discussion of the beginning of the war in Boris Takk’s memoirs in this book. Senior Colonel Jaan Kurvits of the Cavalry Regiment where Aleksander Loog served was initially assigned to Chief of Staff of the 182nd Rifle Division; however, on 13th May 1941, he was arrested and accused of espionage. During his interrogation, Kurvits did not admit his guilt and he was executed on 18th May 1942 in Solikamski Prison along with former Estonian Minister of War, Lieutenant General Nikolai Reek, who was accused of being the leader of conspirators in Ussollag. On 31st March 1942, 58 people were sentenced to death and only two were given mercy, the death penalty instead being replaced with a 10-year prison sentence. Those sentenced to death included former Estonian officers and politi-

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

11

12

13 14

15

16

17

257

cians, who were accused of organizing armed resistance to Soviet power. (Tõnismägi, 1998, 35–40.) Aleksander Loog’s brother Villem was punished on the basis of §58–13 of the Russian SSR Criminal Code and given 10 years in captivity; he was sent to a camp in Sevurallag, and was released after completing his sentence in 1952; ten years later in 1962 he died of an infarct at the age of 50. (Õispuu, 1996.) In 1941–42 internationally recognised scholar Ants Oras, Professor of English at the University of Tartu, also belonged to the initiative group of the Estonian National Committee. Afraid of being arrested, he escaped from Estonia to Finland in April 1943. His memoirs entitled Baltic Eclipse, which were published in London in 1948, were one of the most effective attempts to inform the world of what had happened in Estonia in 1939–44 (Oras, 1948). See in Hiio, Maripuu Paavle, 2006, 769–1032. The governmental system of the Nazi occupation in Estonia was characterised by a multitude of rulers, and the duplication of competencies among German and Estonian institutions. In addition to the German police and security police (including the Secret State Police, defined as the Political Police), the Criminal Police and Security Service that operated as special branch (SD, dealing with intelligence and counter-intelligence), Estonian police structures were also in operation, which were subordinate to the orders of the German authorities and did not operate independently. With this parallel subordination, an attempt was made to extensively involve the local population; the local Germans dealt with forwarding the orders that came from Berlin and with controlling the Estonian group. Thus, the competence of the German Political Police department (A-IV) included the monitoring of all types of politically hostile activities – parachutists-bandits, churches, the written word, Jews, emigrants (foreigners living in Estonia who were not Reich Germans; Soviet citizens were also considered emigrants), prisoners of war, and the population’s reaction to the existing situation. The Estonian group was left in charge of executive police activities. (Kuusik, 2006, 577–587.) People’s Self Defence (RO) – the ‘voluntary’ armed units formed by the Soviets in the summer of 1940. The units of the armed Self Defence [Home Guard] organisation developed in the summer of 1941 in the fight against Soviet power and the destruction battalions. In September, Self Defence Brigades were created in the counties and their assignment was to clear Estonia of Red Army soldiers and Soviet spies; to capture Soviet activists; to guard the former state border; and to organise sentries on the roads, bridges, as well as in companies and military objects. The Self Defence was subordinate to the German military and police authorities. A. Krimm, who was an Assistant in the Political Police, tried to help his friend, Bruno Kulgmaa, who had joined the Party during the Soviet period

258

18

19

20 21

22

23

24

25 26

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

and worked as Assistant to the Secretary of the Rural Municipality. In the fall of 1941, the man was arrested and taken to Tartu Prison. Krimm, who was questioned in his case, stated that: Kulgmaa had joined the Party to work against the Communists with espionage and sabotage. Thus, during the Soviet period, he had also participated in a group in Viljandi for the purpose of anti-Soviet activity. Another witness, Mihkel Hansen, who was Viljandi Governor at the time, also testified that: during Soviet rule, Kulgmaa had the opportunity to join the Party, but not as an ideological Communist, but in order to help former Estonian-minded activists. Despite everything, Kulgmaa was executed on 22nd April 1942. (Catalogue of the National Archive; for more about the Catalogue, see Rahi-Tamm, 2007). About 1,000 boys and 100 girls from Estonian passed through the Reich Labour Service (RAD) (Kosenkranius, 2005, 7). See Janurary 30 1944 entry in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology in this volume. ERAF.129SM-1-21126. Sweden and Finland were the preferred destinations for those escaping from Estonia, although those leaving at the last minute had to take a more complicated route over land to Germany – between 35,000 and 40,000 Estonians arrived there. During the Great Escape almost 25,000 Estonians arrived in Sweden. It is believed that during the escape, about 10% of those who set out, up to 7,000 people may have perished. It is generally accepted that the refugees amounted to 70,000 people. The research of Ülle Kraft has been very helpful for reporting on people’s life stories (Kraft, 2006); other supplemental data has been procured from the Museum of Occupations website www.okupatsioon.ee, Catalogues of the National Archives, etc. Ten years later, he did have to repeat one subject on the history of physical education, the content of which was ideologically reappraised during the Soviet period (University of Tartu Archives, UT Student Register, roster 121, document 269). Punishment paragraph 58-1b meant 25 years in a correctional camp and 5 years of the restriction of rights after the completion of one’s sentence along with the confiscation of all property; Aleksander Loog’s term of punishment started as of 11th April 1948. Aleksander Loog’s personal file in ERAF, fund 129SM. In his story, Aleksander Loog presents the example of the conviction of an occasional chauffeur, which has not been included with the text that is published in this volume: Prisoners came and went. There were also people I knew. Innocent men. For instance, there was a chauffeur from Paide. During the German occupation, he was riding along the highway to Tallinn. On the road, there was a German soldier with two Russian prisoners of war. They stopped him and said they wanted a ride to Tallinn. The chauffeur dropped them off at the police precinct and that was all. However, he was accused of transporting Russian POWs during the

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

27

259

German occupation. He got 25+5. Innocence meant nothing here. Everyone got 25+5. Here is another similar case. Paul Falk (b. 1904) was arrested in June 1941 and accused of suppressing the coup attempt organised by the Communists in 1924; more exactly, of executing the Communists who were convicted of organising the rebellion. At that time, Paul Falk was completing his compulsory military service in the Estonian Defence Forces. In the winter of 1926, when he was the driver on duty, he, along with the other drivers, was put at the disposal of the commandant of the garrison. Armed soldiers and an officer got into the vehicle; after a few kilometres a tyre burst, and the soldiers were put in another truck. After the man had repaired the tyre and returned to his company, he heard from his companions and read in the newspapers that the soldiers who were under the command of the commandant’s office had shot August Riisman, one of the organisers of the December coup attempt. It was for participating in this crime that Falk was arrested in 1941. In 1965, the ESSR Security forces found that the necessary elements of a criminal offence were lacking in his case and that the resolution of the Special Council in 1942 (he was sentenced to 10 years in a prison camp based on §58–13 for fighting against a revolutionary movement) was not justified in his case. In 1951, when Paul Falk had served his 10-year prison sentence, he was directed to exile with his family in the Tomsk oblast, and was released in 1959. Paul Falk’s family was deported in 1941 as a socially dangerous element; the family’s youngest son, who was 4 months old at the time of the deportation died on the way to Siberia. His daughter, Maie, (b. 1939) escaped to Estonia in 1948, but died almost immediately upon her arrival in her homeland. (ERAF. 130SM-1-5909) There is one especially prominent case of escape in Estonian historical literature. Thanks to his German heritage, Erik Heine succeeded in being able to escape from the Soviet Union twice. The first time, Heine was captured in October 1940 for belonging to a students’ organisation, but in 1941, he succeeded in getting permission from the resettlement commission to leave Estonia. During the German occupation; he came back to Estonia and in 1944 was taken prisoner by the Red Army. Heine escaped from the POW company, concealed himself in the forest, was captured and sent to a forced labour camp. In 1956, he succeeded again in escaping to the German Federal Republic, from where he eventually continued on to the US. (Jürjo, 2000, 115–116.)

260

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way References

Adler, N. (2004), Beyond the Soviet system. The Gulag survivor. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Baron, N. and P. Gatrell (2004), Homelands, war, population and statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924. London: Anthem Press. ERAF = Branch of the Estonian National Archive. Fogu, C. and W. Kansteiner (2006), “The Politics of Memory and the Poetics of History”, in: R. N. Lebow, W. Kansteiner and C. Fogu (eds.) The politics of memory in postwar Europe. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 284–310. Gross, T. J. (2000), “Themes for Social History of War Experience and Collaboration”, in: I. Deák, J. T. Gross and T. Judt (eds.), The politics of retribution in Europe. World War II and its aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 15–35. Hiio, T., M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) (2006), Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Hiio, T. and H. Piirimäe Helmut (2007), Universitas Tartuensis 1932–2007. Tartu: Tartu University Press. Jaago, T, E. Kõresaar and A. Rahi-Tamm Aigi (2006), “Oral History and Life Stories as a Research Area in Estonian History, Folkloristics and Ethnology”, E-Lore, 13 (1): 1–15. Judt, T. (2000), “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe”, in: I. Deák, J. T. Gross and T. Judt (eds.) The politics of retribution in Europe. World War II and its aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 293–324. Jürjo, I. (2000), “Täiendusi baltisakslaste ümberasumise ja Eestisse jäänud sakslaste saatuse kohta NKVD arhiiviallikate põhjal”, in: S. Kivimäe (ed.) Umsiedlung 60. Baltisakslaste organiseeritud lahkumine Eestist. Tallinn: Baltisaksa Kultuuri Selts Eestis, Tallinn City Archive, 109–134. Kosenkranius, L. (2005), Labida ja relvaga. Eestlastest tööl ja võitluses II maailmasõjas. Tallinn: Esto Rad Ajaloo toimkond. Kraft, Ü. (2006), “Eesti piirikaitserügementide ohvitserkond 1944. aastal”, Eesti Sõjamuuseumi – kindral Laidoneri muuseumi aastaraamat, 6: 180– 220. Kross, J. (2003), Kallid kaasteelised. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus. Kuusik, A. (2006), “Security Police and SD in Estonia in 1941–1944”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 577–602. Laar, M. (2007), September 1944. Otto Tiefi valitsus. Tallinn: Varrak. Laasi, E. (1989), “Mis sai Eesti kaadriohvitseridest?”, Vikerkaar, 1: 72–76.

Aigi Rahi-Tamm

261

Leetmaa, M. (1979), Sõjas ja ikestatud Eestis. Stockholm: Välis-Eesti & EMP. Levi, P. (2004), Kas see on inimene. Hingetõmbeaeg. Transl. from Se questo è un uomo La tregua. Einaudi.,Torino, 1989. Tallinn: Vagabund. Lofgren, S. (2006), Army guide to oral history, Washington, DC: Center of Military History United States Army. URL: http://www.history.army.mil/ books/oral.htm [last visited in April 8, 2009]. Luiga, H. (1991), “Unustage oma nimi”, in: L. Lauri (ed.) Kirjutamata memuaare: katkendeid kaasaegsete elukroonikast helilindil VI. Tallinn: Perioodika. Maripuu, M. (2006), “Soviet Prisoners of War in Estonia in 1941–1944”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 739–768. Maripuu, M. and P. Kaasik (2006), “Deportations of 14th June 1941”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 363–390. Mertelsmann, O. (2005), “How the Russians Turned into the Image of the “National Enemy” of the Estonians”, In Pro Ethnologia, 19: 43–58. Mertelsmann, O. and A. Rahi-Tamm (2009a), “Cleansing and Compromise: the Estonian SSR in 1944–5”, Cahiers du monde russe, 49: 319–340. Mertelsmann, O. & A. Rahi-Tamm (2009b), “Soviet Mass Violence in Estonia Revisited”, Journal of Genocide Research, 11 (2–3): 307–322. Mälksoo, L. (2003), Illegal annexation and state continuity: The case of the incorporation of Baltic states by the USSR. Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Niglas, A. and T. Hiio (2006), “Estonian Border Defence Regiments in 1944”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 969–1000. Noormets, T. (2003), Metsavennad Suvesõjas 1941. Eesti relvastatud vastupanuliikumine Omakaitse dokumentides. Ad Fontes 13. Tallinn: National Archive. Oll, A. (1999), Nõukogude Kaug–Põhja vangilaagrid ja eesti poliitvangid Kolõmal. Okupatsioonide Repressiivpoliitika Uurimise Riiklik Komisjon, 14. Tartu: Okupatsioonide Repressiivpoliitika Uurimise Riiklik Komisjon. Oras, A. (1948), Baltic eclipse. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. Paavle, I. and P. Kaasik (2006), “Destruction Battalions in Estonia”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945: Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 469–494.

262

Aleksander Loog – Searching for One’s Way

Pajur, A. (2007), “Eesti Rahvavägi 1940. aastal”, in: T. Tannberg (ed.) Eesti NSV aastatel 1940–1953: Sovetiseerimise mehhanismid ja tagajärjed Nõukogude Liidu ja Ida-Euroopa arengute kontekstis. Tartu: Estonian Historical Archive, 65–105. Pekkarinen, J. and J. Pohjonen (2008), Läbi Soome kadalipu. Inimeste väljaandmised Nõukogude Liidule 1944–1981. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Pihlau, J. (2003), Eesti sõjaväe häving aastal 1941. Okupatsioonide Repressiivpoliitika Uurimise Riiklik Komisjon, 19. Tartu: Okupatsioonide Repressiivpoliitika Uurimise Riiklik Komisjon. Põldmäe, J. (2002), Nii mitu aega eluajas. Tallinn: Maalehe Raamat. Rahi, A. (1998), 1949. aasta märtsiküüditamine Tartu linnas ja maakonnas. Tartu: Kleio. Rahi-Tamm, A. (2005), “Human Losses”, in: V. Salo (ed.) The White Book: Losses inflicted on the Estonian Nation by Occupation Regimes 1940– 1991, Tallinn: Estonian Encyclopaedia Publishers, 9–24. Rahi-Tamm, A. (2007), “Arhiivid Nõukogude repressiivaparaadi teenistuses. “Poliitvärvingute” kartoteek Eestis 1940–1956”, Ajalooline Ajakiri, 1/2 (127/128): 123–154. Salo, V. (1996), E.V. kaadriohvitseride saatus 1938–1996. 3. ed. Okupatsioonide Repressiivpoliitika Uurimise Riiklik Komisjon, 8. Tartu: Okupatsioonide Repressiivpoliitika Uurimise Riiklik Komisjon. Sarv, E. (2006), “Eesti Vabariigi Rahvuskomitee (EVR)”, in: A. Parmas (ed.) Otto Tief ja 1944. a vahevalitsus. Tartu: Korporatsioon Rotalia, 35–55. Tarand, H. (1990). Epitaaf. Loomingu Raamatukogu, 1–2. Tallinn. Tshapenko, 2006 = Tšapenko, A. (2006), “Eesti Rahvaväe reorganiseerimine Punaarmee 22. territoriaalseks laskurkorpuseks 1940–1941”, Eesti Sõjamuuseumi – kindral Laidoneri muuseumi aastaraamat, 6: 39–50. Tõnismägi, H. (1998), Ülekohtu toimikud. Tallinn: BSN Kirjastus OÜ. Uluots, Ü. (1999), Nad täitsid käsku. Eesti ohvitseride saatus. Tallinn: Pakett. Usai, U. (ed.) (1993). Eestlased tööpataljonides 1941–1942: Mälestusi ja dokumente, 1.–2. Tallinn: Olion. Õispuu, L. (1996), Political arrests in Estonia 1940–1988 (§58), vol. 1. Tallinn: Eesti Represseeritute Registri Büroo. Weiner, A. (2001), Making sense of war. The Second World War and the fate of the Bolshevik Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Boris Raag – Hope of Staying Alive: Survival Strategies of a Soviet Soldier Olaf Mertelsmann 1. Introduction ‘Homo Sovieticus was a string-puller, an operator, a time-server, a freeloader, a mouther of slogans, and much more. But above all, he was a survivor’ (Fitzpatrick, 1999, 227). With these words social historian Sheila Fitzpatrick sums up her research concerning everyday Stalinism. After the ‘archival revolution’, which meant the opening of large Soviet archival holdings in the recent two decades being secret previously, we know much more about political developments in the USSR, about the heads of the inner circle of rulers, or the over-all history of World War II. New research possibilities have not changed entirely the basic understanding of Soviet history but definitely enhanced our knowledge. Still, we do know much less about the survival strategies of the ‘ordinary’ Soviet man and women during Stalinism and especially during World War II, which was dubbed the Great Patriotic War. For this aim, we need ego-documents like diaries, oral history interviews, or life stories with all their source problems. Catherine Merridale (2006) has demonstrated skilfully how those sources in combination with archival documents might bring the war experience of the ordinary Soviet soldier to life. Orlando Figes (2007) did the same concerning the impact of the Great Terror. In memoirs and life stories of Soviet veterans, we usually find similar elements like in the stories of German veterans: accounts of how to be mobilized and transported to the unit, about the training of soldiers, and of course, battles and combats. The everyday life of the soldiers is not so much present, the survival strategies they used even less. Maybe, we read about some drinking, women and love, small rations, fear, black markets and unqualified officers. Soviet and German veteran memories seem to be in many aspects very similar even when the prehistory and the social and political context were different (Jahn, 2005, 48). In my analysis of Boris Raag’s story I see the author’s leitmotif of survival as given in his title as one key for the interpretation. Also the influence of contemporary fiction should not be underestimated. As a historian, I view the text as a source first for how the author represents his war experience in 2003 and I attempt to connect it with the historical context. Second, the descriptive parts of the life story offer insights into the different strategies applied by ordinary people to survive the war. Raag offers long descriptions of the situation and life in different places being not always necessary to drive the story forward. Third, form, structure and

264

Boris Raag – Hope of Staying Alive

content of the narrative are in itself interesting. This essay is not a classical source interpretation guided by source criticism and other tools of historians, but an attempt to interpret the narrative while being aware that literature scholars, for example, possess more elaborated skills to do so. 2. War, Stalinism and Survival Sheila Fitzpatrick’s characterization of homo sovieticus is highly important; he or she had to use all kind of strategies to survive. This became even more obvious during the war, because the regime was forced to weaken surveillance and coercion, to a certain extent it even lost control of what was going on in some places. This does not mean that Stalinism turned less vicious during the war like the deportation of entire ethnic groups or the extensive use of the death penalty indicated. As a result of the loosening of control, room for agency grew. In the case of Estonian soldiers like with others, applying survival strategies was a key experience for them. Otherwise, they would not have stayed alive. Unfortunately, veterans did not write much about it. The life story analyzed here is a real exception. Already the title – ‘Hope of Staying Alive’ (Lootus ellu jääda) indicates the importance of survival strategies. The need for survival strategies was created by the Stalinist regime. Forced collectivization and industrialization led to a severe decline of the standard of living after the end of the New Economic Policy (NEP). The state exploited the population to finance industrial investment and increasingly, since the second half of the 1930s, armament industries and a growing military force. On which, according to Abram Bergson’s famous estimates, the Stalinist state spent and invested approximately half of the national income in peace time and more than two thirds during World War II (Bergson, 1961, 277).1 To secure food provision and sometimes the sheer survival of the family during periods of hunger and extreme austerity (Osokina, 1998) Soviet citizens needed a variety of strategies including petty theft, ‘blat’ (economies of favour) (Ledeneva, 1998), giving and receiving bribes, black marketeering, and shirking (cf. for examples Jones, 2001; Mertelsmann, 2007a). The war increased the economic pressure and large regions of the unoccupied area of Russia were in deep crisis (cf. Moskoff, 1990). In addition, several waves of purges and persecution pushed many potential victims into changing their identities and applying other survival strategies. The war in the east was a war of annihilation. Hitler made this explicitly clear to his generals during the preparation talks of Operation Barbarossa in spring 1941. Behind the invading German army operated mobile

Olaf Mertelsmann

265

killing squads, Einsatzgruppen, which murdered Jews and real or alleged communists on a large scale. Stalin, too, did not take much care of the international regulations of warfare. Neither side treated civilians in occupied areas or prisoners of war according to international conventions. The war of annihilation escalated with partisan warfare and numerous reprisal measures.2 A disregard, by commanders, for life and health also became the fate of soldiers especially under severe climatic conditions in winter. Particularly harsh was the treatment in the punishment battalions (Strafbataillone, shtrafbaty) and for soldiers serving in the labour battalions of the Red Army. This became the fate of Estonians, mobilized in 1941 and living under conditions of criminal neglect until the beginning of 1942, because the Soviet leadership thought that troops originating from the newly acquired territories were not reliable. Lev Mekhlis, the highest political officer of the Red Army, ordered in September 1941 Estonian soldiers to be sent to labour battalions (Kaasik, 2006, 886). As a result, approximately one third of them are thought to have died in those camps (Usai, 1993, 5–18). The survivors deemed fit for service would become once again regular Soviet soldiers. Estonia was part of the territories occupied and annexed by Stalin in 1939–40 following the secret protocols of the German-Soviet non-aggression treaty. The three Baltic states were forced by an ultimatum in 1939 to allow the stationing of Soviet troops and, losing their independence, were annexed in 1940. Sovietization started quickly as did political arrests. Living conditions deteriorated and a mass deportation in June 1941 shocked the population. After the beginning of the German attack, prisoners were tortured and executed and Soviet destruction battalions terrorized the countryside. Under those circumstances men were mobilized into the Red Army.3 3. Boris’ Story The narrator of the life story, Boris Raag, was born in 1918 into a workers’ family with five children in the rural municipality of Kohila. After seven years of schooling, he started work with different short-term jobs mostly in agriculture and then went to work in the same paper factory where his father was employed. In January 1939, Boris was conscripted into the Estonian army and transferred into the ranks of the Estonian Corps of the Red Army in autumn 1940. In spring 1941, he was demobilized and started to work as a driver for a trade enterprise in Tallinn after taking a break of four weeks. After the beginning of the German attack in June 1941, he was mobilized into the Red Army.

266

Boris Raag – Hope of Staying Alive

Boris finished his life story of approximately 180 pages in 2003 (KM EKLA f. 350, 1741). The story is divided into three parts, his life before the war (‘Memories from the Years 1918–1940’, 59 pp.), the central account of his experience in 1941–44 (‘Hope of Staying Alive’, 89 pp.), and a third part covering the time after his return to Estonia as a Soviet soldier when he participated for the first time in real fighting and was finally demobilized (‘Memories from the Years 1944–1946’, 36 pp.). The first part serves as a kind of introduction and the reader becomes acquainted with Boris Raag. The last part, recounts the end of his war experience. I will concentrate on the second part, of which a shortened version is published in this volume. In the main body of the text, we find no battles or even weapons mentioned, but a well-written and highly readable account of how to stay alive as an Estonian mobilized into Stalin’s army, deserting from there and attempting to survive in the Soviet rear. Being an Estonian born and raised in his home country, meant that Boris shared the personal experience of a pre-Soviet order, of incorporation into the USSR and Sovietization with more than 20 million people from the newly acquired territories. His account is, of course, rooted in Estonian culture and traditions, but in my interpretation I see his narrative as an example for the survival strategies of an ordinary Soviet soldier with a different background than a soldier originating from the ‘old republics’ of the USSR. Indeed, for example, a Russian from Pskov might have told the story in a different way, but he could have used similar survival strategies. In addition, we should not underestimate that Boris lived for nearly half a century in the Soviet Union after the end of war, which clearly influenced his narrative. Even when the writing was finished in 2003, it bears the stamp of a long-lasting Soviet experience. The author has good humour, he writes with irony and understatement, one reason why I have chosen this story. Of course, humour might have been also a strategy to cope with his war time experience. Stalin is not a devil but simply Jossi for him. Boris is neither a victim, nor a hero but a survivor using his agency. He is an excellent observer and a really good storyteller. He plays with words and meanings. In some parts, he reduces the tempo and starts an ethnographic or geographic description of exotic places in Central Asia. He provides us with many details of everyday life and especially, of course, the food situation. Usually, he keeps away from stereotypes. There are some topoi concerning everyday life in the Soviet Union, but even communists receive a fair description. Obviously, the author shows no ethnic or racial prejudice. He compares his unbelievable story with a movie, but states that he has told the complete truth (p. 119). According to him, if any mistakes in his account happen, then they occur because the events are so far away in the past and memory has played a

Olaf Mertelsmann

267

trick. That the author mentions a film might have two reasons, he believes that his story is extraordinary and his account is seemingly somehow influenced by movie structures. Some of the scenes in his text could be even used for a film script. In the introduction, Boris writes about the background of his personal survival strategies: If God has given you life and a razboinik4 wants to take it, one needs resources to keep the soul within the body God gifted. If those resources are not given, one has to take them. So we thought that it was not a sin to deceive, to lie, and to steal. Nobody wanted to die of hunger under the Soviet power. It was so senseless to become simply one of the victims of either the “Za Stalinu, za rodinu”5 or the “Heil Hitler” regimes. So one had to manoeuvre to get out of the situation with as small a loss as possible. Those in power kept stressing that everything belonged to the people. So, being one of the people, everyone had a right to a part of the riches. When dividing the resources was inadequate or directly wrong, one had to get their share through lies and deceit. Taking someone’s personal property is wrong. I have not sinned in that sense. (P. 119.)

In the rest of the text, religious motifs do not really occur but obviously Raag had been brought up as a Christian like most other children of his generation in Estonia. In the interwar period the tendency towards secularization increased (Plaat, 2001, 144–153) but as might be noted in many life stories children still received a Christian education. This quotation indicates the importance to manoeuvre between two criminal political regimes to ensure survival and it justified Boris’ use of illegal means. It might be seen that he is arguing like a fraudster or thief simply defending himself but, in fact, a similar line of argumentation might be found in other life stories concerning, for example, petty theft on the kolkhoz. If the state behaves like a robber nationalizing private property on a large scale, keeping the food rations on the brink of starvation and threatens the very physical existence, one possesses the natural right to defend yourself and to steal from the very same state. Using the official rhetoric of socialized property and taking this property for the own use seems ironic but is the justification of normal human behaviour under extraordinary circumstances.6 Apart from economic exploitation in Stalin’s USSR, there existed a ‘hierarchy of consumption’ (Osokina, 1993), which turned worse during the war. The narrative by Boris Raag is filled with stories of how he stole and cheated, evaded regulations, and changed identity, escaped from camps or a place of work. His complete story seems at the first view unbelievable, but he was not alone. In most of the cases, there were Estonian comrades

268

Boris Raag – Hope of Staying Alive

and friends committing their deeds together. The group or gang changed composition including ethnic Russians and a Russian Estonian, but the guiding line remained the same and there were few exclusions. Actually, the entire society was somehow behaving like this. What Moshe Lewin (1978, 56) dubbed a ‘quicksand’ society was unstable, changing quickly and using opportunities to improve their fate. Unfortunately we do not have many accounts about those opportunistic strategies as people do not want to be seen in a bad light. But a society with Ostap Bender as one of the most popular heroes of contemporary fiction was confined to legal and illegal strategies of survival. Whether all the episodes of Boris’ story are ‘true’, is hard to decide, but as an historian I might state, it could have happened that way. Of course, historians tend always to be critical with their sources and try to determine how reliable they are. Anyway, for this essay the narrative itself is far more important than the question whether the content is always ‘true’.7 Being employed together with his friend Erka in a Tallinn enterprise, Boris was mobilized in the summer of 1941 into the Red Army. Before the war, the author has served in both the Estonian and the Red Army. He thought about not following the mobilization and hiding in the woods, but in the end he joined the Red Army. Many other Estonians did not even have the choice between hiding and being mobilized. The recruits were shipped to Leningrad and transported in cattle wagons to the Urals to find themselves in a camp for a labour battalion. On the sheer endless trip, cultural conflicts with the locals appeared and the first insights into the Soviet ‘paradise’ of hunger and poverty were made. In the Urals, Boris met the first louse which was still remarkable: Later we did not take a look at a single louse. If the colony got too big, we simply started to slaughter them (KM EKLA, f. 350, 1741, 7). In the camp in Krasnouralsk, living conditions were appalling, so they decided to flee to Afghanistan after stealing some food – altogether there were five men, Boris, Erka, the brothers Kats and Villu and a man named Allik. Their escape, which was officially punishable with the death sentence and which forced them later to change their names, succeeded. Only after the return to Estonia, could Boris finally reinstate his identity. Their comrades in the camp heard that they had been caught and shot which was not true. During the trip to Central Asia the group was arrested in the Urals as ‘Germans’ – a typical topic of Estonian life stories.8 But they lied that they have been evacuated from Estonia and were searching for work. The militia men believed their lies and after stealing from them let them finally go free. A new member joined the group, Aher, an Estonian from Leningrad, who would be used as a translator. A while later Aleksei, an evacuated Russian from Estonia also joined.

Olaf Mertelsmann

269

Their first place of work was an armament factory in Verkh-Neivinsk in the Urals. The promised proper clothing for winter was not offered. Allik became ill and was hospitalized. Illegally, the others were leaving again in November 1941 which could have been punished with imprisonment in the Gulag according to the Soviet labour legislation.9 Aher left them after meeting some friends and Aleksei became the interpreter. They took new identities and travelled by train to Central Asia. Often, they were free riders not paying the fare. Here they encountered Polish deportees being freed to join Polish troops under British command. After meeting other Estonians, they started to work on a cotton farm and realized that they could not travel to Afghanistan because of the tight border regime. The next stage of their escape took them around Central Asia, again by train. Infrequently, the group was splitting up or getting new members. During a usual identity control in January 1942 they were caught by the militia and were sent to an army camp where they received their first showers for half a year. Boris again became a Soviet soldier and a member of the Estonian Rifle Corps. After military training, which was difficult for him because of the lack of proper shoes and the usual hunger, he was freed from service at the frontline in the summer of 1942 because of a denunciation and sent to a labour battalion. The soldier who denounced him and others, did not survive, due to his poor health, a rifle shot from behind (p. 137) during his first action in battle according to Raag. Actually, during combat in both world wars, unpleasant officers, sergeants or snitches could fall victim to revenge by their comrades in arms. Boris Raag started to work in the Urals again, in Ursumsk in a labour battalion. One factory was in his words one of the most modern after the Middle Ages (p. 137). He joined a gang which had specialized in the forging of documents, especially ration cards. After stealing flour, Boris owned the means to join them to flee for a second time from military service. He started to work on a Central Asian Sovkhoz as a tractor driver and provides us with interesting descriptions of life there. One central issue was the improvement of food rations by all possible means. This might be seen as a natural outcome of the extreme austerity of the war years. After getting tired of Sovkhoz life, Raag and his friends wanted to get mobilized and developed a proper scheme how to use mobilization for fraud. They got documents, rations and tickets in one place and were ‘searching’ for their unit. They got mobilized in another place, faking documents, selling ration cards, and travelling around. For half a year, they lived such a life. They were arrested and freed again. The next step was to settle down in a better Sovkhoz which was exempted from mobilization. After a while, Raag took his last job in another Sovkhoz. Being

270

Boris Raag – Hope of Staying Alive

tired of this work and homesick, he was voluntarily mobilized in the summer of 1944 and arrived as a Soviet soldier in Narva in Estonia on 26 September 1944 when the largest battles were over. 4. Interpretation Boris Raag’s life story is not a novel, but contains elements of good fiction; still the story seems to be essentially true. It is virtually impossible to take up all the straws of the plot. A novel writer would have preferred a more simple chain of events and would have added some love and sex. There is, of course, enough crime and tension. Concerning love and sex, the author does obviously not want to write about it. This is a taboo for him and not a suitable topic for his potential readers, family and grandchildren. Beside of this taboo, he tries to be as honest and accurate as possible and not to stay silent about his own deeds. The detailed description of deprivation and everyday life in the Soviet hinterland from the perspective of an outsider who became an insider might be one reason to appreciate the story as an historian. Secondly, Raag is not a victim; he does not use simplified clichés, but is actively trying to improve his situation using all possible means. He was applying a vast array of strategies, risking the death penalty, and survived. None of his strategies are unique, but putting them all together, we see one of the many ways a Soviet soldier tried to stay alive. There is no room for false pathos or heroism. Raag’s story tells a lot about Stalin’s Soviet Union during the war. How the centre lost control, how people could use or misuse this fact, and how bad organization led to the deaths of millions of human beings. Living conditions were awful. The crude death rate and infant mortality in the Soviet hinterland was, in fact, strikingly high. Infant mortality reached more than 60 percent in August 1942. That year the crude death rate in Siberia was one third above the pre-war level (Isupov, 2000, 144; 159). The loss of control offered room for manoeuvre, which could be used by men or women, like Boris. Others could not so aptly adapt and perished. While Raag is an Estonian, his story seems to me truly Soviet. In today’s discourse in Estonia, both notions are usually seen as opposed to each other but I think in reality they very much intermingled. Obviously, Raag has elaborated the story over years, his own later life experience after the war played a role and the narrative could be influenced by fiction, too. Indeed the latter is impossible to prove and it is not clear whether he did read much but given that he attended only seven years of school, his

Olaf Mertelsmann

271

story is well written and he was presumably an active reader in his later life. ‘The Good Soldier Schweik’ by Jaroslav Hašek was a popular book in Soviet Estonia and earlier in the interwar period. An Estonian language translation first appeared in 1928 and a second very popular one in 1960 (Hašek, 1928; Hašek, 1960). In the late 1920s and again following Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’, Russian translations were published in the USSR. The Czechoslovakian movie from 1956 also reached Soviet cinemas. The Soviet dissident writer Vladimir Voinovich created Private Ivan Chonkin after the model of Schweik (Voinovich, 1977), but his work could only be published in the USSR in 1990. Obviously, the adventures of Schweik reminded Soviet citizens of their own experiences, be they in the military or bureaucratic institutions. Schweik turned from an archetype of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy into a character universal for the socialist experience of an oppressive regime organized in a top-down manner. The figure of Schweik might somehow have influenced Boris’ account of his own war experience. Another popular Soviet hero was Ostap Bender created by Ilya Ilf and Evgenii Petrov (Fitzpatrick, 2005, 265–281). Bender was a confidence man during the NEP-period in the 1920s dreaming of Rio de Janeiro. The novel ‘The Twelve Chairs’ appeared first in 1928 and was followed three years later by the ‘Golden Calf’. Both were translated into Estonian in 1962 (Ilf, Petrov, 1962). Several movies and television series popularized Ostap Bender. He was definitely one of the most beloved characters in Soviet fiction. Apart from the entertainment value, Soviet readers could identify themselves with Bender thinking of the small lies, tricks and cheating they had used to master everyday life. Bender is not a hero of Socialist Realism and this made him so popular. Like in the case of Schweik, Ostap Bender has probably influenced Boris Raag’s story. Another possible influence is the satirical writer Mikhail Zoshchenko, one of the most popular authors in the early Soviet Union. Some of his satires of Soviet life were translated into Estonian in the inter-war period. He describes all the small problems of Soviet everyday life in a humorous way and in the tone of the ‘ordinary’ man. Of course, it is difficult to prove that Boris Raag was inspired by Hašek, Ilf and Petrov, or Zoshchenko, but I believe it is probable. I do not believe this in the sense that Raag simply copied from literature or the movie adaptations, but in the sense that literature and movies inspired him maybe even unconsciously in his narration. As mentioned above, the story of Boris Raag is highly elaborated. It seems unlikely that Raag, taking his age into consideration, wrote everything in one go in 2003. Presumably, he narrated parts of his story several

272

Boris Raag – Hope of Staying Alive

times to a private audience of relatives and friends or he had written down fragments earlier. Of course, his later life experience and knowledge somehow influenced his narrative. When travelling to Russia he barely knew the language and the country, but according to the text he remembers Russian expressions or slang like ‘GAZ-don’t-hurt-me’ (p. 126). The metaphor of Tallinn as a town of sprats originated from a later period, too. The way the story is constructed and told seems to be a sign of later understanding. Raag’s account tells also us about how to become Soviet. Initially, he did not know much about Soviet reality and the way it enforces adaptation. Step by step he learnt new skills and adapted to the surrounding using legal and illegal methods. His proficiency in applying various survival strategies increased over time. It is not the process of reforming the mind, as described by Jochen Hellbeck in the case of the ‘Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi’, a young man of kulak background trying to transform himself into a good Stalinist citizen in the 1930s (Hellbeck, 1996; 2001; 2006). No, this is a different bildungsroman about how to obtain the necessary Soviet survival skills under extreme circumstances combined with elements of the picaresque novel. Jochen Hellbeck might be correct in assuming that countless Soviet subjects tried to become Soviet by accepting many of the core values of Stalinism (cf. Hoffmann, 2003). Concerning the population of the annexed Baltic states, obviously the majority turned Soviet during a long process of adaptation without recognition of some of the core issues. This process of accommodation with the Soviet order took until Khrushchev’s ‘Thaw’ and beyond (Mertelsmann, 2005b). Boris Raag is an example. He did not rebel while seemingly followed orders as Schweik did, but he had his own agenda of survival, which was placed above any ideology or winning a war. This was not his war as he explicitly writes. It would be foolish to risk life for Hitler or Stalin. Apparently his search for a ‘third way’ between the two regimes influenced the description of his own war experience. In today’s Estonia, Red Army veterans are often seen as having fought on the wrong side but Raag’s narrative is also acceptable for Estonian ‘patriots’. In his bildungsroman with strong elements of the picaresque novel Boris not only learnt the survival skills. He obtained knowledge about ordinary Soviet life whether in the camps, the army or the village. Being himself of rural background he clearly understood the particular absurdity of Soviet collectivized agriculture. He discovered how a Soviet enterprise or a Sovkhoz operated, gained skills in shirking, forging and cheating. In addition he learnt about far away places and nationalities, especially about Central Asia, which was a region he obviously did not fully comprehend because of his European cultural background.

Olaf Mertelsmann

273

5. Conclusion Of course, the piece presented in this volume is a shortened version of Boris Raag’s war experience. Remarkably in the earlier part of his life story Boris leans much less to using elements of the picaresque novel. Thus only one facet of his life is offered, but obviously it was apart from his family experience the most important one. As for many war veterans, the war was the biggest adventure, event or tragedy lived through. It marked a turning point, in the case of Estonia. World War II is deeply inter-related with the establishment of a new political regime intending to totally transform society by Sovietization. It did change society fundamentally, but not always in the intended direction (Mertelsmann, 2007b, 25– 27). Like society, Raag was step-by-step on the way to becoming Soviet, first of all by obtaining the necessary survival skills and this was, of course, not the intended path of his transformation from the regime’s perspective. Amir Weiner (2002) has argued how crucial the war experience was for the further development of the Soviet regime; the war represents a turning point in Raag’s life, too. Boris Raag’s life with the Red Army and in the Soviet hinterland was one among tens of thousands of fellow Estonians. What makes his story appreciable is that he narrates when others are staying silent about; namely their survival strategies. Of course, his experience seems to be especially bounteous. Only a small portion of Soviet society went so far as Boris did with trickery, fakery and petty fraud. Nevertheless, survival strategies were a crucial part of the Soviet way of life, especially during the war and during Stalinism. Of course, a life story written down more than half a century after the events took place will not be able to recall all the details and in that sense there is no final answer to the question whether Raag remembers correctly. It is his version of the story, of how a young Estonian man brought up in a different society survived the war in the Soviet hinterland and adapted to the way of life imposed on him by Stalinism. Historians tend to reach different interpretations and conclusions when reading the same sources. In the case of a written life story, a genre closely related to literature, we might expect that the outcomes of interpretation and analysis are even more diverse than in the case of bureaucratic documents. The researcher is subjective and influenced by his or her positioning in the field, a worldview, personal experience and so on. I owe a great deal ‘revisionist’ Soviet social history and my own work with archival documents and life stories concerning the Sovietization of Estonian society. In that sense it seems clear that my reading and understanding of this life story might be contested by another interpretation.

274

Boris Raag – Hope of Staying Alive Notes

1

2

3

4 5 6

7

8

9

Bergson’s view has been recently questioned by Robert C. Allen (2003). Bergson’s estimates are, in fact, old, but I think he indicates the correct direction. The literature on the war in the east is tremendous. For an introduction see: Mawsdley, 2007; Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 1998; 2007. The notion of the involvement of the German army in massive crimes caused a big controversy in the 1990s in Germany. See: Heer, Naumann, 1995; Hoffmann, 1995; Bernd, 1999. For the historic background see: Misiunas, Taagepera, 1993; Ant, 1999; Mertelsmann, 2005a; Pajur, Tannberg, 2005; Hiio, Maripuu, Paavle, 2006; Mertelsmann, 2006a; Tannberg, 2007; Zubkova, 2008. Разбойник – a robber (in Russian). За Сталину, за Родину – For Stalin, for the Motherland (in Russian). Different societies under various political regimes react similar to pressures on consumption. On the workshop Consumption Constrained: Austerity and Rationing in the 20th Century, held 28–29 April 2007 in Tartu (unpublished papers in the possession of the author), the situation of the UK, Japan, Israel, the USSR and Austria-Hungary was compared. Illegal means were taken whenever consumption was endangered. I do not intend to contradict statements I made earlier on source problems of oral history or life stories but in this case the narrative offers a key for my interpretation. Mertelsmann, 2006b. For Russians not knowing German the Estonian language might sound like German, an experience I made myself several times in Russia. In addition, ‘German’ was often used as a synonym for European foreigners. For the conditions Soviet workers lived in and the draconian legislation see Filtzer, 2002.

References Allen, R. C. (2003), Farm to factory: A reinterpretation of the Soviet industrial revolution. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Ant, J. (1999), Eesti 1939–1941: rahvast, valitsemisest, saatusest. Tallinn: Riiklik Eksami- ja Kvalifikatsioonikeskus. Bergson, A. (1961), The real national income of Soviet Russia since 1928. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Bernd, U. (1999), Eine Ausstellung und ihre Folgen: Zur Rezeption der Ausstellung “Venichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1945”. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. Figes, O. (2007), The whisperers: private life in Stalin’s Russia. London: Lane.

Olaf Mertelsmann

275

Filtzer, D. (2002), Soviet workers and late Stalinism: Labour and the restoration of the Stalinist system after World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fitzpatrick, S. (1999), Every Stalinism: Ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fitzpatrick, S. (2005), Tear off the masks: Identity and imposture in twentiethcentury Russia. Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press. Hašek, J. (1928), Vahva sõduri Švejki seiklused ilmasõja kestel. Transl. by B. Linde. Tartu: Loodus. Hašek, J. (1960), Vahva sõduri Švejki juhtumised maailmasõja päevil. Transl. by L. Remmelgas. Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus. Heer, H. and K. Naumann (eds.) (1995), Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. Hellbeck, J. (1996), “Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi (1931–1939)”, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 43: 344– 373. Hellbeck, J. (2001), “Working, Struggling, Becoming: Stalin-Era Autobiographical Texts”, Russian Review, 60: 340–359. Hellbeck, J. (2006), Revolution on my mind: Writing a diary under Stalin. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Hiio, T., M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) (2006), Estonia 1940–1945: Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity. Hoffmann, D. L. (2003), Stalinist values: The cultural norms of Soviet modernity, 1917–1941. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hoffmann, J. (1995), Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941–1945. Munich: Verlag für Wehrwissenschaften. Ilf, I. and J. Petrov (1962), Kaksteist tooli. Kuldvasikas. Transl. by H. Haug, V. Pirson. Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus. Isupov, V. A. (2000), Demograficheskie katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka. Novosibirsk: Sibirskii Khronograf. Jahn, P. (2005), “Kriegsfolgen: Die Erinnerung an den Zweiten Weltkrieg in der sowjetischen und deutschen Öffentlichkeit”, in: W. Künzel and R. Lakowski (eds.) Niederlage – Sieg – Neubeginn: Frühjahr 1945. Potsdam: Brandenburgische Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 46–54. Jones, J. W. (2001), “‘People without a Definite Occupation’: The Illegal Economy and ‘Speculators’ in Rostov-on-the-Don, 1943–48”, in: D. J. Raleigh (ed.), Provincial landscapes: Local dimensions of Soviet power, 1917–53. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 236–254. Kaasik, P. (2006), “Formation of the Estonian Rifle Corps in 1941–1942”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945: Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity, 885–907.

276

Boris Raag – Hope of Staying Alive

KM EKLA = Estonian Cultural History Archives in the Estonian Literary Museum. Ledeneva, A. (1998), Russia’s economies of favour: Blat, networking, and informal exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewin, M. (1978), “Society, State and Ideology during the first Five Year Plan”, in: S. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Cultural revolution in Russia, 1928–31. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 41–77. Mawsdley, E. (2007), Thunder in the East: the Nazi-Soviet War 1941–1945. London: Hodder Arnold. Merridale, C. (2006), Ivan’s war: The Red Army, 1939–1945. London: Faber and Faber. Mertelsmann, O. (ed.) (2005a), Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt bis zu Stalins Tod. Estland 1939–1953. Hamburg: Bibliotheca Baltica. Mertelsmann, O. (2005b), “Die Sowjetisierung des estnischen Alltags während des Stalinismus”, in: N. Angermann, M. Garleff and W. Lenz (eds.) Ostseeprovinzen, Baltische Staaten und das Nationale. Festschrift für Gert von Pistohlkors zum 70. Geburtstag. Münster: Lit-Verlag, 591– 610. Mertelsmann, O. (2006a), Der stalinistische Umbau in Estland: Von der Markt- zur Kommandowirtschaft. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač. Mertelsmann, O. (2006b), “Mälu ajalooallikana?”, Vikerkaar, 4–5: 129–135. Mertelsmann, O. (2007a), “Mehrdimensionale Arbeitswelten als Überlebensstrategie während der stalinistischen Industrialisierung am Beispiel Estlands”, in: B. Schmidt and J. Hogeforster (eds.) Mehrdimensionale Arbeitswelten im Baltischen Raum. Hamburg: DOBU, 94–106. Mertelsmann, O. (2007b), “‘Sovetiseerimise’ mõistest”, in: T. Tannberg (ed.) Eesti NSV aastatel 1940–1953: Sovetiseerimise mehhanismid ja tagajärjed Nõukogude Liidu ja Ida-Euroopa arengute kontekstis. Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 13–29. Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.) (1998), Germany and the Second World War. Volume IV: The attack on the Soviet Union. Oxford: Clarendon. Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.) (2007), Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Volume VIII: Die Ostfront 1943/44: Der Krieg im Osten und an den Nebenfronten. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Misiunas, R. and R. Taagepera (1993), The Baltic states: Years of dependence, 1940–1990. London: Hurst. Moskoff, W. (1990), The bread of affliction: The food supply in the USSR during World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Osokina, E. (1993), Ierarkhia potrebleniia: O zhizni liudei v usloviiakh stalinskogo snabzheniia, 1928–1935. Mocow: MGOU. Osokina, E. (1998), Za fasadom “stalinskoe izobiliia”: razpredelenie i rynok v snabzhenii naseleniia v gody industrializatsiia. Moscow: Rosspen. Pajur, A. and T. Tannberg (eds.) (2005), Eesti ajalugu VI: Vabadussõjast taasiseseisvumiseni. Tartu: Ilmamaa.

Olaf Mertelsmann

277

Plaat, J. (2001), Usuliikumised, kirikud ja vabakogudused Lääne- ja Hiiumaal: usuühenduste muutumisprotsessid 18. sajandi keskpaigast kuni 20. sajandi lõpuni. Tartu: Eesti Rahva Muuseum. Tannberg, T. (ed.) (2007), Eesti NSV aastatel 1940–1953: Sovetiseerimise mehhanismid ja tagajärjed Nõukogude Liidu ja Ida-Euroopa arengute kontekstis. Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv. Usai, U. (ed.) (1993), Eestlased tööpataljonides 1941–1942: Mälestusi ja dokumente. Esimene raamat. Tallinn: Olion. Voinovich, V. (1977), The life and extraordinary adventures of private Ivan Chonkin. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Weiner, A. (2002), Making sense of war: The Second World War and the fate of Bolshevik revolution. Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press. Zubkova, E. (2008), Pribaltika i Kreml’ 1940–1953. Moscow: Rosspen.

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality: Double Mental Standards in Ailo Ehamaa’s Life History Aili Aarelaid-Tart 1. Introduction: the Republican Generation in World War II Ailo Ehamaa is the father of one of my classmates, whom I have known for decades, but with whom I have a rather superficial acquaintance. A few years ago I learned that he was engaged in recording his memoirs and telling them to his younger relatives. I asked for permission to listen to the recordings, and found out that the old gentleman’s main interest was describing and reflecting upon the events of his own youth, and that of his forebears. The memories mostly circled around people’s fate in the first half of the 20th century, with a focus in the years from the 1920s through the 1940s. Ailo Ehamaa also spoke of the life course of his parents and his grandparents on both sides, spanning two major turning points in the history of the Estonian people: the birth of the Republic of Estonia, and building it up as an outcome of World War I, and the tragic labyrinth of occupations that was the outcome of World War II. I visited Ailo Ehamaa, recorded a five-hour life history interview with him, and followed this up with numerous telephone conversations, in which I asked him to give more specific information about several sets of circumstances. Over the course of these conversations, I realized that the narrator had positioned his youth as the centre of his life, and was trying to tell the story of a generation whose close relatives lived in the first decades of the Republic of Estonia. He experienced those events, and the events accompanying the occupations, as their child and grandchild. Thus Ailo Ehamaa became a ‘window’1 for me to investigate the complicated life journey of the inter-war, Republican generation in the conditions of sharply contradictory political regimes.2 The birth years of those belonging to this generation occurred approximately in the interval 1915–1930, which means that their conscious selves were formed in the conditions of the Republic of Estonia, declared in 1918 and effectively made manifest in 1920. Their schooling was guided by Western-oriented liberal education3 and strong patriotic formatting. This generation was not yet ripe for the complicated political debates that took place on the eve of World War II (Bennich-Björkman, 2007, 338), but it was united by the ideal of working collectively for the good of the country and the people. In his memoirs ethnologist Ilmar Talve, who is about the same age as Ehamaa, characterizes this generation as follows:

280

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality

‘In our case the background for everything was a patriotic upbringing, which we received in school. The categorical imperative was that one must defend the fatherland, no matter what the situation.’ (Talve, 1997, 349–350.) On the eve of the World War II, this so-called ‘age-group with an Estonian era consciousness’ was preparing for adult life with high hopes. Unfortunately, with the outbreak of the war they were thrown into the rapidly whirling carousel of history. A short background chronology of events that took place in Estonia during the subsequent years would be composed as follows: establishment of Soviet military bases in 1939; June, the overthrow of the government in 1940, initiated by the Soviet Union, and the end of the era of independence; June–July 1941, combat between Germany and the Soviet Union; August 1941 – September 1944, the German occupation, at the end of which thousands of Estonians fled west; the second half of 1944, combat between Germany and the Soviet Union; May, 1945, the end of the war and the fixation of the Soviet occupation of Estonia.4 A few years after the war the forceful repression of Estonianness (eestimeelsus) began: in 1947 came the Kremlin-minded ideological turn, the so-called Zhdanovshchina (Mertelsmann, 2003, 11), the great deportations of 1949, followed by the 8th Plenum of the Central Committee of ECP in March 1950, marking the triumph of the Russianminded party elite, and after these events the positive recollection of the Estonian era retreated from public view for many decades. ‘Whose side were you on during the war years?’ was a question that had serious impact on life’s opportunities for the members of this cohort (Johnston, AarelaidTart, 2000, 677). Just like any other, the Republican generation is divisible into many micro-cohorts, based both on nuances of world view and by the haphazardness of fate. During the war years 1941–1945, those young men coming into ripe soldiering age were forced to serve by turns in two hostile armies. Both in the summer of 1941 and in spring 1945, Estonian boys were mobilized into the Red Army. During the period of German occupation they had to serve in the German army; in 1939–1940 and 1943 a large number of Estonian young men (later referred to as the Finnish Boys) volunteered for service in Finland to fight against the Soviet Union. In 1942, the Estonian Legion was formed within the German Army, to some extent on a voluntary basis, as was true in the case of the return of the Finnish Boys to fight against the Red Army on homeland soil. The way of remembering World War II that characterized these later micro-cohorts was directly tied up with which army they happened to have fought in, and how the uniform they had worn during the war years unavoidably shaped the men’s lives from that time forward.

Aili Aarelaid-Tart

281

Naturally the Republican generation – like any other – is heterogeneous with respect to the conditions of their upbringing. Although one of the main axes of that era (Karjahärm, 2001, 224; 252–253) was patriotism mixed with an idyllic representation of rural life, even this was not free of conflicts among social understandings. The birth of the independent republic by no means entailed the disappearance of social inequalities. Society was divided between the financially successful and the less successful, and there was a clear boundary between those who only had the obligatory elementary education and those who had achieved higher education. The poorer and richer folk thought somewhat differently, but in general, sharp class conflicts were unknown in Estonia (Bennich-Björkman, 2007, 336) and the people were united by ideals of the elation of self-existence and cultural solidarity (Aarelaid, 1999, 7–8). The successive occupations created strong turbulence in the Estonian communitarian collective consciousness, as well as sowing confusion in the area of individual self-consciousness. Both the bacteria of Communism and National Socialism were contagious. For the young men of the Republican generation, ending up on the Soviet or the German side was often not a matter of worldview but of military dictatorship. Granted, there were some elements of voluntary choice: there was the Finnish Boys’ movement, with the goal of helping a kin people in their struggle against the Red Army; in the summer of 1941, the NKVD destruction battalions provided an opportunity to mete revenge for ‘haters of bourgeoisie’; in February 1944, the wish to stand against the invasion of the Red Army made the German general mobilization successful among Estonian men (Laar, 2005, 18–19). Actual participation in the war naturally contributed to the formation of the identities of the micro-cohorts, and when victory came, the members of the Republican generation were no longer mentally unified. The identities of some of the micro-cohorts were legitimate when the Soviets came, others became negligible with the change of political regime, and some were ambiguous and hard to classify. With the solidification of Soviet power, those who had served in the Estonian Rifle Corps met with acclaim and good career prospects; the Soviet history books wrote of nothing but their glorious war journey.5 Those who had served on the German side, who had not succeeded in escaping to the West in autumn of 1944, had to suffer disgraced status for decades, and official history silenced them completely. Those who had made their way to Sweden, Canada, and other places in the free world did indeed write about their identities, which were based in large measure on their war experiences,6 but in Soviet Estonia, the dissemination of these writings was prohibited. With the restoration of independent statehood, the hierarchy of rights to memo-

282

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality

ry was turned on its head once again: Legionnaires and Finnish Boys were heroes, while those who had fought in the Red Army were assigned to the role of repentant sinners. As a male child born in 1922, Ailo Ehamaa also belongs to the generation whose growing up years were stamped by patriotic enthusiasm, the desire to become a healthy, decisive citizen of the Republic of Estonia. His role models were his father and uncle, both of whom had taken part in the War of Independence; he participated in the youth work of the Defence League (Kaitseliit), and received his high school education in the Tallinn Realschule, known for its strong patriotic spirit. As an 18 year old, he wanted to embark on life as an independent adult along with his peers, but the successive waves of occupation prevented this. He went to war straight from the school bench, and into totally foreign conditions in Russia to boot. Under such circumstances there was nothing to do with a young man’s ideals for self-realization, and what determined things was the skill simply to stay alive. 2. An Estonian Soldier on the Russian Side As in other soldier’s stories,7 there is a prominent place in Ailo Ehamaa’s life story for war experiences. His narrative is characterized by the position of a neutral observer: the war journey is presented rather as a sequence of fortunate and unfortunate happenings, of itineraries and locations, than as an emotional description of the horrors of battle, friends who were killed before his eyes, soldier’s jokes, etc. Throughout, Ehamaa remains a decent Estonian boy in a foreign army, that is, on the Soviet side.8 His description of the Estonian draftees’ first encounter with the half-illiterate Russian superior officers is laced with quite a bit of irony, and the same is true for work regime at the military construction site, where little regard was shown for people. In the Red Army Estonians (and Balts in general) were not to be trusted, not only because of their ‘capitalist’ past, but because of their massive desertion to the German side in the 1941 defence battles in the area around Pskov. The Estonian draftees were sent to labour battalions, where living conditions were so difficult that a large number of men did not survive at all.9 Ailo Ehamaa was extraordinarily lucky, since instead of labour camp he landed in a kolkhoz as a farm hand, where he was lodged with a Russian family who took kindly to him. Building his everyday life with this family on the principle of mutual help, Ehamaa’s labour battalion period was a time of recuperation rather than suffering. Nine months in a Russian village was in some ways a ‘supplementary education’ for Ehamaa, giving him an opportunity to perceive and understand

Aili Aarelaid-Tart

283

more deeply the differences in cultural realities. The Estonian-mindedness he brought along from home and school was not particularly Russianfriendly; however, war experiences showed that life is even more complicated and black-and-white schemata do not work very well. Ailo Ehamaa went through the entire trajectory of battles of the Estonian Rifle Corps, from Velikiye Luki to Courland, was wounded twice, and came out of the war as a second group invalid. The most pessimistic parts of his narrative are from the days of Velikiye Luki, where the men were simply sent for slaughter without the requisite preparation for battle, and where three quarters of the initial composition of the Estonian Rifle Corps was eliminated, being killed or wounded (Larin, 1962, 100; Noormets et. al, 2007, 118). Ehamaa himself is also wounded, and describes the three months spent in military hospital with his characteristic mild irony as a one of the pleasures of war, which even included an opportunity to shake hands with the members of the behind-the-front-lines government of the Estonian SSR. For many reasons (human losses, large numbers of deserters to the German side, the Estonian SSR behind-the-lines government’s initiative to keep Estonian men from being sent to the Stalingrad front), the Estonian Rifle Corps, rendered incapable of fighting after Velikiye Luki, were taken out of the combat zone, sidelined, and sent back into action more comprehensively in 1944, particularly that summer, when the battles began to liberate Estonia from the German army. The Soviet high command skilfully used a strategic trick, provoking and rallying the ‘national units’ through propagandistic brainwashing to ‘cleanse their national territories of the beastly and all-demolishing fascists’. When he returned to his unit in spring 1943, Ailo Ehamaa was very disturbed by the fact that it no longer consisted only of Estonian men, but that it had been extensively reinforced by Russian Estonians and simply men of other nationalities. When he had been sent to Russia in 1941, he had been among other Estonians, who thought the same way he did. These boys wanted to go back home, even if it had to be in Soviet uniform, to cleanse their country of the foreign invaders, and go back to living normal life again. Unfortunately the Russian commanders were not able to take a trusting or understanding attitude toward this patriotism. Many conscripts who boasted too loudly about their patriotism simply disappeared from the unit. Alongside the young soldiers there were numerous older men among the mobilized, all the way back to those who had participated in the War of Independence (1918–1920). Even during the War of Independence they had had to fight not only against the Reds, but against the Germans – so that thought was not totally foreign. Of course the Red Army higher command had no respect for Estonian-mindedness and so they began ‘mixing

284

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality

up the nationalities’. During the formation of the Estonian Rifle Corps in 1942, there were over 20,000 men in two divisions, 88% of whom were Estonians (Larin, 1962, 44). After reformation, by 30 June 1943, there were 18,500 men, of whom only 75% were Estonians (Larin, 1962, 107).10 The Soviet Estonian military historian Peeter Larin has included in this figure the so-called Russian Estonians – those men born and raised in Russia for whom the patriotic sentiment of the interwar period and the will to defend the Republic of Estonia was something alien. Ailo Ehamaa’s war buddies began sorting themselves out into the Estonian-minded and communist symphatizers.11 While in the beginning they had talked loudly among themselves in Estonian about the poverty and stupidity that ruled in Russia, they soon learned to veil their sentiments in the presence of the political officers (politruk) (Noormets et. al, 2007, 98). A bizarre, alienating situation developed, since officers included both veterans of the War of Independence and those who had graduated from Soviet military schools. The soldiers must have had to develop a ‘field-guide’ or classifier in this contradictory situation, in order not to get caught speaking too directly. With the officers from the Estonian Army one could get away with speaking like-mindedly, but when it came to Russians and Russian Estonians, it was a better idea to keep one’s mouth shut. The Estonian men serving in the Soviet Army had little useful or reliable information about what had happened in the three years in the homeland. The Estonian-minded men took the attitude that the numerous political lectures were a useless waste of time, and used the time for napping. In his memoirs, Rinaldo Nurm, who fought in the Estonian Rifle Corps, writes that from time to time Estonian radio operators were able to pick up a German-language broadcast from the homeland, but a comprehensive overview of what was going on in Estonia could not be gathered from these. Over against the horror stories told by the politruks, they found out to their consolation that at home they were living a relatively peaceful life under German rule (Nurm, 2006, 73–74). Apparently the majority of the Rifle Corps men did not have anything like a complete picture, including the Finnish Boys, the Estonian Legion, the Omakaitse (Home Guard) units, nor of relatives and friends fleeing before the Russian forces in a state of panic. Ailo Ehamaa and many others like him were motivated by the possibility of returning to Estonia, to liberate the land of their birth from the German occupiers, and to start living like ordinary people. How much they had been influenced by Red Army propaganda is hard to judge in retrospect. It is beyond question that in the Corps, antiGerman hatred was propagated actively. One example of Red brainwashing is the movement for mandatory hate and revenge letters on the topic, ‘Why do I hate the Germans?’ (Noormets et. al, 2007, 141).12 Jaan

Aili Aarelaid-Tart

285

Roos, who lived in the homeland at this time, writes in the 16 October 1944 entry to his diary that the men of the Estonian Corps who marched in with the invading Red Army had all become convinced communists (Roos, 1997, 106); Roos was going along with a rumour that was circulating at the time. In his entry for 15 June 1945, after the war ended, Roos describes the situation in totally opposite manner: ‘The Estonian Corps is back in Estonia now. The majority of the Estonian Corps men have a hostile attitude toward the Russians, and are Estonian-minded.’ (Roos, 1997, 171.) The standing against each other on Estonian soil of Estonian men who had happened into combat wearing the uniforms of two different armies is certainly one of the most excruciating ordeals of World War II for Estonians (Laar, 2005). Artilleryman Ailo Ehamaa did not have to participate directly in any of these fratricidal battles. In March 1944 the command of the Leningrad front did not trust Estonian artillerymen in the invasion of strategically important Narva; after aiming heavy fire at the Germans they were reassigned to the southern stretch of the front on Russian soil, with the goal of securing Lake Peipus. Ailo Ehamaa returns to his homeland at Kallaste, and notices that the local Russian population of Old Believers had a strange attitude toward the men of the Estonian Corps: Estonians are sometimes in German uniform, then in Russian uniform, how is one supposed to behave around them? In the battles at the River Emajõgi that same summer, Ehamaa had a chance encounter with what seemed to be a Home Guard unit, since according to him they were badly dressed with poor equipment, and they took off at a run. As Red Army soldiers, they even captured some Home Guard men, but after a short conversation they allowed their countrymen to escape quietly. Thus Ehamaa had no idea about the opinions exchanged at several points on the German-Russian front between Finnish Boys and Corps boys with regard to who was on the ‘right’ side (Larin, 1962, 164). 3. The National Flag in an Alien War In the historical consciousness of contemporary Estonia, the 22nd of September 1944 is a date fraught with contradictions. In a great war there are always two hostile parties, and unfortunately it is possible that there will be two simultaneous and disagreeing interpretations of the same specific past events, held by opposing memory communities. On the Soviet side what has been emphasized is the complexity of the so-called battles to liberate Tallinn, accompanied by a demand, issued in a categorical tone, that the victors’ heroic deeds be recognized and the fallen be comme-

286

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality

morated for evermore. For the Estonians, however, the 22nd of September marks the fall of Tallinn and the beginning of the second Soviet occupation. It is also known that the Red generals did not trust Estonians to be the advance guard for the liberation of Tallinn, but thanks to the courage of Lieutenant General Lembit Pärn in mobilizing Corps men for the first unit of soldiers to arrive in the capital, the main merit belongs to the native people (Aru, Paulman, 1984, 78–84). Ailo Ehamaa described the attack on Tallinn as a race between Corps men and Russian tank columns, in name of the honour of being the first to enter Tallinn. The time difference was minimal (Larin, 1962, 163), but the Estonian boys won. They may have been victors, but in whose name? Ailo Ehamaa was one of the few of those Soviet warriors born and raised in Estonia who went straight to Toompea on that day. Unfortunately this was also one of the strangest days of his life, the meaning of which he has only come to realize years later. On the 4th of July 1941 he had been mobilized into the Soviet Army and taken to Russia by force, and on 22 September 1944, with a red star on his soldier’s cap (pilotka) he returned to his homeland. He had been away from Tallinn for three years and 11 weeks – the young man wanted to go home! To get back to the city where he had been born, to speak Estonian in the street, to see the blue-black-and-white flag flying on Toompea – in all of this there was a great deal of the sublime – for a moment. Only an hour later Ehamaa had to see the national flag being replaced by the red flag, right under his very eyes. In the historical discourse of the Estonian SSR, nothing was mentioned about a change of flags. Instead, what was emphasized was the fact of raising the red flag: ‘1st Lieutenant N. Karmu and Captain G. Savik drove up to Toompea, where Lieutenant J. Lumiste and Lance Corporal E. Nagelmann raised the red flag in the Pikk Hermann tower’ (Leentsman, Sõgel, 1977, 383).

In Soviet historical writing it was also taboo to mention that those raising the flag were Corps men who had never had the slightest previous contact with the patriotism of the Estonian era, since they had grown up in Russia. For Ailo Ehamaa, the hidden opposition between Estonian-and Russianminded Corps men unexpectedly assumed a real expression. Neither he nor his fellow combatants could have known at that moment that the blueblack-and-white flag had flown on Toompea for less than two days. According to the recollections of contemporaries, on the afternoon of the 20th of September, the German flag with the swastika suddenly began to come down from Toompea, and the Estonian national flag was raised in its stead. The crowd in the Baltic Railway Station, seized by the panic of flight had rejoiced ecstatically for a moment, congratulated one another,

Aili Aarelaid-Tart

287

wept, and spontaneously started singing the national anthem (Laar, 2007, 103). Unfortunately this outburst of patriotism in a power vacuum was brief, and the following change of flags showed very clearly who had assumed power. Ailo Ehamaa was greatly embittered. He concluded that the only possibility to stay alive in such a situation was to take refuge in the background. Standing around with one’s hands doubled into fists in a situation of crying injustice was familiar to him already from the year 1940, when he had to witness the marching of the Red Army into Estonia, powerless to do anything about it. On that September day, the jubilation of victory suddenly turned into the anguish of loss. The pain was somewhat soothed by finding his father again, and by the realization that his home was left intact in the bombings. The carousel of history was turning at top speed, at least as this young man was concerned: something essential was taken away, but there was still something left. He was alive and back home again, and he could hug his own father. Ailo Ehamaa did not care about the fact that all around him there was ‘feasting in a time of plague’: the marauding Russian army, searching for liquor, taking valuables by force from people (watches, bicycles, etc). Those Estonians fleeing for dear life from the Russian soldiers could not have gotten far from Tallinn; those who stayed were occupied with taking what was left from the Germans and from their countrymen who had left. Ehamaa had prior experience of the chaos attending the Red Army’s arrival in towns abandoned by the Germans – but he had never had the experience of coming back home again from war. Despite all of this, things were not the same after the 22nd of September. Apparently, part of Ailo Ehamaa’s reaction to what happened was the fact that the stark journey of the Estonian Rifle Corps into combat that lasted another three quarters of a year, and took them from Tallinn to Courland, is not represented at all in the content of his life story. Only that battle in which he was wounded again has a meaning. From Ehamaa’s point of view this was the next existential turn, which destined him to bear the stigma of a wounded veteran for decades hence. In arranging his life he would always have to reckon with the fact that his severely injured leg was luckily still attached, but the chronic infection in the wound would not heal for 60 years, and would require daily tending. The price Ehamaa paid for survival in the war was high: both his body and soul were struck with affliction.

288

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality 4. To be Hardened by Double Mental Standards

In the course of the occupations, Estonia had suffered severely, both materially and in a spiritual sense. The end of the war had been especially turbulent, given both the German soldiers pillaging in the spirit of retreat, and the invading Red Army doing the same from a victors’ mindset. In his diary Jaan Roos has summarized this as follows: ‘Indeed, the German has washed his face, and the face of the Russian is muddy, but both of them are pigs’ (Roos, 1997, 99). In the fall of 1944 the majority of Estonians was in despair: the Germans had betrayed and abandoned the land, using Estonian men (Legionnaires, Finnish Boys, Home Guard units) as a protective shield to retreat behind; people panicking at the Russians’ return left their homes behind, making frantic attempts to flee, which failed for most of them. When the dust cleared, the first impression of the circumstances was that perhaps it would be possible to strike a compromise with the Russians, who just might not be interested in ruling Estonia after all. However, the NKVD roundups that began soon thereafter left no doubt that most of the people were suspected of anticommunist sentiments, and these were to be punished severely as a show of force. Left stranded, the people hatched a new illusion, namely that an Anglo-Saxon Allied force would drive out the Russians and take power.13 Things were very far from a unified nation: everyone was primarily interested in saving their own skin. This kind of desperate situation is a breeding ground for the development of double-mindedness. On a theoretical level, the circumstances of those days could be characterized as an accelerating cultural turn, in the course of which the previous value-normative constellation of the idyllic statehood of a small nation was replaced by the new master discourse of a happy Soviet reality I have previously analyzed the process that ensued as cultural trauma, which I have defined as a ‘violent value invasion; sudden, repressive application of “alien” axiological scales that rapidly oppose age-old traditions’ (Aarelaid-Tart, 2006, 44). I have maintained that the development of so-called double thinking is one of the most crucial strategies of coping with cultural trauma. In my previous writings I have covered this topic at greater length (Aarelaid-Tart, 2003); in this chapter I apply this theoretical framework to the interpretation of a particular life story. I have previously argued that Estonian-minded sentiments were palpable publicly for many years after the end of the war (Aarelaid, 1998). In the current context, I would like to add to this the idea that due to routines of everyday life, the persistence of an old mental framework is always strong, but the adoption of a new one may also be somewhat intense. After sudden

Aili Aarelaid-Tart

289

political turns, people are basically worried about two things: whether they and their families are safe from the threat of repression, and whether there will be enough work and bread for them. The reinstatement of Soviet rule in Estonia in 1944 was accompanied by a wave of persecutions and arrests, and provided no guarantees with respect to these questions of basic life necessities. Therefore, everyone quickly had to think up some kind of strategies for survival on their own, and piece together the old and new standards of thinking as best they could. Quick external compliance with the commandments of Soviet ideology was certainly one of the strategic moves entailed by adjustment. There were even high-ranking intellectuals who, after only a few months following the imposition of the new regime published pieces that fit with the new ideology (for example, Jaan Roos (1997, 128) has alluded in passing to the change of heart of a recognized writer from a struggling war refugee to a oily-tongued Red public opinion leader). However, for the majority of the people, the cultural turn manifested gradually and step by step, since they could not think of themselves as the products of the ‘false consciousness’ of a previous era, nor were they empty vessels, tabula rasa, on which the mass media could project whatever they wanted (Hall, 2007, 42). This same pattern of the development of double mental standards is repeated in many of the published life stories of homeland Estonians from this generation (e.g. Mäesalu, 2007). As young people who grew up in the pre-war Estonia, the time of reversals had meant a significant measure of suffering for them: they had lost homes, members of their close inner circle, and like-minded companions, as well as having to endure fear for the sake of their very survival. Academician Juhan Peegel has described this situation, quite alienating for an Estonian young man, as follows: ‘My brother-in-law got me a job working in the Education department of the executive committee of the Working People‘s Delegate Assembly of Saaremaa. I had nothing to do there, so I somehow just did office work.’ (Peegel, 2006, 74.)

As opportunities opened up, young people with Estonian-era high school educations enrolled without hesitation in Soviet style universities, accepted jobs with strange titles, began working in trade unions, etc. When they reached middle age, that is, by the beginning of the 1960s, many of the members of Republican generation were already noteworthy specialists, who may have looked askance at some of their activities, but were able to navigate Soviet-style institutions skilfully. In their more intimate circles of relations, they would permit themselves little ‘Estonian era pranks’ such as anti-Russian anecdotes, reminiscences of national-minded teachers, ditties such as ‘Stalin twirls his moustache in the Kremlin, and

290

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality

teaches us the art of famine…’ (Nurm, 2006, 175). From time to time people stopped and recognized that one or another colleague had something to hide about their past, and that there were from time to time reasonable bosses who did not allow themselves to be bothered by a man’s dark past (a Legionnaire or a Finnish Boy) (Mäesalu, 2007, 183). Outwardly Soviet, internally Estonian-minded – this was how many would have wished to characterize their double-standard mentality. Demobilized at the age of 24, Ailo Ehamaa finally began the normal life he had longed for. He quickly had to learn a trade appropriate for peacetime circumstances, and he was ready to start his own family. Similarly to many of his age-mates, he felt how paradoxical a situation he was in: as a young person with a very Estonian-minded upbringing, he now had to perform as a loyal Soviet official. His social status consisted of two parts: triumph and trauma were closely intertwined. On the one hand he was a victor in a great war, and thus belonged to the brotherhood of Corps men, sanctioned by the official authorities. On the other hand he was a member of the Estonian people, which was suffering the repressions of the NKVD. His status as a Corps man spared neither his wife’s parents from deportation nor his grandfather from being evicted from the house he had built with his own hands; in the new system, his father remained shadowed by his inappropriate past as a member of the Defence League. In such circumstances, success was facilitated by a coping strategy that could be articulated as timely, rational choices and their quick implementation. One of the leitmotivs of Ehamaa’s autobiographical narrative was the statement: …the opportunity arose to do something… and that was what I did. In such behaviour there is certainly a healthy portion of military conduct, but also of the decency of an Estonian-era schoolboy. In order to cope with the ideologically and economically contradictory first decade of the Soviet era, Ehamaa uses standards of thinking and behaving from both the old and the new social framework. He cannot forget the Estonian era; neither does he set himself directly in opposition to Soviet rules for living. As distinguished from many of those who were in the Estonian Rifle Corps (Ojalo, 2007, 221), he is in no hurry to start working for the local apparatus of the occupying powers, either in a government institution, the Communist Party, the Komsomol, or trade union. He keeps a low profile, and works as a middle-level specialist in the area of farm product supply. Ailo Ehamaa’s childhood and youth had created a foundation for critical assessment of the diversity of life, as well as for avoiding those paths that led downward. His essential social capital was a large kinship network: three living grandparents, aunts, an uncle, etc. Since childhood this gave him rich experience of the possibility of different ways of life, as

Aili Aarelaid-Tart

291

well as of how to cope with sudden changes. By means of his relatives he had a close-up view of the life practices of those who had taken part in the War of Independence, those who built their own houses, kept livestock, practiced as master craftsmen or physicians. This was a resource which permitted Ehamaa to change his way of life as needed in complicated times: to go from the city to the country when food was scarce, and, after looking for ways of self-realization, to return from the country to the city. Ailo Ehamaa acted on the principle that given the circumstances one had to choose the most practical way to continue one’s existence, not pursuing unattainable ideals, but rather taking things one step at a time and protecting the circle of one’s close ones. In the case of abrupt twists of circumstance, he continued to find some kind of modus vivendi, and lived on quite tolerably, without being imprisoned, becoming unemployed, suffering hunger, or falling into pessimism, etc. The norms of his Estonianera upbringing enabled him to manage with dignity in all situations, and his skill in maintaining decency toward his companions never faltered. In his childhood he had acquired the value judgment that as a small nation, Estonians had had reason to fear foreigners, particularly invaders. By force of necessity, on several occasions Ehamaa had to work in a collective of mixed ethnicity, where the official language was Russian. Even though he was competent in both oral and written Russian, he always wished to leave the foreign work environment as soon as it was feasible. Ailo Ehamaa’s relationship with Corps men as power-bearers deserves separate consideration. After returning from the war, he does not feel the need for frequent communication with his battle comrades. He claims that he has never attended gatherings of the veterans of the Great Patriotic War at the statue of the Bronze Soldier,14 and the glorious aura of a victor is not part of his personal identity. He has considered it important to take part in some gatherings of his division, but not at official ritual events. In his war memoirs, Ehamaa never mentions any awards or medals for combat, any victorious attacks, etc. However, as a person capable of learning, he has acquired the ability to use his Corps connections in critical situations. He did this on two occasions: on going to the country in pursuit of a suitable job, and on returning to Tallinn and looking for an apartment. His description of how he fussed with the housing commission is colourful in the style of Bakhtin’s famous carnivalesque,15 and Ehamaa describes his paraphrase of the Soviet ideological phrasebook with pleasure. The crisis situation (his family has nowhere to live) causes him to present himself as a liberator of Tallinn, as a war invalid, as a boss who went to the country to help with collectivization, etc. The end dictates the means, and through manipulating words from the official ideological lexicon, the Ehamaa

292

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality

family obtains an apartment in Tallinn. Was this a bow to the powers that be, or the opposite – a chance to mock them? Ailo Ehamaa’s membership in the Communist Party certainly had its part to play in the tolerable living he and his family had in Soviet times. This, however, was not the result of conviction, but rather a consequence of a young soldier’s inexperience. In one of the many telephone conversations that followed up our interview, it turned out that the circumstances of Ehamaa’s recruitment to the Party had been drastic indeed. One of the main indicators of the political work carried out in the Estonian Rifle Corps was the steady increase of membership both in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Komsomol. Since belonging to these organizations was understandably not very popular among those mobilized from Estonia in 1941, the tactic of ‘Party political work carried out in combat’ (Larin, 1962, 116–117)16 was implemented. Concretely this meant that immediately before sending soldiers into an obviously dangerous battle, the politruk came, weapon in hand, and demanded an immediate decision to apply for admission to the Party. In other words, the measure of the politruk’s effectiveness was the number of fallen communists in each battle. Thus Ehamaa and many others like him had to make a quick decision, either to present the requisite application, and with some luck to come through the battle alive – or to be killed on the spot by the politruk’s bullet, which would later be reclassified as a German bullet. Ehamaa never made a career in the Party, though this circumstance might have facilitated his period of study abroad and to his appointment as director of a laboratory of All-Union importance. 5. Summary: The Arduousness of Memory Work The generation that grew up in the interwar period is already fading into the past. What happened in their lives is the concern of historians and politicians of several succeeding generations, who seem never to tire of classifying the fates of Estonian soldiers into ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Tens of thousands of sons cannot step forward to defend their fathers’ rights, since those men who died wearing different uniforms never got the chance to pass on their lives to sons. Many of the fathers of unborn children were buried in the soil of Velikiye Luki, the meadows on the banks of the River Emajõgi, in Tehumardi, and Courland. Juhan Peegel has written, ‘Perhaps no one publicly commemorates those sons of Estonia anymore. Sad. Painful.’ (Peegel, 2006, 65.) For half a century the Estonian-mindedness of the youth of Republican generation was not open for public declaration. It

Aili Aarelaid-Tart

293

was, however, one of the guides in setting the course of one’s life – at least it was for the majority Corps men. Ailo Ehamaa was approaching his seventieth birthday when Estonianmindedness once again became legal in the public arena. Despite a long practical life in the Soviet system, the spark of the Estonian era had not gone out in him. With enthusiasm he took part in most of the events of the liberation movement of the years 1988–1991. Ailo considers the greatest miracle of his life to be that he had the strength to live until the rebirth of the Estonian Republic, and spent his elder years – now nineteen years already – as a free person. A long life had forced the bonds of doublemindedness on the man, but finally liberated him from them. At the time of our interview in July 2008, Ailo Ehamaa was 85 years old. Half a century of his long life he had spent as a Soviet person. How did he remember himself, and how did he narrate his life story? We might ask the question, whether the biographical work of a person of such advanced age has to include self-justification, or can it have a different purpose altogether? Indeed, Ailo Ehamaa’s main interest at this point is recollecting the realities of the interwar Republic of Estonia and passing this on to his younger relatives. As his medium of recording the old gentleman uses a modern digital Dictaphone. In this article I have used these same recordings, which in their extent and depth are much richer in factual content than the published life story referred to above. Ehamaa’s narrations are interesting from a local history point of view (reminiscences of colourful Realschule teachers, of life in the settlements of Laeva and Käsmu in the 1930s, the coping strategies as a recently retired person in the economically tight times of 1992–1995, etc) and the motif of their intertwining is recalling the Estonian era. Considering his venerable age, Ailo Ehamaa is seeking his place in the chain of life stories of his forebears. He believes that he has had to obtain a Soviet life experience in the same way as his grandparents learned the social framework of the Tsarist era, and his father the outlines of the interwar Estonian Republic. As a rule, people cannot choose the framing conditions in which they act, though it is in their power to remain honest and not to betray the principles of his forefathers. At present, it is not important to Ehamaa to preserve a record of himself, but rather finding a common denominator for the lives his relatives have lived in Estonia. The key words for this might be ‘modestly ambitious’, ‘accommodatingly straight-backed’, and ‘outwardly Soviet, internally Estonian-minded’.

294

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality Notes

1

2

3

4

5

6

7 8

9

10

11 12

13

14

The ‘window’ method was explored by Paul Thompson (1978), and described as the theoretical basis to understand any social change (Thompson, 1981). Research in preparation of this chapter was supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development fund (Centre of Excellence of Cultural Theory) and by the ESF grant 7030. Translated by Tiina Ann Kirss. I have written at greater length about this generation in Johnston, AarelaidTart, 2000. See a more detailed characterization of the enumerated events in the context of World War II history in Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Cronology in this volume. For a selection of the commemorative literature on the Great Patriotic War, see Larin, 1962; Kalvo, 1972; Repson, 1978. For a selection of Estonian diaspora memoirs of World War II see Jurs, 1987; Uustalu, 1973. From among those published recently, see Nurm, 2006; Loosaar, 2006. The moods and emotions of Estonian boys drafted into the Red Army were also written about in literary works published during the Soviet period, such as Kuusberg, 1965; Peegel, 1979. See also Noormets et. al, 2007, 156. About 10 000 men perished (different sources cit. 6 000 to 15 000, cf. Ennuste, 2005, 42). The same information can be found in Noormets et. al, Õun, 2007, 97, where the proportion of Russian Estonians is estimated at 1/5. For another example of the same experience, see Nurm, 2006, 73. One of the ideological forms of preparing the Red Army soldiers of Estonian origin for battles on homeland soil was forcing the men to express themselves in writing. In political lessons Estonians’ rage against the pillaging German conquerors was stressed, and they were allowed to write letters of revenge. Some of these have been published in the almanac Sõjasarv 1, 1944. This illusion, tinted by nostalgic hope, is known as the metaphor of the ‘white ship’. In life stories that tell about the post-war years, the metaphor of the white ship can be encountered quite frequently: ‘…stories spread that the “white ship” would come. The Americans would not allow things to stay as they were. Surely there would be a turn of events,” one or another would confirm; that is, among those whom one could trust.’ (Hinrikus, 2003, 39.) The same metaphor can be seen when describing the mood of the end of the 1950s. See also Rutt Hinrikus’ analysis of the metaphor of the white ship in history, Hinrikus, 2008, 100. The Bronze Soldier is a monument to the liberators of Tallinn erected by the authorities in the Tallinn city centre in 1947. For decades official

Aili Aarelaid-Tart

15

16

295

ceremonies were held there on the day of victory, the 9th of May, and on 22 September. When Estonia regained its independence, Russian war veterans continued to gather around the Bonze Soldier till its removing to the military cemetery 2007. In Rabelais and His World Bakhtin (1968) conceptualizes carnival as one of the expressions of Renaissance popular culture. The theory of carnival has also been considered suitable for the study of Soviet culture, with an allusion to the pathos ‘between the lines’ of Bakhtin’s text: namely, the concept of carnival represented a veiled anti-Soviet and anti-Stalin allegory. If in October 1942 the combined membership in the Party and the Komsomol was 396, by 1 January 1944 it had grown to 7391. Apparently this was not a matter of growth in principled conviction.

References Aarelaid, A. (1998), Ikka kultuurile mõeldes. Virgela: Tallinn. Aarelaid, A. (1999), “Rahvakultuur ja eurointegratsiooni hingus”, in: A. Aarelaid (ed.) Rahvakultuur ingliska ja internetiga, Tallinn: Rahvakultuuri Arendus- ja Koolituskeskus, TPÜ RASI & TPÜ Nüüdiskultuuri Uurimiskeskus, 5–21. Aarelaid-Tart, A. (2003), “Double Mental Standards in the Baltics during Two Afterwar Decades in Baltics”, in: A. M. Kõll (ed.) The Baltic countries under occupation. Soviet and German rule 1940–1991. Studia Baltica Stockholmiensia 23. Stockholm: Stockholm University, Department of History, 215–228. Aarelaid-Tart, A. (2006), Cultural trauma and life stories. Helsinki: Kikimora Publishers. Aru, K. and F. Paulman (1984), Meie kindral. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Bakhtin, M. (1968), Rabelais and his world. Transl. by H. Iswolsky. Cambridge: MIT. Bennich-Björkman, L. (2007), “The Cultural Roots of Estonia’s Successful Transition: How Historical Legacies Shaped the 1990s”, East European Politics & Societies, 21 (2): 316–347. Leentsman, L. and Sõgel, E. (1977), Eesti rahvas Nõukogude Liidu Suures Isamaasõjas 1941–1945. Vol. 2. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Hall, S. (2007), “Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy and the Cultural Turn“, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(39): 39–49. Hinrikus, R. (ed.) (2003), Eesti rahva elulood. Vol. III: Elu Eesti NSVs. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Hinrikus, R. (2008), “The Journey of the White Ship”, Interlitteraria, I: 229– 241.

296

The Estonian-Minded Person in Soviet Reality

Johnston, H, and Aarelaid-Tart, A. (2000), “Generations and Collective Action in Authoritarian Regimes: the Estonian National Opposition, 1940– 1990”, Sociological Perspectives, 43 (4): 671–698. Jurs, A. (ed.) (1987), Eesti vabadusvõitlejad Teises maailmasõjas. Toronto: Sihtasutus “Võitleja” raamatu toimkond. Kalvo, A. (1972), Nemad vabastasid Lõuna-Eesti 1944. aasta augustis– septembris. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Karjahärm, T. (2001), “Haritlaskonna enesetunnetus ja ühiskondlikud ideed”, in: T. Karjahärm and V. Sirk (eds.) Vaim ja võim. Eesti haritlaskond 1917–1940. Tallinn: Argo, 215–379. Kuusberg, P. (1965), Enn Kalmu kaks mina. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Laar, M. (2005), Emajõgi 1944. II maailmasõja lahingud Lõuna-Eestis. Tallinn: Varrak. Laar, M. (2007), September 1944. Otto Tiefi valitsus. Tallinn: Varrak. Larin, P. (1962), Eesti Laskurkorpus Suures Isamaasõjas. Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus. Loosaar, E. (2006), Eesti mehe lugu. Tallinn: Varrak. Mertelsmann, O. (2003), “Introduction”, in: O. Mertelsmann (ed.) The Sovietization of the Baltic states, 1940–1956. Tartu: Kleio, Tartu, 9–17. Mäesalu, V. (2007), Kulaku tütar nõukogude süsteemis. Aastad 1922–1977. Tallinn: Grenader. Noormets T., T. Nõmm, H. Ojalo, O. Raidla, R. Rosenthal, T. Taavet and M. Ōun (eds.) (2007), Korpusepoisid. Tallinn: Eesti Akadeemiline Sõjaajaloo Selts. Nurm, R. (2006), Sõjateest laskurkorpuses ja teisi mälestusi. Tallinn: Grenader. Ojalo, H. (2007), “Eesti rahvusväeosa likvideerimine”, in: T. Noormets et. al (eds.) Korpusepoisid. Tallinn: Eesti Akadeemiline Sõjaajaloo Selts, 221– 222. Peegel, J. (1979), Ma langesin esimesel sõjasuvel. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Peegel, J. (2006), Otsides. Meenutusi pikalt teelt. Ed. by M. Lõhmus. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Repson, A. (1978), Seni, kuni elame. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Roos, J. (1997), Läbi punase öö. Esimene osa: 1944. ja 1945. aasta päevik. Tartu: Eesti Kirjanduse Selts, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus. Talve, I. (1997), Kevad Eestis. Autobiograafia I. Tartu: Ilmamaa. Thompson, P. (1981), “Life Histories and the Analysis of Social Change”, in: D. Bertaux (ed.), Biography and society: The life history approach in the social sciences. London, Thousand Oaks & New Dehli: Sage, 290–306. Uustalu, E. and R. Moora (1973), Soomepoisid: ülevaade Eesti vabatahtlike liikumisest ning sõjateest Soomes ning kodumaal Teise maailmasõja päevil. Toronto. Ennuste, Ü. (ed.) (2005), Valge raamat Eesti rahva kaotustest okupatsioonide läbi 1940–1991. Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopediakirjastus.

How to Remember? The Social Framework of Reinhold Mirk’s Reminiscences of War Rutt Hinrikus 1. Introduction The events of World War II are continually receding from our view, along with the decrease in the number of men who either took part in it or who remember that time from a child’s or adult’s vantage point. The field of choices for Estonian men in the World War II was dictated by the two great powers whose occupations succeeded one another; both declared mobilizations. These recruitment campaigns were at odds with international law, but what did those who were mobilized know about the law, which was nothing but words on paper? The future soldier had some margin for choice, up till the point when he was the equivalent of being a prisoner: he could choose whether or not to obey orders, and the latter meant going in to hiding. Choices usually had to be made blind – their meanings and consequences would only emerge later. The men who were mobilized into the Red Army were no exception to this general pattern. The situation awaiting Estonian men who were mobilized in 1941 and sent behind Soviet lines was not military training, but labour battalions, and a large number of them never made it any further. Others were lucky. They returned home with the victorious troops. Reinhold Mirk, born in 1918, was one of these. After graduating from high school in 1937, Reinhold Mirk performed his military service in the armed forces of the Republic of Estonia, and a year later was released as a reserve officer. In 1941 he was mobilized into the Red Army, to be demobilized in 1956, after 15 years of service. Thus his life, spent in the Soviet Union and the Estonian SSR, represents that of an acceptable citizen, who has proven his loyalty. At the beginning of the war, on his way to mobilization headquarters, neither Mirk nor anyone else could have predicted this outcome. Forty-five years later, at the end of 1996, he wrote his memoirs, which he entitled ‘Despair and Pain in a Pair of Clear Eyes’. In March 1997, Mirk submitted his memoirs to the Estonian Literary Museum’s life-writing campaign with a laconic accompanying letter: I send you the story of my hard life in the labour battalion, since little has been written about the life of those in labour battalions (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (1)). It can be seen that the author felt a certain responsibility to transmit his experience and information about past events. Mirk’s 36 pages of handwritten reminiscences constitute a testimonial text about the Soviet labour battalions. The author’s attitude is clearly visible from the first few sentences of his text:

298

How to Remember?

We know that many Estonians were innocent victims of the harsh repressions that followed the June 1940 takeover of the government. Neither did the recruits – conscripts and reserve military forces mobilized in the summer of 1941 escape being sent to the cold land. (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (1), 1.)

The apparent stimulus for Reinhold Mirk’s written reminiscences was the call issued by the Estonian Life Stories Association to write one’s life story, with the overarching topic ‘My Destiny and the Destiny of Those Close to Me in the Labyrinths of History’, the deadline for which was set in spring 1997. In the autumn of that same year, Mirk sent the Museum another 73 pages of memoirs, with the title ‘The Course of My Life in the Labyrinths of History’ (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (2)). The text was placed in the archive alongside the earlier one. Though the texts were submitted separately, they form a whole, since the first submission is a thematically circumscribed part, in other words, an excerpt of the narrative submitted later.1 It is most likely that the first part, devoted to the labour battalion, was completed first, and sent on its way, clearing the way so that the author could continue writing about the periods of his life that preceded and followed the labour battalion. This view is confirmed by the place marked in the later text for the insertion of the previously completed labour battalion memoirs. The memoir ends with a reflective passage on the war, since the events of the war take up the largest amount of space in the life story. Mirk narrates his war journey not in the persona of a brave soldier, but rather as a witness of ‘what really happened’. According to Maurice Halbwachs (1980), remembering takes place under the pressure of society, and the reworking of the past by memory is a social process. However, it is important not to forget that the interpretation of the past is not neutral. Since the publication and translation of Maurice Halbwach’s research in the 1980s, memory as a question of power has become the crucial problem in the study of memory and society (Kõresaar, 2001, 45). As pertains to the topic under consideration, the ways of remembering the war, it is impossible to miss seeing the connections between memory and power. As pertains to analyzing Reinhold Mirk’s memoirs, I have regarded collective memory as a means of constructing identity, through which the relationship of the group to memory stands revealed. I find myself drawn increasingly to Aleida Assmann’s treatment of cultural memory, particularly her discussions of the multiple ways of interpreting the shadows of the past (Assmann, 2006).2 When considering the dynamics of individual and collective memory in the traces (or shadows) of a traumatic past, Assmann comes to the conclusion that personal experience allows itself to be translated into collective memory (so-called memory transfer); however, this does not

Rutt Hinrikus

299

take place without mediation, but rather through the formation of specific ‘us’ groups. Here Aleida Assmann distinguishes between the levels of the individual, social groups, and political and cultural collectives (Assmann, 2006, 59). In the case of contradictory memories, the chosen group is the one, with which the individual shares a similar version of history. The profile of memory changes with every generation, to the extent that personal memories exist not only in a certain specific social environment, but also in time, which can be marked by the changing of generations. Those generations on the same temporal horizon exchange experiences and memories and form communities that share common stories. A part of this body of stories is passed on by children and grandchildren within the span of three generations (Assmann, 2006, 26–28.) The time of Reinhold Mirk’s experiences and the time of interpretation of these experiences are not one and the same; with respect to strategies of remembering, his texts describing his war experiences belong to different contexts of historical interpretation. Following Assmann’s example, the relationship between these can be examined through the categories of winners and losers (Assmann, 2006, 69). In Estonia the concepts of winners and losers have been complicated, since after the war a large part of the population did not partake of the ruling official Soviet memory politics. Experiences and the interpretive schemes forced upon people in a way that instilled fear differed from one another significantly. The comparison between the two occupying powers and a different historical context are features that distinguish Estonian (and Baltic) memories of this period from those of many other European peoples. For a long time after the war, people expected the restoration of the pre-war borders and of Estonian independence; there was talk of the ‘White Ship’, that is, the coming of a supernatural saviour (Hinrikus, 2008). Indeed, in many life stories there is talk of hope placed in the saviour role of the western nations, and this can be seen particularly clearly in the diaries kept in 1944–53 by schoolteacher and literary scholar Jaan Roos (published 1997–2009). In his memoirs ‘Dear Companions’ (Kallid kaasteelised), the author Jaan Kross (1920– 2007) asks several times, who will take responsibility for the fact that ‘half of the peoples on an entire continent, many of them in the most demeaning manner, were forced to live with their face down in the mud for half a century’ (Kross, 2003, 333). Apparently, Reinhold Mirk was thinking practically: after the war, he served for another ten years in the Soviet army, following which he worked in schools as an instructor in military studies, tantamount to being an implementer of the official memory politics. When he decided to write his memoirs in Estonia after it had regained its independence, and to send his memoirs to the archives, he knew how radically that memory politics

300

How to Remember?

had changed, and he had to think through what and how he remembered. He chose as the dominant motif in his memoirs the time spent in the labour battalion, although he did write of his entire war journey. In Mirk’s reminiscences there is an interweaving of different Estonian strategies of remembering World War II, specifically with respect to the time spent serving in the Soviet army and the labour battalion; these strategies represent different eras and regimes. 2. Remembering the War in Estonia: Public Memories and Literature After the war, the memoirs of the victors began to appear at a cautious rate. In the circumstances of post-war terror, people did not want to risk writing their memories of the war, since the Soviet version of history was constructed on a sharp opposition between that which was declared true and untrue. The Estonians who had fought in the ranks of the Estonian Rifle Corps had helped liberate the homeland, alongside other Soviet people. Thus their struggle had been noble and true. Applying the principle ‘he who is not for us, is against us’, they were set in opposition to those of their countrymen who had been mobilized into the German forces, and to those who had sought a third way, Estonian men who had served in the Finnish army. Those Estonians who had fought in the ranks of the Estonian Rifle Corps and – here it was obligatory to add the clause ‘along with other Soviet peoples’ – had helped liberate the homeland, had proved their choice by their actions. Soviet politics designated all the others to be traitors who had collaborated with Hitler’s Germany. The first political anthologies designed to serve this ‘correct representation’ had already been published during the war in Moscow and Leningrad. In December 1941 the Moscow Party Central Committee established a commission to compile a chronicle of the defence of Moscow, and in 1942 this was renamed the Historical Commission of the Great Patriotic War (Scheide, 2004, 216). The central form of expression of ritual memory was the burial of the fallen in common graves and the marking of these mass graves. The second wave of remembering, which made certain correctives in the previous one, was activated upon Stalin’s death; the third, during the Khrushchev thaw in 1956–64. Subsequently, Leonid Brezhnev came to power and remembering received a new boost. Compared to the previous periods, this was a time of unveiling pompous war memorials, but it also demarcated a new wave of remembering, adorned by the leaders own highly praised war reminiscences: Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev’s ‘Little Land’ (1978) and its sequels, ‘Virgin Land’ and ‘Re-

Rutt Hinrikus

301

birth’ (Scherrer, 2004). It was recommended that discussions of these texts be organized in all work collectives and educational institutions. Estonian historian Hans Kruus, who before the war had organized a widespread collection of memoirs on the topic of the year 1905,3 initiated a campaign to collect war memories as soon as the war broke out. The results of this campaign were never published, as a wall seems to have gone up against this effort very quickly. Kruus recalled that the collection initiated a campaign to collect war memories as soon as the war broke out: ‘In order to collect memories, we visited all the larger units of the Estonian Rifle Corps, along with some of the smaller ones. All of this work of collection took place mainly in 1942 and to some extent in the following year as well. When writing down the memories, we interviewed over 300 people, resulting in a total of over 3000 pages of material.’ (Kruus, 1971, 19.) Kruus described how the requisite precision was achieved in the content and form of the transcriptions, and how a network of correspondents was generated: ‘The historical source material gathered behind Soviet front lines – first and foremost the written memoir accounts – is particularly unique, and cannot be replaced by any other historical source material about the early period of the war in the territory of the Estonian SSR. Some public use has already been made of it, but this is as yet quite modest.’ (Kruus, 1971, 21.)

Why the memoirs were not published does not become clear from Hans Kruus’ text. Instead of explaining the reasons, Kruus writes of the importance of memories in the work of political education, since the collection of memoirs demonstrates that people are participants in historical acts: ‘The goal of writing down and collection memories early in the war was to form the most valuable kind of primary source material...’ (Kruus, 1971, 22). The first canon-forming account of the war journey of Estonians in the Great Patriotic War was the 1945 book ‘The Struggle of the Estonian Tallinn Guard Rifle Corps’ compiled by Vassili Külaots (1945), but the edited memoirs of the author were not published until 1969, almost 25 years later (Külaots, 1969). The same practice was repeated in the case of the memoirs of Estonian generals: General Lembit Pärn’s overview ‘How Fascist Germany and Imperialist Japan were Crushed 1941–1945’ (Pärn, 1948) was published in 1948, but his own memoirs came out twenty years later (Pärn, 1968). The first selection of war memoirs, ‘On the Path of Battle’ compiled by Nikolai Vanaselja, was published in 1960 (Vanaselja, 1960). Little by little, a string of others followed. Before publication, all of these books

302

How to Remember?

had gone through several stages of state inspection (censorship). By 1983, memoirs of the Great Patriotic War had been published by 23 soldiers in the form of 25 books (Ruutsoo, 1983, 641). Full-length personal memoirs had been published by the Soviet heroes Lembit Pärn, Karl Aru, and Albert Repson. In 1963 an anthology of memoirs was published with the title: ‘Trial by Fire: Reminiscences of the Great Patriotic War by the Fighters of the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps’ (Kiljako, Friedental, 1963). The collection had been compiled in the Party History Institute of the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party, which was a department of the MarxismLeninism Institute of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The title indicates that this is the first volume of a multivolume work, but no second volume followed. The compilers’ preface follows the meta-narrative that emerged in the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of the war, according to which the victory over fascist Germany was proof of the rightness of the socialist state order. A line of continuity was thus drawn between the battle fame in the Great Patriotic War, and the October Revolution: ‘In these bright days we put in the hands of the reader an anthology that tells of the struggle of the Great Patriotic War [---] Side by side with our brother peoples the Estonian people fulfilled its honourable duty in the defence of the freedom and autonomy of the socialist homeland; the finest sons and daughters of the Estonian people fought with weapon in hand in the Soviet Army....’ (Kiljako, Sepp, 1964, 7.)

The preface concludes: ‘May the example of these patriots grow a strong new generation of young people, a powerful band of warriors to build up communism’ (Kiljako, Sepp, 964, 7). This militant text of propaganda recruits memories into an ongoing struggle. Further, slogans such as these were another reason for the diametrical difference between public and private memories in the Soviet era. For many people, the Rifle Corps was the servant of the foreign Soviet power. Not infrequently, one member of the family had been mobilized into the Red Army, the other into the German forces. Both of these choices were forced upon people, but they had been embellished with the rhetoric of honourable duty. The war was over, but the battle for memories had only just begun. In the 1964 collection ‘In Battle for the Soviet Homeland’, edited by August Pusta and Pjotr Izmestjev, was written: ‘Bourgeois propaganda disseminated all kinds of false rumours and information about the land of the Soviets. Among the ranks there were those who were in the shackles of bourgeois, petit bourgeois or religious

Rutt Hinrikus

303

prejudices. Some of the fighters had wrong attitudes toward some of the means employed due to the war, such as labour battalions.’ (Pusta, Izmestjev, 1964, 17.)

The cornerstones of the institution of remembering were war heroes. In the book ‘War Heroes’ (Pähklimägi, 1978), portraits and short biographies were used to introduce approximately 250 Soviet Army fighters, who took part in the battles for the liberation and occupation of Estonia. Among them there are ten Estonians, most of whom were born in Russia, and including one woman, Leen Kullmann, who was ‘discovered’ and posthumously named a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1965. Former soldiers of every age have always loved myths, which support the burden of imagining a self. But what kind of myths are created when private experiences drastically diverge from the memory-image of public discourse, if we keep in mind, as we must, that such a divergence was not supposed to exist? People kept silent about their experiences, or opened their mouths only behind closed doors. In his memoir ‘Searching’, a former soldier Juhan Peegel recalls: ‘One had to be very careful, since there was counterintelligence in all the units, keeping watch over sentiments, attitudes, views. For example there was a great deal of trouble because a change was made in the provisioning of soldiers [---] the informer made a report, and the orderly, a recruit – a sergeant, was court-martialled.’ (Peegel, 2006, 61.)

Since the publication of the memoirs of those who participated in the war was restricted for many years, literature played an important role in the shaping of memory. Alongside literary texts, effective means of post-war memory politics included film and visual art. Astrid Erll has called attention to the role of metaphor and symbol in collective memory, and considers collective memory itself to be a metaphor or metonymy (Erll, 2005, 96). Such a metonymic burden applies first and foremost to the representation of the positive hero in Soviet literature. In culture the opposite of remembering is forgetting; instead of inscribing something in memory, one can erase things from memory. Paul Connerton (2008) has enumerated seven types of forgetting, some of which vividly characterize totalitarian regimes. In times of historical rupture, it is characteristic to see state-enforced repressive erasure, which differs from prescriptive forgetting only because the latter is believed to serve the general interest. In order to prevent opposition, use is also made of a third type, ‘forgetting that is constitutive in the formation of a new identity’, (Connerton, 2008, 59). The task of post-war Soviet literature

304

How to Remember?

(Estonian literature included) was to confer a new Soviet identity – to raise a new human being. In Estonia the implementation of a new canon of remembering the war received contributions by authors who had been evacuated behind Soviet lines, that is, who had inclined themselves favourably toward the new regime during the first year of occupation, 1940–1941. One of those who rose to recognition was the author August Jakobson, who was soon appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR (Jakobson, 1944; 1946); in the genre of the novella, contributions were made by a former private, Eduard Männik (1949), and Juhan Smuul, who emerged as an author at the end of the war, and who soon became the head of the Estonian Writers Union. The central themes of the works of these authors included Soviet-style tempering by fire – the hero‘s accelerated development during the war into a Soviet man, a genuine fighter. The focus was on changing social consciousness, with an emphasis on the formation of the positive hero. General Lembit Pärn expressed this ideal in his foreword to the abovementioned selection of reminiscences: ‘Each one of our soldiers was not only fighter for the noble communist cause on the battlefield, but also a fiery agitator...’ (Kiljako, Sepp, 1964, 5). The epic war novel only joined short literary forms in 1957. The first such novel was Hans Leberecht‘s ‘The Soldiers are Going Home’ (Leberecht, 1957), which sought to give an overview of the war odyssey of the Rifle Corps without focusing on the psychology of individual characters. Alongside these characters that existed on paper, and the works that manipulated with ideas, Paul Kuusbergs novel ‘Enn Kalm’s Two Selves’ (Kuusberg 1961) offers fragments from real life. It is the story of the reeducation of the protagonist – a soldier from the Estonian Rifle Corps – who is transformed into a purposeful fighter on behalf of socialist society. Enn Kalm’s choices also delineate the choices facing a whole generation. The internal dialogue between the two selves of the protagonist culminates in the dilemma, whether, as a result of humiliations suffered, to desert to the other side or not. One of the Kalm’s two selves asks, ‘are we prisoners or Red Army soldiers?’ bringing to light the silenced question of the labour battalions. Understandably, however, Enn Kalm’s Soviet self wins out, and he makes the right choice. Outside the Soviet canon, Estonian exiled authors published many novels with a war theme. One of the most notable authors among them is Aino Thoen, whose novel ‘Debt Book’ (1951) is a work of realistic narrative, significantly based on real-life material, with a goal of illuminating truthfully the destiny of the reserve officers mobilized into the Soviet army in 1941, and by extension, the fate of all those men who had to submit to Soviet mobilization. The novel follows the life narrative of Aino

Rutt Hinrikus

305

Thoen’s husband, Erik Thoen, who himself was mobilized into the Red Army as a reserve officer in 1941. After humiliating circumstances and the famine in the labour battalion in Siberia, he finally surrendered to the Germans at Velikiye Luki and became a prisoner of war. Paul Kuusberg‘s first war novel, ‘Enn Kalm’s Two Selves’ can also be read as a response to Aino Thoen’s ‘Debt Book’ – a response that seeks support in Soviet ideology (that is, from creative forgetting). Both novels show what happens to the soul of the fighters; in both the protagonist, recruited via mobilization and struggling under an overwhelming burden of work and hunger in the labour battalion, oscillates between the choice to flee or to stay. The conflicted selves of Kuusberg’s protagonist are given support toward their re-education by the nurse’s aid, later a political educator named Kristi, with whom the protagonist feels a burgeoning love. Both novels in fact interpret the margin of choice that Estonians had in World War II. Jakobson’s plays serve the interests of repressive erasure; Leberecht’s novel illustrates events, while Kuusberg provides corrective interpretations, and Thoen engages in demystification. Ülo Tuulik’s novel ‘In the Path of War’ (1974) introduced the subject of civilian war experiences into fiction. This novel, with its documentary foundation, depicts the deportation of the population of the Sõrve peninsula to Germany at the end of the war: ‘We are driven just like animals, and like animals we are given to intuit, that we are being taken somewhere, yet precisely like animals, no one among us knows what awaits us.’ (Tuulik, 1974, 21).

In describing the journey of the Sõrve folk, the author makes use of the authentic diary of a young Sõrve woman, Liine Hüüdma, and excerpts from men’s diaries are presented as well. Here life is mixed with literature; the author himself was one of the deportees, who recalls, explains, and thinks through past events, in search of their meanings. In this way, ‘In the Path of War’ can be considered a kind of transplanted hybrid form, an intermediate between literature and memoir, between the fictional and the documentary. A new outlook was provided for readers by the highly acclaimed novel authored by former Red Army artillery soldier, Juhan Peegel, ‘I Fell in the First Summer of the War’ (1969). This is the fictional monologue of a young soldier, which is not much different from documentary works, and aspires to be as honest as was possible at that time. The protagonist perishes without ever finding out what happened after he fell in battle. Like Tuulik’s ‘In the Path of War’ this novel also bears antiwar pathos.

306

How to Remember?

Uncensored memoirs of those who fought in the Red Army which were not submitted by the public culture of memory were almost as inaccessible in Soviet Estonia as the exiled author Aino Thoen’s ‘Debt Book’, published in Toronto. However, doubtless there were those in Estonia who sooner or later decided to write down what they remembered, in the interest of their offspring or an abstract future reader. Such memoirs were held in family circles, and sometimes, if the worker was deemed trustworthy, they were given to a museum or archive for safekeeping. The diary of Vello Raigo, a man mobilized into the Estonian Rifle Corps, consists of letters written to his wife from July 1941 to the end of October 1944. It was published in 1997 under the title ‘To You, Tiu’ (Raigo, 1997). The family had deposited the manuscript at the Estonian Literary Museum some ten years earlier for safekeeping. The figure of his wife, which Vello Raigo conjures before his eyes as he writes, helps him bear the stringent life of a soldier, demoted and demeaned to the life of a prisoner in a work and correctional camp, and this image helped him defy death.4 The publication of Vello Raigo’s wartime diary falls into the postSoviet wave of memory work, which was transformed by the initiatives of the Estonian Heritage Society at the end of the 1980s into a work of emancipation (Hinrikus, Kõresaar, 2004, 21–22). This new level of remembering World War II opened up by way of the dismemberment of the Soviet Union. In 1993 a two-volume anthology was published entitled ‘Estonians in Labour Battalions’, which consists of the memoirs of 39 men, as well as documents. The compiler Urmas Usai was effective, and thus the book reached the broader public during the first wave of emancipating memory, ‘now when it is possible to write truthfully about many events of history’ (Usai 1993, 6). By gathering and making public the circumstances surrounding the deployment of those mobilized from Estonia into the Red Army in the Soviet Union, this anthology filled in a blank spot in the historical consciousness of Estonians. Public understanding had lacked such a generalized knowledge of the complex life trajectories of Estonians in different armies. 3. The Narrative Mixture of War: Writing the Self into a Collective Trajectory After doing his military service in the Republic of Estonia in 1937–38, Reinhold Mirk was a non-commissioned officer in the reserves. After the annexation of Estonia, the Soviet regime quickly began re-forming the Estonian army. With the outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and

Rutt Hinrikus

307

Germany on 22 June 1941, Soviet general mobilization orders were immediately issued in Estonia, which extended to men born 1905–1918. At the same time the Deputy for the People’s Commissar for the Defence of the USSR issued a directive concerning the discharge of untrustworthy soldiers from the active duty army, and their deployment in labour battalions (Ojalo, 2007, 65). Thus Estonian men mobilized into the Red Army were in effect sentenced to forced labour. The Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party (Chairman Paul Keerdo) and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR (Chairman Johannes Vares) acknowledged this: ‘Since the mobilized had not done military service nor had they undergone training in the Red Army, this mobilization was not carried out for the purpose of supplementing the ranks of the Red Army of Workers and Peasants, but so that the enemy could not use them for their purposes in the case of possible occupation of the land. These men will be used for lumbering work.’ (Quoted in Noormets, 2008, 12.)

The untrustworthy mobilized men were directed to construction battalions and labour camps, where they were assigned to physical labour in the northern forest regions and the Urals. When cold weather came, famine set in. The Estonian puppet government knew about the situation, and tried to intervene, but this took time. On 19 December a directive was issued by the USSR State Defence Committee to form the Estonian Rifle Division. By April 1942 it was determined that the number of mobilized Estonians was 29 414. According to various sources, the number of those who had perished in the labour battalions by that time was anywhere from 6 000 to 15 000 men (Ojalo, 2007, 74). Two rifle divisions were formed from the Estonians, followed by another Estonian reserve regiment. After several re-formations, the Estonian Rifle Corps was established. The first battles in which the members of the Rifle Corps took part were against the German forces in the region of Velikiye Luki from 9 December 1942 to 16 January 1943. The Corps suffered heavy losses (Taavet, 2007, 117), and many deserted to the German side. In total there were approximately 70,000 Estonians in the Red Army during World War II, including 13,000 who were taken over from the army of the Republic of Estonia, and the 45,000 mobilized in the summer of 1941, thousands who were conscripted into the Red Army from the Estonians evacuated behind Soviet front lines, and up to 10,000 mobilized in Estonia in 1944–45 (Õispuu, 2008, 15).

308

How to Remember?

Reinhold Mirk went to the mobilization headquarters in the summer of 1941 beset by hesitations, with his training from Estonian military service and in the rank of a reserve officer. He does not deny that the news of the war frightened him. Many of the young men subject to mobilization hid themselves in various places, a few fled on the way. Mirk himself was not free of doubts, which he recalls: Mobilization into the Red Army started in the first days of July with the calling to active service of all conscripts born in 1919–1922; men born in 1907–1918 were taken on July 27. I was among them. Thinking it all over, I could not decide: to go or not to go? After some thought I decided to fulfil my duty as a citizen. (P. 100.)

A week prior to the outbreak of the war between Germany and the USSR mass deportations had taken place,5 which shocked the whole of Estonian society (cf. Hinrikus, 2000), though based on Mirk’s reminiscences this does not seem to have affected his decision to go to war. As justification for following mobilization orders, he finds it necessary to write the following: Our ancestors, our fathers, had all warred against our old enemy, the Germans, so it was my duty to do the same and fight against the German successors to keep my honour. (P. 100.)

The Germans as the historical enemies of the Estonian people beginning with Christianization in the 13th century was an important motif in the historical memory of pre-World War II Estonia, which was also cultivated through the schools.6 Wartime Soviet propaganda contributed to this narrative of historical enmity. Behind Soviet lines, propaganda material was printed with the task of boosting the fighting spirit, by turns ridiculing and demonizing the image of the enemy, in any case emphasizing the role of the Germans as ancient enemies.7 Historian Hans Kruus, who has been regarded as a passionate defender of this historical myth based on his wartime speeches and writings (Tamm, 2007), recalls: ‘From the first hours of the Great Patriotic War it was clear that the historical archenemy had risen up against the Estonian people. From the XIII century onward German aggression had influenced the destiny and circumstances of the Estonian people. For centuries the people were deprived of opportunities for political independence and self-determination.’ (Kruus, 1971, 9.)

Rutt Hinrikus

309

In many post-Soviet war memoirs there are descriptions of the transformation of the image of the ‘archenemy’ under the influence of the first year of Soviet occupation. On the basis of archival material and oral history documents historian Olaf Mertelsmann has shown how the first year of Soviet occupation, as well as the post-war years of Stalinist terror wrought a thorough transformation in the image of the ‘archenemy’ in the historical memory of the Estonians. However, this is not reflected in the memoirs of former Red Army soldiers, including those of Kruus and Mirk. In his memoirs Reinhold Mirk gives a rather long description of his years of service in the Estonian army, particularly its most distinguished period – service in the garrison of the Estonian President‘s summer residence. However, his account of the first year of Soviet occupation is rather brief. Granted, Mirk describes the first weeks of the mobilization and recalls his hesitations, interpreting the attitudes of the Soviet powers toward the mobilized Estonian men. He recounts how a sense of danger alternated with relief, but he does not explain the contexts for that sense of danger. The first fears had to do with whether or not they would be considered insiders: But we still did not understand that we were an unnecessary mass of people whom they were sending in small groups to the Urals to be destroyed by hunger and hard work (p. 102). Nobody took care of you here. We had no clothes to go to work in; the summer clothes we had had on when we started from Tallinn were torn and worn. We also had very little food, too little to keep us going. (P. 103.)

Despite the fact that the memoirs are written almost half a century later, the description is not neutral, but charged with emotions, which are even visible in laconic passages, where the author describes what happened to the reserve officers when they were assigned to [---] a work detail resembling a labour battalion. What distinguished it from a labour battalion was that it lacked a number and a military structure. In the beginning they did not work us as hard, but later it was 7 days a week, 11 hours a day plus transit time to the workplace 6–7 km away. The rations were 600 gr of bread a day, the quantities of other foodstuffs was unspecified. Later there is a period when for 8 days our daily menu consisted of bread, salt, and hot water. On top of that there was a harsh overseer, who replaced the earlier one. The work circumstances worsened in keeping with declining strength. The brutality of that kind of repression is in some respects worse than prison. (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (2), 10.)

310

How to Remember?

Reinhold Mirk is emotional in his descriptions, often using an amplified tone when recalling tragic events. From these descriptions it becomes clear to the reader that hunger, the status of a prisoner, and the lack of trust were more draining than the work itself. Exhaustion characterizes all the mobilized, and when he meets up with a group of his fellow countrymen, he could see his mirror image reflected in them: Now we went on towards Irbit by train. A group of bearded Estonians entered our carriage. Like us, they were so poorly clad that they looked like real scarecrows. They were overworked and exhausted, pain and despair looked back from their eyes. The same thing happened at several stations where Estonians entered our carriage. (P. 104.)

For Reinhold Mirk service in the labour detachment ended unexpectedly, when his unit was ordered to leave the Volkovo forest station at the beginning of 1942, and the formation of the Estonian units began. As he sums it up, Such was my situation before reaching the national division. The neutral-sounding end of the account is adorned with memory pictures, and the author seems to be looking for general symbols. Thus he finds ‘pain and despair looked back from their eyes’, but he supplements the image with an explanation: Whatever story of suffering was written on the faces of these people, it could not capture more than a tenth of what they had actually lived through (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (1), 36).

This summarizing sentence concludes the chapter of the memoirs that depicts the labour battalion. The style of narration changes in Mirk’s later text, the one he later submitted to the life story competition, and in which he recalls the events that took place after the mobilized Estonians were sent to the national units. He alternates between the precise factual, official-sounding style of the chronicler of the corps (The national divisions preparations for going to the front were observed by representatives of the Ural military district, the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party and the Council of Peoples Commissars of the Estonian SSR), and the more emotional language in which he describes his own moods and sentiments. For example, Mirk writes about his mood prior to going to the front: I had the feeling as if my life had turned over a new leaf, onto which entries could only be made in blood (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (2), 30). When his unit gets its flag, the event is described in the discourse of Soviet war memoirs:

Rutt Hinrikus

311

The last great event of 1943 was the festive presentation of the Regiment’s Colours by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union on December 31. The flag was presented by Lieutenant General Lembit Pärn to a general delegation of 140 men formed of smaller delegations of 3–5 men and led the Regiments’ commander Lieutenant-Colonel Mullas, his political assistant Major E. Avaldi, and the Chief of Staff Paul Liitoja. (P. 109–110.)

After this passage, Mirk relates his feelings: The Colours, a symbol from time immemorial of the fame, honour, bravery, and daring of a unit became from this day on the regiments guide in everyday life, in training, and in battle (p. 110).

Once again, the author attempts to sustain a solemn style, but this is his own style, his own non-official language. Vividly and with particular attention to detail, he recalls the battles waged on Estonian soil: At that time I was the commander of the regiment‘s Colours unit and I moved with the headquarters. My direct task was to organize and guarantee the defence of the company‘s flag and the regiment’s headquarters. (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (2), 53.)

Yet it is also possible for the two styles to mix, the official and the author’s own: We celebrated the May holidays with self-sacrificing shock work. On the free afternoon of 1 May, out in nature in the blossoming early spring, the unit’s 30-member amateur musical ensemble performed for the entire regiment. There were pleasant songs, upbeat instrumental pieces, and enthusiastic verbal performances. The grateful listeners especially enjoyed... (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (2), 45.)

In efforts to achieve simultaneously both expressiveness and precision, the author has made frequent use of phrases he has heard or read, for example, this was historical necessity for the small Estonian people (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (2) 70); to confer on the Estonian Rifle Corps the title of the Household Guards in return for its demonstrated heroism, braver, manliness, persistence, discipline, and the exemplary performance of its duties (KM EKLA f. 350, 450 (2), 79).

312

How to Remember? 4. Summary

In his book ‘In the Path of War’, Ülo Tuulik reflects: ‘Everything has already been said in clear terms about the outbreak of this war, its nature and its course. I am free of the naive dream of adding any new facts to military history. Indeed, I did not set out to write so much about the war, but about the strange, menacing pain in my heart that I could not get rid of.’ (Tuulik, 1974, 21.)

This strange, menacing pain in my heart could be one of the answers to the question why people keep on writing memoirs of the war, though 65 years have passed since its end. Some of the authors of these memoirs were children during the war, many were teenagers. One might think that their lives would contain many events much more important than such distant memories, but their hearts are weighed down by their stories, which they were not allowed to tell before. Before we begin to argue with author Ülo Tuulik about whether or not it is possible to add new facts to the history of the war, we need to remember when ‘In the Path of War’ was published, in 1974. Ülo Tuulik has recalled how the chief censor of the Estonian SSR, Arnold Adams, summoned him and announced: ‘Comrade Tuulik, we are going to leave this passage out’ (Tuulik, 2009). The passage that was cut told of a drunken Soviet soldier who nonchalantly shot a farmwoman in Germany. In the last few decades research by historians had revealed numerous facts about the war, some of which were not known, others of which were silenced. The gathering of oral history and memoirs has helped, in part, to locate and illuminate such aspects. Nevertheless, even the memoirs written in the last decades are not eo ipso objective nor innocently truthful, nor are they unmarked by the written and published memoirs of others. In the course of writing the authors have been influenced by public discussion on historical topics and by the nationalist discourse instilled in them in their youth and later rediscovered, as well as by the residues of the Soviet historical canon. ‘As everywhere else in the social memory of Eastern and Central Europe, what dominated was the systematic elimination of the real past, in other words a socially constructed forgetting’ (Paju, 2007, 13). For sixtyfive years after the end of the war in Estonia, the process continued of sorting out and clarifying the choices of those who fought on one side of the front lines or the other. In an interview in the daily newspaper Eesti Päevaleht Online in April 25 2005, the author Jaan Kaplinski revealed he had been approached by a World War II veteran Uno Raudkivi who had said,

Rutt Hinrikus

313

‘I am an Estonian who served in the Estonian 20th Waffen SS Division, who on the basis of the soldier`s oath taken in the name of God only consented to participate in combat against bolshevism, without in any way swearing loyalty to the German Reich. In your opinion is it possible to connect the context of my participation in the war with Nazism? If so, then on what legal or moral basis?’

Jaan Kaplinski answered that this topic is an important one with respect to his own family history:8 ‘I am neither a moralist, nor a legal scholar, and, so I can only claim that on the one hand many Estonians really did fight in the belief that they were fighting for a free Estonia; on the other hand, they were helping the Germans stuff the holes on the Eastern front and calmly make preparations for the abandonment of the Baltics. And that brought the majority of Estonians and Latvians worse sufferings than the German occupation did. However, there were many in Europe for whom the Red Army was indeed a liberator. It seems to me that if Estonia‘s political and military leadership had survived, there would have been no compliance with the German mobilization, and the population losses would have been smaller. I admit that maybe I am wrong, and that it actually was worthwhile to fight.’

In this question and in the answer there is a nodal point that connects with Reinhold Mirk‘s writing about the war sixty years afterwards. The nationalist discourse he had absorbed in his youth is represented in the following reflection: In the face of history we are all guilty of fratricide. And I can assure that men on both sides of the front were fighting for Estonia and if they had had an opportunity to do it in an Estonian uniform, they would have done it. The aim of an Estonian soldier has always been an independent and free Estonia! (P. 116.)

Thus in Reinhold Mirk’s memoirs there is a mixture of three levels of remembering: his memoirs of the labour battalion are written as the testimony of a labour battalion conscript who has been unjustly imprisoned and abused; the events of the war are recalled by a soldier of the victorious army, and the final moral is written by a sceptical nationalist, who is prepared to trade in his former slogans, but who has difficulty articulating new ones. Mirk’s memoirs reflect changes in the strategies of remembering the war, and the different points of view of those who remember: the pathos of the time in which memoirs are written is strongly connected with nationalist discourse; although the earlier texts are not erased, the

314

How to Remember?

new is written on top of the old. Thus Reinhold Mirk’s memoirs contain signs of the consciousness of a Soviet prisoner and a Soviet soldier, as well as of the nationalist consciousness that has been retained in the Estonian collective memory. Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

In the interests of providing an overview, the version of Reinhold Mirk’s life story in the first part of this book has been compiled from both texts. The research for this chapter was supported by the Estonian Science Foundation Grants 8190 and 7354, and the state-targeted project SF0030065s08. The paper is translated by Tiina Ann Kirss. Reminiscences of the revolutionary events of 1905 collected under the direction of Professor Hans Kruus in the 1930s (interviews, collected correspondences and other materials) are preserved in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (KM EKLA f. 172). Raigo was not the only one who wrote down an account of his days spent in the labour battalion. ‘Estonians in the Labour Battalions 1941–42’ (Usai, 1993) contains excerpts from several diaries. Outside Estonia, diaspora author Ilmar Jaks published a diary in 1949, which was the diary Jaks himself kept in the labour battalion (Jaks, 1949). See the entry for 14 June 1941 of the chronology of World War II compiled by Tiit Noormets, this volume. On the image of the Baltic Germans as ‘national enemy’ in history, see Mertelsmann, 2005, 45–47. For example in 1943 the 600th anniversary of the legendary uprising of St George’s Eve was celebrated behind Soviet front lines, but what little information there is about this is contradictory. The anniversary of St. George’s Eve invigorated the deeper layers of nationalist historical memory both at the front and behind front lines, and did so with amazing power, promising to transfer the battles of today into the universal register of the ancient events. (Tamm, 2007.) Jaan Kaplinski’s father, Jerzy Kaplinski, was the Polish cultural attaché in the prewar Republic of Estonia; he was arrested by the Soviet powers and executed.

References Assmann, A. (2006), Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik. München: C.H.Beck. Connerton, P. (2008), “Seven Types of Forgetting”, Memory Studies, 1 (1): 59–71.

Rutt Hinrikus

315

Erll, A. (2005), Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen: Eine Einführung. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler. Halbwachs, M. (1980), The collective memory. New York, Harper & Row Colophon Books. Hinrikus, R. (ed.) (2000), Eesti rahva elulood. Vol. I–II. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Hinrikus, R. and E. Kõresaar (2004), “A Brief Overview of Life History Collection and Research in Estonia”, in: T. Kirss, E. Kõresaar and M. Lauristin (eds.) She who remembers, survives. Interpreting Estonian women’s post-Soviet life stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 19–34. Hinrikus, R. (2008), “The Journey of the White Ship”, Interlitteraria, 13: 229–241. Jaks, I. (1949), Saaremaalt Leningraadi: tööpataljonlase päevik 1944–1945. Stockholm: Eesti Raamat (Polygraf). Jakobson, A. (1944), Hiiglaste tee: kolm jutustust. Leningrad : Ilukirjandus ja Kunst. Jakobson, A. (1946), Elu tsitadellis: draamatiline jutustus neljas vaatuses. Tallinn : Ilukirjandus ja Kunst. Kansteiner, W. (2002), “Finding Meaning in Memory: a Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies”, History and Theory, 41: 179–197. Kiljako, D.; Fridental, S. (eds.) (1963), Karastustules: Nõukogude armee 8. Eesti Laskurkorpuse võitlejate mälestusi Suurest Isamaasõjast. Vol. I. [EKP Keskkomitee Partei Ajaloo Instituut]. Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus. Kross, J (2003). Kallid kaasteelised. Tallinn : Eesti Keele Sihtasutus. Kruus, H. (1971), Koos oma rahva ajalooga Suures Isamaasõjas. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Kuusberg, P. (1961), Enn Kalmu kaks mina. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Kõresaar, Ene 2001. “Kollektiivne mälu ja eluloouurimine”, in: T. Anepaio and E. Kõresaar (eds.). Kultuur ja mälu. Konverentsi materjale. Studia ethnologica Tartuensia 4. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 42–58. Külaots, V. (ed.) (1945), Eesti Tallinna Kaardiväe Laskurkorpuse võitlustee. Tallinn: Poliitiline Kirjandus. Külaots, V. (1969), Uraalidest Kuramaani: mälestusi Eesti Laskurkorpuse võitlusteelt Nõukogude Liidu Suures Isamaasõjas 1941–1945. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Leberecht, H. (1965), Sõdurid lähevad koju. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Männik, E. (1946), Südamete proov. Tallinn : Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus. Mertelsmann, O. (2005), “How the Russians Turned into the Image of the ‘National Enemy’ of the Estonians”, Pro Ethnologia, 19: 43–58. Noormets, T. (2008), “Eestlastest vene sõjaväes”, in: L. Õispuu (ed.) Eestlased Vene sõjaväes 1940–1945: sundmobiliseeritud tööpataljonides. Esimene osa (A-L) = Estonians in Russian armed forces in 1940–1945: persons mobilised to serve in labour battalions. Part 1 (A-L). Tallinn: Eesti “Memento” Liit, 12–14.

316

How to Remember?

Ojalo, H. (2007), “Surmapataljonid”, in: T. Noormets, T. Nõmm, H. Ojalo, O. Raidla, R. Rosenthal, T. Taavet and M. Õun (eds.) Korpusepoisid. Eesti sõjamehed 22. eesti territoriaalkorpuses ja 8. eesti laskurkorpuses Teises maailmasõjas aastatel 1940–45. Tallinn: Sentinel, 65–80. Paju, I. (2007), Tõrjutud mälestused. Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus. Peegel, J. (1979), Ma langesin esimesel sõjasuvel: fragmentaarium. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Peegel, J. (2006), Otsides. Meenutusi pikalt teelt. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Pusta, A.; Izmestjev, P. (1964), Lahingutes Nõukogude kodumaa eest: mälestusi Eesti Laskurkorpuse lahingupäevilt Suures Isamaasõjas. Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus. Pähklimägi, A. (ed.) (1978), Sõjasangarid. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Pärn, L. (1948), Kuidas purustati fašistlik Saksamaa ja imperialistlik Jaapan 1941–1945. Tallinn: Poliitiline Kirjastus. Pärn, L. (1968), Sõjakeerises: mälestused. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Raigo, V. (1990), Sinule, Tiu. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Ruutsoo, R. (1983), “Eesti memuaarkirjandus 1944–1982”, Keel ja Kirjandus, 11: 640–643. Scheide, C. (2004), “Collective and Individual Models of Memory about the ‘Great Patriotic War’ (1941–1945)”, Ab Imperio, 3: 211–236. Scherrer, J. (2004), “Sowjetunion/Russland: Siegesmythos versus Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung”, in: M. Flacke (ed.) Mythen der Nationen. 1945 – Arena der Erinnerungen. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 619–670. Taavet, T. (2007), “Velikije Luki”, in: T. Noormets et. al (eds.) Korpusepoisid. Eesti sõjamehed 22. eesti territoriaalkorpuses ja 8. eesti laskurkorpuses Teises maailmasõjas aastatel 1940–45. Tallinn: Akadeemiline Sõjaajaloo Selts; Sentinel, 101–120. Tamm, M. (2007), “Eestlaste suur vabadusvõitlus: järjepidevus ja kordumine Eesti ajaloomälus”, Riigikogu Toimetised, 16; URL: http://www.riigikogu.ee/rito/index.php?id=10453&op=archive2 [last visited Jan 22, 2010]. Thoen, A. (1952), Võlaraamat. Toronto: Orto. Tuulik, Ü. (1974), Sõja jalus. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Tuulik, Ü. (2009), “Valetamise alandav kergus”, Postimees, 16.05; URL: http://www.postimees.ee/?id=119749 [last visited Jan 22, 2010]. Usai, U. (1993), “Saateks”, in: Eestlased tööpataljonides 1941–1942. 1. raamat: mälestusi ja dokumente. Tallinn: Olion, 5–18. Vanaselja, N. (ed.) (1960), Võitluse radadel: mälestuste kogumik. Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus. Õispuu, L. (2008), “Mobiliseeritute nimekirjadest”, in: L. Õispuu (ed.) Eestlased Vene sõjaväes 1940–1945: sundmobiliseeritud tööpataljonides. Esimene osa (A-L) = Estonians in Russian armed forces in 1940–1945: persons mobilised to serve in labour battalions. Part 1 (A-L). Tallinn: Eesti “Memento” Liit, 15–17

The Lucky Star and Discernment: The Positioning of the Self and War in the Life Story of Lembitu Varblane Tiiu Jaago 1. Introduction In the following chapter,1 using the autobiography of one narrator, I will investigate the topic of the ‘Finnish Boys’, the Estonian volunteers who served in the Finnish Army during World War II. The following questions will serve to focus my research: how is the war narrative situated in an autobiographical text that covers an entire life span? In such a case, what are the characteristics of the war narrative? How does the author of a life story describe himself as a narrator of war? First, I will provide an overview of the life narrative in question, and then take a closer look at the life story, which the narrator wrote at the age of 76.2 I will focus on the ways he discusses his choice to serve as a volunteer in the Finnish Army, and how, in the narrative, he situates and positions himself in his surroundings. Posing questions in this way permits both a cultural-analytical approach as well as a scrutiny of the development of personality in the political framework of the times. Finally, I will ask to what extent and how the life narrative reveals the narrator’s sense of his own roles, and those personal characteristics that may not be apparent at first glance. In addition to the life narrative, I will use other texts concerning the narrator and the topic, as well as information gathered during my meetings with him, which took place from 2003 until 2008.3 This will in turn allow me to follow connections between these various texts, which for the purposes of this article concern the contestatory nature of war narratives. In this chapter I consider telling stories about war as an aspect of negotiating the reconstruction of the past. I am interested in ways in which war narratives are texts situated in broader, social deliberations and connections between various versions and texts, and ways in which the narrator himself consciously participates in a larger dialogue by means of the reflections and discussions inherent in his text.

318

The Lucky Star and Discernment 2. The Story of Lembitu Varblane

Characteristic and evocative of the narrator and his immediate environment is a sentence he wrote in a newspaper article: It is good to live in a place where the sea and the land meet.4 Lembitu Varblane was born in 1923 in western Estonia. He describes his childhood in a farm setting against the background of the Matsalu landscape, with its unusual beaches and reedy meadows. From the farm milieu he derives his attitude toward work; the Matsalu beaches have given rise to his sense of nature. In 1943 two important life events took place: he graduated from high school, but he had to postpone any other plans he had, because for the time being one had to go to war instead. Since he decided to evade the German mobilization, he fled to Finland, and from October 1943 to September 1944 served as a volunteer in the Finnish Navy.5 In September 1944 he returned to Estonia,6 but having kept an eye on the rapid course of the war’s events in Tallinn, as well as having heard various opinions about Estonia’s future upon the re-imposition of Soviet rule, he decided to go back to Finland. This plan failed, because he fell into the hands of the Germans. The outcome of the negotiations that followed was that he was not sent to the front, but had to serve in the German army. As the war’s situation changed, he seized the opportunity to join the armed band of Admiral Pitka,7 who was organizing resistance both to the German and the Red Armies. In the chaos due to the rapid movement of the front, he returned home, and again made plans to flee across the waves to Western Europe.8 This plan again failed, since the last possible moment to flee had already come and gone. In October 1944 he was mobilized into the Red Army. On the way to the assembly point he ran into the inspector of the local education department, who was looking for educated men among the mobilized, whom he could invite to work: there was a serious shortage of teachers. Since he had known Lembitu Varblane since the beginning of his high school studies, the inspector extended this invitation to him as well. From then on until 1983, Varblane worked as a teacher. When talking about his activities outside of work and family, he mentions the interest shared by almost all teachers in choir-singing, amateur theatre, and folk-dancing, in addition to local history and environmental conservation. All of these also describe Varblane as well. In his retirement years, Varblane worked in a fishing kolkhoz as master of office machinery and built a house. As concerns his family, at the time of writing his life history, he mentions that he has 4 children and 10 grandchildren.

Tiiu Jaago

319

3. The Life Narrative: Composition, Choices, and Themes The life story9 Varblane wrote in March 1999 and submitted to the life histories collection competition of the Estonian Cultural History Archives is made up of three parts. First, his origins and childhood in Läänemaa, the historical framework for which is peacetime in the pre-war Estonian Republic, premonitions of war beginning in 1939, and the first year of Soviet rule in Estonia (1940–41). Second, the events of the war in Estonia (1941–1944), which covered his service in the Finnish Navy from the autumn of 1943 to the autumn of 1944 and his life on the family farm and as a teacher in the early years of the Soviet regime until the great deportations of early spring 1949. Third, his working life during the Soviet era and life after retirement. The story ends with an ‘Epilogue’ in which the narrator talks about his family in the form of brief reports and sums up the 75 years of his life. He states: Thinking back over my life, I have to say I was born under a lucky star! How many of those my age and my fate-companions perished or lost their mental balance! There was a time when I regretted that I was unable to flee [to the] West. Now I think it was the right thing to do to stay in my homeland. The new generation of Estonians can only grow here, from the ancient roots of the people. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 19.)

In this last section of the written life story, there are three interconnected ideas: he has been given a lucky star to accompany him; his age-mates have had a range of different destinies; over the course of his life he has reevaluated the plans he made after the war to flee to the west. In keeping with this self-perception, he entitles his story: ‘Born under a lucky star’. The ‘lucky star’ binds the different parts of the story and the individual formative episodes into a whole. It might seem that one should be able to explain all the situations with the lucky star, both those that were forced on him and those that were freely chosen. This, however, the narrator does not do. To the contrary, he gives the reader a chance to think alongside him, how he assessed situations, how he oriented himself in them, and what he relied on to support his choices. Yet even this observation does not apply equally to all of the episodes and life-course segments articulated in the life story. Although the story that is the focal point of the current discussion is written retrospectively from a single vantage point in time, this introspection is presented as a stage-by-stage unfolding. In childhood, the father’s authority stands out; little-by-little the protagonist’s self-image emerges in relationship with his companions; in the descriptions of postwar situations, discussions of them and of opportunities for oneself are emphasized. The different parts of the story come

320

The Lucky Star and Discernment

together on the level of a feeling for life. If I had to suggest a key word to evoke the wholeness of the story, I would add to the ‘lucky star’ another word used by the narrator – discernment (arukus). Lembitu Varblane even uses this word with quite some frequency, to describe rather different situations. But what does this word mean? What life-wisdom is contained in the notion of ‘discerning behaviour’? For example – in one episode the word is not used directly, but as an implicit recommendation for how to navigate and find one’s way through rapidly changing and thus unknown situations: stay calm and wait to see what will happen. In this episode, the narrator describes a situation in the autumn of 1944, when it becomes clear to the protagonist that he cannot flee Estonia, and that the Soviet regime is not only repulsive to him, but potentially life-threatening, due to his past war experience: I felt the force of the following sad truth: Estonia was facing hard years of bolshevist dictatorship. [---] There were only two choices: to be killed while resisting or to suppress all hatred hoping that my future life would not be the hardest. My great-uncle who had suffered much in his youth (was taken prisoner in World War I, etc.) understood what I felt. “David got Goliath with his cunningness, do not do anything thoughtless! Stay calm and see what will happen,” he advised me. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 11.)

Taken together, the lucky star (like fate, which has perhaps not ‘ordained the worst possible life’ for him) and discernment form a pair of concepts that helped him cope in complicated circumstances. These concepts do not cancel each other out. The discerning behaviour of his companions may mean a ‘lucky star’ for the narrator (such as the absence of accusations or informers both during the German occupation and in the early years of the Soviet regime). The ‘lucky star’ might first appear to be a sequence of failures or misfortunes, the more positive aspects of which are revealed later (such as the reevaluation of the possibility of fleeing west in 1944 from the narrator’s later perspective as a grandfather.) Most likely the notions of ‘lucky star’ and ‘discernment’ also move in tandem through those reflective passages in which comparisons are made between one’s own fortunes and those of one’s age-mates: How many of those my age, and of my fate-companions perished or lost their mental balance. Landing in the thick of the events of war is usually attributed to chance or fate. For example, two of the fate-companions of Lembitu Varblane recall how some fellow soldiers perished: Their grave was fated to be in that place, and there is nothing to do about it. A sad story indeed.10 ‘Fate’ can refer both to perishing or survival. Varblane

Tiiu Jaago

321

describes how he survived the wreck of the torpedo boat where he was assigned using the expression ‘my fate’: One of those days is bound up with my fate, the day our dear “Taisto” was destroyed. However, most of the descriptions of being in the middle of a maelstrom of critical events are more connected with discernment: the narrator nails down the surroundings and the factors influencing and shaping the events rapidly, logically and with a wealth of detail. 4. Life Story Analysis: Standpoints and Questions The basis for analyzing the story of Lembitu Varblane is reflexivity: a dialogue growing out of different texts, but also from the questions I asked of the author before and during the writing of this article. As a folklorist I chose the narrative (and not the historical events) as the point of departure for my analysis. In order to formulate questions, I first had to break the life story down into topics, to analyze its narrative structure, and subsequently construct its context from events in the past.11 In a life story, various life periods are articulated in a range of lengths and with different degrees of intensity. The overall length of the narrative consists of 19 computer-typed pages; the first 19 years of the protagonist’s life and the introduction of his ancestors are covered in two pages. His life as a mobilized person (more precisely speaking, as an evader of German military service) and as a volunteer in the Finnish navy lasted almost a year and a half, but the narrator needed 10 pages – over half of the total length of the story, to describe this period. The subsequent period of adjusting to the Soviet regime and the new political situation (four and a half years) fits into a quarter of the total length. The few days from the time of the great March deportations12 are represented in the space of 5 pages. The protagonist’s life’s work as a teacher of natural history and a school administrator fits into a few pages, even though it is a much longer period than the previous ones (lasting almost 40 years). These segments are followed by a summary of just threequarters of a page long. Thus the narrator focuses on two historically critical periods in his lifetime – the war and the deportations, which in his own lifespan take up less than two years and less than two days respectively. These topics, though presented in narrative segments of various lengths are tightly articulated together through nature, upbringing, principles and other such layers concerning mentality. Thus the relative proportions in length of narration do not necessarily shift the weight of the message of the story unilaterally from peacetime into the critical years. Furthermore, the

322

The Lucky Star and Discernment

style of narration is characterized by focusing not so much on events as on discussion of them, and of the circumstances that surround them. In what follows I shall examine the narrator’s stint as a ‘Finnish Boy’ and compare this with the time of the deportations. Both periods are connected to macrohistorical processes, spanning World War II, the imposition of Soviet rule in Estonia, and the attendant repressions. In this respect, history ‘wrote’ certain events into people’s lives: for men with certain birth years, this meant mobilizations;13 Estonians serving as volunteers in the Finnish Army and the mass deportations of 25 March 1949. Events of a personal life run in parallel with these historical events. For example, the day of the deportations, 25 March was also the 23d birthday of the brother of Lembitu Varblane, who was sent to Siberia. It is my brother’s birthday today, the village youth were probably invited (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 13). Characteristic of the narrator’s style is the making of connections between history and personal story, from the general to the specific: first he gives the historical context, to which he then adds local and personal aspects, as in the following section: World War II, Estonia, the home area, his father, and then his own reminiscences: Now the eve of the World War II was already near. The Nazi and Communist dictators started dividing the world among them. The fate of Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States were decided by Stalin and Hitler. Russian military bases were brought to Estonia. Motorized military units and tank columns were located near my home, Matsalu ja Saastna manor. The local administration made my father a contact man to communicate with them as he could speak Russian. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 1.)

In connection with the mobilizations, the question arises how young men, Lembitu Varblane included, oriented themselves in such situations: should one evade the mobilization, submit to it, or find a third way? In his story Lembitu Varblane never explicitly discusses this, but he does talk about choices, of not submitting passively to fate. Since in different parts of the story the author shows varying aspects of himself as observer, actor and decision-maker, I have asked questions about his selfdescriptions at the periods of his life. As the story continues, he gives more and more voice to others who have opinions on matters, sometimes showing his enjoyment, at other times arguing with them, on one occasion, even feeling insulted. Even though he focuses on two critical periods – the war and the mass deportations that took place in the early years of the Soviet regime, he also points out the differences between the experiences from those periods. At the frontline, it is very clear who he is, with whom he is fighting, with which weapons and against what

Tiiu Jaago

323

weapons. The front lines can be experienced spatially. However, in the hostile atmosphere of the Soviet regime, the enemy is both visible as well as derivable from an accusation. Under interrogation, one’s ‘weapons’ have to be extracted and extrapolated from the words and behaviour of one’s opponent, or else one remains totally defenseless. 5. The 1943 Mobilization Call: Choices or Decisions In 1943 the German occupation authorities issued two calls for ‘voluntary’ mobilization. Men born in 1919–1924 were recruited in the spring; in the autumn the orders were extended to include men born in 1925. In the course of the campaign about 8 600 men were recruited into the Estonian Legion and the police battalions.14 Lembitu Varblane and his birth cohort were subjected to forced mobilization in the spring contingent. At the time he was 19 years old, and he describes that period of his life as follows: My schooling continued at Lihula Gymnasium. The Germans wanted to hear nothing of Estonian independence. And soon the luck seemed to be on the side of the Russians. In Spring 1943 a German mobilization order arrived. So it was time to choose: to serve in an SS-unit or in the police battalion. I chose the first option. Yet I got an extension to graduate from school and to do the spring farm work at home. 15 The situation at the war fronts indicated that the Germans would lose the war. I decided not to go into the German army. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 2.)

Varblane discusses two decisions here: first, given a choice between the police battalions and the Waffen-SS, he chooses the latter; secondly, he chooses to defy mobilization orders altogether. The reasoning behind these decisions is not discussed in the life story, and I regard this as a deliberate narrative choice. Recalling the circumstances of making these decisions was not essential from the author’s point of view. After all, in autobiography, a cultural framework informs the writer’s selections of events deemed important enough for inclusion; the understanding of what a life story is, is also shaped by this framework (cf. Fivush, 2008, 50–51). It is possible that not discussing the decision-making process points to a degree of tacit self-evidence in the situation. Presumably at the time he was aware of the meaning and reputations of both the SS and the police battalions. The decisions may not have been arrived at through talk or deliberation; rather, a solution was found intuitively. In retrospect, at the time of writing, decisions made at

324

The Lucky Star and Discernment

earlier junctures may not have been consciously separable units; at that time the social environment was saturated with information that one drew upon and relied upon when making choices. Consequently, it is natural, that at the time of writing the life history, circumstances in which one made decisions are not remembered as definite moments. Retrospective meanings might be ascribed to these decisions, but there was still no need or opportunity to analyze the choices, or to shape them into narratives. I shall examine all of these assumptions and suppositions more closely. In the life story, the choice to evade mobilization is connected with knowledge of the situation at the frontline in 1943, which was turning against the Germans’. I asked Lembitu Varblane about this more specifically as I was writing this article. He replied in a letter: Rumours were spreading, which turned out to be true (TJ: ‘rumours were spreading’ points to an information-saturated social environment), that the police battalions were mostly being used in the fight against partisans. A guerrilla war is not the same thing as fighting man against man at the front. [---] In a situation where armed partisans and loyal people are all mixed up together, it is difficult to decide who is who. A soldier might end up having the destruction of an innocent person on his conscience, and at the same time a guerrilla who looks like a civilian may kill the soldier.16

Thus when making a decision, what was evident was less the idea of what one wanted to do, but sober reckonings of outcomes: to kill or be killed, and, if one survived, how to cope with what might be on one’s conscience afterwards. These were practical considerations, derived from the knowledge of what one or the other choice might entail for the everyday life of the soldier and his probable fate. To recall this (or to make it public?) fifty or sixty years after the events required outside provocation – at least in the case of this narrative. In contrast to Lembitu Varblane, there are narrators who have written the decision-making process into their life story. For example, Heino Soosalu gives a longer description of the discussions that went on in school around the mobilizations of the early spring of 1943: ‘Now everyone‘s head was full of thoughts and during recess there was discussion about what to do when school was over. [---] During recess we gathered in groups, where we weighed both possibilities, one [German army] and the other [Arbeitsdienst] [---]. We were of the opinion that we knew more about the situation at the time than the teachers did. We also talked a great deal about the third possibility, going to Finland.’ (Relvik, 2003, 42).17

Tiiu Jaago

325

There were two ways to evade forced recruitment: to hide in Estonia (which could be extremely complicated) or to flee to Finland (which also entailed secret activities and risks). Lembitu Varblane writes the following about the half-year he spent evading military service: I was in hiding and worked at my aunt’s farm. There are two aspects here, close together: on the one hand war and hiding, on the other everyday life and farm work. The people in the village were aware of his situation, but a smart farm family is not going to stick their noses into another family’s business, as Lembitu Varblane reports, including in his text a comment about the values and attitudes of the local people. Indeed, it was this collective life wisdom in the community that made it possible to hide from the authorities, even while actually being quite visible to others. In the description of the period of hiding out, there are circumstances of everyday life in wartime, and meetings that remained fixed in memory though they are not directly connected with the line of events. However, this shows that parallel to the war as an event of ‘grande histoire’ there were ‘little’ stories (such as the story of the forest warden’s wife), in which the war was just a ‘time’ in a person‘s life. Actually, the different qualities of time are somewhat analytical categories, since in real lived time, ordinary time is implicitly contained in the critical time (wartime).18 When comparing choices of episodes in life stories it is apparent that what pertains to war (evading the mobilization and fleeing to Finland) took place rather quickly and with closure (it was done and that was how it was). However, episodes of ordinary life in wartime, the stories of people, remained in the memory, and afterwards there were reasons to recall and reflect on these again and again, until they were written down as stories of experience, as integral parts of a whole life narrative. Finally, with the help of some relatives and friends I found a way to go to Finland. With this sentence the narrator leads the reader back to the level of events. The dangerous journey by sea across the Gulf of Finland on an October night is expanded upon at length and in detail, as one would expect. Verbal images are created of the boatmen and of those they transported, the danger due to a German patrol boat, and the weather; but not, however, of the feelings experienced during the journey. He allows the reader to observe him from outside, giving some information about the practical side of the journey (how one was to behave in case of capture, the money that one had to pay to the boatman). How he felt upon reaching his destination is noted from the first person plural (we) perspective, we were drenched to the skin and chilled. Then, with the episode that follows, the preceding detailed journey report is summed up quickly: I decided to join the navy. Once

326

The Lucky Star and Discernment

again the background and reasons for this decision are not shared with the reader. 6. The Finnish Boy: Flight or Moral Considerations During the year 1943 about 6,000 persons fled from Estonia to Finland, most of them men. Of these approximately 3,00019 were accepted for Finnish military service. The majority of them later formed the infantry regiment JR 200, to fight ‘for Finnish freedom and Estonian honour’ (Rebas, 1996, 722).20 Four hundred of the Finnish Boys served in the Navy, Lembitu Varblane among them (Relvik, 2003, 146). The choice to go to Finland has been justified by assertions such as: ‘The Germans had demonstrated that they did not accept our strivings for independence’ (Relvik, 2003, 18) or ‘the thought of joining the Wehrmacht was repulsive’ (Uustalu, Moora, 1973, 20). Vello Salo (2007) adds to these the wish not only to fight for Estonian freedom, but to fight for it close to Estonia. Also mentioned is the wish to repay an old debt from the days of the War of Estonian Independence,21 when Finnish volunteers22 came to the aid of Estonian fighters (Raudvassar, 1997, 7). Historian Andres Kasekamp confirms these claims, and writes the following about the Waffen-SS, the police battalions, and the fleeing to Finland as choices: on the one hand, there was disappointment in ‘German politics’ and the ‘political taint’ of the Legion. On the other hand, the police battalions fought far from Estonia, which ‘in no way aided in the achievement of Estonia’s national goals’ (Kasekamp, 2005, 205–206.) In the summer 2007. when I asked Lembitu Varblane about the reasons for his decision, he answered that in Finland he has often been asked the same thing, but that when he has mentioned moral considerations and the debt of gratitude for Finnish help in the War of Independence, there is reluctance to believe this. He adds that the authority of those who organized the activities of the young men who fled to Finland, especially Karl Talpak23 and their arguments in favour of fighting in the Finnish army were far from unimportant. This argument was that Estonia needed trained soldiers to fight for Estonian national independence against both the Soviet and the German occupations (and in Finland the young men did get the training).24 Going to the aid of the Finns had to have been the strongest consideration during the Winter War (1939–1940), when the Soviet Union attacked the eastern territories of Finland and dispatched planes to raid

Tiiu Jaago

327

Finland from the military bases formed on the west coast of Estonia.25 Lembitu Varblane narrates this as follows: Soon the Finnish war started.26 Hurriedly an airport was built on the northern side of Matsalu Bay,27 at a place called Sinalepa. From there the ‘Red Eagles’ of the Russian airforce started bombing Finland. For some reason, they had a habit of circling above the bay. With other village boys, I used to count how many planes went and how many came back. The wings of several planes had shot full of holes over Finland. We were all depressed as the intentions of Russia were quite clear. (KM EKLA f .350, 921, 2.)

Apparently in 1943 anti-German sentiment was indeed the strongest motivation. In fact, the narrator himself mentions that the Germans would not even hear of Estonian independence. By this time Estonian cooperation with the Finnish Army had already been rather well organized in Helsinki: Johan Pitka, Aleksander Varma, and Karl Talpak had founded the Estonian Office, which dealt among other things with aiding Estonians who had fled to Finland, and recruiting volunteers for the Finnish Army, engaged in the Continuation War.28 In historical surveys the mutual cooperation of Estonia and Finland comes to the fore, including the principle that the Estonians were not only helping Finland, but that Finland was helping those Estonians who were unwilling to fight either on the side of the Bolsheviks or in the army of Nazi Germany (Rebas, 1996; Lukkari, 1996, 62–63). When speaking of individual choices, other life circumstances come into play, particularly the influence of people whose opinions were considered authoritative as well as congruent with the individual’s world view and principles (this could be seen in the abovementioned school discussions). When considering the background of these past choices, it is clear that at the time people did not draw up lists of options, as it is done in retrospect when weighing and analyzing one‘s memories. All of these factors had a cumulative impact, coming to the fore at different times and in a variety of situations. 7. Decisions, Choices, Explanations In his life history, up to the time he became a Finnish Boy, Lembitu Varblane records only decisions, which he neither comments on, nor subjects to the comments of others. There is only one exception – a schoolboy prank played in 1940. I will digress briefly here to show why the narrator uses two different devices in describing this early period in his life (his childhood and youth).

328

The Lucky Star and Discernment

In February 1941 (T.J: the first year of the Soviet occupation) I did something ill–considered. I wrote a note where I called my classmates to gather on the eve of the Republic’s anniversary at the monument to soldiers killed in the War of Independence. That note fell into the hands of the authorities thanks to a young communist informer. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 2.)

The consequences of the episode described here were food for thought to last a lifetime, and Lembitu Varblane has also written about them elsewhere (e.g. Varblane, 2000, 37–38). Historian Mati Mandel elaborates on this topic based on documents drawn up by the Soviet regime in connection with the interrogation of Maria Torm, a teacher at the Lihula Gymnasium (M. Torm was arrested 18.03.1941 and was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment): ‘The interrogator also mentions the “anti-Soviet” letter written by the student named Varblane. Teacher Pazhevaja has testified against Maria Torm that she was “agitating the students in her class, who mocked Communist Youth and laughed at them, and for this reason many of them did not dare join the Komsomol. Opposition to Communist youth was spearheaded by Varblane.” Based on testimonies of various students, the interrogator knew that the letter of the student, Lembitu Varblane, invited all of them to assemble at the schoolhouse on the evening of 24 February, in order to go together to the War of Independence monument at 8 o’clock. On 24 February a dead crow had been hung on a tree in the central park of the town of Lihula. The perpetrator was not apprehended.’ (Mandel, 2007, 53.)

It should be mentioned that ‘a dead crow hung in a tree’ was not meaningless, but alluded to Johannes Vares, the leader of the Estonian Government appointed by the Soviet occupation regime, (Vares means ‘crow’ in Estonian), (for details cf. Vahtre, 1994, 181; Ant, 2005, 169). It seems that the first few decades of the narrator’s life took a clear or determined course among family and close friends. He does not offer selfreflective discussions of this period. This is noteworthy, since his narrative point of view focuses on public, not family-oriented topics. The only exception for this period is the story of the anti-Soviet letter. Even though the letter-episode foregrounds state ideology and the activities of the Soviet regime (he does not say much about his own experiences), it nevertheless reflects the development of the narrator as an individual (how he expresses his view and evaluates actions). He has also had to think back over his past actions from time to time. In the immediate aftermath of the event, he was only partially informed of the reaction of the authorities to

Tiiu Jaago

329

the letter. Many of the details (for example the execution of the person who punished him, by the German occupation powers, the reunion with the teacher after the years spent in Siberian imprisonment, and what was said in the interrogation records) reached the reader after shorter or longer intervals, albeit steadily, each time providing new levels of meaning. Thus it is not clear whether the letter-episode is a public topic (the violence of the Soviet regime, or the general violence of the authorities in cases of dissent), or one that concerns the narrator’s inner world. It seems that the first implies the second: he reflects on his actions in the context of the regime and public relationships, not the other way around (he does not describe how he developed an anti-Soviet attitude, and how that either deepened or diminished). When representing the time he spent in the ranks of the Finnish Boys, separated from family and relatives, having to manage on his own among strangers, the description changes. In subsequent episodes, Lembitu Varblane consistently provides information about those with whom he discusses events, and those who give him advice. Apparently this shift in the description also signifies a change in the story of his formation, precisely in this period of life. From here on the narrator shares with the reader not only events he has lived through and values he learned through his family, but also the story of the formation of his conscious self. The first such episode is connected with his being sent to the front to the torpedo boat fleet.29 There were relatively few Estonians in the torpedo boat fleet, 49 in fact, and they did not form separate crews (Relvik, 2003, 184; 188). Of the 11 crew members of the torpedo-boat ‘Taisto’, Lembitu Varblane was the only Estonian. Varblane thinks that the reason central headquarters assigned him to the navy was his knowledge of the Finnish language. He weaves another third-party opinion into this episode: an older Finn thought it was a messy business there, you could get hit by a bullet or shrapnel or be sunk altogether. I had no idea what to think, for a soldier, orders are orders (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 3).

In the narrative, this marks the end of his life in training camp, and the next phase of his war journey begins – serving in the Navy on the torpedo boat ‘Taisto’. The style of narration also changes: in addition to the chronological presentation of events, there is discussion with the authors of other texts. This is no longer just his own story; rather, he and his story are participants in a larger story.

330

The Lucky Star and Discernment 8. Arguments over Events and Memories

On my first reading of the life story of Lembitu Varblane I was struck by the detail of the episodes directly connected with the war. For example, he gives very specific information about the torpedo boat fleet, particularly the technical details of the motor torpedo boat ‘Taisto’ on which he served. I was even more taken with the ways he takes issue with sources external to his life story, pointing out errors in memory: Unfortunately there are mistakes in the memoirs. Time has done its work and dimmed human memory (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 6). Once he has described the episode of the sinking of the torpedo boat on which he was serving, he again brings examples from other texts, in order to argue with them: In a book of war history I found the following: “Acting as a safeguard to gunboats, torpedo boat Taisto-1 sank on June 21, 1944 being hit by a bomb and after the explosion of the petrol tanks towards the south from Oritsaari.” Luckily what has been written about the explosion of the petrol tanks is not true. That is why all eight men on deck survived the incident. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 7.)

He goes on to argue with the memoirs of a sailor who took part in the battle of Viipuri, where the author refers to what happened to him in the sinking of the ‘Taisto’: the rescue squad pulled out an Estonian sailor, who was called Varpunen.30 To Lembitu Varblane, this cannot be true, since the author of the memoirs speaks of the rescue of an unconscious man who was taken for a corpse, and of the wound made in his hip by a boat hook. As for himself, I never lost consciousness, and no one dragged me out of the water half-dead with a boat hook (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 7). On one hand war memories are personal experiences; on the other, especially in memoirs, they are experiences shared with fate-companions. It seems that there is a need to correct his own memories with those of others, to clarify and understand things. All the more so since it was only possible to begin talking and arguing about these things at the end of the 1980s. Psychologist Endel Tulving (1994, 74–75) identifies the primary source of memory errors as the way in which similar events are laid down in memory, as a result of which they clump together into a single remembered image,31 and the use of semantic memory (available information about the surrounding world) to compensate for the memory gaps. In the stories of the Finnish Boys, one also has to take into account the long time interval during which, for political reasons, it was impossible to handle such topics; also, the consequent decay of information, and its displacement by new information. The deliberations with oneself and

Tiiu Jaago

331

with others at the end of the 20th century serve as stimuli for remembering: the events themselves have not changed, but conversations and stories about them are influenced by the contexts in which they are now remembered (Tulving, 1994, 68; 74–75). In addition to the peculiarities of contexts of remembering, another layer emerges from the life story of Lembitu Varblane: this might be called the ‘law of genre’ for war stories. He writes: Since ancient times seamen have had a habit of adding a bit of spice to their stories, sometimes even of making them up completely. Unfortunately the postwar situation in Finland did not favour investigation of the war events very thoroughly. And decades later it is not very easy to be adequate. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 7.)

One noteworthy occasion of arguments is the process of editing memoirs for publication, and this has induced Lembitu Varblane to provide his own corrections: I consider it necessary to give an explanation concerning the so-called “burning sea”, because of the way my reminiscences were printed in the brochure for the 5th anniversary of the guild,32 under the title BURNING SEA. Apparently the editors added “spice” by making the sea burn. That was not the way I wrote it. I was surprised, tried to find out who it was who added “pepper”, but unsuccessfully.33

The represented event is connected with a war assignment to rescue the crew of a ship destroyed in battle. In his story Lembitu Varblane articulates it as follows: We received an order to save the people. So we hurried at full speed to the place of the incident. The evening skies were rosy, the smooth sea was all glimmering in a haze. On the horizon we saw a cloud of smoke born of the explosion which by now was already diffusing. Coming closer, we sensed the smells of oil and burning. There was a huge splotch of fuel oil at the site of the shipwreck, in the middle of which were men in life vests and on bits from the ship. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 5–6.)

What Lembitu Varblane argues against is the title given to his earlier representation of the event, and thus he articulates it again: Above the place where the warship had been destroyed hovered a large patch of black fuel oil used in the ship’s turbine motor. At any rate the gunmen in our boat called it polttoöljy. The kindling temperature of that

332

The Lucky Star and Discernment

kind of oil was quite high, and there was no way it could have been burning on the surface of cold seawater in late winter or early spring. Gasoline is another story – it catches fire easily. In Haapsalu during the Soviet era, I have seen the burning of airplane fuel (some kind of petroleum mixture). (TJ: the dregs of which were poured into a ditch and set on fire there for some reason). The rest of the fuel burned up in the ditch, and did not get into the seawater to pollute it. It is within likelihood that at the moment of being torpedoed some easily flammable pieces of wood burned on the surface of the water for a short while. I did not see that. But the air was saturated with the smoke from the explosion and from the smell of burning. Mist and the rising tide at evening seen above the sea in the red northern light might indeed give the impression of burning when seen from a distance. But if something really is burning on the surface of the sea, plywood boats would be wise to move away from it, in order not to catch fire themselves, let alone carry out any rescue operations.34

The red evening sky, the explosion, and the smoke rising from it may have created the impression of a fire and a ‘burning sea’. Despite its picturesque quality, this impression does not fit with the memory of what realistically happened: the fuel oil could not have been burning; those taking part in the rescue operations did not see the burning; furthermore, the rescue boat was made of plywood, which may have been waterproof, but not fireproof, as Lembitu Varblane points out, supplying the reader with supportive technical detail. Perhaps indeed it was the ‘red sky at evening’ that called up the image of the ‘burning sea’. I have not chosen this example only to indicate the factual or documentary dimension of the argument, but also to show the narrator‘s style of contestation. He states his position (the editors have added some “pepper”) and his arguments. He makes corrections, but he does not attack, allowing for some slack (it might be possible: the air was saturated with the smell of smoke and burning; the mist and evening light may have created an effect like burning). At the same time he does not remain ambiguous in his point of view (I did not write it like that; I did not see that). My second, longer questioning of the author during the writing of this article is connected with the ‘burning sea’ episodes. I wanted to see the manuscript he was having the argument about, as well as its edited version. Comparison of these source texts did not add any new information, but my attention was drawn to the notes Lembitu Varblane had added to the edited copy of the text, and the accompanying comments he made to me. From the notes I got the clear feeling that narrators distinguish between the different genres in which events are told: the realistic story of events and experiences; the adventure story told with

Tiiu Jaago

333

poetic licence and exaggerations by an entertainer, a teller of tall tales. Indeed, he did briefly mention such a spinner of yarns when he disputed the memories of the Finnish seaman of the sinking of the ‘Taisto’. His comments to me deepened my understanding of him as someone who sought balance between his own argumentative and conciliatory tendencies. (In a peeved state I scribbled something more, I can‘t remove them anymore. It‘s not worth getting upset about.)35 9. The Narrating Self and His Environment In the following I provide a deeper look at the dynamics of the narrator’s self-portrayal: how, and through what or whom he describes his position in the world. Once again, one can discern different periods and themes here: childhood, being a soldier abroad, adjustment to the Soviet regime. In the pictures from childhood his authority figure is his father, whose views are included from time to time. Since the father’s opinion is never argued with, for the narrator it probably functions as a spiritual heritage, values that he carries along with him permanently. In the pictures of war, his own personal thought-world begins to be outlined: how he gets along with others, his interests, ability to observe the world, and the more hidden abilities (that ordinary life may even foreground), such as how the natural and technical worlds speak to him. As was clear from the previous discussion, the narrator shows a distinctive precision when talking about both of these. First, he mediates information about himself through others (I was well received on the launch. My importance was boosted by the fact that I boasted a high-school diploma; You were like a son to us.) Clearer selfpositioning emerges in situations of conflict. In this category belongs a negative incident, which even at the time of writing the life story calls for the comment I was deeply insulted, and which entailed a need to judge ‘him’ harshly. He is describing the bombing of Helsinki. Having noticed dishes thrown out into the snow from a burning building, he starts to gather them up so they would not be shattered: Suddenly a livid naval officer appeared and accused me of intent to steal. The dialogue between the two men ends with the narrator‘s opinion of the ‘angry’ man: There are probably a few such bird-brained characters in the best of armies. Besides the capacity of self-observation, there is the skill in observing the ‘culturally other’. Here again a certain conflict enters the interaction between self and other, but in the life history narrative he shows that he knows how to use this experience as a cultural description. For example, the episode about being on leave from military service, which includes a description of life on a Finnish farm in Loimaa:

334

The Lucky Star and Discernment

I remember differences of opinion between myself and my host – he didn’t like that I lent a hand with the threshing, he employed two farmhands, one of whom was a war invalid, and they were threshing corn in winter! Other differences were my delight with dancing with the girls at the village kuppila (inn) and when skiing my use of both the alternating ski stride and the double pole stride. Class distinction and rigidly formed principles were really fixed. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 4.)

After the war, when he has to adjust to the Soviet regime, his self-positioning in the historical landscape is totally different from what he described earlier. Earlier, he was among his own kind, and the enemy was on the opposite side of the front lines. Now it is no longer so: the ‘front lines’ are not visible, and one has to feel situations out, talk them over, and formulate guidelines and boundaries through analysis. Thus, characteristically, in the story of the deportations he first gives a description of what he noticed in different situations and only after that a narration of the event itself. For example, in the episode in the railway waiting room, where he sits on a bench, smokes, and thinks about the situation, having just found out about the deportation of his mother and brother to Siberia on 25 March 1949. If at the beginning of this episode his thoughts would in no way submit to sober self-control, the half-page of analysis of the situation ends with a summary: I made a firm decision. He goes to the NKVD headquarters and shares the journey with the reader, the details he notices on the way (military trucks, in the back of which people were squatting on top of their bags and bundles, these were women, children, and old men; with them there were armed soldiers; cars were waiting in front of the building, probably awaiting orders; in the front rooms it was quiet, but from the back rooms you could hear Russian conversation and rough, nervous shouting). If in the story of the Finnish Boys, there was a reflecting back on oneself (an imaginary picture of how others saw him), then what is described here is a sharp need to observe things (knowing that one’s fate depends on someone else: an interrogator, an informer, or the lack thereof). Nevertheless the kind of self-description that includes others does not disappear, even much later. For example, when describing peacetime: The life of a school leader in Taebla was relatively easy, even at the time when the Soviet system was destroying country life and agriculture by dint of simple stupidity. The vast majority of the leadership of collective farms consisted of smart, discerning people who were national-minded, who knew how to stand up for the rural folk, and who supported the school in every way. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 18.)

Tiiu Jaago

335

The dependence of one’s life, fate, or well-being on others emerges from descriptions both of crises and more stable times. In the latter case the core of this feeling comes from cooperation: the participation of likeminded people in one‘s activities, and vice versa. It follows that on the one hand he designates himself as a member of society (a community or a work group, etc); on the other, that he knows how to give a very precise indication of his position in any such group. As we have seen, this also characterized his arguments with other texts. Lembitu Varblane does not generally write about his feelings (except for homesickness and his feelings about his family in the deportation story). For example, in the episode in which he describes the rescue of the shipwrecked in 1944), he has painful memories of the northern evening and night at the beginning of June. Though he describes sensations (painful memories; at the place of destruction there was a big black oil spill; there was the smell of oil and burning), emotional description is reserved for those they went to rescue (frightened soldiers; outburst of joy), not themselves. He tells about himself from the perspective of remembered activities (how hard it is to heave a person in wet, oil-drenched clothing up onto the deck of the ship). Alternatively, he merges with the impersonal world of objects (the summary of the rescue operations: mixed with dark anguish there was a feeling of contentment: people got saved). In those situations containing intimations of danger, he seems rather to focus on clarifying observations (I remember that in the first squadron there were 40 attacking airplanes, most of them IL-2s and some destroyers) than on specifying feelings. Even being on board the ‘Taisto’ after it was hit is described less from the perspective of what he felt than through activities: We all heard a deafening blast. I saw a bloody head through the broken hatch of the engine room and a column of fire coming from the petrol lines of the engine. The three men in the engine room were instantly killed. The rest had to leave the burning boat immediately. Fortunately our “Taisto” sunk quickly without making much noise. The other “Taisto” at once picked us up. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 7.)

In descriptions of imprisonment it is also activity that is foregrounded: he reads Tuglas‘ poem ‘The Sea’, which he remembered having memorized [---] in [his] schooldays‘36; when he is taken back to his cell after interrogation, I rearranged the things that had been taken out, did warmup exercises in the damp room, and waited to see what would happen. Even when he articulates an activity through external decisions (I was to go), he also immediately gives a signal of his presence (I chose the school

336

The Lucky Star and Discernment

from my home area) and the reasons for his choice (I thought that). In his story he is a conscious agent; things do not just happen to him, but he acts amidst the circumstances. Among the characteristic features of his story are a visual and panoramic quality. In his laconic style of description there is plenty of room for nature descriptions: the ink-black autumn sea roared; when the wind picked up, the sea had not had a chance to start roiling yet; on the heaving sea it was not easy; when the sky started to lighten, the first rocky islands came into view; the ice in the Gulf of Finland thawed quickly, supplementary instruction in Helsinki ended. In these passages there are time markers as well as specifications of activities, often woven together. Also characteristic for him are his observations of situations: these, once again, are brief, yet capacious enough to accommodate both the general outline and the details. For example, concerning the last ones wishing to flee the homeland on the west coast of Estonia in 1944: The shore was full of civilians and militaries coming from the fronts. There were gentlemen, farmers with families, old people and children, and members of the coastguard regiment, the SS division, the police battalion, the Finnish volunteers and also the Pitka’s men. Everyone sought an opportunity to escape across the sea. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 10.)

Or his observations in connection with his journey to the Red Army along with others his own age: It was exciting to watch those men. I saw men from the forest, men from the German and Finnish units. A man’s recent past was very apparent from how he spoke or moved his hands and feet. (KM EKLA f. 350, 921, 11–12.)

Such pictures (along with the abovementioned summary of the values of Finnish village society) – few in words, but laden with meaning – increase the reader’s enjoyment, but also give a good sense of the tightening of rules, the chaos of the front passing over, or simply of the natural surroundings where activities and communication take place. They also give plenty of clues about the observer, who is wont to follow nature, the environment and people closely. 10. Summary In my analysis of the life story of Lembitu Varblane, I took as my point of departure the source text, the written story that he submitted to the

Tiiu Jaago

337

archive in 1999, which is also the basis for the story published in this volume. Beginning with individual themes, I compared this basic text with the other writings of Varblane, as well as with historical texts and other life stories. Information from my meetings with Lembitu Varblane in 2003, 2007, and 2008 have been used both for context as well as to answer questions that came up as I was writing the article. I focused on the topic of the Finnish Boys, which I compared with the story of deportation. It is noteworthy that he does not represent the majority of the Finnish Boys (who served in the infantry), but those who served in the navy, and he was the only Estonian on his crew. It is possible that this shaped his fate in the direction of the ‘lucky star’, since he returned to Estonia later than the infantrymen, at the time when there was already total chaos in Estonia as the front passed through. Thus he does not go to the front again in the ranks of the German army, nor does he flee west. He stays home, which at the time of the events seemed like misfortune, but which from today’s more recent perspective is considered by the narrator himself to be good fortune indeed, both viewed in terms of his lifework and his family, his children and grandchildren. He chanced to escape being deported: he was working as a teacher, and on that day was at a continuing education course for teachers in Tallinn. But in this story, his life is definitely not ruled by chance. He allows his reader to follow the circumstances in which he made choices, where alongside good luck, life-wisdom derived from his cultural context takes a ‘step forward’. The 1999 version of the life story of Lembitu Varblane is the result of various texts and various tellings, but it is also one more phase of the life of those stories. War memories serve the function of continuing to discuss what happened with one’s fate-companions, as well as to discuss how those events are remembered, what were the points of view of the narrator as knowing witness (where he served, what was his assignment, what he participated in, where and when, etc). In connection with his wartime descriptions, the narrative identity of Lembitu Varblane and his sense of genre come most to the fore. This is to be expected, since it is in the presentation of his war stories that he sets his own knowledge and approaches alongside those of others. As a narrator, he aims for precision and avoids the purely entertaining (a quality which he attributes to war stories to some extent). For him these are not entertaining tales. At our first meeting in 2003 he said in passing: War is a horrible thing, from time to time you remember it and talk about it, and then you don’t want to remember it at all. Deportation stories resemble war stories in the sense that these, too, are stories to be shared with those companions who know and understand the circumstances.

338

The Lucky Star and Discernment

But as distinct from war stories, these are bound up with the home and the fate of family members. Significantly, in these stories there are no arguments with the stories of others. The note written in school and against the regime during the first Soviet year is on the one hand coherent with the times, reflecting the relations between Soviet authorities and local people (more indirectly it points to the narrator‘s later choices and preferences as well). But as times change, what begin to weigh more heavily are the ways, in which people with different beliefs and experiences made decisions, and the way this in turn influenced the narrator himself. In the narrative, two positions take turns in the foreground – the actor or agent (as in imprisonment) and co-actor (he is one among man soldiers, one of the village folk, one among many teachers), and one who discusses and observes (in descriptions of critical situations). Parallel to these subject positions the narrator’s more hidden ‘self’ makes its appearance to the reader: this is a man who is interested in the world of technical things, and in making observations about nature and other people. Where, then, is there a place for the lucky star and for discernment? When comparing the topic of war with other topics, it seems that the action moves along a predetermined track. One does have to make decisions, but it is not possible to discuss them at length. One has to believe in intuition and chance. Thus, in war, it is the lucky star that rules. But discernment belongs to the individual: it works, both in critical situations as well as in everyday life. Notes 1

2

3

4

5

Research in preparation for this chapter was supported by: target financing topic ‘Folklore and Society: folkloric memory, creativity, applications’; the European Union through the European Fund for Regional Development (Centre for Excellence in Cultural Theory) and the Estonian Science Foundation Grant 8190. Translated by Tiina Ann Kirss. Estonian Literary Museum, Cultural History Archives, ‘Estonian Life Histories’ collection: KM EKLA f. 350, 921. Materials held in the department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, Tartu University; MK, Läänemaa. Interview for Õpetajate Leht (Teachers’ Gazette), on the occasion of his 75th birthday (Pajula, 1998). Finland was engaged in Jatkusota, the Continuation War (June 25, 1941 – Sep 19, 1944) against the Soviet Union over the eastern territories of Finland.

Tiiu Jaago 6

7

8

9 10

11

12

13

14 15

16 17 18

19

339

The majority of the Estonians who served in the Finnish army, mostly infantrymen, who chose to return to the homeland, returned legally on Aug 19, 1944. They continued to serve at a German training centre (at Kehra, Klooga, etc.) and as a rule were sent to the front. Estonians who had served in the Finnish navy were demobilized later, in September, as the Soviet forces were advancing on Tallinn, when there were skirmishes between German and Estonian armed units. The subsequent fortunes of these young men changed with the rapid changes in the scenario of war, and were rather diverse, both compared among themselves and in comparison with those who had returned to Estonia earlier (Vabaduse eest, 1997; Lukkari, 1996, 61.) Contradmiral Johan Pitka organized the resistance of Estonian soldiers (including those who were coming from the German and Finnish armies) against both occupying armies, the Germans and the Russians, in September 1944. This took place in the context of attempts to restore Estonian national independence (Vahtre, 1994, 192–193; Laar, 2005, 224). The great flight from Estonia took place in September 1944, in part on transport ships to Germany, but preferably to Sweden, including on small boats (Laar, 2005, 226; Rahi-Tamm, 2005, 27; for the life histories of those who fled, see Kirss, 2006). KM EKLA f. 350, 921. Eduard Tohver and Robert Kriisa, Sõjamälestused I: Jalkala plahvatus. (‘War memories I: the Jalkala explosion’). Tape recording, in the trust of the family, copy on CD at the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, Tartu University. In thematization and structural analysis of the narrative, I draw on Satu Apo and Lauri Harvilahti’s methods for the analysis of folklore texts (cf. Apo, 2001, 28–31; Apo, 2003; Harvilahti, 1992; Harvilahti, 2000). 25 March 1949, in the course of which nearly 21 000 people were taken from Estonia to Russia (cf. Rahi-Tamm, 2005, 29). These took place in violation of the 1907 Hague Convention, which prohibits the mobilization of residents of occupied states (cf. Kasekamp, 2005, 206). Cf. eg. Vahtre, 1994, 188–189; Rebas, 1996, 692–693. On the postponement of mobilization until high school graduation see Relvik, 2003, 40, 42; KM EKLA f. 350, 883. Letter of Lembitu Varblane to Tiiu Jaago Feb 24, 2008. Compare similar discussions in school in Tartu, Kaalep, 2005. On the experience of different qualities of time, see Vahtre, 1991; Hiiemäe, 1993. According to Vello Salo’s data, 3,344 Finnish boys are known by name, of which the life stories of 3,333 men can be found in the book Vabaduse eest (‘For Freedom’) published in 2007 (Salo, 2007, 8).

340 20

21

22 23

24

25

26

27

The Lucky Star and Discernment

‘For Estonian honour and Finland’s freedom’ was the motto of JR 200, the infantry regiment formed at the beginning of 1944 of Estonian volunteers serving in the Finnish army (Kasekamp, 2005, 206). The War of Independence (Nov 28, 1918 – Jan 3, 1920) was fought in the name of Estonian national independence. Estonian soldiers fought against both Soviet and German forces. For details see Vahtre, 1994, 139–140; Lukkari, 1996, 62–63. Karl Talpak was the spiritual leader of the Finnish Boys movement, and the organizer of their training (Uustalu, Moora, 1973, Plate II; Kasekamp, 2005, 206). Ain Kaalep, who had contact with Karl Talpak at the Tartu Treffner Gymnasium, writes: ‘As a Treffner student, of course I had many a conversation with Karl Talpak – during the German occupation, there was intensive interchange between the most active students and active teachers. That quite a large part of our graduating class fled from the clutches of the German authorities to Finland in spring 1943 was to a large measure due to Talpak’s encouragement – his, and that of religion teacher Elmar Salumaa, who shared his views). Threatened with arrest by the German authorities, he had already found refuge in Finland, and one might say he was waiting there ahead of us. That was how our regiment was born.’ (Kaalep, 2005; cf. KM EKLA f. 350, 870.) The conversation took place in Haapsalu on 4 July 2007. One can find confirmation for the two factors Lembitu Varblane emphasized – obtaining military training and the Finnish struggle for independence (for which the kin people is commended) in the life stories of other Finnish Boys, for example Eino Viire (Kirss, 2006, 67) and Harald Võsu (KM EKLA f. 350, 1752, , 16, 21; cf. KM EKLA f. 350, 834.) For the role and meaning of the leaders’ authority (or lack of authority) for shaping choices compare Heino Sits 2008a EE-6 (KM EKLA f. 350: unregistered manuscript). Varblane returns to the importance of military training in one of his newspaper articles on the topic of the Finnish Boys, published in the local newspaper Lääne Elu (Western Life) (Varblane, 2008). Jüri Ant (2005, 133) summarizes the building of Soviet military bases on the territory of the Estonian Republic with the assertion that through this ‘the substance of Estonian independence was destroyed, particularly beginning in November – December 1939, when Soviet planes bound to bomb Finland set off from the bases on Estonian soil. Despite Estonia’s official confirmation of its neutrality, this was also how the international public regarded it.‘ (For details see Uustalu, Moora, 1973, 9; Ant, 2005, 157–158.) The ‘Finnish War’ refers to the Winter War (Nov 30, 1939 – March 12, 1940). The home village of Lembitu Varblane was located on the southern shore of Matsalu Bay. It is unthinkable that having had contact with Red Army soldiers in everyday life contexts, the village people would not have

Tiiu Jaago

28 29

30 31

32

33 34 35 36

341

formed attitudes and views with respect to political events, including the ongoing war between Finland and the Soviet Union. For details, see Uustalu, Moora, 1973, 25; Vahtre, 1994, 189. Motor torpedo boats were in the patrol and security service (Relvik, 2003, 184–188). Varblane, in Finnish ‘varpunen’. In oral history, this has been referred to as ‘the bleeding together of times’ (cf. Jaago, 2002, 397–400). The Guild is the association of Finnish Boys (The Guild of Estonians who served in the Finnish Navy) Reminiscences of Lembitu Varblane (Relvik, 2003, 204). Reminiscences of Lembitu Varblane (Relvik, 2003, 205). Letter from Lembitu Varblane to TJ, 22.02.2008. The poem ‘Meri’ (‘The Sea’, 1908) written by F. Tuglas (1886–1971) when he was imprisoned in the Toompea Castle, is a classic work of Estonian literature.

References Ant, J. (2005), “MRP ja baaside aeg. Nõukogude okupatsioon”, in: A. Pajur, T. Tannberg, L. Vahtre, J. Ant, M. Laar, K. Jaanson, M. Nutt, R. Raag, S. Vahtre and A. Kasekamp, Eesti ajalugu VI. Vabadussõjast taasiseseisvumiseni. Tartu: Õpetatud Eesti Selts, 153–178. Apo, S. (2001), Viinan voima. Näkökulmia suomalaisten kansanomaiseen alkoholiajatteluun ja -kulttuuriin. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Apo, S. (2003), “Rahvapärase mõtteviisi uurimine arhiivi- ja küsitlusmaterjalide abil”, in T. Jaago (ed.) Pärimus ja tõlgendus. Artikleid folkloristika ja etnoloogia teooria, meetodite ning uurimispraktika alalt. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 218–233. Fivush, R. (2008), “Remembering and Reminiscing: How Individual Lives are Constructed in Family Narratives”, Memory Studies, 1 (1): 49–58. Harvilahti, L. (1992), Kertovan runon keinot. Inkeriläisen runoepiikan tuottamisesta. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Harvilahti, L. (2000), “Rahvalaul “Müüdud neiu” Ingeris ja Eestis”, in: T. Jaago and Ü. Valk (eds.) “Kust tulid lood minule... ” Artikleid regilaulu uurimise alalt 1990. aastatel. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 27–56. Hiiemäe, M. (1993), “Kuukalendri nädal ja ajaarvamine”, Keel ja Kirjandus, 1: 16–20. Jaago, T. (2002), “Popular History in the View of Estonian Folkloristics”,T. Jaago, M. Kõiva and K. Kärsna (eds.) Lives, histories and identities. Studies on oral history, life- and family stories. Vol. 3. Tartu: University of Tartu, Estonian Literary Museum, 390–404.

342

The Lucky Star and Discernment

Kaalep, A. (2005), “Ohvitser Karl Talpaku 100. sünniaastapäev”, Postimees, 28.02., URL: http://www.postimees.ee/280205/esileht/158833_1.php [last visited Jan 25, 2008]. Kasekamp, A. (2005), “Saksa okupatsioon 1941–1944”, in: A. Pajur et. al, Eesti ajalugu VI. Vabadussõjast taasiseseisvumiseni. Tartu: Õpetatud Eesti Selts, 196–209. Kirss, T. (ed.) (2006), Rändlindude pesad. Eestlaste elulood võõrsil. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, Toronto Ülikooli Eesti õppetool. KM EKLA = Estonian Cultural History Archives in the Estonian Literary Museum. Laar, M. (2005), “Võitlused Eesti pärast 1944. aastal”, in: A. Pajur et. al, Eesti ajalugu VI. Vabadussõjast taasiseseisvumiseni. Tartu: Õpetatud Eesti Selts, 213–227. Lukkari, M. (1996), Viron itsenäistyminen. Helsinki: Otava. Mandel, M. (2007), Kurjuse aasta Lõuna-Läänemaal 1940–1941. Varia Historica II. Tallinn: Eesti Ajaloomuuseum. Pajula, E. (1998), “Ei tahtnud saada õpetajaks”, Õpetajate Leht, 4.12. Rahi-Tamm, A. (2005), “Inimkaotused”, in: Ü. Ennuste, E. Parmasto, E. Tarvel and P. Varju (eds.) Valge raamat. Eesti rahva kaotused okupatsioonide läbi 1940–1991. Tallinn. Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus, 23–42. Raudvassar, L. (1997), “Võideldes vaenlase vastu, kes ei sallinud vabadust”, Eesti Kirik, 3.12. Rebas, H. (1996), “Miks edu – miks luhtumine? Võrdlev essee Saksa mobilisatsioonidest Eestis ja Leedus 1943. a.”, Akadeemia, 4: 692–727. Relvik, H. (2003), Mereväe soomepoisid. Tallinn: Soome Mereväes Teeninud Eestlaste Gild. Salo, V. (2007), “Soomepoiste avastamata pärandus”, Postimees, 15.12. Tulving, E. (1994), Mälu. Tallinn: Kupar. Uustalu, E. and R. Moora (1973), Soomepoisid. Ülevaade vabatahtlike liikumisest ja sõjateest Soomes ja kodumaal Teise maailmasõja ajal. Toronto: Soomepoiste Klubi Torontos & JR 200 Sõprusühing Stockholmis & JR 200 Koondis Göteborgis. Vabaduse eest (1997) = Vabaduse eest. Soomepoiste lühielulood. Tallinn: Soome Sõjaveteranide Eesti Ühendus. Vahtre, L. (1991), Eestlase aeg. Uurimus eesti rahvapärase ajaarvamise ajaloost. Tallinn: Eesti Teaduste Akadeemia Ajaloo Instituut. Vahtre, S. (1994), Eesti ajalugu. Kronoloogia. Tallinn: Olion. Varblane, L. (ed.) (2000), Lihula Gümnaasium: meenutused, mälestused 1938–1952. Lihula: Lihula Gümnaasium. Varblane, L. (2008), “65 aastat soomepoisse”, Lääne Elu, 7.10.

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War in a Post-Soviet Life Story Ene Kõresaar 1.

Introduction

This chapter provides a closer look at the life story written by Boris Takk in the first half of the 1990s and attempts to use it as a basis for the analyses of war as a space of consciousness of former soldiers. The goal is to understand the personal significance of war for the narrator in the cultural context in which, in the 1990s, Estonian veterans constructed their realities of life. In order to achieve this goal, I will focus on the interpretative mechanisms that are used in a veteran life story to express the war experience and to integrate this experience into his general life history.1 The theoretical basis for my discussion of how war is depicted in a post-Soviet life story is the concept of selfhood as an embodied and historically situated practical knowledge (Battaglia, 1995, 3). According to Debbora Battaglia, ‘[t]he “self” is a representational economy: a reification continually defeated by mutable entanglements with other subjects’ histories, experiences, self-representations; with their texts, conduct, gestures, objectifications; with their “arguments of images” [---], and so forth’ (Battaglia, 1995, 2). The question of what narrative strategies are used to construct selfhood in war memories is simultaneously related to the issues of the dialogical mechanisms of remembering and narrating. All narratives have a narrator and an audience, real or imagined, and the potential of narrative to be powerful or to be used strategically can only be realized from within this dialogic relationship. People tell their lives, in conflict or in cooperation with others, always in dialogue with other stories and other selves as they negotiate ways of being in the world. (Patterson, 2002, 4–5) In addition, the narratability of experiences depends on social and political constraints as well as collective narratives that are in effect during the time of narration (Patterson, 2002, 5–6) or have affected the possibility of narrating the experiences in question during the narrator’s life. As demonstrated by Juri Lotman, the latter depends on how individuals construct their role in relation to society and what framework society allows them to use (Lotman, 1991, 366; 370; 385). Studies of the retrospective interpretations of the lives of former Wehrmacht soldiers (e.g. Köstlin, 1989; Rosenthal, 1990; 1991; Schütze, 1992a; 1992b; Löffler, 1999) have underlined the ambivalence of the roles of victim and persecutor characteristic of such stories, the taboos related to thematising certain events and experiences, and the different narration strategies used in the contexts of

344

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

different communities of memory (family, the company of veterans, local community) as well as the contradictory effect of public discourses and collective narratives on remembering the war. It only became possible for Estonian men who had fought in the German troops during World War II to make their war experiences public in the context of the ethnic movements and the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The process of social transformation created a strong need for re-orientated and reshaped biographies or orientational pasts (Rosenthal, 2000). The biographical (re)structuring of the past (Fischer-Rosenthal, 2000, 68) became absolutely necessary. The biographical constructions of identity that were based on anti-Soviet group ideologies enjoyed a privileged position in post-Soviet social communication. One of the central memory regimes in Estonia during the 1990s was the ideology of ‘prolonged rupture’ (Kõresaar, 2005, 151f). According to the ideology of ‘prolonged rupture’, the Soviet occupation of 1940 interrupted the country’s ‘natural’ national development and brought about a general deterioration. The paradigm of rupture is characterised by the denial of the possibility to lead an ordinary daily life or achieve personal (and collective) happiness during the Soviet period. According to this paradigm, the national body and therefore also the individual had only two possible conditions during the Soviet period: being oppressed and suffering or resisting the oppressive regime. The ideology of the ‘rupture’ focuses on the destruction of the national way of life and the invasion of strange norms, values and customs. At the beginning of the 1990s, the interpretation of history that originally focused on the 1940s was extended to the entire Soviet period, making it an ‘in-between era’ that separates the periods of independence (1918–1949 and from 1991 onwards) in the postSoviet Estonian remembrance culture. The life story of Boris Takk analysed in this chapter represents this dominant view of history that evaluates the entire history of Estonia in the 20th century from a postcolonial perspective.2 I will attempt to determine to what degree and how the experience of being a soldier in the German army can be integrated with the post-Soviet ideology of the ‘prolonged rupture’. I approach the problem by outlining some of the main oppositional pairs appearing in Takk’s war memories and attempting to show how they relate to the narrator’s representation of self and other social and cultural texts. My analysis is based on the 1993 Estonian manuscript of Boris Takk’s life story as well as my conversation with Takk at his home in 2006. Boris Takk sent his 205-page computer printed life story entitled ‘My Destiny and the Destiny of Those Close to Me in the Labyrinths of History’ (Minu ja minu lähedaste saatus ajaloo keerdkäikudes) to the Estonian Life Stories Association in November 1996 in response to the public

Ene Kõresaar

345

call for life writing. According to the note in the manuscript, he finished writing his life story in 1993. It is a very detailed narrative with a strong testimonial accent. The story is written in a highly ideological key and contains digressions into past and current politics. It reveals the narrator’s established self-image as a resistance and freedom fighter. Takk’s entire life story can be viewed as the life story of an activist, which communicates the narrator’s personal dedication to resisting the Soviet regime and to the related aspect of enlightening the public both in the communist and post-communist context. It is due to the narrator’s engagement in politics that his life story contains more than the usual share of theorising ‘in the forms of argumental commentaries, which are normally formulated in closing positions at the end of a narrative unit’ (Schütze, 1992a, 190; cf. also Arvidsson, 1998). He has added a separate chapter to his memoirs, where he explains his worldview and also returns to the events in his life that he thinks require more explanation. Takk used our interview, conducted 10 years after he sent his life story to the Estonian Life Stories Association, to reaffirm his political views. The interview concentrated on two particular aspects of his life: his experience as an Estonian soldier in the Waffen-SS and the status of that experience in contemporary Estonian society as well as his experience as a resistance activist during the Soviet occupation, incl. as a delegate of the Supreme Council.3 The following analysis is based mainly on the text of the life story written by Takk and the interview has been used to verify its interpretation. 2. A Strategic Narrative: the Ideology of Prolonged Rupture in Boris Takk’s Life Story The Soviet occupation as a rupture of Estonian national continuity and way of life is the main theme of Boris Takk’s life story and gives meaning to his entire life. Almost every description of a phase in Takk’s life contains a negative comparison to the Soviet period. He is methodical in his construction of the Soviet occupation as a period of rupture, starting by describing the ‘beginning’ of the rupture – the Russian revolution – and already establishing the significant narrative characteristics of the regime that occupied Estonia: the revolutionaries and those who rose to power in Russia are lazy vodka-loving idlers; the causes of the revolution itself (e.g. the famous slogan ‘Bread!’) are invented and untruthful; the revolution amounts to vandalism and outrageous behaviour, which, along with the extermination of educated people and culture, becomes a daily part of Soviet life. (KM EKLA, f. 350, 417, 3.)

346

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

In Boris Takk’s narrative, the stories of pre-wartime rupture contain almost all of the themes that make up the rhetoric of national rupture (Kõresaar, 2004). He starts the chapter ‘Youth (with the Turn of History)’ (Noorusaastad (koos ajaloouperpalliga)) by ridiculing the 1940 June Coup and telling amusing anecdotes about the uncivilised Red Army officers and their wives. At the same time, he also thematises the first arrests, the forced propaganda and the new rituals, the routinism of the ‘new life’ and the beginning of Soviet doublethink. As the narrative develops, the description of the rupture changes from amusing and ironic to tragic, ending with detailed accounts of how the monument to the Estonian War of Independence (1918–1920) was blown up, how people disappeared without a trace as well as of the mass deportation of 1941. While Takk describes the pre-wartime rupture as strange times, the reoccupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union in 1944 marks the beginning of the long night for Estonia, which ends only after the restoration of its independence in 1991 (KM EKLA, f. 350, 417, 86). In the context of Boris Takk’s life story, Estonia’s post-war history was at the centre of the ‘national rupture’. If symbolic freedom was still a possibility when the war reached Takk’s home (he describes how people destroyed Soviet symbols), then the mid-1940s are characterised by the onset of ruin and deterioration. In the context of the second half of the 1940s, the operative words in Takk’s narrative of deterioration are plundering and devastation of the land – attributes which, he believes, characterise the Soviet system as a whole. Boris Takk criticises the more peaceful and stable life that started at the end of the 1950s pragmatically through the prism of everyday life (regarding this narrative tendency cf. Jõesalu, 2009). He considers it his mission to open the reader’s eyes to the faults of the Soviet system. To achieve this purpose, Takk uses the abovementioned analogy between revolution and occupation, first of all describing the miserable state of Soviet Russia, the ‘motherland of the revolution’,4 and then describing the negative effects of the Soviet regime in Estonia. Takk’s criticism of Soviet life comprises the comparisons of wellbeing (e.g. medical care) in the Soviet Union and ‘abroad’ that were popular during the Soviet period, as well as preconceived and imagined notions regarding the causes of the economic problems of the USSR as experienced by individuals in their daily lives (e.g. Certainly, it was possible to get by. But the cheap goods were produced by armies of prisoners – at low cost, of course. Unfortunately, a lot of the goods were damaged.). Takk describes the Soviet mentality as ephemeral and afflicted by gigantomania, resulting in idiocy and absurdity on the level of everyday life.5 From the standpoint of the ideology of the rupture, it is important for the narrator to draw a line of

Ene Kõresaar

347

comparison between the Soviet regime and the old farm masters of Estonia in order to show the profundity of the rupture (KM EKLA, f. 350, 417, 141).6 In Boris Takk’s life story, the triangle of the ideology of the prolonged rupture he so passionately advocates, the Sovietisation of the Estonian people, and the self-definition of the ‘patriotic’ pre-war generation is actualised in an intriguing way through the conflicting choices Takk has to make during his life. During the mid-1950s, Takk, who earlier had to hide himself from the NKVD, settles down at a kolkhoz, marries, and begins looking for profitable jobs to fulfil his life’s dream of building a house. This is where his life takes a turn. At some point during the early 1970s (Takk’s narrative is not clear on the exact time period at this point), he is invited to join the Communist Party and become a delegate of the Supreme Council. Takk accepts the offer, justifying this act by saying that he wanted to serve the Estonian cause from inside the system.7 Thus, Takk’s life story is an interesting combination of two antithetic biographies that have a different status during the different periods of Takk’s life. During the Soviet occupation Takk does not have the ‘right’ biography as a veteran of the German army and it is difficult for him to find work at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s. Moreover, the part of his life that comprises his activities as a forest brother does not even exist publicly. In essence, Takk restores his ‘right to a biography’ when he begins working actively ‘on the cultural front’ as a delegate and a member of the Communist Party. He now possesses both the ‘right’ and the ‘wrong’ biography and these change places in the context of the national movement at the end of the 1980s. The manner in which Takk describes joining the Communist Party is a combination of the interpretation models used by non-Party members and Party members (Kõresaar, 2005, 169–170). This combination stems from the motivation Takk uses to justify his decision and the level of legitimation of the motivation in the public discourse at the time of writing. The secret fight for freedom and serving the Estonian cause are equally accepted as courses of action as refusing to join the Party and being a dissident. Takk is also supported by his past service in the German army forces (which has been finally acknowledged at the time of writing). Another significant factor that legitimises his decision is the ideology of the prolonged rupture which is used in the narrative to substantiate his entire description of the Soviet period.8 The ideology is so strong that Takk does not identify with the Communist Party at all, despite being a Party member. He describes Estonian members of the Communist Party as puppets of the regime, thus clearly distancing himself from this group.

348

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

The Baltic Chain in 1989 was one of the most important events in Takk’s life. From this time, he becomes involved in organising veterans of the German troops;9 he brings his past as a forest brother ‘out of the closet’ and ties his service in the German military (resistance to Bolshevism) to his continuous fight for Estonia’s freedom. 3. The Public and the Private War: On the Syncretism of Freedom Fighting Researchers of life stories have demonstrated that the war memories of soldiers who fought in World War II generally follow a similar, chronological narrative scheme, regardless of the army or branch of the armed forces in which they served. According to Gabriele Rosenthal, this narrative scheme has developed due to the nature of warfare: ‘The war of mobility between 1939–1945 was an experience of nonroutine situations in different places with various people, and of confrontations with living persons, including both civilians and the enemy. [---] These non-routine events, with their memory-impressive changes of place, are advantgeous for the process of narration. The biographical mainnarration can follow these place changes chronologically. In this way the narrator is in control of a memory frame (Halbwachs) which helps him or her to bring the past into the present.’ (Rosenthal, 1991, 36–37.)

In this regard, Boris Takk’s war narrative does not differ from other soldier memoirs: he moves from place to place with his unit and orders his experiences linearly, event by event, lingering on some events during his life as a soldier according to the meaning he attributes to them in the context of his entire life story. Takk’s narrative flows almost without obstruction. However, the same cannot be said about how he interprets his war experiences, which narrative strategies he uses to do so, and what he links the experiences to in the context of his life story as a whole. This demonstrates the ambivalent nature of war memories (cf. Löffler, 1999), which is based both on wartime experiences as well as the syncretistic identity characteristic of autobiographical self-representation. This means that the meaning of a certain event does not derive solely from the ‘authenticity of the event’ and that the representations of different experiences support each other. What’s more, in addition to personal experiences and their interpretations, Takk’s self-representation also comprises the (public and official) receptions thereof in the context of the different social orders that applied in Estonia during the 20th century. Below, I will attempt to explain the ambiguity of Boris Takk’s war memories and

Ene Kõresaar

349

demonstrate their syncretistic nature by focusing on some experiences in his war narrative that may, at first sight, seem to be opposites. I will analyse Takk’s narrative based on my primary goal: to find out how Takk’s war experience can be integrated into the main idea of his life story – the ideology of the prolonged rupture. One of the most significant questions that the men who fought in World War II had to answer after the collapse of the Soviet Union was: whose war were you fighting? This question also presents itself in Boris Takk’s story of the choices he made as he tells the readers about the critical events that occurred during the course of the war or discusses his role and personal goals in the war. The question ‘what am I doing here?’ reflects a complex dynamic of the public and the private, which is expressed in the interpretation triangle Nazi war ideology – Estonians’ pursuit of independence – personal coping. Boris Takk’s argumentation regarding his role in the German armed forces is characterised by his search for the so-called third way. In the context of the memories and history of World War II, the ‘third way’ represents the attempts made by Estonians (as well as their general mental orientation) towards restoring the independence of their country.10 Takk became a soldier in the Estonian unit of the Waffen-SS during the forced mobilisation of the autumn of 1943. By that time, Takk says, he had already witnessed the crimes and inhumanity of the occupying Nazi regime and had compared them to the events that occurred during the Soviet occupation: All these “liberators” are the same. Any thoughts of restoring the Republic of Estonia vanished, of course. (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 30.) In searching for the third way, Boris Takk relies on the opinions of experienced soldiers, which carry all the more weight due to the fact that the men in question enlisted in the German army voluntarily (in 1941–42), being motivated either by personal revenge11 or the more idealistic goal of fighting the Soviet regime whose acts they had witnessed in 1940–41: For my future life one fact was especially decisive. Several men I knew who some time ago had volunteered to join the German army now started to think of deserting. This was probably because they were disappointed in their hope of restoring the Republic of Estonia. And certainly they had understood that Germany would not win that war: our men (I mean those who were on the German side) had to kill men who were driven to the front from the other side [---]. And it was clear that on our side the strength would fade sooner. The other side got help from America, just as much as to enable them to crush our side. One could kill those red soldiers out of a hatred of Bolshevism but not their ideologists, their leaders. Those, however, were outside our reach. They were sending those simple boys with encouraging speeches to be massacred, [for the leaders] to

350

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

come then and take the victory over their dead bodies. It seems I was taught very thoroughly and as I took the teaching seriously, I survived in the end. The main thought was: men, try to survive in this Hitler-Stalin scramble, Estonia may need you later. (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 37–38.)

It is interesting to note that at times the nature of Takk’s discussions makes it difficult to understand who the agent is in a given situation, i.e. whether the described sentiment is attributed to the ‘old volunteers’ who had been sent to the Eastern Front or to himself. At times, it is also difficult to establish chronologically when and in what connection the discussions took place: are they retrospective musings of the ‘old volunteers’ or his own thoughts from different periods in the war? The relationship between Takk’s attitude towards the legendary units of the ‘old volunteers’ and his personal mission of surviving the war is similarly confusing and contradictory. The following is a quote from Takk’s description of the period he spent in the Debiça training camp in Poland: After a medical check-up, part of us, 500 guys were taken into a special unit. At first we also expected to be taken but the unit was complete before they reached us. Lucky again? Later I heard from a schoolmate of mine that all those 500 who were taken into that special unit were a supplement for the Narva battalion of the “Wiking” division. That battalion was very famous, was fighting at the time in the Ukraine and was a great “headache” for the reds. The supplementary soldiers were told that they would get uniforms somewhere in the Ukraine. But upon arriving they had already suffered an unexpected attack and later, due to a too short training period, the losses were big. In some place they had had to swim a river in December to save themselves and when they were gathered later, in my schoolmate’s group there were only 23 guys who had survived. At any case, at the parades in Tallinn on March 20 [1944], 173 men were marching out of the 500 taken! This was a hard blow for men born in 1925. (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 45.)

‘Lucky again?’ is a phrase that refers to Takk’s stories of his miraculous escapes as a soldier (including him avoiding being sent to Belorussia to hunt partisans and not receiving the SS tattoo in his armpit) that, along with other stories of everyday strategies used during the war (going AWOL and visiting home, feigning or acquiring illnesses in order to avoid being sent to the front, getting ‘softer’ jobs), make up a significant part of Takk’s war memories.12 However, it is important for Takk to maintain his connection with units and campaigns that enjoy a legendary status in postSoviet Estonian veteran culture and the militaristic postmemory of World War II affected by it (cf. Laar, Suurmaa, 200813).14 Of course, Takk is

Ene Kõresaar

351

affected directly by the fate of the men mentioned in the quote, who are waiting to be assigned to their units at the same training camp as him. In addition, the lives of the men mobilised into the German armed forces to replenish the troops make up a part of the fate of the men born in 1925, which Takk commemorates in his life story. Two more sense relations become apparent here in the light of Takk’s life story as a whole. One significant aspect is his Soviet-era counter-status as a former “fascist”, which he includes in his self-representation as a dissident among the Communist Party (cf. above). On the other hand, the national movement at the end of the 1980s and the subsequent restoration of Estonia’s independence in 1991 provides Takk with the opportunity to identify himself publicly as a veteran of the German army who joins the fight for Estonia’s freedom due to his patriotic ideals15: Immediately after that [the collapse of the Communist Party] I joined the public “fight” for Estonia’s freedom. On March 30, 1991, Estonian veterans of the German army gathered in Viljandi and formed the Estonian Soldiers’ Association Sakala, registering it as a subordinate body of the Estonian Heritage Society as a form of precaution. For practical purposes, Estonia and the rest of the Baltic countries were still under Red rule and the Soviet regime would not have allowed a completely independent organisation to exist. Small county-based groups were created in many urban areas [---]. I was entrusted with the role of one such group. Since there are several other energetic old soldiets in our town [---], we took it upon ourselves to organise the Association’s summer camp. The experience of Tori, where Russian tanks came in from Pskov to scatter the “cursed fascists”16 taught us to be cautious and therefore we did not inform the press of our plans and instead passed on our invitations to all the men by word of mouth. [---] Many friends later asked me why we hadn’t informed a wider circle of people of the camp and I argued: “Don’t think that we were afraid of those Russian tanks, but they would have ruined our great party!” (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 149–150.)

It seems that Boris Takk’s question of his role in the events of World War II connects to the main theme of his life story – the ideology of the prolonged rupture – and his role as a resistance activist (and Soviet delegate) formulated within its framework only at the end of the narrative. Of course, the admonitions of his old comrades in arms – men, try to survive in this Hitler-Stalin scramble, Estonia may need you later – pave the way for his later role as a resistance activist, but the reader does not yet have enough information to notice this connection in the context of Takk’s war experience. In the last chapter, looking back once again on the life he has lived and summing up the topics that are important to him, Takk says:

352

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

Of course, taking my ideals into account, I would have been a Pitka man, but I did not get the chance and heard about everything that happened only later when the war in mainland Estonia was over. Not that my involvement in that chaos would have changed anything… (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 163–164.)

By referring to the resistance to the Red Army organised with the help of Admiral Johann Pitka’s ‘Finnish boys’ in September 1944, Takk links himself directly to ways of exercising the third way that are accepted in the post-Soviet approach to history. 4. The Distance and the Closeness of the War: Relationship with the German Military Cause Boris Takk’s choice to distance himself from Nazi Germany’s military objectives and focus on coping with daily life as a soldier and the attitudes attributed to the entire Estonian nation which, in Takk’s text, are concretised as the expectations of the men who fought on the German and Finnish side, are intertwined in the concept of the ‘third way’. Takk seems to be aware of the ambivalence of his position as an Estonian patriot in German occupation forces. There are several occasions in his war memories when he distances himself from the warring side in whose army he serves, showing compassion for the enemy (the incident of feeding Italian POWs) and understanding towards the occupied (training camp in Poland) as well as feeling embarrassed about his actions towards the inhabitants of an occupied country (the confiscation of horses in Lithuania). Takk’s story also contains a fragmentary theme of compassion for the Jews who were being murdered. Due to his family ties, he was in frequent contact with minority groups during his childhood and paints a likeable picture of such groups, including the Jewish community. He also mentions the disappearance of people, including Jews, at the beginning of the Nazi occupation, although in less detail than the Soviet repressions that occurred a year earlier. Adopting the position of a youngster as the narrator, Takk makes no reference to their possible fate (thus denying himself knowledge of it?). He also uses the same strategy in a later episode where he describes driving through the Klooga concentration camp in the winter of 1944: On February 24 we were greeted by Estonia. The journey had lasted for 5 days and nights. We were in Tallinn by the evening. Arriving the next day at Klooga, the train was pushed through the camp of the Jews which was a byway. This was a very dismal sight. (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 51.)

Ene Kõresaar

353

It bears repeating that Takk wrote these passages at a time when the Holocaust and the potential responsibility of Estonians had not yet been brought up at all, just as it had been avoided in the Soviet Union and among Baltic emigrant communities (Zägel, 2007, 225; Scherrer, 2004, 636–637; Onken, 2004, 675). This theme in Takk’s story, fragmentary though it may be, is actually fairly exceptional among post-Soviet life stories if we take into account the fact that he lacks any narrative or social mechanisms for integrating it into his life story. He also has no personal connection to what happened. Therefore, there is no sense of responsibility and guilt in Takk’s memories here, unlike in the case of other episodes where it clearly shines through. (One example being his description of the manhunt in Torma during which he took part in capturing deserters and/or partisans (hence Takk’s ethical dilemma) as a member of a hunting commando and indirectly witnesses their execution.17) Instead, he feels a connection between himself, an invader, and the people of the occupied countries when he enters occupied Poland on his way to the training camp: he feels for the Polish and understands their guerilla war on the basis of his own historical experience (Soviet occupation). When Takk goes on a tourist trip to Poland in the 1970s, he once again comes face to face with the Holocaust when the tourist group visits the death camp of AuschwitzBirkenau. In his memories, the death camp represents the conventional behaviour of totalitarian regimes; he compares it to the Gulag to which he has a deeper emotional connection: However, our visit to the former Oświęcim death camp made me really gloomy. Once again I saw the nature of these ideologies: one built killing factories while the other used its massive area and got by “cheaper”, without such buildings, as the prisoners died from cold and hunger on their own. (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 137–138.)

The comparison between different totalitarian regimes, which is realised by the visit to the death camp, is enabled by Takk’s narrative strategy: the ‘third way’ and resistance to the Soviet regime (let us remember that in the 1970s he was already an active member of the Communist Party). In his memories, the war experience becomes, in part, a commentary of his experience under Soviet occupation – a tendency also apparent in other Estonians’ post-Soviet life stories (Kõresaar, 2007a). Establishing the ‘third way’ as the default choice for Estonians serving in the German armed forces, Boris Takk also distances them from Nazi policy and its goals as well as the Nazis’ ways of warfare. The choice made by the Estonians, Takk included, was to survive in the name of Estonian independence. The Soviets are thematised as the enemy and the Germans are, in turn, the best means available for fighting the enemy (cf.

354

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

the incident of being invited to join the Lithuanian partisans). What’s more, the war fought by Estonians on the Eastern Front is normalised as a justified war against Bolshevism in which Estonians exhibited courage and heroism (cf. above: the Narva battalion was very famous, was fighting at the time in the Ukraine and was a great “headache” for the reds). In Takk’s narrative, however, the perception of German war propaganda and its effect is ambivalent rather than unambiguous. On the one hand, he takes an ironic and distanced view of the role attributed to the mobilised men in German war ideology (contrasting it to historical memory) and calls into question their assigned status as volunteers (cf. also KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 71): One day [in the training camp] when some boys did not have a complete uniform even, the whole unit (the 33rd training and reserve SS-grenadier battalion) was taken to the training ground and lined up, forming a quadrangle. It is hard to say how many men there were. In the middle of the quadrangle Sturmbannführer (Major) Alemann, the Commanding Officer of the unit, an interpreter, and all officers gathered. Alemann delivered an address. At first he greeted us as volunteers. Yes! SS was a voluntary military organization and accordingly the Waffen-SS where we belonged was voluntary too. So we were greeted as an Estonian unit that had voluntarily joined in the common fight of all Estonian peoples against the red Russia, our common enemy. When he then said, speaking about history that the friendship between Germany and Estonia had started long time ago, someone shouted: “Yeah, at Võnnu!” (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 44– 45.)18

Takk also does not claim to have (or, as revealed above, depict the ‘old volunteers’ as having) any idealistic sentiments towards German goals: Before I was drafted into the army, I began to deal with a lot of inner conflict. I analysed the entire situation thoroughly. Bolshevism had, of course, permanently discredited itself in my eyes. The ideology and the people who promoted it were quite simply the scourge of all humanity. But what about Hitler? Based on what I had seen and read as well as the experiences of my friends, I did not see this system in a much more favourable light. Of course, Hitler had saved us from Bolshevism, but he hadn’t done it in order to liberate Estonia – he had conquest plans of his own. It was becoming increasingly clear that the “-isms” were not very different from each other, despite the fact that Hitlerism was less dangerous for Estonians. The hope of restoring the Republic of Estonia, however, would have to be abandoned under either regime. [---] [In September 1944] Hitler’s high command made quite a “Judaslike” move by using mainly Estonian units as their “cover” and leaving them to take

Ene Kõresaar

355

heavy casualties before dispersing due to the Russians’ tremendous troop advantage. How many men were captured [---]. Historians will have to shed light on the course of events here, but I tend to believe that since the German high command was not unaware of the idea of restoring the Republic of Estonia (put forth by Pitka), treachery may indeed have been afoot. (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 162–163.)

On the other hand, it is conspicuous that Takk frequently uses the phrase ‘the fight against Bolshevism’ without applying the techniques he characteristically uses to bring nuances to an otherwise black-and-white picture (e.g. volunteer – ‘volunteer’, delegate – ‘delegate’). The appearance of ‘the fight against Bolshevism’ in life stories that describe former soldiers’ participation in the war is common, rather than exceptional. The phrase tends to slip in when the author reaches a turning point in his war experience or feels the need to dwell on his motives and choices.19 The fight of European peoples against their common enemy, the red Russia, as Major Alemann teaches the newly mobilised men of Waffen-SS in Takk’s story (see quote above), was one of the supranational legitimation formulae of the Nazi war ideology, which were used to influence nonGerman volunteers and promote separatism in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The soldiers were systematically trained to see the war as a political conflict between and in the name of worldviews. (Müller, 2007, 91–111.) Predictably, the effect of Nazi propaganda was the greatest in places where nobody had to be convinced and where the propaganda could rely on pre-existing nationalist knowledge. During World War II, propaganda and nationalism had a dynamic mutual relationship, with certain items of propaganda affecting soldiers who had already been favourably disposed to the topic previously (Müller, 2007, 10–11; 91). The ‘old volunteers’ in Takk’s story are an example of this: they have lived through the Soviet occupation and their subsequent scepticism provides Takk with a source for the everyday wisdom he needs to survive. In principle, the occurrence of the rhetoric of ‘fighting against Bolshevism’ in life stories does not indicate that the process was understood in accordance with the image promoted by official war propaganda and Nazi ideology (Müller, 2007, 10–11). Instead, as other researchers (Kasekamp, 2003; synoptically in Zägel, 2007) have also pointed out, the use of the rhetoric was a tendency deeply rooted in political culture. It is likely that similar phraseology was used incidentally in life stories and their general narrative context does not support the potential assumption that its authors were deliberately conforming to official wartime ideology. Instead, this is probably a narrative strategy used to place the narrator ‘back’ into a specific situation in the war20 and its use results from the fact that linguistic mechanisms for ‘translating’ the experience did not yet exist in the 1990s.

356

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

A similar tendency can be seen in the life stories with regard to decribing narrators’ experiences during the Soviet period: in the 1990s, the use of Soviet phraseology in describing experiences related to that period was characteristic of both public and more private modes of remembering (Kõresaar, 2003, 164). During the Soviet period, when one’s past as a soldier on the enemy side put them in a position where they had a ‘nonstatus’, to put it mildly, these men lacked any opportunity for critical reflection on their choices. Therefore, the rhetoric that crystallised was the only one available to them for describing their experiences, and they adopted it from daily communication between soldiers as well as official war propaganda. In the 1990s, when anti-Soviet war experience was made public and became institutionalised in the form of the appropriate veterans’ organisations, the use of past rhetoric was energised by two closely intertwined discourses. On the one hand, the influence of emigrant culture that had fed off the confrontations of the Cold War definitely played a part in the development of the veterans’ post-Soviet culture of remembering. On the other hand, the viability of the wartime rhetoric was probably also sustained by the post-Soviet anti-communist discourse of rupture which, in its nationalist pursuit of independence, also stressed the idea of civilisational borders and used the contrasts between order and chaos as well as purity and pollusion, which were popular in the context of the national movement (Kõresaar, 2007a). In Boris Takk’s story, these complex connections are recognisable in the ideology of the prolonged rupture he so passionately defends. Takk’s story also reveals how the aspects of coercion and consensus, manipulation and co-operation appear simultaneously in the individual experience during the war when the narrator was concurrently a resident of an invaded country and an invader, a victim and a culprit (cf. Müller, 2007, 89). 5. Conclusion This chapter analysed the life story of a man who took part in World War II as a soldier of the Waffen-SS and looked at how war experiences are expressed in a post-Soviet life story together with the strategies that are used to integrate them into the life story as a whole. More specifically, the problem raised was that of the narrator’s personal understanding of his participation in the war. Gabriele Rosenthal has demonstrated that ‘the structural possibility of generating narrations about the war experience [--] is conditional upon the structure of the war experience, the biographical necessity for narration, and its social function’ (Rosenthal, 1991, 34). The beginning of the 1990s, the time when Boris Takk wrote down his

Ene Kõresaar

357

memories, was also the period when the entire experience of the 20th century was being radically re-evaluated in Estonian society. At that time, the process focused less on the experience of war and more on the experience of the Soviet occupation(s), and the specific experiences from other periods were subordinate to the need to process the Soviet experience. In the 1990s, the experience of the Soviet occupation functioned as a filter for attributing meaning to all other ‘eras’ that people had lived through during the 20th century (Kõresaar, 2007a, 38). The new milieu de mémoire also motivated biographical re-structuring and created a need for narrators to bring a new consistency to their lives, to explain to themselves who they are and how they got there (Rosenthal, 1991, 37). In Boris Takk’s life story, the idea that explains and summarises his life is the so-called ideology of the prolonged rupture, which focuses on the Soviet occupation as a rupture in Estonian national continuity and way of life. According to the cultural logic of the rupture, Takk’s activity as a Supreme Council delegate during the Soviet period is compatible with his role as a resistance activist and freedom fighter and brings his past as a soldier in the Waffen-SS into a syncretistic relationship with his public identity during the Soviet era. Although the strength of the ideology of the prolonged rupture in Takk’s life story might give us reason to assume that his war experience is subordinated unconditionally to this ideology, this is not the case. Despite the fact that the experiences of 1943–44 do, in some aspects, correspond to the ideology of the prolonged rupture, their description retains a certain sense of ambivalence and contradiction21 which can be explained by the structure of the war experience itself as well as the changing conditions for expressing the war experience. Yet, Takk’s war memories exhibit a certain tension and lack of consistency in terms of interpretation, which points not only to a potential past reality (cf. Schütze 1984; 1992a; 1992b). It also allows the narrator to have the necessary individual freedom and flexibility with regard to interpreting events, to alternate between public and private positions (Lomsky-Feder, 1995, 477), which, in turn, makes it possible for him to integrate the war experience more fully into his life story as a whole. Notes 1

2

The preparation of this chapter has been supported by the Estonian Science Foundation grants No 6687 and 8190 and by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence of Cultural Theory). I have previously analysed Boris Takk’s story from the aspect of the ideology of prolonged rupture in my book ‘Ideologies of Life: Collective

358

3

4

5

6

7

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

Memory and Autobiographical Meaning-making of the Past in Estonian Life Stories’ (Kõresaar 2005, in Estonian). It can be said that Takk’s main positions, not to mention the facts of his life, remain completely unchanged in the interview. Of course, Takk did react to the changes that had taken place in the meantime in Estonia’s memory culture in relation to World War II, for example by expressing disappointment over the fact that unlike those who fought in the Red Army and the Finnish Army, the men who fought in the German troops had still not managed to erect a monument in memory of their fallen comrades (the interview took place two years after the monument in Lihula had been removed; cf. Brüggemann, Kasekamp, 2008). He was also dissatisfied with the failure of contemporary society to understand the complex nature of choices that had to be made during World War II and the tendency to make black-and-white judgements by, for example, referring to all men who fought in German uniforms as ‘SS volunteers’. Takk uses his own experiences from his work trips he made to Russia at the end of the 1950s as ‘source material’. Takk also repeats other aspects of the social and ethnic criticism familiar from the end of the 1980s (mass migration, housing problems, privilege systems, etc.). When analysing the ideology of the prolonged rupture on the basis of Boris Takk’s narrative of his life, one is confronted with the question of how the life story manages to deal with the problem of the prolonged drastic change in mentality and deterioration actually affecting the Estonian people. Theoretically, at least, it should not be possible to describe national decline and depict the nation itself as unharmed by the process. The Sovietization of the Estonian People or the danger thereof is an issue in Takk’s life story, which he solves by using the generational persepective. Takk himself belongs to the pre-war Estonian generation (cf. the notion of Republican generation in Aili Aarelaid-Tart’s treatment in this volume) who have been inculcated with a work ethic and sense of responsibility since early childhood. This gives him the moral right to judge later generations with regard to Soviet mentality and upbringing (contrasted with work ethic and sense of responsibility). ‘Serving the Estonian cause from inside the system’ also entails informing foreign countries of the nature of the Soviet system (this being one of the central themes of Takk’s memoirs). According to Takk, he is able to do this during his holiday and official trips abroad, where Takk uses informal conversations to fulfil his mission. In the last chapter of his life story, which is generalising and retrospective in nature, he continues his mission by addressing the sirs of the Western countries in an impassioned indirect discourse in order to open their eyes with regard to Soviet Russia. During our interview, Takk continued this line of narration in a rather conspicuous way, using me as a ‘microphone’ and addressing the ‘Western countries’ directly. I interpret this as the expression in Takk’s story of the blame and

Ene Kõresaar

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

359

betrayal narrative related to the Western countries (UK and USA), which was topical during the period that immediately followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and functions as a two-fold accusation: the accusation for leaving Estonia at the mercy of Stalin (Yalta conference) and the fight for a position in the European memory culture (cf. Laanes, 2009, 73–83). See discussions of similar tendencies in Latvian social memory by Onken, 2004, 682–683. Boris Takk was an organiser of one of the first reunions of veterans of the German military in 1992–93, at a time when former Soviet military forces were still present in Estonia. Takk also belonged to the managing committee of his local veterans’ organisation for years. Publicly, the ‘third way’ is generally associated with men who fought on the Finnish side in the Continuation War as well as the activities of Otto Tief and Johan Pitka in the autumn of 1944. September 22, declared Resistance Day in 2007, is also officially related to the concept of the third way (Valitsuse, http://www.valitsus.ee/brf/?id=294367&op). Fighting for Finland’s freedom is also linked with the third way in Takk’s life story due to connection with the concept of defensive war: Many men had escaped to Finland to avoid the mobilisation [---], but when they fought there, they were not fighting in Hitler’s army and could oppose Bolshevism by defending the country of a kindred nation (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 38). In connection to this, Boris Takk recollects cases in the generalising and retrospective last chapter of his life story, where young boys had voluntarily joined the German army in order to, for example, revenge for the murder of their parents by the soldiers of NKVD destruction battalion. He explains, with regard to joining the German military machine: We did not have the choice or the time to scrutinize Hitler’s regime [---]. Our people would have struck a deal with the devil himself in order to end that terrible regime, to make them pay in blood for what they had done. (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 181.) Takk discusses all of his ‘little’ strategies with a flippant tone, communicating the sense of adventure inherent in war (cf. Köstlin, 1989), although he does not go to such extremes as Boris Raag in this volume. Laar, Suurmaa 2008 also provides a general bibliography with regard to the Estonian Legion, including its battalion Narva. See also other memory forums, e.g. http://www.eestileegion.com/; http://www.militaar.net; the magazine Kultuur ja Elu (http://kultuur.elu.ee/) has dedicated articles to World War II since 2000, when the magazine declared that it would start protecting the interests of freedom fighters in the field of Estonian memory politics. Nevertheless, it seems that the Estonian Legion has been adopted in postSoviet war memory as the entity that represents all Estonian men who fought in the German army. The battalion Narva in particular has acquired a reputation as a legendary elite unit and people emphasise its great fighting spirit and skill, exemplary success in battle, and the related

360

15

16

17

18 19

20

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

heroism and fame. The legendary status originates already from the time of the war and was passed on by war correspondents and, later, by soldiers’ everyday communication. Takk wrote his memoirs in 1993 when the development of post-Soviet war memory was not yet in full swing, although it was reproduced quite early in the public domain: e.g. the first post-Soviet exposition at the Estonian History Museum focusing on the 1940s and the 1950s already contained a message regarding the heroism displayed by the battalion Narva in Ukraine (Kõresaar, 2007b, 95). Boris Takk also links service in the German military to the positive selfimage of Estonians in other ways. For example, in his life story, he characterises all of the men who were mobilised into the German army as master workmen and active people who had built houses for themselves. For Takk, this is high praise, since building a house was his dream in life. Here, Takk refers to the first reunion of its kind, which was planned by the Tori Parish Heritage Society and was supposed to be held in Tori in the summer of 1990, but was cancelled for fear of conflict. Clearly, the manhunt in Torma is an anguishing memory for Takk and he has not been able to resolve it. He is characteristically reflexive in his narrative, attempting to find a place for this event in his war biography. Alternating between the narrative positions of a subject and an object, he tries to come to terms with the fact that he helped to imprison and indirectly also to execute his compatriots. It seems that Takk sees his peace of mind as resting, in part, on the issue of whether the men were partisans as the organisers and leaders of the ‘hunt’ claimed, or deserters, which was the impression Takk himself got from the course of events. The first explanation would seemingly justify the entire campaign (fighting an enemy), while the second one would mean that it was in contravention of Takk’s wartime creed and conscience. At the end of his life story, Takk mentions a conversation with an ‘old fighter’ that took place later, during the 1990s, which ostensibly confirmed the partisan version. It appears that Takk is unable to resolve the episode of the manhunt in Torma for himself and needs outside reassurance. See also note 6 in Takk’s story. ‘The fight against Bolshevism in World War II in the name of freeing Estonia and Europe’ has also become a part of the commemoration acts of veterans who fought in German uniform and was expressed in the inscriptions of the monuments erected in Pärnu (2002) and Lihula (2004). Cf. Brüggemann, Kasekamp, 2008. Cf., for example, Aleksander Loog’s story, where the official German war phraseology appears only once in the description of a POW camp circumstances and is not related to the reasons the author used to motivate his desertion: In November [1941] an order arrived that all soldiers, i.e. the Privates, would now be sent to Estonia. There were more than a thousand men in the column. The officers were told, however, that they could not go, that the Germans were waiting until the battle was over at Leningrad and

Ene Kõresaar

21

361

we could go then to be used in the eastern areas to keep order. We could go nowhere else. We wanted to go to the front. We had come over to fight against communism. But nobody paid attention to what we wanted. We were still in the camp and diseases were rampant among us. (P. 55.) The war experience narrated by Takk is even more contradictory than could be demonstrated through this analysis. Thus, the contrast between the sense of continuity and loss was left out of this treatment. The first of these is expressed in the sense of nationalism and masculinity that creates a continuity between pre-war and German military order and training and establishes a contrast with ‘Soviet slackness’. The pain of loss is expressed in Takk’s story through the commemoration of his generation and close friends. The episode of the manhunt in Torma was also not subjected to thorough analysis. It combines guilt, ethical dilemmas and selfjustification, therefore contradicting the distanced descriptions of troop movements and adventurous soldier stories.

References Arvidsson, A. (1998), Livet som berättelse. Studier i levnadshistoriska intervjuer. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Battaglia, D. (1995), “Problematizing the Self: a Thematic Introduction”, in: D. Battaglia (ed.) Rhetorics of self-making. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1–15. Brüggemann, K. and A. Kasekamp (2008), “The Politics of History and the War of Memories in Estonia”, Nationalities Papers, 36(3): 425–448. Fischer-Rosenthal, W. (2000), “Address Lost: How to Fix Lives. Biographical Structuring in the European Modern Age”, in: R. Breckner, D. KalekinFischman and I. Miethe (eds.) Biographies and the division of Europe. Experience, action and change on the ‘Eastern side’. Opladen: Leske+ Budrich, 55–76. Jõesalu, K. (2009), “Erfahrungen und Darstellungen – das sowjetische Alltagsleben in der estnischen Erinnerungskultur”, in: J. Obertreis and A. Stephan (eds.) Erinnerungen nach der Wende. Oral History und (post)sozialistische Gesellschaften. Remembering after the fall of communism. Oral history and (post-)socialist societies. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 329– 343. Kasekamp, A. (2003), “The Ideological Roots of Estonian Collaboration during the Nazi Occupation”, in: A.M. Kõll (ed.) The Baltic countries under occupation: Soviet and NazirRule 1939–1991. [Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Studia Baltica Stockholmiensia 23]. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 85–95. KM EKLA = Estonian Cultural History Archives in the Estonian Literary Museum.

362

Boris Takk – The Ambiguity of War

Kõresaar, E. (2002), “The Farm as the Symbol of the State. Metaphorical Depiction of the Nation and the State in the Childhood Memories of Older Estonians”, in: T. Jaago (ed.) Lives, histories and identities. Studies on oral histories, life- and family stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 169– 187. Kõresaar, E. (2003), “Ajaloopiltide dialoog eestlaste elulugudes”, Vikerkaar, 10–11: 162–164. Kõresaar, E. (2004), “The Notion of Rupture in Estonian Narrative Memory: On the Construction of Meaning in Autobiographical Texts on the Stalinist Experience”, Ab Imperio, 4: 313–339. Kõresaar, E. (2005), Elu ideoloogiad: kollektiivne mälu ja autobiograafiline minevikutõlgendus eestlaste elulugudes. [Eesti Rahva Muuseumi Sari 6]. Tartu: Eesti Rahva Muuseum. Kõresaar, E. (2007a), “The Culture of Remembrance of the Second World War in Estonia as Presented in Post-Soviet Life Stories: On the Logic of Comparison Between the Soviet and the Nazi Occupations”, in: A. Mihkelev and B. Kalnacs (eds.) We have something in common: the Baltic memory. Tallinn: The Under and Tuglas Literature Centre of The Estonia Academy of Sciences, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia, 35–60. Kõresaar, E. (2007b), “Zwei Ausstellungen über den Zweiten Weltkrieg im Estnischen Museum für Geschichte (Tallinn): Notizen zur Dynamik der Erinnerungskultur”, in: O. Kurilo (ed.) Der Zweite Weltkrieg im Museum: Kontinuität und Wandel. Berlin: Avinus-Verlag, 83–102. Köstlin, K. (1989), “Erzählen vom Krieg – Krieg als Reise II”, BIOS: Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung und Oral History, 2: 173–182. Laar, M.; Suurmaa, L. (eds.) (2008), Eesti Leegion sõnas ja pildis. The Estonian Legion in Words and Pictures. Tallinn: Grenader. Lomsky-Feder, E. (1995), “The Meaning of War through Veterans’ Eyes: A Phenomenological Analysis of Life Stories”, International Sociology, 10 (4): 463–482. Löffler, K. (1999), Zurechtgerückt: der Zweite Weltkrieg als biographischer Stoff. Berlin: Reimer. Müller, S. O. (2007), Deutsche Soldaten und Ihre Feinde. Nationalismus an Front und Heimatfront im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Frankfrurt am Main: S.Fischer. Onken, E.-C. (2004), “Wahrnehmung und Erinnerung: Der Zweite Weltkrieg in Lettland nach 1945”, in: M. Flacke (ed.) Mythen der Nationen. 1945 – Arena der Erinnerungen. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 671–692. Patterson, W. (2002), “Introduction”, in: W. Patterson (ed.) Strategic narrative: New perspectives on the power of personal and cultural stories. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Lexongton Books, 1–8.

Ene Kõresaar

363

Rosenthal, G. (1990) (ed.) “Als der Krieg kam, hatte ich mit Hitler nichts mehr zu tun.” Zur gegenwärtigkeit des “Dritten Reichs” in Biographien. Opladen: Leske+Budrich. Rosenthal, G. (1991), “German War Memories: Narrability and the Biographical and Social Functions of Remembering”, Oral History, Autumn: 34–40. Rosenthal, G. (2000), “Social Transformation in the Context of Familial Experience: Biographical Consequences of a Denied Past in the Soviet Union”, in: R. Breckner, D. Kalekin-Fischman and I. Miethe (eds.) Biographies and the division of Europe. Experience, action and change on the ‘Eastern side’. Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 115–138. Scherrer, J. (2004), “Sowjetunion/Russland: Siegesmythos versus Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung”, in: M. Flacke (ed.) Mythen der Nationen. 1945 – Arena der Erinnerungen. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 619–670. Schütze, F. (1992a), “Pressure and Guilt: War Experiences of a Young German Soldier and Their Biographical Implications (Part I)”, International Sociology, 7 (2): 187–208. Schütze, F. (1992b), “Pressure and Guilt: War Experiences of a Young German Soldier and Their Biographical Implications (Part 2)”, International Sociology, 7 (3): 347–367. Valitsuse Kommunikatsioonibüroo Briifinguruum (2009), Taustamaterjalid: vastupanuvõitluse päev 22.septembril. URL: http://www.valitsus.ee/brf/?id=294367&op, 2009 [last visited Nov 28, 2009]. Zägel, J. (2007), “Die estnische Debatte um Holocaust und Kollaboration mit den Deutschen”, in: J. Zägel (in cooperation with R. Steinweg), Vergangenheitsdiskurse in der Ostseeregion. Band 2: Die Sicht auf Krieg, Diktatur, Völkermord und Vertreibung in Russland, Polen und den baltischen Staaten. [Kiel Peace Research Series Band 15]. Berlin: Verlag Dr. W. Hopf, 225–235.

When is the War Over? Ylo-Vesse Velvelt’s Life Story and Surviving the ‘Czech Hell’ Tiina Ann Kirss 1. Introduction: Czech Hell and its Survivors For young Estonian men mobilized into the Nazi Army in 1944 and shipped off to Germany as the second Soviet occupation advanced north and west in the third week of September 1944, the war was far from over. For most, a stint at the Neuhammer military training camp in Poland preceded a long, erratic march to the eastern front, in full consciousness of being cannon fodder, and accompanied by a concentrated first-hand look at war atrocities and civilian bombings. Months later, the following spring, these and other men in Estonian units fighting in Silesia followed orders to retreat. What followed came to be referred to by the newly-minted word kablutamine, a pell-mell, disorganized fleeing westwards, as fast as possible and mostly on foot. For those in the units headed by legendary figures of Paul Maitla1 and Alfons Rebane,2 who had survived one or more Red Army encirclements, the road in May 1945 led through the ‘Czech Hell’. This appalling experience, the culmination of all the harrowing experiences of the preceding months was the outcome of a gamble that the Americans would surely reach Prague before the Russians, thus guaranteeing freedom and safe passage west. The Russians got to Prague first and Czech partisans and civilians over the ensuing days and weeks committed random acts of retaliatory brutality against the occupying German army. The perpetrators of these brutal acts, including summary executions, made no allowances or acts of clemency to affect the fate of Estonians mobilized into the army that had occupied their homeland. For those marching through the ‘Czech Hell’, the meanings of confusion and helplessness became radicalized. In this paper I will focus on one narrative of remembering the Czech Hell, the life story of Ylo-Vesse Velvelt (born 1926), both in its published (edited) and unedited forms.3 Compared to other Estonian war stories, and other published Czech Hell narratives, it is a modestly told, moderately jovial tale, yet it narrates a passage through the middle of the cauldron. Czech Hell is one framed chapter of Velvelt’s war journey, which lasted exactly one year from the day he shipped off to Germany to his return home to Saaremaa; it is not, however, the story’s dramatic climax. The war is one chapter of a comprehensive account spanning an entire life, most of which was spent in the homeland; the ‘war chapter’ is both set

366

When is the War Over?

apart and framed by a holistic apologia pro vita sua that weaves it into a larger pattern. Velvelt’s story allows analytical focus on the periodization and density of a life narrative, and on the perceived agency of the teller. Survival of the Czech Hell was indeed a gamble, a matter of fortunate timing, the discernment of a ‘time window’, and the strategic concealment or revelation of one’s national identity, which with luck and language competence, could be a bargaining chip for one’s life if not freedom. Velvelt’s story allows the examination of how this agency is narrated in retrospect. Finally, like many other war stories, and in its very modesty, Velvelt’s survival story subordinates individual heroism to male bonding: he emerges from the Czech Hell alive because a friend knew how to speak Russian. In the larger history of World War II, the Czech Hell was one local event among many others of its kind, episodes of entrapment, escape, and local chaos which occurred against a canvas of large-scale movements of troops and front lines (Made, 2008, 225). It was a transition, an effect of timing and geography, a composite of the complicated, desperate trajectories of an army in retreat, and the added chaos of an ‘interregnum’ between regimes, releasing both outbursts of euphoria greeting supposed ‘liberation’ and a spate of random as well as concerted acts of revenge. Heino Susi, a ‘Finnish Boy’ who went on to survive the Czech Hell compares this drastic culmination of the war journey to the interval between Soviet and Nazi occupations in the summer of 1941. As both Susi (1985) and Lauri Vaska (2004) recount in their memoirs, for Estonian men in the German army, the Czech Hell was one more case of the overall predicament of being caught in the middle in ‘someone else’s war’. How long the Czech Hell lasted was variable – from a few days, to some weeks, to months of work, wandering, or imprisonment. In his fictionalized memoir, Heino Taremäe (1921–2000), who was fortunate enough to have time on his side, crossed the Elbe at Melnik before the Soviet troops arrived and blocked the bridge, and moved rapidly west via Chemnitz. He reflects on this stubborn foot-march, once his protagonist has reached safety in the West: ‘There they were, in the little room of a hostel in Heidelberg. They had kept on going indefinitely, westward and westward. Had they finally arrived? What would happen next? All at once the thought seemed very foreign to Mart that tomorrow morning they would not have to get up and go anywhere. Life had proceeded according to a definite plan, consisting of three main parts: walking, obtaining food, and looking for a place to sleep.’ (Taremäe, 1996, 123.)

The crucial factor of timing in the passage through the Czech Hell becomes clearer if one sketches a more detailed chronology of events. On

Tiina Ann Kirss

367

the day of the capitulation, 8 May 1945, the remnants of the Estonian 20th Waffen-SS Division was located in the Hirschberg-Schönau area, about 250 km from the border of occupied Czechoslovakia. Having been ordered the previous night to abandon the front and retreat west, and fearing to fall into the hands of the Soviet Army, which was advancing on Prague from the north, there seemed to be no better option for those in the Estonian units than to be turned over as prisoners of war to the American army, which it was hoped would have reached Pilsen.4 The road to Pilsen led through Prague, where on 5 May, the Czech partisans had staged an uprising. Retreat with their unit west across the Elbe into Czech territory put 1500 Estonian men in the power of Czech partisans, who were more than eager for revenge against the hated Nazi occupation army. Weapons were immediately confiscated at the border. Despite hearing rumours that their company commanders had struck a deal with the partisans, for Estonian nationals wearing a blue-black-and-white badge on their uniform sleeve to have safe passage through Czech territory to the American zone, these hopes proved to be roundly false. On 9 May 1945 the Czechs began taking their own prisoners, from among those on the road, who were treated arbitrarily and brutally. Irrespective of the location, at Melnik or in Prague, there were random shootings, beatings, torture, and ritual humiliations before jeering, spitting Czech crowds. The retaliatory violence of the Czech partisans generally ignored all explanation about the micropolitics of not being German. On 11 May, the 1500 men of the 47th regiment of the 20th Division were rounded up and brought to the Czech Central Prison on the outskirts of Prague, where another 1500 or so Estonians awaited them. Systematic executions began; the SS blood-group tattoo under the right armpit was sufficient evidence to call for a summary shooting. A German was a German, regardless of the ‘national’ band on the sleeve. In most cases where Estonian men survived, it was paradoxically due to Soviet officers who either intervened to contain the violence, or declared to their belligerent troops that the war was over and that it was prohibited to shoot prisoners of war. After two weeks, those men who survived were turned over to the Soviets and transported via Hungary and Rumania to Odessa. At best, being taken a prisoner of war by the Soviets and identifying oneself as Estonian would mean repatriation to Estonia, but this came with the risk of being arrested and sent to Siberia sooner or later, as a veteran of the enemy army. Alternatively, one could be sent directly to a prison camp to share the fate of German prisoners-of-war, thus skipping the trip home. Some of the bold and the lucky used superior language skills (Russian) or invented (falsified) a national identity, which they corroborated, if possible, by false identity papers. If the ruse worked, these men moved on west. The most

368

When is the War Over?

fortunate outcome befell a few small bands of men who had had a head start. They avoided Prague, like Heino Taremäe, and succeeded in moving sufficiently quickly westwards by a more northern route, via Chemnitz, thus only passing through the outskirts, or the prodromes of the Czech Hell. If their identity claims were convincing to the American military they encountered along the way, they eventually found their way to the displaced persons’ camps in the American zone. Heino Susi (1925–1987), one of those whose flight west timed out successfully, and author of a published memoir, succinctly summarizes the situation and the semantic field of the Czech Hell: ‘Beginning with the 9th of May 1945, events occurred in northern Czechoslovakia that are known among the Estonian people both in the homeland and in the wider world under the name [the] “Czech hell”. The announcement of the truce on the morning of 8 May nullified all plans to get to the west through concerted effort and as a group. Even before reaching the mountains of Sudetenland, the Estonian units got hopelessly mixed up with other German and Hungarian units, civilian refugees, and even with British prisoners-of-war fleeing west. During the desperate nocturnal trek to cross the Riesengebirge, it was impossible to hold the fleeing groups of soldiers together, nor even to maintain communication among them. Larger and smaller bands of soldiers arrived on Czech territory, either along, or mixed up with other refugees.’ (Susi, 1985, 66.)

Susi’s summary shows that survivors of the Czech Hell are both a stratified and fragmented ‘memory cohort’. According to how and where their war journey ended, there is a broad-brush distinction between those who ‘went west’ and those who were ‘sent east’, approximately, though not entirely symmetrical with the contrasting destinies of the 45th and 47th infantry regiments. An appreciable part of the ‘Fox Cubs’ – Alfons Rebane’s 47th regiment5 – made it across the Riesengebirge mountains to the west.; Paul Maitla’‘s 45th regiment, however, became dispersed at the beginning of the retreat, and landed in Czech hands. Only a few of Maitla’‘s men reached the west, and Maitla himself was executed in Prague. The fragmentation of the memory cohort is due to the structure of the experience: some went through the centre of the cauldron, while others skirted ‘‚hell’‘, or touched off an outpost. More importantly, without the coherence, not to speak ofindeed the solidarity, of an organized military unit, men fled in small bands, often with one or two companions, with whom they shared a trajectory and, later, a story. Keeping in mind Jan Assmann’s useful distinction between communicative and cultural memory, written retrospective accounts of the Czech Hell still resonate dynamically in the realm of ‘communicative memory’,

Tiina Ann Kirss

369

and are not yet fully assimilated into ‘cultural memory’, especially in view of Estonia’s recent ‘monument-conflicts’ (Tamm, 2008; Tamm, Petersoo, 2008). This small group of narratives is a good example of what Hirst and Manier refer to as ‘collective episodic memories’, which have resulted in ‘collective autobiographical memories’ (Hirst, Manier, 2002, 45; Echterhoff, Saar, 2002, 27–28). In their starkness, the subgroup of Czech Hell reminiscences provide a degree of differentiation in ‘German army veterans’ stories’, and perturb efforts to regard ‘Estonian men in the German army’ with monologic ideological coherence. 2. The Memory Cohort and Narratives of the Czech Hell As James Wertsch (2002; 20076; 2009) has pointed out in his model for a ‘distributive version of collective memory’, narratives are cognitive instruments, tools that offer both ‘affordances’ and ‘constraints’. What narratives offer to remembering are the elements of temporal organization and emplotment, which include both a ‘grasp’ on events and actors and a moral scheme or ‘moralizing impulse’. The result of narrativization is the effect of transparency: plot represents events, circumstances, and motives ‘simply’ as ‘what really happened’. The reader is hooked by this magic, as if they were ‘looking through very clear windows’. For Wertsch, who critiques the ‘strong’ version of collective memory (with its implications of a hypostatized ‘collective subject’), narratives are the shared tools that make collective memory ‘collective’. The theoretical ghost of the ‘collective unconscious’ can be calmed down by a ‘fishbone’ account of collective memory, which Wertsch prefers, and this consists of partially overlapping, partially ideologically, incoherent accounts that can be pieced together in a source-critical manner. More importantly, as Wertsch insists, narratives of remembering are organized according to explanatory schemes, however subtle and inexplicit: life stories seek to make sense and make meaning; to explain, but also to justify. In testimonial accounts, there is no analytical means to refract this double intentionality in any final way. Among the published memoirs of the Czech Hell, four lengthy texts were written by men who had been lucky enough to flee west, the earliest published in 1960, the most recent in 2004 (Lindström, 1960; Susi, 1985; Taremäe, 1996; Vaska, 2004). Two of these published accounts from the West are written in the third person and in the genre of prose fiction. Though third person and ‘fictionalized’ accounts are not unusual among war memoirs, intentionalities here are multiple and complex; among them being the pursuit of narrative distance and the masking and protection of

370

When is the War Over?

identity for personal as well as political reasons. Of those who returned to Estonia and wrote their memoirs in the post-Soviet transition years, one cautious, unpublished account (Olev) is in the third person;7 that of Kalju Roolaine, published in the local newspaper Valgamaalane, is in the first person (cf. also Roolaine, 1999). Reminiscences of the Czech Hell seen from the perspective of those Estonians, in German uniform ‘voluntarily by force’, were politically incorrect in the Soviet era and could not be publicly narrated in the homeland. Having an anketa (the official autobiography required for employment that included the political background) that showed the possessor as having fought on the wrong side constituted grounds and the risk of repressions up to the time of Stalin’s death in 1953, and thereafter. Repercussions were unpredictable, however, and could reach decades into the future. Use of the third person and erasure of proper names of persons and places is one symptomatic feature of reminiscences recounted in this period of emergent memoirs. Ylo-Vesse Velvelt tells his story in the 1990s, from a long retrospective point of view, and a somewhat abbreviated version of his life story was published in the collection ‘Eesti rahva elulood’ (‘Estonian Life Histories’) in 2000 (Hinrikus, 2000a). His life story thus adds to the accelerating flow of communicative memory in the early years of the newly independent Estonian Republic. The most distinguishing mark of Velvelt’s story is its unpretentiousness – its very modesty. 3. Ylo-Vesse Velvelt’s Life Story Ylo-Vesse Velvelt’s narrative is a full-length life story, 84 typed pages long, of which the events of World War II encompass 25 pages, and the events of the 7 May 1945 retreat and the Czech Hell take up 13 pages of the 25 pages of the ‘war chapter’. Velvelt’s manuscript (KM EKLA f. 350, 643) was initially edited to a length of 20 pages by Rutt Hinrikus in 1999, when the story was selected for inclusion in the collection ‘Eesti rahva elulood’ (Hinrikus, 2000a; 2000b; 2003). Rutt Hinrikus corresponded with Velvelt, giving him an opportunity to modify this edited version before the collection was published. Large descriptive sections of the text were cut, while the elements of the narrative plot remained unchanged in the edited version. Velvelt gently objected to the cutting of what he deemed the most dramatic section of his story, the one that he also thought carried crucial explanatory weight: the first months of ‘his’ war as a newly enlisted member of an anti-aircraft artillery unit in Dortmund, where he witnessed heavy civilian bombing. The passage was cut because of its level of detail, and the belief on the part of the editors that such explanations could also

Tiina Ann Kirss

371

be found in other kinds of sources. However, by virtue of its inclusion in ‘Eesti rahva elulood’, Velvelt’s story was embedded into a canon of 100 stories of Estonians in the ‘terrible 20th century’ selected on the basis of chronological inclusiveness and range of experience, in order to be maximally reflective of the variety of ‘fates’ that befell Estonians. His story is one of six stories of men who were combatants in World War II, and belongs to the generational cohort of those born in the 1920s.8 Thus, Velvelt’s story is unavoidably rendered ‘emblematic’, if not representative, of the much larger body of Estonian veterans’ stories of the German army in World War II. Among the relatively few published accounts of the Czech Hell, YloVesse Velvelt recounts his war journey in a chronologically coherent, moderately jovial account that takes up approximately one third of his total life narrative. The fast-paced, matter-of-fact narration is sparing in overt description of war horrors. There is neither any significant military detail nor tactical explication given concerning the framing situation, nor a specific chronicle of how the Czech Hell happened. Ylo-Vesse Velvelt, born in Kuressaare on the island of Saaremaa in 1926, belongs to the cohort of immature, young teen-aged soldiers, whose itinerary took him from his home island via Danzig to a training camp in Neuhammer, Denmark and thereafter to Dortmund, where he served in an anti-aircraft battery. Retrospectively framed as a clear choice between alternatives, the 18-year-old goes with his Luftwaffe unit to Germany in September 1944, being more sure of the danger of deportation should he stay in the homeland than of the possible success of fleeing west with throngs of refugees, his family among them. He decides to obey the rules, hoping for the best. As such, he is neither a deserter nor an opportunist. The key to Velvelt’s survival of the most harrowing central episode of the Prague experience in May 1945 was his close friend’s competence in spoken Russian, and the appearance at a crucial moment of a senior Soviet officer commanding officer who understood the explanation and stopped the execution. Following this escape, Velvelt tells of two ‘choice’ points on which he could have remained in the west, both of which he passes by, and is repatriated to Estonia as a prisoner of war. Velvelt’s soldier’s story is a modest tale, told with relish but with little bravura, Schweikian irony or swaggering embellishment.9 4. Decisions and Choiceless Choices Several interpretive aspects of Estonian combatants’ war stories are focalized by Velvelt’s Czech Hell story. First, the representation of agency and

372

When is the War Over?

‘no choice’ situations in a war story confers a retrospective clarity in a field of lived choices that may have been much more emotionally fraught at the time they were actually made. Both subject position and cultural codes of masculine emotionality link this story with the large repertoires of other examples of the genre, and with several others in this collection. As a narrator, Velvelt appears not too interested in presenting himself as a hero; neither, however, does he emphasize victimhood or being a cog in a war machine. A middling modesty and wry humour characteristic of the stance and voice of a ‘common soldier’ prevails in his narrative tone. Retrospective explanation of ‘choices’ in life narratives is a particularly thorny interpretive topic, regardless of its political necessity or currency. Specific to the body of stories, under examination in this volume, of Estonian young men who had freshly graduated from high school and were suddenly ‘eligible’ for mobilization, found themselves in a situation of a choiceless choice, in which none of the alternatives stood up to fully agentic choice-making. This renders inquiry into agency and choices ethically questionable, or at least delicate. However, these men did take decisions, the consequences of which are present to them in reflective consciousness as they generate their retrospective accounts. For some, such as Lauri Vaska (2004) or Ülo Subbi (2008), source texts like pocket calendars are available to check facts against impressions; these have been surprisingly, even miraculously preserved despite long journeys and imprisonment. In most cases, these personal annals have disappeared or were destroyed for fear of being incriminating. Looking at the photographs and personal calendar laid out on his writing table, even Vaska reflects at length on how much forgetting has encroached on what he is capable of remembering. While some have used the metaphor of ‘being caught in the gears of the war-machine’, others articulate the ‘choiceless choice’ more generally, as opting for the ‘lesser of evils’. When recounted in a retrospective narrative, these junctures often begin to look clearer, more like rational choices than they most probably were at the time. In other words, decisions are retrospectively re-inscribed as choices. Depending on the kind and degree of self-reflection in their narratives, writers look back on their 18 year old selves and acknowledge that intuition played a large part in decisions made under duress, and that human connections mattered, i.e. not knowing the whereabouts of one’s family and close ones, or consciously thinking about what might happen to them ‘if...’. Velvelt’s decisions, to join the Luftwaffe, and not to attempt escape from prison camp, are marked with the laconic formula in Estonian Oli selge... (‘It was clear that...’). The adage indicates that, in uncertainty and confusion, it was crucial to filter information coming from various sources, radio bulletins, rumours, reports from trusted informants, family members, to

Tiina Ann Kirss

373

discern reliable information from less reliable, and to select a course of action from a limited list of options. We, the readers, are given only a report of the result of this process. Full-length ‘war’ life stories permit a closer examination of the schemes through which coherence and logic of choice are retrospectively attributed to chaotic, frantic and fear-laced events, requiring quick action in situations where timing was of the essence, and allowing little time for deliberation. Parallelisms, premonitions and flashbacks create pleats in the narrative fabric, indicating that a long, ongoing, subsequent process of reflection has nuanced the telling of the raw tale, often enacted in the memory, or shared with trusted friends who had a similar life trajectory. Thus, the ‘whole life story’ as a context shows how schemes providing explanation to one period of one‘s life foreshorten, interrupt, or situate gaps in the account of other periods. Velvelt’s decision to join the Luftwaffe is framed in his narrative by the experience of Youth Camp in Narew, Poland in spring 1944. He reports that during the German occupation, schoolboys were expected to work during the summer holidays – hauling wood, hay and agricultural products in farms, in return for food and alcohol. The driver of the wood-gas operated truck that Velvelt helped to load taught him how to drive. In the third summer of the war, however, because of the changes on the eastern front, young boys were no longer expected to work, and a general mobilization was declared for those born in 1927, one year older than Velvelt. The leader of the local Estonian Youth organization (which replaced the Boy Scouts during the German occupation), asks whether Velvelt would like to go to a youth camp in Poland, and he agrees, in order to broaden his horizons and see a bit more of the world. In his life story, Velvelt states explicitly that he was not himself formally a member of the Estonian Youth. The camp turns out to be entirely different from what he had expected: it was in fact preparatory training for war, with the issue of gas masks and wooden guns on the day of arrival, and drill, conducted by war invalids and members of the Hitlerjugend. The ritual exhibits of power, the enforcement of hierarchy, and the humiliations of non-Aryans and those unlucky enough to make mistakes or learn too slowly were distasteful and unpleasant for Velvelt. He and his fellow Estonians attempted passive resistance and claimed to have seen through the rhetoric of war propaganda. This background experience is context for what follows: At the beginning of July 1944 it was clear that they would soon mobilize the men of my birth year, 1926. I had to think about what to do. To go to the front when the Russians were already in the Blue Hills [Sinimäed], and it was clear that it would only be a matter of weeks until they broke through there, or if not from there, then they would flow in from the south, would not have been going to the front to fight for Estonia, but instead, for

374

When is the War Over?

Greater Germany and to prolong the Führer’s life. It would have been hard to think of a more stupid reason to die than that. When the report came of Count von Stauffenberg’s attempt on Hitler’s life on the 20th of July, it was clear that Hitler’s promised secret weapon was a bluff, that the higher levels of staff were ready to capitulate, and that the only thing to think about was how to stay alive in this war. Whoever had connections and money, fled to Sweden. My family had neither, and there only remained the possibility to choose between bad and worse. The lesser evil, and the way to hold death at bay seemed to be the air force, so I chose to enlist there. To volunteer for the Luftwaffe. My friend Peeter Kinnes was of the same mind. On the last day of July we went to Tallinn to sign up for the air force as volunteers. (KM EKLA f. 350, 643, 23.)

It should be noted that the narrative account of Velvelt’s decision is embedded in the context of family relationships and friendship. He does not make his decision alone, but signs up with a friend who is ‘of the same mind’ – that is, who shares his reasoning about the best option for survival in a war that rules out one honourable option; fighting for one’s own homeland. Also, as the events earlier in the life story remind us, Velvelt has the 1941 deportation behind him – a ‘benign’ version of what might have been a tragedy, but tragic only for his father, who was sent to Siberia for 10 years. Being under-age, Ylo-Vesse and his older brother Enn are sent with their mother from Tallinn’s Patarei prison to a prison camp in Harku, from where they are soon sent home. At the time of Velvelt’s joining the Luftwaffe, his older brother Enn has medical documents exempting him from mobilization, and his father is in Siberia. As he reports leaving for Tallinn, his narrative includes a prolepsis: his mother’s tears at their parting in Kuressaare harbour, and the fact that they would never see one another again. 5. Marking Time: Czech Hell Velvelt’s narrative of the Czech Hell marks time with the same sharpness as his reporting of the events of the third summer of the war, July 1944, which culminates in his signing up for what seemed to be the best survival option. However, in the section of his narrative devoted to the Czech Hell, the sequential chronology and the noting of the passing of day and night are maintained but the precise dates are dispensed with after the arrival in Prague. The narrator is in full control of the management of narrative time; though he does not engage in meta-reflection on what he does and does not remember; it is likely that he did not retain any dates in his memory during this period of fear and overall confusion, let alone have

Tiina Ann Kirss

375

the means to record the events of the Czech Hell and its aftermath, until his return to Saaremaa. Features of his account of the events from 4 May 1945 through 21 September 1945 are clear distinctions between reliable and unreliable information, between the reports of his unit commander, Prees, and the official lies from the German General Staff. Here Velvelt’s chronicling of events moves in parallel with published accounts of Czech Hell survivors, focusing as they do on the importance of timing. The unit commander, having received orders on 7 May to begin the march at noon the next day, with the goal of reaching the Estonian Division at the front, decides instead to delay as long as possible, and holds a secret meeting with the unit. Having listened to radio broadcasts from London, Prees is aware of the uprising in Prague, and that Field Marshal Schörner‘s army group Mitte is on its way west to surrender to the British. At Hirschberg, the unit is ordered to dispersed by its commander (Prees), and Velvelt continues the march west with Prees and a fellow soldier, Georg Larka from the Estonian flight squad. The ensuing narrative of the threesome’s foot-march west matches the accounts of Susi and Lindström, with its fast pace, visual detail, episodes of stealing food and using whatever motorized transport that could be found to hasten the journey. A longer episode of commandeering a transport truck includes short dialogues between the three men, though these are notational and subordinated to the narration of action, more so than can be seen in the accounts of Lindström and Susi, who approach the fuller interchanges between characters in a novel, and serve the narrative purpose of ‘building’ and personifying characters. At the bridge over the Elbe outside Prague, the men meet the Czechs, who order them to surrender their weapons, after which they are taken to a shed. The next morning they witness the sorting out, beating and executions of Waffen-SS men by the crowd, and are subsequently taken on a slow march through downtown Prague with its jeering onlookers. Having passed through Prague they are called to a halt and ordered to dig a mass grave. In the course of this part of Velvelt’s narrative, details are noted succinctly, but with no effort at graphic description or amplification. The narrative voice is engaged, not distantiated, and is far from dispassionate or neutral; Velvelt seems to be reliving the events in the course of retelling them, stopping occasionally for brief contextual explanations. The ‘camera’ shifts now and then to Velvelt’s immediate companions. Prees having disappeared into the general crowd on the road to Prague, Velvelt is now accompanied by Georg Larka, and a man he recognizes as Viktor Masing, a young man from Tartu a year older than him, mobilized with his age cohort of 1925 into the Estonian Legion. Masing understands some Czech, and both he and Larka speak at least passable Russian. In the next

376

When is the War Over?

two days, language skills become increasingly important in order to understand what is going on around them, and communication of one’s identity becomes the index of escaping the general fate of execution that awaited all those counted among the ‘fascists’. The ability to speak good Russian was a badge of suspicion for the Czech partisans, as it might indicate that the speaker belonged to the hated General Vlassov’s army. Just before the next round of executions, a Russian major walks into the warehouse yard. The major, dissatisfied with the explanations of the visibly drunk Czechs, turns to Larka and Masing who succeed in explaining that the several Estonians, present, were mobilized into the German army against their will. Velvelt reflects: What Larka said to the major in his long diatribe, I did not understand, because I did not have that much Russian. Larka later told me that apparently what convinced him was the talk about the drunken gang that brought shame to the Red Army liberators of Czechoslovakia by their acts of revenge. (KM EKLA f. 350, 643, 54.)

Velvelt and his companions are taken to a Russian military unit for a few days, and from there to a prisoner-of-war camp. Again, the transition is marked in Velvelt’s narrative by a summarizing sentence: It was clear that life in that military unit would not last long. And so it was. (KM EKLA f. 350, 643, 54.) Other than the brief mention that he considered the option of escape, which he immediately dismissed, the next and last major choice point in the ‘war chapter’ of Velvelt’s story takes place in the prison camp. If the significant personal characteristics that determined the outcome of the mass execution scene in the warehouse yard were communication, language competence and to some extent national identity, the most important was Larka’s negotiating skills, which included pointing to the dishonourable drunken Czech partisans. In the prison camp national identity becomes a bargaining chip. Velvelt reconstructs his reflection at this juncture: It immediately became clear that there were also some Estonians in the camp – young boys and older men, too – and even though there was plenty of room in their barracks, I did not want to go there. It made me think, this talk of being sent back to the homeland. If I was with the other Estonians, they would send me back to Estonia, but I would probably face deportation there. Besides, my mother and brother were in Germany, in the west for sure, in the BritishAmerican zone, and that was where I should be as well. I decided to stay among the Germans, and if they sent them to Germany, I might have a chance to get to Germany, too. A boy from Nõmme made the same decision. He was a pilot, and he, too, didn`t have anyone waiting for him in Estonia. His family had fled to Sweden. It was a good thing that Larka had gotten a job a few days

Tiina Ann Kirss

377

ago in the camp headquarters; he had good German and Russian, and was translating there. From him we started to get wind of the plans the Russians had for us. (KM EKLA f. 350, 643, 56.)

The summer passes with Velvelt sharing a barracks with the Germans and spending most of his time reading. At the beginning of August, Larka brings news that the camp is to be dispersed, all non-Germans sent to their homelands, and the Germans sent to Russia as prisoners-of-war to ‘liquidate war damage’: There was to be a written inquiry into the inmates’ national identities. Velvelt tells of deliberations with Larka about what to do next. Velvelt himself decides to identify himself as an Estonian and to move into the Estonian barracks. Larka, by nature an adventurous rogue, sees no one has identified themselves as being from Luxembourg, lists himself as a Luxemburgian. Velvelt notes his parting from Larka with wistfulness and gratitude, in a passage of reflective hindsight: We had been together for all these last months, and I had a big debt of gratitude to him. I certainly owed him for coming out of that warehouse yard alive. If it hadn’t been for Larka and Masing’s Russian, if they had not bargained with the Czechs, and slowed things down that way, the Russian would have come too late. No doubt it was coincidence that the Russian major entered the yard at the right moment, but it was because of Larka that the “coincidence” was not too late. It was a bit of a hollow feeling when Larka waved goodbye as he went out of the gate, shouting something that could not have been anything else but “Farewell, boys”. (KM EKLA f. 350, 643, 59.)

With this passage Velvelt steps out of the position of the narrator reporting on the action into a slower, retrospective, reflective mode, which summarizes not only the stakes of his decision at this pivotal point, but his connection with this companion to whom he owes his survival. This juncture in the life story contains the most elaborate retrospective construction of a choice, in which he acknowledges only partial agency in a complex array of coincidence, timing and solidarity. The emphasis on the connection with others important to him is characteristic of the life story as a whole, which is neither picaresque nor Schweikian in its individualism, and where decisions are always couched in an inter-subjective matrix. 6. Conclusion: The Personal and the National Apart from the vehement statement that it was utterly senseless to fight for the prolongation of the Führer’s life there is little trace of retributive, let alone aggressive nationalism in Velvelt’s story. Compared to Susi’s warm, humorous, slow narrative of the Czech Hell (Susi, 1985), or Lindström’s

378

When is the War Over?

almost knee-jerk nationalistic anti-Russian formulas (Lindström, 1960), Velvelt’s apologia pro vita sua is not organized around the motivation of fighting on the German side to get back at the Russians. Codes of ‘national masculinity’ are neither overtly evoked nor deconstructed, though one can discern the outlines of a framing mentality and concomitant ideology in Velvelt’s narrative. His nationalism was middling, moderate and unquestionable and a matter of habitus. His nationalism was also an element of conscious pride, as he shows when he traces his first name to the heroes that fought in the ‘ancient war of independence’ against the 13th century German crusaders. Nationalist principles and attitude correspond and cohere with Velvelt’s account of the years of his growing-up and the loss of his father in the 1941 deportation. Clearly this is also the mentality that came with the territory and the active education of belonging to youth organizations, in Velvelt’s case the Boy Scouts. His choice to go with the Estonian Youth troop to youth camp in Narew in July 1944 is by no means an indication of an ideological alignment or sympathies with Nazi rhetoric. Quite the contrary. Indeed, Velvelt minces no words when he reports that on his return from the camp he told the local Estonian Youth leader of the contradiction between his expectations of the camp and reality of being a poor excuse for forced military training and for bullying Estonian boys to ‘volunteer’ for service. Velvelt’s later pragmatic decision to join the Luftwaffe is also neither a principled choice of sides, nor a passive obedience to orders. When seen in the context of his father’s deportation and his family’s flight to Germany, Velvelt is true to his temperament and allegiances: at the core, he acknowledges and affirms ties of family and friendship. This is abundantly shown in the postwar section of his life story, with its intense focus on his older brother, who eventually emigrates to the United States and with whom he succeeds in visiting twice despite his own ‘questionable’ political background. Ylo-Vesse Velvelt’s war journey is one component of the published version of his larger, complete life story, and its inscription in this larger whole includes ripple effects from the war story into the larger frame. In the final analysis, Velvelt’s story of the Czech Hell poses a complex question to the public readers of life stories as life histories: what are the elements of the narrative repertoire, the consensual thresholds that determine the readability of a soldier‘s story, one that would qualify as acceptable for inclusion in canons that serve political meta-narratives of public memory – national, European, and generational? Lateral comparisons of Velvelt’s story with other accounts of the Czech Hell provide informative clues regarding how writers find orientation and meaning in ‘debacle’, more often than not eschewing interpretation of their experience as traumatic.

Tiina Ann Kirss

379

Most important to such an analysis is the concept of the three ‘experiential cohorts’ of Estonians who at the end of the war were (i) still in Siberia, (ii) in the homeland or (iii) had emigrated to the West. Though these cohorts require additional complex internal differentiations (for example, between those who remained in the homeland in 1949 or who had been sent to Siberia in the mass deportations of March 1949), and though each encompasses a generational range, the life stories of these cohorts diverge after 1945. This does indeed occur, despite there being life story writers in each of the ‘experiential cohorts’ having relatives in the other two cohorts. Since Estonian independence in 1991, these three cohorts have changed in differential valence and ideological ‘capital’, i.e. the ‘memory regime’ of the post-1991 Estonian republic has ascribed a certain hierarchy of value to the cohort memories. These distinctions are most sharply drawn in the case of the men who bore arms in the war and the immediate post-war years. If (according to the prevailing ‘memory regime’ with its record of public commemoration and recognition) the noblest and most heroic memories are lodged in the ‘homeland’ cohort with the freedom fighters of the Forest Brethren, where as those who suffered in Siberia or fled to the West are ascribed higher honours. Among the combatants, the Finnish Boys are bluer-blacker-whiter (Estonian national colours) than those in the German ranks with the Red Army men in the lowest position. The remaining ‘homeland cohort’ (in addition to civilians) consists of men who fought in either the Soviet army or the German but succeeded in avoiding the greater repressions. When examined through the historiography of the Estonian diaspora, including acclaimed veterans’ memoirs, the survivors of the Czech Hell are highly prominent. The heroism of those who experienced the Czech Hell relies not on the humiliations experienced in the cauldron but that they, by pluck, strength or miracle, survived. In public commemorations of the war, these men often remained silent. Their stories were painful to remember, complicated to explain, particularly the geography and contained little bravura, because bravura did not signify when captured, disarmed and put through Hell. There is no amplification or emblematization of the layer of Czech Hell memories in the diasporic ‘memory regime’. The Czech Hell is a twist to a war story which is already convolutedly twisted. Furthermore, with the exception of Lindström’s book in the 1960s, the memoirs of the Czech Hell’s survivors living in the West were published quite belatedly, 30–60 years after the event. One has to wonder about the extent to which survivors of the Czech Hell, particularly those living in the West, exchanged narrative accounts of their experiences. Lauri Vaska (2004), a natural scientist by profession,

380

When is the War Over?

takes pains in his memoir ‘Euroopa südames’ (‘In the Heart of Europe’) to indicate and annotate the occasions on which he compared notes with those who had passed through the periphery of the Czech Hell. Dr. Tootson, for example, functions as a mentor figure with whom Vaska later corresponded frequently, after both had immigrated to the United States. It is important to reiterate that similar comparing of notes among survivors of the Czech Hell in the homeland of Estonia could only take place cautiously and surreptitiously and in private in the Soviet era. Velvelt’s account of the Czech Hell does, however, differ markedly from the unpublished tale of the homeland survivor Olev, whose relatives have asked for discretion in the use of his written text and an abstention from direct quotation. Compared to the rhetoric of Velvelt’s text, in which there is a retrospective reconstruction and explanation of several situations of choice-making, Olev writes predominantly in the passive voice, even as he sets out to portray his self of the 1940s as a fictional character, written in the third person. From the texture of the narrative, the absence of detail, and these passive formulations, it seems that the experience of Czech Hell rolled over Olev and his immediate mates, jarring them into mute suspense and leaving no space to make genuine choices. Though there are continuities in Olev’s narrative and little overt fragmentation, the numb neutrality and the draining of all emotion from his tale bears the marks of a storyteller who has been traumatized by his remembered experience, and also by the telling of his tale. Ylo-Vesse Velvelt’s tale is written in what Hayden White might call ‘middle voice’, in which the capacity for reflection on severe, complicated, chaotic past events is in tension with the chaos of those events (La Capra, 2001, 25). The cinematic quality of the narrative, which negates a visualization of the remembered experience as it is recounted, is rich in detail and notation of emotional content. However, the narrator clearly conducts a sustained reflection on those events, which subordinates the episode of the Czech Hell to the larger logic of the narrative of a whole life. Perhaps it is this rounded, though far from perfect wholeness that is this narrative’s best resistance to the false feathers of posteriorly attributed ideology.

Tiina Ann Kirss

381

Notes 1

2

3

4

5 6 7

8

Major (Sturmbannführer) Paul Maitla (1913–1945) began his career as an officer in the Estonian military, graduating from Officers’ School in 1938. In the first Soviet occupation 1940, his army unit was merged with the Soviet military; captured by the Germans in 1941, he was for a short period a prisoner-of-war; in November 1941, Maitla joined the 37th Police Battalion, guarding Luftwaffe airfields till October 1942 when he joined the Estonian Legion. He saw action on the Nevel River and Narva fronts in 1942 and 1943, and at Sinimäed (the Blue Hills) in 1944. In January 1945, he was appointed the commander of the 1st Battalion of 45th Regiment of the Estonian Legion. Maitla’s heroics in bringing his troops out of the encirclement at Oppeln won him high military honours. He was captured in the Czech Hell, and executed by Czech Communists one day after the cessation of hostilities, on 10 May 1945. On Colonel Alfons Rebane, see Endnote 20 in Ylo-Vesse Velvelt’s life story in Soldiers of Memory. The writing of this chapter was funded by the Estonian Science Foundation (Grant 8190). In an effort at a precise reconstruction of the chain of events, Taremäe states that the orders for the retreat were given to the units of the Estonian Division at various times between 21:00 and 23:00 on the evening of 7 May. The retreat began the following morning. According to the capitulation documents signed in Reims at 2:41 on 7 May, cessation of hostilities was to take place at 23:01 on 8 May. It is doubtful that the men in the German Army Divisions on the eastern front knew about the capitulation at the time the orders to retreat were delivered. They had also lost 18–21 hours of the 44 hours that remained until the cessation of hostilities. What they also could not have known is, in Taremäe’s words, that ‘during those days, Prague was the worst possible place for men wearing German uniforms’ (Taremäe, 2004, 127). Indeed, the Prague uprising had begun on 5 May, with local German forces striking back on 6 May. On the 7 May, at the request of the Czechs, Vlassov’s First Division entered Prague, and on the following day, 8 May ‘cleansed’ the city of Germans. Soviet tank units arrived in Prague on 9 May. Thus, for everyone involved in the hasty retreat, the time lags were compounded by insufficient and inaccurate information flows and all movement along the roads westward was slow, since the Estonian Division had virtually no motorized vehicles. Rebane is a fox in Estonian. Plenary presentation given at a conference in January 2007, Tartu. I am thankful to Professor Piret Viires for pointing out the existence of Olev’s story. See Kõresaar, 2005 for the ‘rupture’ that characterized the life trajectory of the generation born in the 1920s.

382 9

When is the War Over?

The Good Soldier Schweik is a satirical novel published in 1923 by Jaroslav Hašek. The novel is set in Austria-Hungary during World War I, and consists of a series of absurdly comic episodes involving the central character, who subverts army discipline and in the end, wearing a Russian uniform, is taken prisoner by his own troops. For Estonian combatants in WW II, Schweik`s enormously popular novel was a familiar and shared semiotic treasury.

References Echterhoff, G. and M. Saar (2002), “Einleitung: Das Paradigma des kollektiven Gedächtnisses:Maurice Halbwachs und die Folgen”, in: G. Echterhoff and M. Saar (eds.) Kontexte und Kulturen des Erinnerns. Maurice Halbwachs und das Paradigma des kollektiven Gedächtnisses. Konstanz: UVK Gesellschaft, 13–37. Hinrikus, R. (ed.) (2000a), Eesti rahva elulood I. Sajandi sada elulugu kahes osas. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Hinrikus, R. (ed.) (2000b), Eesti rahva elulood II. Sajandi sada elulugu kahes osas. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Hinrikus, R. (ed.) (2003), Eesti rahva elulood III. Elu Eesti NSVs. Tallinn: Tänapäev. Hirst, W. and D. Manier (2002), “The Diverse Forms of Collective Memory”, in: G. Echterhoff and M. Saar (eds.) Kontexte und Kulturen des Erinnerns. Maurice Halbwachs und das Paradigma des kollektiven Gedächtnisses. Konstanz: UVK Gesellschaft, 37–59. Kirss, T. (ed. and transl.) (2009), Estonian life stories. Budapest: CEU Press. KM EKLA = Estonian Cultural History Archives in the Estonian Literary Museum. Kõresaar, E. (2005), Elu ideoloogiad: kollektiivne mälu ja autobiograafiline minevikutõlgendus eestlaste elulugudes. Tartu: Eesti Rahva Muuseum. LaCapra, D. (2001), Writing history, writing trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lindström, J. (1960), Tšehhi põrgus. Mälestusi sõjateelt ja vangipõlvest. Toronto: Orto Press. Made, T. (2008), Eestlased sõjapõrgus. Tallinn: Tallinna Raamatutrükikoda. Roolaine, K. (1999), Skaudipoisina elu miiniväljadel. Kodu-, kooli- ja sõjamälestusi aastaist 1925–1945. Valga: Litera. Subbi, Ü. (2008), Lõpp hea – kõik hea. Mälestusi pikalt elurajalt. Tallinn: Kuldsulg. Susi, H. (1985), Sarviku sulased. Tõsieluromaan. Vol. I–II. Lund: Eesti kirjanike kooperatiiv.

Tiina Ann Kirss

383

Tamm, M. (2008), “History as Cultural Memory: Mnemohistory and the Construction of the Estonian Nation”, Journal of Baltic Studies, 39(4): 499– 516. Tamm, M. and P. Petersoo (eds.) (2008), Monumentaalne konflikt. Mälu, poliitika ja identiteet tänapäeva Eestis. Tallinn: Varrak. Taremäe, H. (1996), Õnnega pooleks: tõsielujutustus päevist, mil lõppes sõda. Tallinn: SE&JS. Vaska, L. (2004), Euroopa südames: Märkmeid ühest rännakust 1944–45. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus. Wertsch, J. V. (2002), Voices of collective remembering. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (2009), “Blank Spots in History and Deep Memory: Revisiting the Official Narrative of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”, in: E. Kõresaar, E. Lauk and K. Kuutma (eds.) The burden of remembering: recollections and representations of the 20th century. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 37–56.

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels: Stigmatised Family Relations in the Life Story of a Repressed Man Terje Anepaio 1. Introduction On Christmas Eve 1988, a 73-year-old man took his pen in his hand and started to record his story, explaining his motives as follows: I shall try, as much as I can, to put down my life on paper. Let those who are interested, read it but it is not obligatory for anyone. For that story is similar to the stories of many Estonian men who had to go through with it all. (P. 75.)

The year 1988 is very symbolic year in recent Estonian history. Up until that time, the democratisation process in Estonia,1 which had its roots in the Soviet Union’s policy of glasnost and perestroika, had taken the form of a protest movement against the central power and grown into a national movement (Lauristin, Vihalemm, 1997). In the spring of 1988, the blueblack-and-white national flag was flown once more at the ‘Heritage Days’ event that takes place in Tartu. The summer evening ‘song festivals’ at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds initiated the ‘Singing Revolution’. 1988 was a romantic period in the reassertion of the independence era, when Estonians came together, national flags that had been hidden for half a century were flown and people sang about and discussed their country and freedom together. In the same year, a broad-based restitution of the Estonians’ ‘own history’ and national memory was started in the form of a campaign to collect national memories by the Estonian Heritage Society (Laar 1988a; 1988b; 1988c). A public declaration was made calling for the past that the Estonians had lived through and experienced, but which they have been forced to keep secret for decades, be given the right to life. Thus a very special day in a very special year loomed large – Christmas Eve. In the Estonian cultural tradition, Christmas is the most important holiday, the celebration of which was out of favour during the Soviet occupation. In 1988, Christmas came ‘out of hiding’ (Hiiemäe, 2003). In the Christian tradition, Christmas with the birth of the Saviour symbolises a new beginning. Christmas is a time to contemplate, to think about the lasting values of life. Therefore, it is especially symbolic that Heinrich Uustalu started a very special task – the writing of his life story – on Christmas Eve 1988. Writing was actually alien to him; he had done physical work throughout his life. However three years before, at the age of 70, he had stopped working as a blacksmith upon the advice of his

386

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

doctor and started working as a security guard. Now he was taking the time to put his story on paper. Thereafter, he typed his manuscript on a typewriter and sent it to the Estonian Museum of Literature. His 62-page life story manuscript was registered at the museum in February 1990 (KM EKLA f. 350, 145). Apparently the writer had been inspired by a campaign that was directed at Estonian society to preserve memories. The campaign, organised by the Estonian Literary Museum in the autumn of 1989 was called ‘The Life Histories of Estonia’.2 Uustalu’s courageous decision to send his life story to the Estonian Literary Museum as early as 1990 made his story particularly special.3 The story was written early in the genre of Estonia’s life stories, and consequently its presentation and interpretations were more independent than those of later stories, which have been moulded into a uniform national discourse, although Uustalu’s is well-suited to this discourse. The narration of Uustalu’s life story is one story in a body of texts that was formed at end of the 1980s and during the 1990s, the reception of which in Estonian society resulted in the ‘Siberia story’. This is a narrative of suffering ‘where it is not important to the reader when someone was deported, and where no differentiation is made between those sent to the camps and those deported and resettled’ (Hinrikus, 2004, 65).4 Heinrich Uustalu’s narrative is also somewhat special in another way – how and the extent to which he describes the family relationships in his life. Family relationships in men’s life stories are mostly sub-thematised, since masculine biographical constructions usually focus on work, career (education), and sports (Hinrikus, 2003, 209). However, Uustalu sets his intimate relationships into the foreground of his story, by writing about the repression of his innocent family members and the resulting guilt that he felt in the story’s introductory statement: A government who punishes old people and small children is no government. I am, however, to blame before my children and they can freely say: “It is because of you, that we had to go to Siberia.” (P. 75.)

In her study ‘The Gulag Survivor’, Nanci Adler states that the imprisonment of a family member puts the remaining family members into a stressful situation in every society, but in the Soviet Union, ‘politics raised the degree of stress to the level of physical danger. All relatives were stigmatised by their association with “enemies of the people”’ (Adler, 2004, 63). Connections to one’s and responsibility for one’s family members, the impossibility or possibility of doing so, a sense of duty and guilt (in respect to family members) and estrangement are problems that are revealed in Heinrich Uustalu’s story in connection with his family. Below I will analyse how Uustalu treats these topics, which are of key

Terje Anepaio

387

importance for him and his family, and how he places them into the context of the war and the Stalinist repressions that followed.5 I will contextualise Uustalu’s self-reflection in respect to his life course and the story of repression on the one hand, and on the other, the existing knowledge about this in his family. For this, in addition to the life story text recorded by Uustalu himself, I will use Uustalu’s personal files (ERAF 129 SM-1-10967 and ERAF SM 8 N 1 S 6290) from the Estonian State Archives and an interview with Uustalu’s daughter about their family story. I started my research from the life story text sent by Uustalu to the Estonian Literary Museum, but my wish to find out exactly what the Soviet authorities accused him of (and why, for instance, his sentence was reduced) brought me to Uustalu’s personal files (one criminal file and two supervisory files), stored in the Security Archives. I was motivated to interview Uustalu’s oldest daughter who was born in 1944 (the interview took place in her home in Pärnu in May 2009) by my wish to get more clarity about the family’s subsequent life after the Uustalu family returned from exile in Siberia. I also hoped to hear the second generation’s version of their father’s (or rather their family’s) story.6 2. Story of a Repressed Person: Heinrich Uustalu as a Narrator and a Protagonist Heinrich Uustalu opens his story with an explanatory statement to reader, in which he notes that the story is intended for those who are interested in his life experiences, not in a beautiful story, since he is not a writer (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 1). The fact that the author is not a ‘doer of literary work’ is clearly indicated by his poor writing style (for instance, the lack of punctuation, mistakes in spelling, missing words).7 He is also not very familiar with the typewriter, and the reader of the manuscript notices letters that have been mistyped. The sentences in Uustalu’s story have not come easy, but once he undertook the task, he has persevered and (based on the dates that are sometimes added to the text) put his story on paper as fast has he could, doing so in coarse language, and sometimes in very blunt wording. Using particularly incisive irony and sarcasm, he thematizes the conflict between Soviet ideology and reality, and describes everyday Soviet life: the pointless waste of resources, the apathy and thoughtlessness that reigned in the work culture, in which respect attitudes in ‘everyday life’ did not differ from those in a prison camp (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 55). A strategy of irony and ridicule is typical of the Estonian life stories written at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, the

388

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

purpose of which was to prove the inhumanity of Soviet power and its illegal establishment in Estonia (cf. Kõresaar, 2004b, 131; Kõresaar, 2005, 73, 91–93). Heinrich Uustalu has titled his story ‘Between the Cogwheels’, thereby denoting the fact that he became a victim of the Soviet system. The title of the story also summarises his traumatic experience: being designated an enemy of the Soviet regime, his arrest and imprisonment, his experiences in the camp, and the repression of his family. The ‘cogwheels of history’ is a popular metaphor in Estonian life story texts, which denotes the events that accompanied World War II and the subsequent chaos and violence which seriously affected people’s life courses. For instance, in his life story, Boris Takk notes that with the youths born in the same year, I was caught in the “cogwheels” of history (KM EKLA f. 350, 417, 1–2), and a man who is few years younger adds, The repression machine that was called the NKVD along with their special department rolled over the earth. Millions of innocent people were crushed between its cogwheels. (KM EKLA f. 350, 154, 8). By employing the cogwheel metaphor, the writers stress their helplessness as subjects of the ‘labyrinth of history’;8 this situation is perceived as solidarity between the individual and his national collective body and its history (Kõresaar, 2005, 29–32). Surviving the ‘labyrinth of history’ charges the writer with the responsibility of talking about those who shared his fate (especially in stories about deportation, prison camps and fighting at the front) or for those who were of his generation (Kirss, 2006a, 109–111; Hinrikus, 2003, 310). Heinrich Uustalu also defines himself as one of the Estonian men who had to go through with it all, i.e. who were caught up in World War II and the Stalinist repressions that followed. With this short reference, Uustalu positions himself as a member of a wider experience group, as a witness. His story, which fits into 62 typewritten pages, comprises an experience of suffering and repression, its extremely sketchy follow-up story and its prelude – life before his arrest and his childhood and youth in a small town in Western Estonia. The latter comprises about half of the volume of the life story, and emphasises the development of his homestead alongside his father. This is an Estonian saga that continues from story to story, where a rundown farm (the homestead is small and neglected) is transformed into a modern and successful agricultural unit with hard work and smart management. Similar to the pre-war descriptions in the life stories of many Estonians, one can detect a symbolic parallel in Uustalu’s story between the development of the farm and the development of the young Estonian state (cf. Kõresaar, 2004a; 2005, 50–52). Thereby, Uustalu describes the upbringing he received from his father, the central values of which were industriousness and the farm as an ideal of a way of life and ownership

Terje Anepaio

389

(cf. Kõresaar, 2004a, 98–99). As a volunteer, he successfully completes his compulsory service in the Estonian Army.9 As the decisive 1940s arrive, Uustalu is a mature young man looking forward to an independent life and running his homestead. The story of the ‘arrival’ of the Communist power that repressed Heinrich Uustalu and his family is constructed from the beginning as a conflict. His opposition starts with Red Army units marching to a base in Saaremaa in 1939, which Uustalu as a member of the Defence League has to ‘secure’ and observe from the side of the road, and this is followed by the first shocking year of Soviet power, regarding which he describes several conflict situations. Opposition to the new regime results in the young man coming into contact with repression10 and the representatives of the new authority (local police). From the story, one can conclude that a personal conflict between Uustalu and the local police is developing, which culminates in January 1941 with the police looking for him at home in order to arrest him for having supposedly ripped down some election posters.11 The conflict that had developed by the beginning of World War II is summarised by the writer as follows: Russian power had demonstrated its true face to us with its idiocies and brutality (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 13). The ‘rupture’, which is how the establishment of the Soviet occupation is described in most life stories of older Estonians (Kõresaar, 2004b; Kõresaar, 2005), is presented by Uustalu as a developing conflict with an ideological and ethno-cultural other. For him ‘the Soviet period is demonised from its very beginning as an essentially evil empire’ (Kõresaar, 2004b, 332), the clutches of which he or his family do not escape. The war is followed by a repression experience that starts with Uustalu’s second arrest (he once succeeds in escaping as a prisoner of the Red Army) in the autumn of 1944 and ends with him returning together with his family to Estonia in March 1957, which is at the centre of Uustalu’s life story. In October 1945, the war tribunal of the NKVD forces sentences Heinrich Uustalu to 15 years of forced labour and deprivation of all rights for five years, which a few months later, the Military Chamber of the USSR Supreme Court reduces to 10 years of imprisonment and deprivation of all rights for five years (ERA F 129 N1 S 10967 L 41–41p; 43–44p). After the restoration of Soviet power, extensive repressions were unleashed on the occupied areas, including Estonia, for the purpose of cleansing the local society, and preparing it for Sovietisation (Pajur, Tannberg, 2005, 274). The basic scheme of the repressions that struck those who had fought against the Red Army or were suspected of cooperating with the enemy in some other way was the following: arrest after the Soviet conquest,12 conviction for ‘cooperating with the enemy’, years in prisons and

390

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

prison camps, and thereafter the ‘punishment’ of their families, which was primarily carried out by deporting the families to Siberia in March 1949. The men who ended up ‘between the cogwheels’ live in misery in prisons and camps,13 and their families in places of exile in the ‘farthest regions of the Soviet Union’.14 They were reunited either when the men were able to survive the Gulag system and to rejoin their families in their places of exile, or after they return to Estonia from their exile. The reunions were often conditional – some of the men who were able to rejoin their families lived for only a short time, or the harsh existence in the place of exile had taken the life of some other family member. Heinrich Uustalu was able to survive the repressions (in prison and the camps, and to reach and rejoin his family who have been sent to the Novosibirsk oblast, and to bring his entire family back to Estonia). He had four children – two sons and two daughters (two born before the repressions, one during exile in Siberia and one after their return to Estonia) and eight grandchildren. Uustalu’s story describes the man’s prison life and condemnation, his camp years and reunion with his family in their place of exile in the Novosibirsk oblast, their life in Siberia and their return to Estonia. The war years are a prelude to the repressions in Uustalu’s narrative, in which his family suffered due to the choices he made. 3. War and Family The period of World War II, recorded in 13 pages in Heinrich Uustalu’s life story, is divided into two diametrically opposed and difficult to reconcile sides: starting a family and fighting a war; the normal and abnormal are side-by-side. It is the choices made during the war years that determine the life of Uustalu and his family in the post-war decades. Thus, this story fits into the post-Soviet life stories array, in which World War II and its results are the central experiences (cf. Kõresaar, 2007, 39). Uustalu depicts the war as inevitable, in which a clear head and luck are important. At first glance his fighting seems to go well – he is not wounded and is able to rejoin his family. However, his position in the war turns out to be ‘wrong’ from the victors’ point of view, and therefore, both the man himself and his family suffer. Along with the war, Uustalu also writes about starting a family, the presentation of which is also dominated by ambivalence. Starting a family seems to have made him happy, but in retrospect was a fateful step that later painfully affects both his life and those of his family. The war experience is presented in Heinrich’s story in two parts. He recalls the fighting in 1941 and 1944, i.e. the years when actual battles

Terje Anepaio

391

occurred on Estonian territory. Heinrich Uustalu started fighting in 1941, not as a conscript in the army, but as a civilian in his local area,15 by participating in the so-called Summer War which was a partisan struggle in answer to the first year of Soviet occupation and the repressions that occurred, as well as the scorched earth policy declared by Stalin (3 July 1941) in the areas being abandoned by the Red Army. Immediately after war breaks out between the Soviet Union and Germany (22 June 1941), Uustalu starts work in his hometown as the telephonist in the postal and communications office. As a result he can control communications and be updated on the information coming to his hometown from outside (such as orders from Soviet authorities and movements of the punitive brigades). He does not write directly about armed fighting, but rather how the information that was obtained with his help was used in his hometown in order to avoid Soviet conquest and punitive raids, or to prevent them from destroying bridges etc. He repeatedly describes the Soviet violence in his hometown, in which his cousin was killed,16 and the time when his local area of Tõstamaa was caught between the two fronts.17 The topic of fighting recedes in Uustalu’s life story at the end of August 1941.18 Normality – family life – moves to the forefront. Uustalu writes more about fighting in 1944. He is conscripted into the German army forces in 194419 and fights in the Frontier Guard Regiments.20 His experience at the front is quite short (until May he is in the rear where he trains horses that have been commandeered into the army, and in his story, he notes that we were really lucky that winter), but far from safe (he describes several narrow escapes). From July until September of 1944, he is a gunner on the Narva front on Estonia’s north eastern border (in Krivasoo) (cf. ERA F 129 N1 S 10967 L 11). Uustalu’s fighting philosophy is revealed in the sentence where he describes the restoration of communication lines during an enemy bombardment: I took two volunteers, in such a dangerous situation you don’t want to force anyone, you’ll be left with a feeling of guilt (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 24). A colourful chapter in Heinrich Uustalu’s war story is the retreat in September 1944 from Krivasoo in the vicinity of Narva to his home,21 in which he describes the collusion between the young Estonian men serving in the German and Red Armies that meet during the retreat (the Red Army soldiers ‘escort’ the others as ‘prisoners’), in order to travel further and as safely as possible. He describes the Red Army ‘footprint’ on Estonia’s farms and the betrayal by a woman whose yard the retreating soldiers enter, and his successful escape from the Soviet POW camp in Pärnu. Uustalu’s daughter also spoke about this escape in her interview, and noted as in introduction, ‘My father was interned when I was two months old, he was in the German army at Sinimäed, and escaped from there with

392

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

a friend.’ By referring, instead of Krivasoo, to Sinimäed, where the fiercest resistance was mounted against the Red Army that was invading Estonia in July-August 1944,22 the daughter connects her father’s war experience with the group-specific traditions of the self-sacrificing battle of the Estonian soldiers to defend Estonia in 1944. In the daughter’s narrative, the war tradition (represented by the battle at Sinimäed) is integrated into the family tradition. In the interview, Heinrich Uustalu’s daughter said that her father did not avoid speaking about the war, but rather shared his war experiences within the family circle, ‘… I’d say that as a child I heard quite a lot of truth about the war.’ Uustalu’s life as a soldier and his experiences at the front in 1944 became an important part of his social identity as times changed. In re-independent Estonia, where having fought in a German uniform in World War II was no longer automatically defined as a criminal act, but was assigned national significance (fighting for Estonia, in order to preserve the independent state of Estonia) and becomes institutionalised (cf. Kõresaar, 2007), Uustalu joins the Federation of Estonian Freedom Fighters.23 In her interview, his daughter recalls that her father always attended the Sinimäed reunions (‘… well, there he met with many people and could talk’). The members of the local veterans’ organisation (Pärnu Association of Estonian Soldiers) participated in the memorial service at Uustalu’s funeral and honoured its active member with a funeral wreath. In his writings, Heinrich Uustalu does not reveal one chapter of his war experience. This is to be found in the archival materials. The first thing in his personal file is a summary of the charges against him, in which Uustalu is accused of belonging voluntarily to the Home Guard in 1941–44,24 participating in armed Guard Service on the roads as a member of the Home Guard (December 1941 – July 1942), and, in January 1942 together with another member of the Home Guard, of arresting a Soviet activist (local police in 1941), and turning him over to the German police (ERA F 129 N1 S. 10967 L 30). He has confirmed these accusations, along with his service on the front as a conscript into the German Army from February to September 1944. Now that Uustalu has passed on, one can only speculate on why he does not mention his activities in the Home Guard in his life story. Membership of the Home Guard was considered a crime against the Soviet state,25 and in post-war Soviet Estonia one had to keep silent about it. In 1988–89 when Uustalu was putting his life story on paper, this part of the past still carries a discernibly negative mark. In the interview with Uustalu’s daughter she states that her father was charged with ‘fighting’ in the German army, ‘after all, my father was not in the Home Guard’.

Terje Anepaio

393

However, his son-in-law confirms that Uustalu was in the Home Guard and he even spoken about this. The writer may have considered being in the Guard Service as a member of the Home Guard to be a wartime routine not worthy of attention. Although the Guard Service may have been routine, the arrest of a local Soviet activist who had become an enemy during the year of Soviet power definitely was not. However, in his life story, Uustalu states that this man gave himself up to the authorities.26 He does not further dwell on this. The wartime period, or more specifically 1942, was the time when Heinrich Uustalu started his family. In his life story, he has dedicated a separate chapter to this step, which starts with a painful reflection, although the writer appreciates that to a bystander he has been successful in the familial sphere: This chapter of my life is the hardest to describe, to think now, in my old age, back to those years and everything that year brought into my life in 1942. For an undertaking of mine brought trouble to all the people I loved. Maybe I should tell myself: listen, old chap, what are you complaining about, you should be proud instead. You survived; all four children of yours are getting on well. You have got eight grandchildren, all decent and healthy people. My only blame was that I had been born an Estonian and wanted to die an Estonian and that I have never denied it. [---] Had I not taken that step in that year, I would have been dead now. Living alone, I would not have let them play their games with me. (P. 81.)

In retrospect, Uustalu sees ‘his move’, starting a relationship and thereafter getting married, as the point of origin that, on the one hand, destined his family to suffer because of him, and on the other hand, forced him (being connected to his family) to endure much that violated human dignity. These are the pains and humiliations that have remained in his soul, and which now, decades later erupt in this emotional section. From Uustalu’s story of starting a family, we learn that, at the end of the winter in 1942, he surprises himself by looking up a girl, who he had already met before the war at the graduation party of the local home economics school in the spring of 1940. At the beginning of August, the young man already proposes to his bride-to-be, and they have a wedding at the beginning of September 1941. Heinrich is 27 and his future wife is 20. Getting married during wartime is a way of implementing peacetime life strategies – the perception of normality during times of crisis. Researchers (for more details, see Kõresaar, 2007 and Kirss, 2006c, 137) have pointed out that the German occupation is typically recalled in Estonians’ memories through everyday events. Ene Kõresaar (2007, 48) states that in the Estonians’ remembrance culture of World War II ‘the expe-

394

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

rience of the German occupation is filtered through the experience of the Soviet occupation, which both preceded and followed it’. If the descriptions of the period of Soviet occupation bring the experience of violence to the forefront, the German period seems to be re-gained normality. Heinrich Uustalu, who summarised the first year of Soviet occupation with the ‘brutality and idiocies’ of the authorities, briefly characterises the period of German occupation in his local area as follows: There really wasn’t any wrong, as individual farms we more or less did not lack for food. [---] Trade was conducted between the townspeople and country folk, barter trade. (KM EKLA f.3 50, 145, 16.)

During the German occupation despite the wartime hardships, life, primarily in Estonia’s rural areas, was perceived as a continuation of the pre-war period.27 Apparently the feeling of continuity also determined Uustalu and his bride’s decision to marry – they believe in the restoration of the normal (former) life. An excerpt from the interview with Uustalu’s older daughter shows that her parents’ wartime marriage was a topic that she discussed with her mother. If the daughter views her parents’ marriage against the background of war as an extraordinary event (rupture), her mother’s explanation relies on feelings of continuity and normality: Question: ‘But your mother and father married during the war?’ Answer: ‘Well, I have also thought many times how they dared to have a child. I have spoken to my mother about this. My mother said that no one believed, they thought that Estonia is an independent country; they thought what does this [a war between Germany and Russia – T.A.] have to do with us.’ (Woman, born in 1944, interview in Pärnu, May 2009.)

As a father, Heinrich Uustalu writes about a happy event: the first child, a son is born into the family who has settled in the husband’s homestead in the next year (1943), according to Christian morality, just at the right time (p. 82). However, remorse comes to the fore in Heinrich’s story of his son’s birth. He feels that the young couple rushed to have a child. The rushing (the abnormality of normality) is not motivated by moral or other criteria. The criterion is fate, which functions as a synonym for the ‘labyrinth of history’ or the ‘cogwheels of history’ in the post-Soviet life stories of the older generation of Estonians (Kirss, 2004, 117). Fate intervenes, and Heinrich Uustalu does not raise his oldest son, who based on tradition should have inherited his farm and carried on his work, But I was not destined to raise my son. He was raised by others to live in a bright future of plenty…. (P. 82.) With the irony of the last sentence, Heinrich Uustalu refers to his son growing up without his father,

Terje Anepaio

395

in a foreign country, in the sphere of influence of hostile Soviet ideology, during the time when a son should be with and learn from his father. The pain caused by the fact that he could not raise his son himself was intensified by the parallel to his own childhood and youth, when an energetic father figure was the most important parent for him.28 His father, or the work done to develop his farm with the guidance of his father (in agreement with my father), dominates Uustalu’s recollections of his youth and becoming a man. He gets his beliefs (work won’t kill anyone if your stomach is full) and ideals (always yearn for your own farm) from his father. Dealing with the childhood memories of the pre-war Republic of Estonia in the life stories of older Estonians, Kõresaar (2005, 46–57) has pointed out such central components as the village and farm (as a metaphor for the nation state), farm work and the head of the family – the father (the mother is in the background). Tiina Kirss (2006a, 111–115) has pointed out an ‘ethical framework’, which has been called an ‘Estonianera upbringing’29 in life stories and by researchers, which included a harmonious home environment and supportive family and relatives, but where Sunday schools, Young Eagles and schools (national defence classes, etc.) also played an important role. In these interpretations, upbringing is a collective, generation-based process, but Uustalu speaks about his upbringing as a private process, which apparently increased the influence of his father’s role for him. The second child in the young family – a daughter – is born in September 1944. Heinrich Uustalu was no longer at home at the time, he was away at war. Actually his fighting had ended, because his Frontier Guard Regiment was retreating at the time from the Narva front on the northeastern border of Estonia.30 In the family tradition, the primary reason for Uustalu’s journey of retreat is a father’s love for his family. According to his daughter, ‘he then escaped to come home because I had been born and he wanted to see me; after all one more child had been added.’ In his story, the man also values the meeting with his daughter, and the description of his fighting, retreat and escape from a POW camp ends with him arriving home where I saw my daughter, who had been born in the meanwhile – this was most important (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 27). Having arrived home from the war, Heinrich Uustalu can only be with his family briefly. When he is called up in the fall of 1944 and appears before the Soviet Army Mobilisation Committee, he comes under the scrutiny of the Soviet authorities and is arrested.31 This is the beginning of a separation from his family that will last for many years. He has been married for slightly over two years (a third of this time he was away at war). His older child is over a year old and his younger is only a few months old. When he is taken from his home he takes with him several

396

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

documents (certificates from both German and Soviet authorities) and six photos. These photos include one of a confirmation photo of his wife, a picture of their wedding party, a picture of the young family probably at his son’s christening, and a picture of his son in a christening dress.32 4. Separated and Reconnected Lives It was the common experience of the returnees that even initially solid personal relationships would erode under the stress of stigmatization, threats, and long separation, especially when there is no reassurance of reunion’, Nanci Adler (2004, 64) writes in her book ‘The Gulag Survivor’. The young married Heinrich Uustalu is separated from his family for 11 years. Surviving in the Gulag amid abnormality and violence is now in the foreground of his story. The man sees his survival as an obligation to this family, which was very difficult, but which he succeeded in fulfilling. He provides an emotionally tense thematization of another important challenge for those who were repressed – how to preserve the connection to his family while being separated, how to reunite his family – which, according to Nanci Adler (2004, 63), was the most crucial question for Gulag returnees. Reunion is an even more complicated task, because the Soviet regime not only punished Uustalu, but after a few years, also his close relatives – Uustalu’s family was exiled to Siberia. Thus, Heinrich Uustalu has to reach his family in their place of exile in the Novosibirsk oblast of Siberia. Uustalu and his family are able to continue their life together in exile and he succeeds in bringing his family back to Estonia, to his own linguistic and cultural space. Hereafter, I will deal with the conflicts that Heinrich Uustalu presents in his and his family stories of repression. Uustalu’s battle with the system starts with his daily survival in prison and in the camps. In this chapter, irony is combined with objectivity in his story. He is not a defeatist. His older daughter’s summarised description of her father’s prison and camp experiences reflect Heinrich Uustalu’s nature: ‘He told me about the terrible hunger they suffered in prison, how they did logging work and how they caught a woodpecker and made a soup. [---] The strangest thing was that he was not bitter, he spoke about the difficulties as adventures that they were…’ (Woman, born in 1944, interview in Pärnu, May 2009.)

In prison and camp, the only contact with one’s family (the outside world) was through letters and packages.33 In Heinrich Uustalu’s life story too,

Terje Anepaio

397

letters and packages were how he maintained contact with his family throughout the years of separation. These provided both help and support, but also the sharing of painful events. Uustalu tried to stay alive and his family in Estonia tried to support him, until he was sent north in 1948, to a special camp in Komimaa (the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic).34 The internees were sent there through the Vologda distribution point, where the local guards organised extensive robberies of the prisoners (armed criminal prisoners were allowed to do this). Having arrived at the new camp, Uustalu makes the painful decision not to contact his family any more. What he has experienced to date has demonstrated the ruthlessness and indifference of the Gulag. Heinrich Uustalu finds that he lacks the opportunity to control his life in this system and feels that the only strategy that he can adopt is to suddenly break off relations with his family. In this way the desperate man tries to prevent the senseless exploitation of his family by the system. In a way this behaviour is related to the painful introductory reflection in his narrative about starting his family, in which Uustalu writes that his connection to his family and responsibility for his family forced him to endure a great deal in the name of survival. Now he acts entirely to the contrary and tries to separate himself from his family. However, his family does not abandon Uustalu. Six month later he gets a letter and package from home. His wife has found out his address by using the contacts of a former fellow internee. His family does not want to abandon him and takes responsibility, and cares for him both physically and morally.35 Uustalu understands that he has unilaterally abandoned his family, and promises in a letter to his wife to never to give up again (p. 88) and he never does break off contact with his family again. By 1949 Heinrich Uustalu is already in his fourth camp, where he was transferred at his own initiative. It seemed like the worst was over; in the given situation, Uustalu has achieved a certain degree of control – he has learned blacksmithing, which means working indoors, and being a prisoner that is a skilled worker, provides a higher status as well as workrelated satisfaction for him. Then he receives the notice of his family’s exile: Then, at the beginning of April 1949, I got a letter from the Urals, Ufa. It made me tremble for I understood what it meant. [---] My family had all been deported to Siberia: my sister and her six and seven year-old children, my wife with her children of five and six, my father and mother. (P. 88–89.)

During the March Deportations of 1949, about 20,700 people were deported from Estonia to Siberia; the majority (70 per cent) were women, children and the elderly (Rahi-Tamm, 2004, 23). According to the official

398

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

terminology, those who were deported from Soviet Estonia were primarily kulaks with their families and the families of ‘bandits’ and ‘nationalists’. The latter two categories, i.e. the list of ‘enemies of the people’, included those whose relatives had previously been arrested, been sent to Soviet prisons or forced labour camps, had escaped to the West or disappeared. In reality, this meant that during these deportations, the families of the men that had been arrested in previous years were taken away (Rahi-Tamm, 2004, 21–22). Heinrich Uustalu’s close relatives were deported from Estonia as the family members of a ‘nationalist’ (ERAF SM 8 N 1 S 6290 L 23). The 1949 deportations were different from other Stalinist deportation operations because ‘most of the people were sent to special settlements for “eternity” without any hopes of redemption’ (Mertelsmann, Rahi-Tamm, 2009, 316). When the repressions occurred, the fact that the elderly and children were declared to be enemies of the system was especially shocking and incomprehensible. Uustalu also poses a painful question about what happened 40 years ago: What were my helpless children and parents guilty of? (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 37). Juri Lotman in his analysis of the semiosphere emphasises the dependence of the definition of the personality as a historical-cultural semiotic phenomenon on the means of codification, which is confirmed by the relativity of legal semiotics. The treatment of personality as a collective that is typical of the Russian cultural tradition meant that that a man’s (i.e. master’s) wife, children and other household members were included in his person and therefore his ‘guilt’ and punishment also extended to them (Lotman, 1999, 13–14). The Estonians’ understanding of the wider concept of ‘guilt’ was based on the responsibility of a specific individual. In the Estonians’ recollections of the choices in 1940, the following motif is repeated: there were discussions about leaving (escape from Estonia to the West in 1944) about hiding out (when they heard intimations that deportations might occur) but they decided to stay at home because ‘they won’t touch old people and children’. Recollections also recur in which it is stressed that although someone’s close relative (usually a husband or father) was labelled as an enemy of the new regime (arrested or in a labour camp), it was not believed that their guilt would extend to other close relatives (especially children). The moment when Gulag prisoner Heinrich Uustalu finds out that his family has been deported, is one of the most dramatic in his life story. The man starts his life story from this experience, the stigmatisation of his family by the system, and the system’s violence against his family. The same knowledge struck thousands of Estonian men, and in his story Uustalu discloses the pain that this experience caused to these men.

Terje Anepaio

399

The deportation of his close relatives makes Heinrich Uustalu see his own situation differently. In time, he has increasingly acquired skills for surviving in the camp environment. In the Gulag, a food portion was provided for each prisoner, the size of which depended primarily on the fulfilment of work norms.36 If one’s norm was fulfilled, one would get one’s portion, since in the Gulag the prisoner was under the ‘care’ of the system. However, his family is now flung into an unknown environment on the brink of existence: The whole family was starving in Siberia as I learned from the letters (p. 89).37 Heinrich Uustalu now becomes aware that he must stay alive for his family. The family has helped him to date and more than half his sentence has been completed. He must survive for the sake of his family. The stories of the repressed include grievous physical and psychological experiences; some are described in extreme detail, while sometimes the writers prefer to recall them indirectly or not at all. In traumatic life stories more generally, such taboo topics include personal experience of violence and sexual violence (cf. Benezer, cited in Hinrikus, 2003). The topic of sexual violence is treated primarily in women’s repression stories (in Estonian women’s stories see Kirss, 2005, in Latvian women’s stories see Lazda, 2005) and war memoirs (Kurvet-Käosaar, 2000). Leena Kurvet-Käosaar refers to Katherine R. Jolluck’s (1995) conclusions regarding the renditions of war-related and sexual violence in the life stories of Polish women, confirming that the renditions are quite similar to those of Estonian women (Kurvet-Käosaar, 2000, 86). The majority of references to sexual violence are indirect, i.e. something that happened to someone that shares one’s fate (to someone else).38 Personal experiences with sexual harassment are recalled mostly if one succeeds somehow in preventing the worst, even if it results in further repressions (cf. Kirss, 2005, 30–32). The criminalised status of those who were repressed destines them to suffer the tyranny and violence, including sexual violence, of various representatives of authority. For instance, the representatives of security agencies (commandants) as well as officials and the heads of local enterprises (state farm directors) appear in the stories of deportees as those extorting sexual favours from a position of power. In his life story, Heinrich Uustalu writes of a brigadier who forces his wife into sexual relations by threatening to send her to prison because a horse that has been taken to the river to drink during the winter had fallen into the river and drowned. Uustalu finds out about this in a letter from his wife. He confesses that he would have preferred not to have been burdened with this bitter knowledge, which he now has to bear along with his everyday moral obligation to survive. He does not want his wife to share this bad news with him – he cannot control the situation, does not know exactly

400

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

why it happened and is unable to do anything about it (p. 90). Uustalu is honest with himself and the reader, by including this betrayal in his story. He writes not only about this event but his ability or inability to cope with it in the future. Although one string is broken on your instrument, you have to continue playing it (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 45) is how Heinrich Uustalu formulates his philosophy, with which he continued his life at the time and with which he continues his life story. In June 1954, he is released from the camp and starts his five year exile in Petropavlovsk in Kazakhstan. ‘In terms of the ex-prisoners’ personal freedom, exile effectively constituted a prison without walls,’ states Nanci Adler (2004, 52). Uustalu is no longer kept in a camp behind barbed wire, but he is still separated from his family. The system that has flung millions of people across geographic expanses did nothing to order this situation later or to help the survivors (including those who had served their sentences) to restore their social network. Actually, the officials made it more difficult for those who had been repressed to restore their former lives, including their close relationships (cf. Adler 2004, 61, 164–168; 231–233). The local authorities even promoted, sometimes even organised, those who were repressed to ‘take root’ in their places of settlement or exile. Heinrich Uustalu recalls how he refused cohabitation in Petropavlovsk that was organised by those at his job, since in the post-war ‘drought of men’ they did not wish to lose a good worker. To the woman who wanted to start living with him, Uustalu stressed his connection to his family and his obligation to all his close relatives that have suffered because of him, especially his children and parents: ... but I had children and parents to whom I have an obligation to help them as much as possible or to take them back… (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 52). In April 1955, Heinrich Uustalu sees his family again for the first time in 11 years. He has succeeded in getting the opportunity to continue his exile with his family in the Novosibirsk oblast. The man who was 29 years old at the time he was separated from his family is back with them at the age of 40. The description of the reunion in Uustalu’s life story is candid and direct. He notices the ageing of his family, and the uncertainty of his wife and himself. His most critical gaze is reserved for his children, whom Uustalu feels have been affected by their foreign upbringing: The children understood everything in their own way; the communist education at school had had its effect (p. 93). The alienation of family members, especially parents and children who have been separated by repressions, is a painful part of family reunion. Albrecht Lehmann, from an analysis of German soldiers coming home

Terje Anepaio

401

from Soviet POW camps, has shown how alienation as well as incomprehension existed on both sides. For instance, he points outs that many men who were fathers had developed pictures of their offspring from their memories, expectations, and hopes in the intervening years of separation that did not coincide with reality (Lehmann, 1986, 143–145). In the interview with Uustalu’s older daughter, the understanding of the second generation of the alienation between their father and his older children is also revealed. Firstly, the daughter describes her obsessive desire to be reunited with her father: ‘I can say that I really waited for my father! I imagined what it would be like. It was a child’s dream, some others there, some Russians, had fathers, but none of the Estonian children did….’ Her father’s coming was a ‘such a great event for her that I don’t know how to describe it!’ Unfortunately, the daughter confesses that the elder children remained strangers with their father: ‘We never developed a warm relationship … time had done its work. We had our own understandings, which he did not want to accept. …’ (Woman, born in 1944, interview in Pärnu, May 2009.)

Uustalu completes himself as a father by bringing up the ‘second-generation children’ (the older daughter’s definition). The third child (a daughter) is born in Siberia and the fourth (a son) after the family has returned to Estonia. They are the ‘real daughter and son’ for Uustalu, and bringing them up provides him the opportunity to compensate for lost time. According to the oldest daughter, her father devoted visible care and even adoration to the younger children. In his story, Uustalu justifies his dissatisfaction (alienation) with his older children with their wrong upbringing, but his daughter believes that her father was often hiding the bitterness he felt about the time he was separated from the family, primarily the children, by saying this: Question: ‘But what do you think this “different upbringing” was supposed to mean?’ Answer: ‘Maybe this was more bitterness about the lost time; he wasn’t a bitter man, but about this…’ (Woman, born in 1944, interview in Pärnu, May 2009.)

Once Heinrich Uustalu is reunited with his family, he sets about energetically improving their living conditions, by taking a job in the local collective farm, while planning their return to Estonia. Uustalu characterises his relationship and continued cohabitation with his wife as follows: With my wife we also got along somehow. [---] It hurt me constantly. (P. 94.) He chooses a strategy for coping with the betrayal that provides both partners the opportunity to collect themselves on a practical and emotional

402

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

level. He pretends that he does not know anything about the letter in which his wife confesses her sexual exploitation. This is totally believable because letters and packages were often not delivered to their addresses in the Gulag for a variety of reasons. Heinrich Uustalu is successful, because he is able to reunite with his family already in Siberia and to continue life with them in exile. The forms of repression that have struck him and his family differ (prison, labour camp, deportation), but the stigmatisation, being flung into a foreign and hostile environment, creates a similar background of experiences for the family members that helps them to go on together. *** One day in March 1957, the Moscow-Tallinn passenger train crosses the border into the Estonian SSR, bringing Heinrich Uustalu and his family back to Estonia. Uustalu describes this moment: It is impossible to describe our feelings when the train crossed the Estonian border. Suddenly Estonian songs sounded from the loudspeaker. Tears came to my eyes that could not be stopped being home again after 13 years had passed. (P. 95.)

These are the feelings that accompanied a man who had lost his freedom in 1944, and his family (members) who had been repressed five year later, upon their arrival back in Estonia. Twelve years had passed since the end of World War II, but for Heinrich Uustalu and his family these years had meant separation from each other, repressions (including losing their home) and social stigmatisation, as well as a battle to survive under extreme conditions in a foreign environment. New struggles awaited them – the restarting of their lives and re-entry into society as stigmatised people in their Soviet Estonian homeland. Notes 1

2

In Estonia, the smallest republic of the Soviet empire, the social breakthrough started in the spring of 1987 with the great wave of protests (The Phosphorite War) against the plans of the central powers to establish new phosphorite mines in Northern Estonia. In the covering letter added to his life story, the writer confirms, dear museum folk: this is a good thing that you have undertaken… (KM EKLA f. 350, 145). See more about the background of the life story writing campaigns in the Introduction to this collection.

Terje Anepaio 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

403

Although Estonian society lived in a great breath of freedom in 1988, there were still few ‘ordinary’ people who wanted to talk about their past experiences publicly. For instance, one participant in the Estonian Heritage Society’s campaign to collect memoires in the summer of 1989 recalls: ‘It was 1989 and many people did not want to speak with us at all or were very careful…’ (Kirss, 2006b, 599). The fear of disclosing their repression experiences did not disappear even later. Rutt Hinrikus, Chairperson of the Estonian Life Stories Association, which has participated in the collection of life stories from the beginning, has noted that even in 1997 the following question was asked: ‘What happens if I give my memoires to the museum and afterwards the Russians come back?’ (Hinrikus, Kõresaar, 2004, 22). Cf. concerning the post-Soviet discourse of rupture in the Siberian suffering narrative in Kõresaar, 2004b, 332–334. Research for this chapter was funded by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence of Cultural Theory) and the projects ETF8190 and SF0180002s07. I want to express my gratitude to Ene Kõresaar for her helpful comments and assistance in the text processing. Upon asking for permission to publish Heinrich Uustalu’s story, it turned out that he had died in 1999 (e-mail from the family to Ene Kõresaar), but his son (the family’s youngest child) with whom Uustalu lived, wanted me to speak with his older sister ‘who was in Siberia and knows more about those things’ (information from a phone conversation). In her interview, Heinrich Uustalu’s daughter described her father as a person with broad interests who liked to read. Asked what kind of man her father was, the daughter answered that ‘He had a very large library. When he returned to Estonia he had a bookplate made. He was very interested in reading and politics. He wanted to travel. He generally has very broad interests….’ Cf. the popular 1996 life writing campaign entitled ‘My Destiny and the Destiny of Those Close to Me in the Labyrinths of History’, which also included meaningful references on how to interpret history and the role of individuals therein in Estonian society at that time. See more about the social and ideological background of the life writing campaigns in the Introduction to this book. Heinrich Uustalu has considered his service in the pre-war Estonian Army and his companions during this time to be important, because, in addition to many group photos, almost two dozen photos of his fellow draftees, with their names, are pasted on the pages of his albums, and all their names are written underneath the photos. On the backs of the photos, he has written the dates and the names of all those in the photographs by row. (The albums are now in the possession of his children.) The logging truck, on which Uustalu worked as a loader, is commandeered to Pärnu in order to carry out the June 1941 deportations. In Pärnu it turns out that the truck is not suitable, because there is no platform for trans-

404

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

porting the deportees, but the team is forced to stay in town overnight and observes the deportations that take place the next morning. Uustalu states that his family was also on the list of deportees, which was found in a local police officer’s desk drawer after the Soviet occupation had been exchanged for the German occupation. He speculates that perhaps the deporters had some transport problems (as with the logging truck), and therefore some people were not taken away (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 13). The elections for delegates to the USSR Supreme Soviet also take place in Estonia on 12 January 1941. These are the first elections during the new social order. In Uustalu’s hometown, someone had ripped down the election posters. When the Red Army re-entered Estonia in September 1944, the biggest wave of political arrests began in and lasted until the end of 1945 (Mertelsmann, Rahi, 2009, 330ff). In 1944–45 about 10,000 people were arrested in Estonia, of whom half died during the first two years. Until 1953, a total of 25,000 to 30,000 people were sent from Estonia to forced labour and prison camps, of whom approximately 11,000 did not return home (Pajur, Tannberg, 2005, 275). I.e. the sparsely populated regions of the Soviet Union with harsh climates, like Siberia, the Far North, and Kazakhstan. Uustalu was not conscripted into the Red Army because, as a man born in 1915, he is not affected by the first mobilisation of conscripts that was announced on 30 June 1941 (covering those born in the years 1919–22), and reserve officers were also not affected. The second, general mobilisation (for men born 1907–18) into the Red Army was not announced until 20 July 1941, when the southern part of Estonia had already fallen to the Germans (Pajur, Tannberg, 2005, 193–194). Only some of the northern rural municipalities in Uustalu’s home county of Pärnu were still under Soviet control. Uustalu’s local area (town and rural municipality of Tõstamaa) was an active battle area in 1941. When we came back after four days, we found 14 people in the town and its vicinity that had been shot. [---] … my cousin was amongst them (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 16). About this Uustalu says the following: Life was such that one saviour was 35 and the other 20 kilometres away (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 16). On 1 September 1941, the Germans conquered the last Red Army outposts on the Estonian mainland, Haapsalu and Virtsu (Pajur, Tannberg, 2005, 184). The general mobilisation of men born in 1904–23 on 30 January 1944 by the Estonian Self-Administration, i.e. the German puppet government, was also supported by Estonian nationalist circles, by calling upon the men to fight against the Red Army that was forcing its way back into Estonia. By 1 April 1944 almost 40,000 men had been called to service by mobilisation (Niglas, Hiio, 2006, 976).

Terje Anepaio 20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29 30

31

32

405

The company in which Uustalu served belong at first to the 1st, then to the 3rd and finally to the 6th Frontier Guard Regiment. On 16 September 1944, the German Command got permission from Hitler to abandon Estonia. In the confusion, thousands of Estonian soldiers tried to stay in Estonia and reach their homes. Cf. the 24 July 1944 entry in Tiit Noormets’ Estonians in World War II. A Chronology in this volume. Federation of Estonian Freedom Fighters (founded in 1992) for those who fought in the German army (http://www.hot.ee/vvliit/). The Home Guard (Omakaitse) was a voluntary territorial defence organisation established following the example of the Estonian Defence League in summer 1941. On 1 December 1941 the Omakaitse had 40 599 members. In October 1943, membership became obligatory for male citizens aged 17–45 (Kuusik, 2006, 800.) In 1944 the Home Guard was declared a ‘military-fascist’ organisation, which in addition to fighting against the Red Army was also accused of violence against the peaceful population. The policeman’s wife and daughter went to Russia, the man himself fled back home from Pärnu and hid behind the stove. He hid out for a few weeks and then went to the rural municipality building and gave himself up. (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 14–15.) This is related to taxes and the sense of land ownership. The German occupation authorities nullified the Soviet land reform, but did not start returning land to the former owners until 1943–44. The taxes levied on farms during the German occupation (sales quotas) were designed to procure foodstuffs, not to force the farms out of existence. Heinrich Uustalu’s close relationship with his father also persisted in later life. In the interview with his older daughter, the latter recalls that after returning from Siberia, her grandparents split up – her grandfather (Heinrich‘s father) lived with his son, and the grandmother (his mother) with her daughter’s family. Uustalu cared for his father until the end of his life, and even stopped working to care for his father who had behavioural problems caused by old age (woman, born in 1944, interview in Pärnu, May 2009.) Cf. Aili Aarelaid-Tart’s analysis of Ailo Ehamaa’s life story in this book. On this day [13 September 1944] we started our wandering through Estonia, one step at a time, Uustalu writes (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 26). In his life story Uustalu writes the following about his arrest: They came on the evening of 28 October at 8 o’clock (KM EKLA f. 350, 145, 11). The arrest order in the personal file is dated 26 November 1944, but his given his signature to confirm its delivery on 27 November 1944 (ERA F 129 N1 S 10967 L 5). Both the documents and the photos are stored in the Estonian State Archives in his personal file in a separate envelope as items confiscated from an internee (ERA F 129 N 1 S 10967 L 33).

406 33

34

35

36 37

38

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

Receiving and sending letters and packages were subordinated to various rules, there were regulations about how many letters could be written per year, what one could write about and who could write to a camp internee (see e.g. Applebaum, 2003, 247–248). His personal file also contains a copy of a secret decision: in April 1948, a commission in Vozhel, Komi ASSR, reviewed Uustalu’s personal file and found that he ‘belonged to the military-fascist organisation, the Home Guard’ and ‘is subject to transfer to a special camp of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs’ (ERAF SM 8, N 1, S 6290, L 13). His close relatives also tried to fight for Heinrich Uustalu by appealing directly to the authorities. In his personal file, there is also mention of the order issued in June 1947 by the assistant of the military prosecutor of the Leningrad Military District of the Internal Forces of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs for the review of his case, the basis for which was an application submitted by his father. The amendment request is not satisfied. (ERAF F 129 N 1 S 10967 L 50–51). About food in the Gulag, see e.g. Appelbaum, 2004, 206–215. The harsh life of the deported family in the place of exile is also recalled by Uustalu’s daughter: ‘But coming back to Siberia – at first they were hard times. Grandmother cooked orache, there was a drought there.’ (Woman, born in 1944, interview in Pärnu, May 2009.) e.g. a conversation with a mother’s friend is recalled, who talks about the pressure to have sexual relations with a KGB official, in order not to be separated from one’s child or other such reasons (Lazda, 2005, 6).

References Adler, N. (2004), The Gulag survivor: beyond the Soviet system. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. Applebaum, A. (2004), Gulag: a history. New York: Anchor Books. Hiiemäe, M. (2003), “Nõukogudeaegsed jõulud”, in: S. Olesk and A. Krikmann (eds.) Võim ja kultuur. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, Eesti Kultuuriloo ja Folkloristika Keskus, 339–383. Hinrikus, R. (2003), “Eesti elulugude kogu ja selle uurimise perspektiive”, in: S. Olesk and A. Krikmann (eds.) Võim ja kultuur. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, Eesti Kultuuriloo ja Folkloristika Keskus, 171–215. Hinrikus, R. and E. Kõresaar (2004), “A Brief Overview of Life History Collection and Research in Estonia”, in: T. Kirss, E.Kõresaar and M.Lauristin (eds.) She who remembers survives. Interpreting Estonian women’s post-Soviet life stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 19–34. Jolluck, K. R. (1995), Gender, identity and the Polish experience of War 1939–1945. Ann Arbor: A Bell & Howell Company.

Terje Anepaio

407

Kirss, T. (2003), “Kolm eesti naist elulugudes”, in: S. Olesk and A. Krikmann (eds.) Võim ja kultuur. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, Eesti Kultuuriloo ja Folkloristika Keskus, 215–245. Kirss, T. (2004), “Three Generations of Estonian Women: Selves, Lives, Texts”, in: T. Kirss, E. Kõresaar and M. Lauristin (eds.) She who remembers survives. Interpreting Estonian women’s post-Soviet life stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 122–144. Kirss, T. (2005), “Survivorship and the Eastern Exile: Estonian Women’s Life Narratives of the 1941 and 1949 Siberian Deportations”, Journal of Baltic Studies, 36 (1): 13–38. Kirss, T. (2006), “Mäletamine ja veendumus: ühe eesti mehe elu lood”, in: S. Olesk and J. Kronberg (compilers), T. Saluvere (ed.) Ruti raamat: artikleid, lugusid ja mälestusi [pühendusteos Rutt Hinrikusele]. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuusem, 109–128. Kirss, T. (ed.) (2006), Rändlindude pesad. Eestlaste elulood võõrsil, Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, Toronto Ülikooli Eesti õppetool. Kurvet-Käosaar, L. (2000), “‘Naistega juhtus teisi asju’: Teine maailmasõda, vägivald ja rahvuslik identiteet Käbi Laretei teoses ‘Mineviku heli’ ja Agate Nesaule teoses ‘Naine merevaigus’”, Ariadne Lõng. Nais-ja meesuurimuse ajakiri, 1/2: 84–97. Kuusik, A. (2006), “Estonian Omakaitse in 1941–1944”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Report of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian Foundation for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 797–803. Kõresaar, E. (2004a), “Private and Public, Individual and Collective in Linda’s Life Story”, in: T. Kirss, E. Kõresaar and M.Lauristin (eds.) She who remembers survives. Interpreting Estonian women’s post-Soviet life stories. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 89–111. Kõresaar, E. (2004b), “The Notion of Rupture in Estonian Narrative Memory: On the Construction of Meaning in Autobiographical Texts on the Stalinist Experience”, Ab Imperio, 4: 313–339. Kõresaar, E. (2005), Elu ideoloogiad. Kollektiivne mälu ja autobiograafiline minevikutõlgendus eestlaste elulugudes. Tartu: Eesti Rahva Muuseum. Kõresaar, E. (2007), “The Remembrance Culture of the Second World War in Estonia as Presented in Post-Soviet Life Stories: On the Logic of Comparison between the Soviet and the Nazi Occupations”, in: A. Mihkelev and B. Kalnačs (eds.) We have something in common: The Baltic memory. Tallinn: The Under and Tuglas Literature Centre of The Estonia Academy of Sciences, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia, 35–61. Laar, M. (1988a), “Veidi meie ajaloolisest mälust”, Kultuur ja Elu, 4: 11–13. Laar, M. (1988b), “1. aruanne ajaloolise pärimuse kogumisest”, Kultuur ja Elu, 5: 9. Laar, M. (1988c), “Elav ajalugu. Õuduste aeg”, Vikerkaar, 11: 76–78.

408

Heinrich Uustalu – Between the Cogwheels

Lazda, M. (2005), “Women, Nation, and Survival: Latvian Women in Siberia 1941–1957”, Journal of Baltic Studies, 36 (1): 1–13. Lauristin, M. and P. Vihalemm (1997), “Recent Historical Developments in Estonia: Three Stages of Transition (1987–1997)”, in: M. Lauristin, P. Vihalemm, K. E. Rosengren and L.Weibull (eds.) Return to the Western world. Cultural and political perspectives on the Estonian post-Communist transition. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 73–127. Lehmann, A. (1986), Gefangenschaft und Heimkehr. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in der Sowjetunion. München: Verlag C.H. Beck. Lotman, J. (1999), Semiosfäärist. Tallinn: Vagabund. Niglas, A. and T. Hiio (2006), “Estonian Border Defence Regiments in 1944”, in: T. Hiio, M. Maripuu and I. Paavle (eds.) Estonia 1940–1945. Report of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn: Estonian Foundation for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, 969–999. Mertelsmann, O. and A. Rahi-Tamm (2009), “Soviet mass violence in Estonia revisited”, Journal of Genocide Research, 11(2): 307–322. Pajur, A. and T. Tannberg (eds.) (2005), Eesti ajalugu VI. Vabadussõjast taasiseseisvumiseni, Õpetatud Eesti Selts. Tartu: Ilmamaa. Rahi-Tamm, A. (2004), “Küüditamised Eestis”, in: R. Reinvelt (ed.) Eestlaste küüditamine. Mineviku varjud tänases päevas. Artiklid ja elulood. Tartu: Korp! Filiae Patriae, 15–57.

Notes on the Contributors Aili Aarelaid-Tart is a Research Professor and a head of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. She started to take an interest in biographical research in 1996, at first interviewing Estonian intellectuals about their mentalities during the period of Soviet occupation. Articles of Aarelaid-Tart have appeared in the Journal of Baltic Studies, Socis, Sociological Perspectives, Nationalities Papers; by her is published a chapter titled ‘Estonian-inclined Communists as Marginals’ in the book Biographical Research in Eastern Europe (2002, London: Ashgate). Terje Anepaio is a Research Fellow at the Estonian National Museum, has an MA in ethnology and is currently preparing her doctoral dissertation on the (re)adaptation of the victims of Stalinist mass repressions to life in Estonia after returning from Siberia in the 1950s and 1960s, explored from the standpoint of oral history. Furthermore, she has published studies on the practices of commemorating the deported during the postSoviet period and has also made a documentary on this subject. Her other field of interest is documenting the daily life of the so-called mature socialism (1960–1980) on the basis of both visual and oral historical sources. She also has considerable experience in the museological exposition of the everyday life of the late Soviet period. Rutt Hinrikus is a Research Fellow at the Estonian Cultural History Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum. Her main areas of interest include cultural history and Estonian literature of the fist half of the 20th century. During the final period of perestroika, she initiated the collection of life histories in Estonia and has continued as the leader of this effort to this day. She has been the head of the Estonian Life Stories Association since its establishment in 1996 and is the curator of the collection of life histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives. She is the compiler and editor of several collections of life histories, the last of which, Estonian Life Stories, was a joint project with Tiina Ann Kirss and was published in 2009 by the Central European University Press. She is also the author of many articles introducing and analysing the collection of Estonian life histories. Tiiu Jaago is an Associate Professor for Estonian folklore research at the University of Tartu. Her fields of research are oral history and poetics of Estonian old folksong (PhD on the subject in 1991). She is the editor of several books and readers on folksong studies and popular narrated history (incl. Lives, Histories and Identities, 2002; Tradition and Interpretation,

410

Notes on Contributors

2003 in Estonian) as well as on history of folklore studies (Studies in Estonian Folkloristics and Ethnology: A Reader and Reflexive History, Tartu UP 2005, together with Kristin Kuutma). Her current project is on the practices of popular memory: continuities and discontinuities in remembering the 20th century. Tiina Ann Kirss has been Professor of Estonian Literature at the University of Tartu since 2006. Previously, she was Assistant Professor of Estonian Literature at the University of Toronto. Her primary research interests are 20th century comparative European literary history, autobiography and life histories, oral history, Siberian deportations in the Baltics, trauma theory and feminist theory. She is co-editor (with Ene Kõresaar & Marju Lauristin) of the collection of articles She Who Remembers, Survives: Interpreting Estonian Women’s Post-Soviet Life Stories (Tartu UP 2004). She has published a collection of Estonian life narratives of the 1944 flight into emigration and life history interviews with Estonians abroad, along with two articles analysing social memory, commemoration and the concept of ‘postmemory’ in the Estonian disapora – Rändlindude pesad: eestlaste elulood võõrsil (‘The Nest of Migrating Birds: Life Histories of Estonians Abroad’, Estonian Literary Museum 2007). Recently she has published (with Rutt Hinrikus) an anthology of Estonian life histories at the Central European University Press (2009). She is editor of the special issues Women in the Baltics (2003) and Baltic Life Stories (2005) of the Journal of Baltic Studies. Ene Kõresaar is Senior Researcher of Memory Culture Studies at the University of Tartu. Her main fields of research are the study of socialist everyday life, oral history and memory of socialism and World War II. She has been working on culture and politics of remembering and life story telling since 1998 focusing on Estonian post-Soviet narrative memory of the 20th century (a book Ideologies of Life: Collective Memory and Autobiographical Meaning-making of the Past in Estonian Life Stories, ENM, 2005, in Estonian). She has been a co-editor of several books and special journal issues on post-Socialism and memory including She Who Remembers, Survives: Interpreting Estonian Women’s Post-Soviet Life Stories (Tartu UP, 2004, co-edited with Tiina Kirss and Marju Lauristin); Memory between Disciplines: Inter- and Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Current Memory Studies (special issue of the journal Trames, 2008, co-edited with Ester Võsu and Kristin Kuutma) and Burden of Remembering. Recollections and Representations of Twentieth Century Memories (Helsinki, SKS, 2009, co-edited with Epp Lauk and Kristin Kuutma). Her articles have been published in Journal of Baltic Studies, E-lore,

Notes on Contributors

411

Balgarska ethnologia, Folklore, Ethnologia Fennica. Her current project is on the continuities and discontinuities in remembering the 20th century (together with Tiiu Jaago and Aigi Rahi-Tamm). Olaf Mertelsmann is Associate Professor in Contemporary History and former Head of the Centre for the Study of Soviet History at the University of Tartu. His main fields of research are social and economic history of the USSR and the Baltic states, especially during late Stalinism. He is the editor of Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt bis zu Stalins Tod. Estland 1939–1953 (Hamburg 2005) and The Sovietization of the Baltic States, 1940–1956 (Tartu 2003). He has published widely on late Stalinism including in journals as Europe-Asia Studies, Journal of Genocide Research, Cahiers du Monde russe, Journal of Baltic Studies. Tiit Noormets is the Head of the Estonian National Archives’ Publication Service. His fields of research is Estonian military history of the 20th century, especially the history of the armed resistance movement. His pubications include numerous anthologies of archival documents on the Nazi and Soviet occupations in Estonia. His investigations on the Estonian Border Guard in 1940–1941, the mobilisation into the Red Army in 1941, and the Soviet destruction battalions in 1944–1954 were included into the Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity (2006 and 2009). Aigi Rahi-Tamm is Senior Research Fellow of Archival Studies at the University of Tartu. She is working on a study of repression policy and social history in Soviet and Nazi Germany periods, her main field of research is Stalinist deportations. She is also one of the advocators in implementing oral history in Estonian historiography. In 1998, she published a book in Estonian on the 1949 March deportation using a wide oral history material collected by herself. She was also one of the authors in She Who Remembers, Survives: Interpreting Estonian Women’s Post-Soviet Life Stories (Tartu UP 2004). Since then, her interest has been on the complementary use of oral history and archive materials in studying the history of Stalinism.

Authors Index Aarelaid, A. – 276, 283, 295 Aarelaid-Tart, A. – 283, 295 Adler, N. – 254, 260, 386, 396, 400, 406 Ahlbäck, A. and V. Kivimäki – 18, 29 Allen, R. C. – 274 Ant, J. – 274, 328, 340, 341 Apo, S. – 339, 341 Applebaum, A. – 406 Aru, K. and F. Paulman – 286, 295 Arvidsson, A. – 345, 361 Ashplant, T., G. Dawson and M. Roper – 1, 10, 17, 19, 21, 28–29 Assmann, A. – 17, 24, 29, 298, 294, 314 Assmann, J. – 368 Atkinson, R. – 27, 29 Bakhtin, M. – 295 Baron, N. and P. Gatrell – 256, 260 Barron, D., S. Davies and R. Wiggins – 26, 29 Battaglia, D. – 343, 361 Bennich-Björkman, L. – 274, 276, 295 Berger, P. and T. Luckmann – 16, 19, 29 Bergson, A. – 264, 274 Bernd, U. – 274 Birn, R. B. – 22, 29 Brüggemann, K. – 27, 29 Brüggemann, K. and A. Kasekamp – 1, 8, 24, 27, 29, 30, 358, 360, 361 Burkart, G. – 15, 30 Connerton, P. – 303, 314 Echterhoff, G. and M. Saar, M – 369, 382 Ennuste, Ü. – 289, 296 Erll, A. – 303, 315

Figes, O. – 259, 274 Filtzer, D. – 274–275 Fischer-Rosenthal, W. – 344, 361 Fitzpatrick, S. – 259, 271, 275 Fivush, R. – 323, 341 Fogu, C. and W. Kansteiner – 235, 260 Gross, T. – 3, 30 Gross, T. J. – 240, 260 Halbwachs, M. – 17, 24, 30, 298, 315 Hall, S. – 289, 295 Harvilahti, L. – 339, 341 Hašek, J. – 271, 275, 382 Heer, H. and K. Naumann – 274–275 Hellbeck, J. – 272, 275 Hiiemäe, M. – 339, 341, 385, 406 Hiio, T. – 12, 28, 30 Hiio, T. and H. Piirimäe – 245, 260 Hiio, T. and P. Kaasik – 12, 28, 30 Hiio, T. Maripuu, M. and I. Paavle – 28, 30, 253, 260, 274–275 Hinrikus, R. – 3, 6, 7, 25, 28, 30, 289, 295, 299, 308, 315, 370, 382, 386, 388, 399, 406 Hinrikus, R. and E. Kõresaar – 25, 30, 306, 315, 403, 406 Hirst, W. and D. Manier – 369, 382 Hoffmann, D. – 272, 275 Hoffmann, J. – 274–275 Huima, L. – 5, 31 Ilf, I. and J. Petrov – 271, 275 Isupov, V. – 270, 275 Jaago, T. – 25, 31, 341 Jaago, T. and E. Kõresaar – 25, 31 Jaago, T., E. Kõresaar and A. RahiTamm – 4, 31, 235, 260 Jahn, P. – 263, 275 Jakobson, A. – 304, 315 Jaks, I. – 314–315

414

Authors Index

Jannsen, E. – 28, 31 Jõesalu, K. – 346, 361 Johnston, H. and A. Aarelaid-Tart – 280, 289, 296 Jolluck, K. – 399, 406 Jones, J. – 264, 271 Judt, T. – 243, 260 Jureit, U. – 15, 31 Jürjo, I. – 259–260 Jurs, A. – 289, 296 Kaalep, A. – 339–340, 342 Kaasik, P. – 11, 28, 31, 265, 271 Kaasik, P. and M. Raudvassar – 12, 28, 31 Kalvo, A. – 289, 296 Kansteiner, W. – 315 Karjahärm, T. – 276, 296 Karonen, P. and K. Tarjamo – 18, 31 Kasekamp, A. – 326, 339–340, 342, 355 Kattago, S. – 21, 31 Kiljako, D. Fridental, S. – 302, 315 Kirss, T. – 5, 6, 31, 32, 339–340, 342, 382, 388, 393–395, 399, 403, 407 Kirss, T., E. Kõresaar and M. Lauristin – 24, 32 Kõresaar, E. – 4, 6, 7, 18, 21, 29, 32, 298, 315, 344, 346–347, 353, 356–358, 360, 362, 381–382, 388–390, 392–393, 395, 403, 407 Kosenkranius, L. – 258, 260 Köstlin, K. – 8, 32, 343, 359, 362 Kraft, Ü. – 246, 244, 258, 260 Kross, J. – 249, 260, 294, 315 Kruus, H. – 20, 32, 301, 308, 315 Külaots, V. – 301, 315 Kurvet-Käosaar, L. – 399, 407 Kuusberg, P. – 289, 296, 304, 315 Kuusik, A. – 253, 260, 405, 407 Laar, M. – 3, 9, 32, 247, 260, 281, 285, 287, 296, 339, 342, 385, 407

Laar, M. and L. Suurmaa – 350, 359, 362 Laar, M., L. Vahtre and H. Valk – 9, 32 Laasi, E. – 238, 260 LaCapra, D. – 382 Larin, P. – 283–286, 292, 294, 296 Lauristin, M. and P. Vihalemm – 385, 408 Leberecht, H. – 304, 315 Ledeneva, A. – 264, 276 Leentsman, L. and E. Sõgel – 286, 295 Leetmaa, M. – 249, 261 Lehmann, A. – 400–401, 408 Lehti, M., M. Jutila and M. Jokisipilä – 1, 6, 24, 32 Levi, P. – 254, 261 Lewin, M. – 264, 276 Liljeström, M. – 21, 22, 32–33 Lindström, J. – 369, 377–378, 382 Löffler, K. – 343, 348, 362 Lofgren, S. – 247, 261 Lomsky-Feder, E. – 23, 357, 362 Loorits, O. – 20, 33 Loosaar, E. – 294, 296 Lotman, J. – 23, 33, 343, 398, 408 Luiga, H. – 247, 261 Lukkari, M. – 327, 339–340, 342 Made, T. – 366, 382 Mäesalu, V. – 289–290, 296 Mälksoo, L. – 252, 261 Mandel, M. – 328, 342 Männik, E. – 304, 315 Maripuu, M. – 242, 261 Maripuu, M. and P. Kaasik – 235, 261 Mawsdley, E. – 274, 276 Merridale, C. – 259, 276 Mertelsmann, O. – 20, 33, 240, 261, 264, 272–274, 276, 280, 296, 314–315 Mertelsmann, O. and A. Rahi-Tamm – 249, 253, 261, 398, 404, 408

Authors Index Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt – 274, 276 Misiunas, R. and R. Taagepera – 274, 276 Misztal, B. – 17, 33 Moskoff, W. – 264, 276 Müller, S. O. – 355–356, 362 Niedermüller, P. – 3, 33 Niglas, A. and T. Hiio – 12, 33, 245, 261, 404, 408 Noormets T., T. Nõmm, H. Ojalo, O. Raidla, R. Rosenthal, T. Taavet, and M. Ōun – 283, 279, 289, 296 Noormets, T. – 11, 33, 247, 261, 307, 315 Nora, P. – 1, 33 Nurm, R. – 279, 290, 294, 296 Õispuu, L. – 244, 253, 262, 307, 316 Ojalo, H. – 290, 296, 307, 316 Oll, A. – 254, 261 Onken, E.-C. – 1, 8, 10, 21, 33, 353, 359, 362 Oras, A. – 253, 261 Osokina, E. – 264, 267, 276 Paavle, I. and P. Kaasik – 240, 261 Pähklimägi, A. – 303, 316 Paju, I. – 312, 316 Pajula, E. – 338, 342 Pajur, A. – 238, 241, 262 Pajur, A. and T. Tannberg – 274, 276, 389, 404 Pajur, A., T. Tannberg and S. Vahtre – 9, 33 Pärn, L. – 301, 316 Patterson, W. – 343, 362 Peegel, J. – 289, 292, 294, 296, 303, 305, 316 Pekkarinen, J. and J. Pohjonen – 249, 262 Pihlau, J. – 238, 262 Plaat, J. – 267, 277

415

Põldmäe, J. – 253, 262 Pusta, A. and P. Izmestjev – 302, 303, 316 Rahi, A. – 254, 262 Rahi-Tamm, A. – 28, 238, 240, 258, 262, 339, 342, 397–398, 408 Raigo, V. – 306, 316 Raudvassar, L. – 326, 342 Rebas, H. – 326–327, 339, 342 Relvik, H. – 324, 326, 329, 339, 341, 342 Repson, A. – 294, 296 Roolaine, K. – 370, 382 Roos, J. – 285, 288–289, 296–297 Rosenthal, G. – 343–344, 348, 356, 357, 363 Ruutsoo, R. – 302, 316 Salo, V. – 238, 262, 326, 339, 342 Sarv, E. – 243, 262 Scheide, C. – 300, 316 Scherrer, J. – 29, 33, 301, 316, 353, 363 Schütze, F. – 16–17, 23, 33, 343, 345, 357, 363 Skultans, V. – 3, 33 Smith, D. – 1, 33 Subbi, Ü. – 372, 382 Susi, H. – 366, 368–369, 377, 382 Taavet, T. – 307, 316 Talve, I. – 274–280, 296 Tamm, I – 27, 33 Tamm, M. – 20, 34, 308, 314, 316, 369, 383 Tamm, M. and P. Petersoo – 1, 27, 34, 369, 383 Tannberg, T. – 274, 277 Tarand, H. – 247, 262 Taremäe, H. – 366, 369, 381, 383 Thoen, A. – 304, 306–316 Thompson, P. – 294, 296 Tõnismägi, H. – 253, 262 Tshapenko, A. – 238, 262

416

Authors Index

Tulving, E. – 330, 331, 342 Tuulik, Ü. – 305, 312, 316 Uluots, Ü. – 235, 262 Undusk, J. – 19–20, 34 Usai, U. – 6, 34, 241–242, 262, 265, 277, 306, 314, 316 Uustalu, E. and R. Moora – 296, 326, 340–342 Vahtre, S. – 328, 339–342 Valge, J. – 14, 34

Vanaselja, N. – 301, 316 Varblane, L. – 328, 340, 342 Vaska, L. – 366, 369, 372, 379, 383 Voinovich, V. – 271, 277 Weiner, A. – 240–241, 262, 273, 277 Welzer, H. – 24, 34 Welzer, H. and C. Lenz – 1, 34 Wertsch, J. V. –19, 21, 34, 369, 383 Zägel, J. – 353, 355, 363 Zubkova, E. – 274, 277

Word Index Aardemäe, Lieutenant – 61 Aava, Regimental Commissar – 136 Aavik, Johannes linguist – 205, 229 Adams, Arnold – 312 Adaptation (see coping; survival) Adjustment – 289, 333 Affe – 120, 141 Afghanistan – 11, 122, 130, 264, 269 – War – 26 Agency – 5, 264, 266, 366, 371–372, 377 Agent – 14–15, 336, 338, 350 Co-actor – 338 Agricultural Ministry of the Soviet Union – 157 Air-raids (see Bombing) Alajõe [defensive] line – 59 Alemann, Sturmbannführer (Major) – 187, 354–355 Allies – 37, 40, 42, 46, 128, 171, 177, 218 Allied – forces – 41, 43, 45, 283 – powers – 37, 41 All-Union – 68, 292 ALMAVÜ – 70, 73 American – 65, 151, 179 – Army – 367–368 – sector – 222 – zone – 222, 367–368, 376 Amnesty – 14, 249, 252 – Law of 1995 – 70, 254 Anglo-Saxons – 128, 141, 283 Anijaago, August – 140 Anniversary of the Estonian Republic (February 24) – 50, 57, 86, 165, 328 Anti – aircraft cannon (flak) – 217, 370–371 – German – 279, 327 – Russian – 378

Anecdotes – 289 – Soviet – 11, 14, 235–240, 258, 295, 328–329, 344, 356 – submarine – 121 – tank battery/gun – 149, 152 company – 59, 246 regiment – 238 squad/unit – 51, 54, 240 teams – 109 trenches – 188 Arbeitsdienst – 189, 324 Archangelsk – 11, 86 Archenemy Germans – 308–309, 314 Russians – 309 National enemy – 314 Transformation of image (to Russians) – 309 Sworn enemy – 20 Archival – revolution – 259 Documents/materials/sources – 7, 25, 244–245, 251, 256, 259, 273, 309, 392 peculiarity of Soviet – 256 Bureaucratic documents – 273 Army Groups (see German Armed Forces) Artillery – 59, 78, 83, 105–106, 109, 112, 172, 216, 219, 247 – crew/men/soldier – 111, 152, 153, 285, 305 – guns – 175 – units – 41, 152 Air defence – 43 Aru, Karl Major General – 302 Aryan race – 220 Asiatics – 64, 147 Assault – 108, 137 Attack – 52, 72, 113, 150, 152, 154, 161, 167 Air attack – 143 Counter-attack – 39–40

418

Word Index

Auce (Latvia) (see Kuramaa pocket) Augsberger, Franz Brigadeführer – 197, 202, 208 Ausbilder – 216–217, 222 Arbus, Nikolai – 173 Autonomous Republic of Germany – 147 Avaldi, Major E. – 110, 311 Avinurme – 59–60, 84, 247 Axis Forces / Powers – 37–38, 40–41 Bade, Oberscharführer – 197–198 Baglietto (MTB) design – 167 Bagration, Operation – 43 Balkan Offensive – 38 Baltic – 21, 294 – countries / states – 1, 13, 20, 24, 72, 110, 161, 235, 237, 239, 265, 268, 322, 351 – Front – 112 – German Aristocracy (see Ethnicity – Baltic Germans) – Human Chain 1989 – 158, 348 BAM – 64, 72 Baikonur-Amur Mainline railway – 72 Bandits – 240, 253, 398 Banditry – 240 Barbarossa, Operation – 38, 242, 264 Batrak, Lieutenant Colonel – 250 Battery, horse-drawn – 51, 149 Battle Kursk (Arch) – 41, 109, 117 Leningrad (Siege of) – 42, 55, 110, 169–170, 360 Saaremaa – 153, 160, 178 Võnnu, (Cesis) 1919 – 20, 192, 203, 354 Beet soup – 54 Beretaka [weapons] – 124 Berlin – 36–37, 46, 157, 193–194, 199, 217, 219, 222, 253 Belorussians (see Ethnicity) Bildungsroman – 268

Biography – 16, 23, 67, 184–185, 360 Antithetic – 347 Autobiography – 2, 317, 323, 370 ‘right’ – 347 ‘right to’ – 23, 347 ‘wrong’ – 347 Biographical – 2, 4, 7, 15–17, 19, 293, 348, 356–357 – constructions of identity – 344, 386 Narratives – 1–2, 4, 17–18, 23, 317, 324, 343–344, 369, 372 Meta-narrative – 302, 378 necessity for narration – 356 (re)structuring of the past – 344 syncretism – 348 habitual social biographies – 18 life history – 10, 274, 318, 324, 327, 333, 343 life narrative – 304, 317, 319, 325, 366, 371 life story – 4–8, 10–13, 15–18, 21, 23, 25–27 law of genre – 331 Bolshevist dictatorship – 177, 183, 320 Bombing – 287, 365, 370 Finland – 164, 327 Germany – 217 Helsinki – 168, 333 March 1944 Narva – 40, 72 Pärnu – 60 Tallinn – 72, 194 Brezhnev, Leonid Ilyich – 72, 300 British – 141, 170, 173, 217–219, 269, 368, 375–376 – and Commonwealth forces – 37 Bronze Soldier (see War-monument) Buhanka – 133 Bukhara – 131 Burz[h]uika stove – 134

Word Index Canada – 46, 146, 208, 249, 276 Capital – Ideological – 379 Social – 290 Symbolic – 6 Capitalist – 208, 282 Capitulation – 41, 46, 219, 367, 381 Carnivalesque – 291 Caucasus – 40, 62, 67 Cause-and-effect associations – 232 Censor – 312 Censorship – 302 Uncensored – 306 Central Asia – 139, 266, 268–269, 272 Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party – 39, 43, 107, 280, 302, 307, 310 Central Kazakhstan – 89 Central Office of Prison Camps – 64 Chain dogs (see German (Nazi) occupation) Chervonets – 96, 98 Chemnitz – 366, 368 Choice – – between two evils (discourse) – 15 – making process – 15 – of entertainment – 190 – of jobs / occupation – 221, 232 – of tactics – 245 Choiceless choice – 371–372 Clear – 371 Collective – 15 Complex nature of – 358 Conflicting – 347 Construction of a – 377 Critical reflection of – 356 Default – 353 Estonian men/soldiers – 5, 14, 26, 292, 300 Service in German military – 12, 41, 216, 323 Ethnocentric narrative – 6

419

Finland’s choices, independence or destruction – 170 Forced – 302 Generation – 304 Individual/Personal – 2, 4–9, 14– 16, 18–19, 177, 224, 244, 256, 305, 312, 317, 319–327, 336– 338, 340, 347, 349, 352–353, 371–373, 376–378, 380, 390, 398 Logic of – 15, 373 Motives and – 15, 355 Margin of – 305 No choice – 50, 372 Narrative choice – 323 Political – 19 Rational – 290, 372 Voluntary – 276 Right choice – 304 Christianization – 308 Classified – Information – 120 – regulations and instructions – 114, 117 State business – 125 Coastguard regiment (see German Armed Forces – Wehrmacht) Cleansing (see deportation) Cod Church – 205 Cold War – 19–21, 356 Collective – – consciousness – 276 – experience – 3 – farm – 67, 89, 93–94, 96, 97, 123–124, 132, 136–137, 148– 150, 157, 334, 401 Kolkhoz – 14, 212, 226, 230, 267, 282, 318, 347 Sovkhoz – 269, 272 – memory (see memory) Collectivization (forced) – 72, 264 Commemoration – 8, 72, 360–361, 379, 403 – Rituals – 26

420

Word Index

Commemorative – Literature – 289 – Medals – 9 Communism – 9, 20–21, 55, 116, 127, 243, 276, 302, 361 Communist – – informer – 165, 328 – Party – 7, 114, 161, 188, 290, 292, 347, 351, 353 – Party Political Bureau – 105 Communists – 12, 26, 54, 90, 115, 188–189, 197, 219, 258– 259, 265–266, 280, 292, 381 Rebellion in Estonia 1924 – 145, 160, 259 Red fighters - 201 Reds – 192, 283, 350, 354 Comparison – 232, 235, 251, 294, 332, 339, 345, 347, 353 – of two evils – 20 Concentration camp – Auschwitz-Birkenau – 353 Klooga SS-Arbeitslager – 208, 352 Conscription – – by Red Army – 11–13 – by Germans – 12, 27, 41 Forced – 10, 41 Legitimisation of – 18 Voluntary – 43 Consumption – 274 Hierarchy of – 267 Continuation War, 1941–1944 – 9, 41, 327, 338, 359 Continuity – 361 National – 345, 357 Convicts – 68, 72, 119 Cope – 99, 262, 290–291, 320, 324, 400 Coping – 349, 352 – strategies – 283, 290, 293, 401 Coup d’etat – 36 Takeover – 211, 298 Courland Pocket (see Kuramaa) Criminal Code 1926 –

– Paragraph 58 – 69, 73 – Paragraph 58.1a – 86 – Paragraph 58.1b – 252, 258 – Paragraph 59/3 – 68, 73 Cuckoos (snipers) – 154 Cultural – – trauma (see trauma) – turn – 283–289 Czech Hell (Tšehhi põrgu) – 5, 46, 180, 365–366, 368–371, 374– 375, 377–381 Czechoslovakia – 5, 26, 368, 376 Border – 367 Danzig – 371 Day of Victory, June 23 – 203, 295 Debiça (Heidelager) SS training camp – 40, 187, 196, 199, 203, 350 Defence League (Kaitseliit) – 105, 116, 143, 145, 160, 282, 290, 389, 405 Demonstration – 208 – Freedom Square, Tallinn – 145, 160 Denmark – 13, 36, 139, 216–218, 371 Deportation – 5, 38, 52, 214–211, 221, 235, 240, 290, 321–322, 371, 376, 388, 402 – of ethnic groups – 264 – of relatives – 259, 290, 378, 398–399 – story (stories) – 211, 334–335, 337, 388 Estonian officers in June 13–14th 1941 – 52, 203, 213, 226, 235, 241 June deportation 1941 – 10, 70, 165, 265, 346, 374, 378, 403– 404 March deportation 1949 – 13, 14, 67, 72, 155, 161, 180, 182, 185, 221, 280, 319, 321–322, 379, 397–398

Word Index Mass (great) deportations – 38, 51, 187, 203, 265, 308, 322, 346 Deserter – 122, 133, 175, 240, 283, 353, 360, 371 Destruction battalions – 10, 14, 38, 133, 143, 188, 240, 244, 257, 265, 281, 359 Scorched-earth policy/tactics – 38, 240, 391 Dialogue – 3, 8, 23, 137, 304, 317, 321, 333, 343, 375 Dialogical mechanisms of narrating and remembering – 343 Dortmund – 217–218, 370–371 Double mental standards – Double-mindedness – 283 Doublethink – 346 Outwardly Soviet, internally Estonian minded – 290, 293 Dönitz, Karl Admiral – 219 Dünaburg – Daugavpils (Latvia) – 53–54 Eastern Front (Russian) – 2, 39– 43, 45, 215, 313, 350, 354, 365, 373, 381 Ebenrode (see Prisoner of war (POW) camp) Economies of favour – 264 Eestirand (ship) – 143 Ego-document – 259 Autobiography (see Biography) Diary – 25, 182, 235, 259, 268, 280, 283, 294, 305–306, 314 Letter – 25, 235 Memoir – 6 Diaspora – 289, 379 Fictionalized – 366 Hybrid form – 305 Milieu de mémoire – 357 Memoirs – 4, 8, 17, 25, 27, 171, 235, 244–250, 256–253, 259, 279, 292–302, 309, 312–314, 330–331, 345, 358, 360

421

– of Estonian generals – 301 – of the victors – 300 Czech Hell survivors – 366, 369, 379–380 Edited/Editing – 301, 331 Emergent – 370 Labour Battalion – 298, 306, 310 Published – 26, 249, 302–303, 312–313, 368 Recorded – 274 Soldiers’/Veterans’ – 302, 348, 379 Uncensored – 306 War – 22–23, 291, 310, 399 Women’s –399 Interview – 16, 153, 224, 301, 312, 314, 338 Life history – 10, 27, 160, 240, 251–256, 274, 292–293, 345, 358, 387, 406 (see Biographical) Life story (see Biographical) Oral history – 259 Ellam, Johan – 208, 211, 231 Elmik, August – 210 Emigrant – 232, 253, 353 – culture – 356 Emigré – 4, 19–20, 22, 224 Emajõgi River Front – 44, 175, 280 Endla Theatre, Pärnu – 57 English – 129–130, 133, 136, 177, 194, 242 Erfahrungsgedächtnis (A. Assmann) (see Biography) Escape – 11, 79, 125, 131, 165, 176– 177, 214, 232, 235, 241, 244, 254, 269, 337 – (from) conscription – 27 – from Czech Hell – 5, 220–221, 366, 371 – from encirclement – 244–249 – from Germans – 54 – from labour battalion – 125

422

Word Index

– from labour camp – 63–65, 68, 267–268 – from Red Army – 11, 52, 242 – from Soviet POW camp – 391, 395 – preparations – 249 – to Estonia – 259 – to Finland – 14, 43, 249, 253 – to Germany – 187, 231, 259 – to Sweden – 176, 231, 244 – to the West – 44, 398 Allowed to escape – 280 Mass escape to the West in September 1944 – 44, 231 Great Escape (see refugee) Option of escape – 376 Estonia (see Republic of Estonia) – Soviet Socialist Republic (ESSR) – 37–38 – Theatre – 101 Estonian – – Agricultural Academy – 156 – Cultural History Archives – 4, 25, 71, 97, 116, 140, 185, 203, 229, 256, 314, 319, 338 Estonian Ethnic Military Units (by uniform) Finnish (uniform) 200th Infantry Regiment (JR200) – 14, 42, 174, 185, 326, 340 German (uniform) Estonian Legion (1942–1943) – 12, 27, 40–42, 71, 160, 191, 207–208, 218–219, 280, 284, 323, 359, 375, 381 1st Regiment – 208 Battalion Narva – 27, 40–42, 192, 199, 207, 350, 354, 359– 360 Legionnaires – 282–283 Legion boys – 160 Volunteers – 12 SS-Volunteer Brigade (1943– 1944) – 12

33rd Training and Reserve SSGrenadier Battalion – 187 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division (1944–1945) – 28, 42–43, 45–46, 313, 367 (also known as Armed SS Estonian Volunteer Division) Reserve and Training regiments – 208 45th Regiment (see also Maitla, Paul) 1st Battalion – 381 47th Regiment – 231, 367 (see also Rebane, Alfons) 86th Battalion – 219 (see also Rebane, Alfons) Luftwaffe Air Force Auxiliary Service / Luftwaffe Hilfsdienst – 218– 219, 224, 245 Wehrmacht Defence Units Frontier Guard Regiments – FGR (1944–1945) – 13, 19, 28, 42, 58–60, 246–249, 252, 391, 395 1FGR – 59, 405 3rd Company – 82 2FGR – 28, 59, 246, 249 3FGR – 59, 246–248, 252, 405 2nd Battalion – 244 6FGR (Border Guard) – 249, 405 Police Battalions – 39, 165, 176, 323–324, 326, 336 37th – 381 st 1 Pärnu County Territorial Regiment (Omakaitse) – 82 Red Army (uniform) 22nd Estonian Territorial Rifle Corps (1940–1941) – 10, 37– 39, 148, 238, 241 8th Estonian Rifle Corps (1942– 1945) – 11, 13–14, 40–41, 44– 46, 107–108, 111–115, 151,

Word Index 153, 160, 247, 269, 276, 283– 284, 287, 290, 292, 300–302, 304, 306–307, 311 7th Rifle Division – 112, 114 359th Rifle Regiment – 106, 149, 152 249th Rifle Division – 109, 114 917th [Rifle] Regiment – 136– 138 921st Rifle Regiment – 108– 109, 113 6th Rifle Company – 108 1st Estonian Special Reserve Corps – 107 7th Estonian Artillery Division – 105 Republic of Estonia (uniform) Estonian Army 2nd Division Tartu (1920–1940) 3rd Squadron Cavalry Regiment – 50 Ski-cyclist Regiment (SkiBicycle Company) – 50 3rd Division Tallinn (1920–1940) 1st Infantry Regiment of Narva – 100 Kalev (Single Infantry) Battalion – 143 5th Artillery Task Force – 78 9th Special Infantry Battalion (Pärnu) – 99 Estonian – Defence – Army – 101 – Forces – 259 Estonian – Council of the People’s Commissars of ESSR – 107 – Heritage Society – 25, 306, 351, 385, 403 – History Museum – 360 – Independent Republic of (see Republic of Estonia) – Institute of - Physical Education – 62

423

- Zoology and Botany – 158 – State Archives – 387, 406 – Language – 3–4, 158, 161, 210, 224, 229, 271, 274 – Life Stories Association (see life writing campaign) – Literary Museum – 4, 292, 306, 338, 386–387 – Military Academy – 232–237 – National Archives – 258 – National Committee – 42, 175, 253 – National Relief – 57, 71 – seamen – 38, 173 – Self Government – 39 – Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance – 55 – Volunteer – 12, 35–36, 39–40, 42–44, 173, 185, 189, 208, 317, 340 (see also Estonian Ethnic Military Units (by uniform) SSVolunteer Brigade) – units – 12 Civilian – 12 Finnish Boys – 7, 9, 13, 15, 27, 41, 280–282, 283, 317, 326, 329–330, 334, 337, 339–341, 379 Foreign – 36 Soomepoisid – 41 Women – 43 – War of Independence 1918– 1920 – 9, 20, 26, 29, 43, 116, 143–145, 160, 165, 203, 282– 279, 291, 326, 328, 340, 346 ancient fight for freedom – 19 ancient war of independence – 378 Battle of Võnnu – 20 Ethnic – 19, 264 – criticism – 358 – dimension – 24 – group – 26, 264 – point of reference – 18–19 – prejudice – 262

424

Word Index

– sense – 1 – solitude – 19 ethnicity – 23, 291 inter-ethnic relations – 185 Movements – 344 Ethnicity (Soldiers of Memory participants other than Estonians, Germans and Russians) Baltic Germans – 35, 37, 235, 314 Baltic Landeswehr (Baltic German Aristocracy) – 20, 203 Balts – 282 Belgians – 56 Belorussians – 65, 150, 242 Chechen – 63–64 Czechs – 46, 219–221, 367, 375– 377, 381 Finns – 170, 174, 242, 326 French – 56 Georgians – 242 Hungarian – 197, 368 Italians – 36–37, 41, 352 Kazakh – 63 Latvians – 49, 63, 67, 222, 232, 242, 313, 399 Lithuanians – 63, 67, 196, 222, 242, 354 Poles, Polish – 56, 128, 130, 187, 242 Romanians – 242 Russian Estonians – 264, 283– 284, 289 Ukrainians – 242 Evacuation centre – 126–127, 131 Everyday life – 259, 262, 266–271, 282, 311, 324–325, 338, 340, 346, 387 Guide – 110 routines – 283 everyday Soviet life – 250 everyday Stalinism – 259 way of life – 164, 273, 291, 344– 345, 357, 388

modus vivendi – 291 Exclusion – 1, 6, 264 Executive Committee – 61–62, 102, 157, 206, 214–211, 226–231, 289 Exile – 21, 72–73, 235, 249, 259, 304, 306, 387, 390, 396–397, 400, 402, 406 émigré (see Emigrant) Experience (see Narrating, narrability of) – as cultural description – 333 experiential cohort – 379 Explosives – 77–78 Faculty of Physical Education (see University of Tartu) Falk, Paul – 259 Family – – crisis – 291 – experience – 273 – financial situation – 232 – fled to – Germany – 378 – Sweden – 77 – the Pärnu region – 165 – life – 4, 391 – name – 105, 143 – reunion in exile – 390 – stories/histories – 3, 17–18, 313, 318, 387, 396 – tradition – 392, 395 Deported – (see Deportation – of relatives) Fascist – 22, 64, 101, 104–105, 107, 111, 115, 153, 178, 221, 224, 283, 301–302, 376, 405 Former fascist – 351 Federation of Estonian Freedom Fighters (see Resistance; Veteran) Fiat – 197 Fiction – 14, 266, 305, 366, 369 Chonkin, Ivan Private – 271 Contemporary – 259, 264

Word Index novel – 20, 226, 266–273, 304– 305, 375, 382 novella – 304 Ostap Bender – 264, 271 Schweik – 271–272, 382 Schweikian – individualism – 377 – irony – 371 Soviet – 271 Films – 187, 190, 208 Finland Preferred destination – 258 Finnish Boys (Soomepoisid) – 41 Finnish Defence Forces – Army – 7, 12, 14, 27, 35, 41–43, 179–180, 202, 300, 317, 322, 327, 339–340, 358 JR 200 (see Estonian Ethnic Military Units) Navy – 12, 167, 179, 318–319, 321, 325–326, 329, 337, 339, 341 – Motor Torpedo Boat – 341 – flotilla – 167 Von Döbeln – Depot Ship Finnish Navy – 167–168 Hurja – 169 Jymy – 169 Taisto (Taisto-1) – 167, 169, 171–172, 321, 329–330, 333, 335 Tykkivenes (gunboats) – 171 Uusimaa – 171 Finnish National Police (Valpo II) – 249 Flashbacks – 373 Food stamp – 123 Forced labour – 13, 208, 307, 389 – camp – 259, 398, 404 Foreign volunteers – 36 Forest brother (metsavennad) (see Partisans) Forgetting – 121, 372 Constructed forgetting (Paju) 312

425

Creative forgetting – 305 Forming of a new identity (Connerton) – 303 Prescriptive (Connerton) – 303 Repressive erasure (Connerton) – 303 Frankfurt-am-Oder – 216 Freedom fighting (see Estonian War of Independence) – as cultural narrative – 20 The Great Battle of Freedom – 20 Federation of Estonian Freedom Fighters (see Resistance, Veteran) Free – – elections – 165 – Estonia – 120, 159, 313 GAZ AA – 126, 141, 268 Generation Commemoration of – 361 Pre-war – 347–358 Republican – 274–276, 289, 292, 358 German Armed Forces Air Force / Luftwaffe – 36, 216, 371–374, 378, 381 Luftwaffenhelfers – 43 Strafbattallione – 265 Army (Wehrmacht) – 6th Army – 40 – Groups Mitte – 43, 219, 375 Nord – 110 Süd – 40 Coast Guard regiment – 176, 336 Genesung (convalescence) Company – 195, 197 SS – men – 60, 187, 220–221 order for brides of – 198 – officer – 58, 199, 240 – training camp (see Debiça) – unit – 165, 323

426

Word Index

5th Armoured (Tank) Grenadier Division ‘Wiking’ – 41, 192, 203, 350 Einsatzgruppen (killing squads) – 265 Waffen-SS (see Estonian Ethnic Military Units by uniform) German Federal Republic – 259 German (Nazi) occupation – 7, 39– 40, 61, 67, 86, 111, 150, 180, 185, 208, 245, 250, 258–259, 280, 313, 340, 373, 393, 394, 404 – authorities – 12, 323, 405 – forces – 352 – powers – 329 Chain dog – 174, 185, 189 Governmental system in Estonia – 253 Political Police – 7, 240–245, 250–251, 253 Reich Labour Service – 245, 258 Sichereitsdienst Security Service (SD) – 40, 198, 231, 253 Germany – Fascist – 302 Greater Germany – 373 Hitler’s – 300 National Socialist – 5, 7, 13, 35– 38, 41–46, 58–59, 70, 113, 119, 146, 173, 175, 187, 190–192, 204, 216–224, 231, 235–249, 258, 280, 305–308, 312, 339, 349, 354, 365, 371, 376, 378, 391 Nazi – 232–237, 243, 252, 327 (1918–1945) – 139 (East, 1945–1990) – 157–158 (West, post-1945) – 231, 274 Gipsies – 54 Glasnost – 72, 385 Glutch – 102–103 Gorbulina, Directress – 224 Grauer, Lieutenant – 52

Great Britain – 35–38, 104 (see also Anglo-Saxons) Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) – 6, 10, 21–22, 24, 155, 182, 259, 291, 294, 301–302, 308 Great Terror – 241, 259 Guilt – 94, 247, 256, 353, 361, 386, 391, 398 Gukovugol – 221 Gulag – 232 – food – 399, 406 – forced labour camp – 13 – imprisonment – 269 – prisoner – 398 – returnees – 14, 396 – system – 11, 25, 241, 390 Prison camps – 38, 46, 235 Letters and packages sent to – 402 Death camp comparison – 353 Ruthlessness and indifference in – 397 Surviving in – 396 Gulf of Finland – 111, 325, 336 Haamer, Harri – 211 Haapsalu – 60, 177, 179–180, 244, 332, 340, 404 Haas, Herbert Adjutant – 244 Habitus – 378 Hague Convention – 252, 339 Hansen, Mihkel – 258 Harju region – 49 Harjumaa County – 143 Harku prison – 214 Health Care Department – 71 Health Museum, Tartu – 199 Heidelager (see Debiça) Heidelberg – 366 Heine, Erik – 259 Heikkilä Barracks of Turku – 167 Helsinki naval base – 174 Hero – 262, 374 – of the Soviet Union – 303 Fictional hero – 264, 271, 303

Word Index Heroes – 6, 23, 133, 282, 303– 304 – of the War of Independence – 9 – in the ‘ancient war of independence’ – 378 Heroic (deeds) – 104, 115, 280, 379 Maitla’s – 381 Heroism – 5, 177, 311, 354, 360, 366, 379 false heroism – 266 Hero’s death – 219 Socialist working – 141 Soviet – 302 Hint, Aadu – 208, 226 Hirschberg – 219, 367, 375 History – Individual-based approach of – 235 Labyrinth(s) of – 5, 388, 394 Military history – 15, 23, 28, 312 Reconstruction of – 3 Renovation of – 3 Soviet social history – 273 War memory history – 2 Historical – – Commission of the Great Patriotic War – 300 – discourse – of the Estonian SSR – 286 new master (happy Soviet reality) – 283 Soviet historical canon – 312 – period Krushchev Thaw – 14 pre-war Republic of Estonia – 395 Tsarist era [in Estonia] – 293 – tradition – 3, 24 – turning points – 274 Marxism-Leninism Institute – 302

427

Party History Institute of the Central Committee of the Estonian CP – 302 Hitler, Adolf – 46, 128, 130, 165, 189, 195, 219, 264, 268, 300, 322, 354, 374, 405 Hitler-Stalin scramble – 190, 350–351 Hitler-Stalin massacre – 195 Führer – 217, 374, 377 Heil Hitler regime – 119, 267, 359 Home Guard (Omakaitse) – 12, 39, 175, 185, 392–393 – regional unit – 208 – units – 188, 199, 201, 253, 279–280, 283 Military-fascist organisation – 405–406 Homo sovieticus – 259–264 Survivor – 259 To become Soviet – 268 To turn Soviet – 268 Holocaust – 27, 353 Humour – Good – 262 School – 226 Sense of – 216, 372 Strategy – 262 Hungary – 367 Austria-Hungary – 274, 382 Hurja MTB (see Finnish Defence Forces) Hurt, Jakob – 25 Hut – Earth – 106 Mud – 117, 134–135 Identity (see collective memory) (see national identity) Social – 392 Us (we) groups – 294 Ideology – 268, 378, 380 Anti-Soviet – 344

428

Word Index

Prolonged rupture – 344, 347, 349, 351, 356–358 Rhetoric of – 346 Nazi/German – 349, 354–355 Official wartime – 355 Soviet – 289, 305, 328, 387, 395 Ikla – 114 IL-2 (Ilyushin aircraft) – 171 Industrialization – Informer – 165, 328 Snitch, snitches – 137, 269 Iniapin, Colonel – 51 Internationale (anthem) – 145, 187 Interrogation – 62–63, 67–68, 86, 125, 174, 184, 238, 247, 254, 256, 323, 328, 335 – records – 329 – tactics – 250 Interrogator – 62, 67–68, 184– 185, 224, 247, 328, 334 Interpretive schemes (see memory) (see narrative) Interview (see ego-documents) Invalid – 249 War invalid – 10, 14, 22, 156– 157, 168, 291, 334, 373 Invalid’s pension – 155 Second group – 283 Irbit – 11, 102–104, 310 Irboska tactical training camp – 51 Isamaaliit (Pro Patria League) – 117 Italy – 36–38, 41 Jakobson, August – 304–305 Jaks, Ilmar writer – 314 Jäneda – 70 – Farming School – 50 – Manor – 50 Januska, Untersturmführer (SS lieutenant) – 197, 199, 201 Jaundice – 192, 195 Jews – 40, 128, 188, 253, 265, 352 Camp of the Jews – 193, 208, 352 (see Concentration camp, Klooga)

Jewess from Riga – 125 Jewish – 151 – community – 352 – Synagogue – 196 Judenfrei – 40 Jõe, Ants Lieutenant – 249 Jollas Manor, Finland – 167 Jymy (see Finnish Defence Forces) Kaarli Church – 145, 153 Kaerma, Mart Colonel 3FGR – 244 Kaitseliit (see Defence League) Kallaste – 152, 160, 280 Kalev – – battalion (see Republic of Estonia (uniform)) – sports club – 143 Kalinin – front – 107–109 Mikhail Ivanovich – 208, 226 Kannelaud, Jüri – 143 Kaplinski, Jaan – 312–314 Jerzy – 314 Karaganda prison camp – 14 Karelian Isthmus – 43 Karmu, N. Lieutenant – 286 Käsmu – 144–146, 293 Katajanokka Barracks, Helsinki – 168 Kaulač Manor – 154 Kavastu Manor – 112 Kazakhstan – 11, 14, 89, 148, 226, 400, 404 Keerdo, Paul – 307 Kehra – 202, 204 – car repair shop – 199 – driving school – 197 – SS training camp – 175, 339 Keller, Jalmar – 139–140 KGB (see NKVD) Kingissepp – 111 Kirov – 89, 101

Word Index – frigate Red Flag Baltic fleet – 214 – Medical Academy, Riga – 154 Kiryanova, Academician – 158 Klooga (see Concentration camps, see Military bases) Kohila – 265 Kolyma – 68 Komanda (commando) – 135 Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic – 88, 406 Komimaa – 397 Komsomol – 224, 240, 244, 290, 292, 295, 328 Communist Youth – 14, 328 Königsberg – 55, 198, 216 – radio – 192 Kohtla-Järve – 199 Kopli freight station – 187 Kraav, Fred – 216 Kramer, Mrs – 188 Krasnouralsk – 11, 121–122, 128, 134, 264 Krivasoo – 83, 202, 391–392 Kronstadt – 168 Kruus, Hans – 301, 308–309, 314 Kudu, Fred – 62 Kulak (see Deportation) Kulgmaa, Bruno – 253–258 Kullmann, Leen (see Hero) Kultuur ja Elu (magazine) – 8 Kuppila (inn) – 168, 334 Kuramaa (Courland) – 45 – Pocket – 45, 112–113, 153–154 Auce and Saldus – 112 Second Baltic Front – 112 Kuressaare – 205, 211, 214, 219– 224, 226, 371, 374 – Bay – 211 – Castle – 231 – Estonian Society – 205–210 – Massacre – 231, (committed in the Castle) – 215 – prison – 231 Kurvits, Jaan Senior Colonel – 256

429

Kuusberg, Paul – 305 Kuusiku forest camp – 211 Laak, Aleksander SS Obersturmführer – 199, 201–202, 208 Läänemaa County – 59–60, 143, 246, 319 Laamann, Captain – 176 Labour – 11, 63–64, 86, 208, 211, 245, 258, 269, 307, 310, 389 – battalion – 6, 11, 25, 38–39, 46, 101, 106, 115–119, 125, 134– 141, 241–242, 265, 264–269, 282, 292–300, 303–314 – camp – 11, 13, 86–87, 146, 259, 282, 307, 398, 402, 404 Construction battalion – 11, 307 Laeva – 144, 293 Lake Baikal – 64–65 Konsu – 202 Lämmijärv – 111 Peipsi, Peipus – 59, 111, 136, 142, 148–149, 152, 201, 280, 247 Võrtsjärv – 111 Larka, Georg – 219–222, 375–377 Latvia – 20, 35–38, 45, 49, 53, 112, 187, 203, 359 Laur, Otto Lieutenant – 244 League of Nations – 35 Leberecht, Hans – 304–305 Leetmaa, Meinhard Captain – 249 Leningrad – 55, 87, 121, 126, 128– 129, 141, 143, 146–147, 264, 300, 360 – Front – 42, 110–111, 280 – Military District of the Internal Forces of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs – 406 – Military Tribunal – 63, 252 Siege of – 169–170 Volkhov front – 110 Lepp, Colonel – 136, 142

430

Word Index

Liberate – 108, 152, 283–285, 300, 354 Liberation – 110, 114, 293 Liberator – 9, 235, 291, 294, 313, 349, 376 Liberty Square – 153, 158 Lice (louse) – 54–56, 84, 131–134, 136, 149, 199, 264 Life trajectory (see trajectory) Life writing Campaign – vii, 4–5, 7–8, 25–27, 185, 203, 292, 403 Competition – 116 Continuity – 17–19, 302, 361, 394 Public appeal / call for – 7, 25, 140, 229, 345 Lihula (see War monument) Gymnasium – 164–165, 323, 328 Liitoja, Major Paul Chief of Staff – 108, 110, 311 Lilleleht, Paul-August Major – 249 Lithuania – 35–38, 187–192, 196, 352, 354 Literature – 22, 29, 163, 227, 230, 259, 264, 271, 273–274, 289, 303–305, 341, 386 Literature as a remembrance technology – 22 Locksmith – 90, 120, 127, 139, 221 Looga, Armil-Johannes 1st Lieutenant – 249 Loona Manor – 205 Luftwaffe (see German Armed Forces) Luiga, Helmut – 247 Lumiste, J. Lieutenant – 153, 286 Luxemburger Luxemburgian – 222, 377 Machine-gun squad – 193 Maitla, Paul Sturmbannführer (Major) – 365, 368, 381 Mannerheim, General – 174 Männik, Eduard Private – 304

Mansard roof – 78 Marussa – 84, 97 Masculinity – 23, 361, 378 Male bonding – 5, 18, 366 Manliness – 18, 311 Masculine – 372, 386 Biographical constructions – 344, 386 Mashed swede – 56 Matsalu – 179, 181, 185, 318 Bay – 164, 327, 340 Manor estate – 163, 322 Medal – of Liberty – 174 – for ‘Good Work during the Great Patriotic War’ – 182 Noble Knight of the Mannerheim Cross – 167 Mehikoorma – 111 Meie Maa newspaper – 205 Melnik – 366–367 Memory – and power – 298 – cohort – 5, 368–369 – communities of – 280, 294, 344 – culture Estonian – 358 European – 359 – politics – 29 Estonian – 359 official Soviet – 294 post-Soviet Estonian – 6, 21 post-war – 303 – regime – 344, 379 – reservoirs – 3 – transfer – 298 – work – 292, 306 Autobiographical – 10 Collective – autobiographical memory (Hirst & Manier) – 369 – episodic memory (Hirst & Manier) – 369 – memory – 1, 298, 303, 369 Conflict of – 1

Word Index Distributive version (Wertsch) – 369 Estonian – 314 metaphor (Erll) – 303 metonymy (Erll) – 303 Soviet – 21 Strong version (Wertsch) – 21, 369 Conflict of memories – 1 Contested memory – 273 – Contradictory memories – 294 Counter-memory – 21 Culture – of memory – 306 – of forgetting – 303 – of remembrance/remembering Estonian – 393 Post-Soviet Estonian – 2, 344 veterans’ – 356 Post-independence – 15 Pre-war – 344 Cultural – framework – 323 – memory – 1, 23 Assmanns’ theory – 24, 298, 368 Soviet Estonian – 11 Estonian – 20, 226, 369 Memory [continued] Deep memory (Wertsch) – 21 Dialogical mechanisms of remembering (see dialogue) Dynamics of individual and collective memory – 298 Historical memory – 3, 354 – of Estonians – 309 – of pre WWII Estonia – 308 Debates of – 3 Nationalist – 314 Revisiting of (see renovation of history) Institutional (level) of – 11 Literature shaping memory – 303 Mediation of – 294 Milieu de mémoire – 357 Personal memory – 21

431

Post-memory – 350, 403 Pre-memory – 19 Public memories – 300 Ritual memory – 300 Selective nature of – 256 Semantic memory – 25 Social framework of memory (Halbwachs) – 24 Mets, Johannes Chief of the [Kuressaare] Militia – 214–215, 226 Midsummer Night’s Eve – 82 Military – bases – 12 Klooga – 71, 208 Red Army /Soviet – 35, 50, 164, 280, 322, 327, 340 – Chamber of the USSR Supreme Court – 389 – tribunal – 63, 252 Treaty of Mutual Assistance 1939 – 35, 72, 208, 213 Militia – 95, 124, 129, 132–133, 182, 221–224, 240, 264–269 – headquarters (Kuressaare) – 214 – man/men – 79–80, 124–126 – woman – 84 – station – 92–94, 124, 132 Chief of – 214–215 Mini Mafia – 131 Mobilisation German – 12, 180, 182, 245–246, 349, 404–405 Red Army – 10, 13, 240, 404 Soviet Army Mobilisation Committee – 178, 395 To evade – 13 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – 35, 161, 235 German-Soviet non-aggression treaty – 265 Monastery – 86–87 Mõtus, Eevald – 139–140 Muhu Island – 39, 44, 139

432

Word Index

Mui, Aleksander – 208, 214–215, 231 Mullas, Lieutenant-Colonel – 110, 311 Museum – – of Occupations – 258 – or archive for safekeeping – 306 Mustvee – 59 Myocardial disorder – 58 Naaber, Johannes – 139–140 Nachalnik – 227 Nachumsiedlung Treaty – 37, 160 Nagelmann, E. Lance Corporal – 153, 286 Narew – 378 Youth Camp – 373 Narva – 40, 42, 79, 83, 92, 111, 137, 147, 151–152, 247, 266, 280 – Bay – 170 – Front – 13, 42–43, 381, 391, 395 Narrating Dialogical mechanisms of narrating – 343 Narratability of experiences – 343 Narrative – mixture (of war) – 306 – of suffering – 6, 388–389, 403 – scheme – 348 (see interpretation scheme) mixture of – 23 – strategies – 343, 348, 356 – template (Wertsch) – 19–21 (see also pre-memory) – unit – 345 Autobiographical – 7, 17, 290 Collective – 343–344 Life – 304, 317, 319, 325, 366, 371–372 Meta-narrative – 302, 378 Strategic – 343, 345

Thematisation and structural analysis of – 339 National – Committee of the Estonian Republic – 42 – Front, Estonian – 161 National Socialism – 20, 276 Fascism (see fascist) Nationalism – 15, 355, 361, 377, 378 National identity (see identity) Nationalist – 27, 313, 398 – circles – 404 – consciousness – 314 – discourse – 6, 312–313 – groups – 243 – historical memory – 314 – knowledge – 355 – minded – 8 – principles – 378 – pursuit of independence – 356 – society – 19 Estonian – 245 Nationalistic – 378 NEP, the New Economic Policy – 264, 271 Neuhammer training camp – 45, 365, 371 Nightdress – 187, 213 NKVD (see destruction battalions) (see labour battalions) – Agent – 227 Novgorod – 110 Novosibirsk – 64, 89, 92, 390, 396, 400 Occupied Zone (US) – 46 Occupiers – 115, 279 October Revolution (see Revolution) Odessa – 367 Oja, Voldemar Lieutenant – 145 Omakaitse (Self Defence) (see Home Guard) Opel-Blitz – 197, 202

Word Index Oras, Ants Professor – 253 Order of the Badge of Honour – 117 Ortskommandatur – 195 Orissaare harbour – 215 Oru Castle – 99, 116 Ovaskainen, Commander – 167, 169, 174 Overseer – 90, 103, 309 P (for Polen) – 187 Paal, Evald, 1st Lieutenant – 244 Paldiski camp – 175, 195, 197 Panzerkeil – 71 Parallelism – 373 Parka – 135–136 Pärl, Lieutenant – 176 Pärn, Lembit Lieutenant-General – 107, 110, 178, 286, 302, 304, 311 Pärnu – 8, 57, 59–60, 79–84, 95, 99, 115, 177, 204, 222, 240, 360, 387, 403–406 – Association of Estonian Soldiers – 392 – County – 58 – Gymnasium for Boys – 99 – harbour – 216 – Region (Pärnumaa) – 58, 165, 246, 249 Military commissar’s office in – 78 Sauga airport – 216 Soviet POW camp – 391 Pärnu-Viljandi military district – 99 Parody – 8 Pärtel, E. – 176 Partisan – 14, 21, 193, 196–198, 324, 353, 360, 391 – warfare – 265 Czech – 5, 365, 367, 376 RC – 220–221 Armed Resistance – (see also Summer War 1941)

433

Forest Brother – 12, 28, 38, 45, 201, 240, 243, 249, 253, 253, 347–348 (see also Sabbe) Guerrilla war – 353 Lithuanian – 354 To hunt – 350 Patarei Prison – 63, 72, 84, 202, 214–215, 374 Päts, Konstantin, President of Estonia – 86, 116 Patriotism (patriotic) – 6, 276, 283, 286–287 Estonian-Mindedness – 283 Patriotic – enthusiasm – 282 – ideals – 351 – sentiment – 279 – spirit – 282 – upbringing – 145, 280 Pre-war generation – 347 Peace – 3, 237 – negotiations – 173 – time – 264, 290, 319, 321, 334 – life strategies – 393 – Treaty 1920 – 256 Negative peace – 18 Pedagogical University – 175 Peegel, Juhan – 289, 305 Pehk, [Lieutenant-Colonel/Captain 2nd Rank] – 150 Perestroika – 385, 402 People’s Commissar for the Defence of the USSR – 298

Permisküla Island – 59 Persecutor – 343 Petropavlovsk – 91, 400 Pilsen – 367 Pirita Estate – 165 Pitka, Johann Admiral – 13, 43– 44, 152, 160, 175–176, 318, 327, 339, 352, 359 Platnoi – 63 Plenary of the Creative Unions 1988 – 158, 161 Pneumonia – 49

434

Word Index

PO-2 (Soviet reconnaissance aircraft) – 199 Poland – 35, 40, 43, 187, 216, 322, 353 (see also Debiça, see also Neuhammer) Anders army – 130, 141 Polish deportees – 269 Põldmäe, Julius Lieutenant – 252 Political – – assistant – 110, 311 – commissar – 51, 68, 101, 106 officer –215, 247, 254 politruk – 79–81, 164, 211, 279, 292 – lessons – 135, 289 – prisoners – 68–69, 215, 247, 254 Politics of recognition – 4 ‘right to biography’ (Lotman) – 33 Pool, Lieutenant – 58 Porkhov – 10, 53, 241, 247 – Area - 28 – Line – 148 – Region – 38 Prees, Major – 218–219, 344, 375 Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union – 109, 304, 307, 311 Prisoner – 10, 54, 56, 60, 62–65 – of war (POW) – 44, 46, 64, 221, 242, 253–258, 265, 377 – camp – 10, 39, 221, 229, 360, 395 German – 242–243, 249 Soviet – 391 Pro-gymnasium – 210, 224, 226 Propaganda – 3, 68, 238, 302, 346, 356, 373 Brainwashing – 21, 283 Hate and revenge letters – 279, 289 Communist – 240 Goebbels – 199

German/Nazi – 20, 53, 242, 354–355 National – 117 Red Army – 279 Soviet – 19–20, 22, 165, 226, 235, 308 Prussia, East – 10, 54, 187 Pskov – 67, 83, 95, 111, 262, 282, 351 Pühavaimu (Holy Spirit) Church – 176 Pun – Eianna – 160 Purga, Juhan Major – 249 Rahva Omakaitse, RO (People’s Self-Defence) – 208, 226, 240, 253 Raigo, Vello diarist – 306, 314 Rakvere – 199 Randla, Captain – 58 Raudkivi, Uno, veteran of the Estonian 20th Waffen SS Legion – 312 RC boys (see Partisans, Czech) Realist, journal – 145 Realschule, Tallinn – 144, 151, 160, 282, 293 Rebane, Alfons, Standartenführer (Colonel) – 219, 231, 365, 381 Red Army (see destruction battalions) (see Estonian Corps) – monuments – (see War monuments) 3rd Army – 108 Russian forces – 44, 279 Soviet Army – 97, 114–115, 146, 240, 252, 279, 286, 294–300, 302–304, 367, 379 Anecdotes – 346 Marauding – 287 Strafbaty – 265 Taking over the Estonian forces – 238

Word Index Red – Cross (Charity) – 56, 199, 243, 245 – Eagles (Soviet air force) – 164, 169, 171, 327 – Flag (Hammer & Sickle) – 153, 158, 286 Reek, Nikolai Lieutenant General – 256 Reflection – 313, 356, 376, 380, 393, 397 Meta – 374 Process of – 373 Self-reflection – 372, 387 Reflective – 23, 298, 320, 371– 372, 377 Reflexivity – 321 Refugee (see escape) Regiment’s Colours – 109–110, 311 Regimes (political) – 19, 119, 194, 267, 268, 274, 274, 300, 353 Interregnum – 366 Remembrance (see memory) – culture – 2, 15, 344, 393 – landscape – 4, 6–7, 9 Social framework of – 17 Repertoire (see narrative) Representation – 276, 303, 331, 344, 371 Correct representation – 300 Self-representation – 348, 351 Repression – 36, 244, 280, 298, 309, 322, 370, 379, 386, 390–391, 398–402 (see deportation) (see persecution) – experience (see Narrative of suffering) – memories – 21 NKVD – 290 Stalinist – 72, 114, 387–388 Story of – 387–388, 396 Women’s – 399 Soviet – 352, 389 – repression policy – 226–231 Threat of – 289

435

Repson, Albert Lieutenant – 302 Republic of Estonia (Estonian Republic) 1918–1940 – 26, 35–37, 52, 59, 84, 95, 99, 105, 116, 125, 127, 133, 155, 159–160, 164, 188, 195, 211, 229, 237, 245–246, 250–251, 274, 282, 292, 306– 307, 314, 319, 340, 370, 395 Major newspapers and magazines – 210 Restoring – 188, 190, 349, 354– 355 1940–1941 (ESSR) – 37 1991–present – 161, 226, 379 Estonian-era – 280, 286, 289– 290, 293 Interwar – 293 Pre-war – 232, 289, 294, 319, 395 National anthem – 145, 287 Hymn of the Republic – 206 National flag – 176, 286 blue-black-and-white – 385 Resistance (see also Admiral Pitka) – activist – 345, 351, 357 – anti-Soviet (Communism) (see also Summer War) – Day – 359 – image – 9 – to Bolshevism – 348 – to Red Army – 13, 28, 352, 392 – to Soviet occupation / regime – 21, 353 Armed resistance (see Partisans) Dissident – 347, 351 – views – 21 Freedom fighter / fighting – 9, 345, 357, 359 Forest Brothers (see Partisans) Estonian cause – 347, 358 Passive – 373 Underground – 42, 44 Responsibility – – for family – 386, 397

436

Word Index

– for the Holocaust – 353 – for their actions – 184 – of the individual – 398 Restitution – 158 – of independence – 44, 158, 161 – of Estonia’s ‘own history’ – 385 Retribution – 221 Revenge (see also Propaganda) – based violence – 5 – on the communists – 188 – by comrades in arms – 269 Czech acts of revenge – 366–367, 376 Personal – 349, 359 Revolution Bolshevik 1917 – 143 October revolution – 50, 110, 302 November 7th - Anniversary – 141 Revolutionary events of 1905 – 314 Singing – 385 Rhetoric – – of fighting against Bolshevism – 355–356 – of honourable duty – 302 – of war propaganda – 373 Nazi – 378 Popular – 3 Political – 37 Official (Soviet) – 267 Wartime – 356 Riesengebirge Mountains – 368 Riga – 62, 125, 193–194 – Military Hospital – 154 Riis, Vassili, Head of NKVD Saaremaa Department –214– 215, 223, 226–231 Riisman, August – 259 River Amu Darya – 130–131 Elbe – 219, 366–367, 375

Emajõgi – 44, 111–112, 151, 175, 280, 292 Luga – 111 Narew – 216 Narva – 42, 59, 83, 199, 247 Neva – 110 Oder – 45, 216 Velikaya – 53 Volga – 40, 147–148 RO (see Rahva Omakaitse) Roomassaare Harbour – 214 Roosevelt, Franklin D. President of the U.S.A. – 37 Rumania – 367 Rupture (discourse of) (see Ideology – prolonged rupture) Russia – Baltic Fleet – 132, 170 Saaremaa – battles – 153, 160, 178 – Central High School – 210 – Communist Party Committee – 231 – Island – 45, 153, 205, 371 – Provincial Executive Committee – 231 Deported from – 221 Murders in – 215 Red Army base on – 389 Sääsk, Elmar – 215 Sabbe, August – 45 Saldus (Latvia) (see Kuramaa) Savik, G. Captain – 286 Saviour – 80–81, 84, 194, 404 Christian – 385 White Ship – 289, 294 Scabies – 199 Schörner, Ferdinand Field Marshal – 375 Schtelter, Dr. – 158 Scorched earth tactics (see destruction battalions) Second Baltic Front (see Kuramaa Pocket)

Word Index Security Police – Estonian (pre-war) – 247 German – 40, 253 State (Estonian – 1995) – 226 Self – image – 319, 345 – perception – 319 – positioning – 317, 333–334 – representation – 348, 351 narrating self – 333 selfhood – 343 Self Defence (see Home Guard) Sepik, Chairman of the Kuresaare Executive Committee – 214– 215 Shot – while escaping – 65, 249 (Metaphor for) Murder – 81, 312, 404 Summary execution – 52, 63, 68, 71, 80–81, 189, 202, 215, 220–221, 240, 259 Siberia (see Deportations) – story – 386 Sichereitsdienst (SD) (see German (Nazi) occupation) Siege of Leningrad (see Leningrad) Silesia – 365 Sinimäed (Blue Hills/Mountains) – 43, 111, 175, 373, 381, 391 – Reunions – 392 Snitch (see Informer) Smuul, Juhan – 304 Social – inequalities – 276 – transformation – 344 Soinla, Arnold – 36 Song Estonian songs – 95, 136, 402 ‘bristling ice and snow’ – 121, 141 ‘moving south where Egypt lies’ – 141 ‘Postipoiss’ (The Stage Coachman) – 136

437

‘Stay free, Estonian sea’ – 114, 117, 136 Marching – 117 Revolutionary – 208 Tallinn Song Festival Field – 146 Soodam, K. – 176 Soomepoisid (see Volunteers) SORVVO – 97–98 Soviet – German Front (see Eastern Front) – Information Bureau – 104 – occupation – 5, 7, 14, 280, 345, 347, 349, 353, 355, 357, 389 1940–1941 – 20–21, 72, 99, 309, 328, 344, 381, 391, 394, 404 1944–1991 – 286, 365, 385 Council of the People’s Commissars of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic – 107 Sovetski – 136 Supreme Soviet – – of the ESSR – 95, 158, 161, 304, 307 – of the Soviet Union – 109– 110, 311, 404 – propaganda (see propaganda) Sovietisation – 347, 389 Sõrve peninsula – 45, 153, 211, 305 Speculation – 213 Speculators – 213 Sphere of Influence – 395 Soviet – 35 Sports – – and military training – 18 – camp (Aegviidu) – 70 Sprat Town (see Tallinn) SS (military units) (see German Armed Forces) St. Petersburg Military School – 144

438

Word Index

St. George’s Eve 1348 uprising – 205, 314 Stablack POW camp – 10, 55, 57 Stakhanovite worker – 128, 141 Stalin, Jossif (Joseph) – 68–69, 72– 73, 137, 177, 195, 208, 254, 265– 262, 268, 322 Anti-Stalin allegory – 295 Comrade – 105 Ditties – 289 Joss – 119, 140 Jossi – 266 Mercy of – 359 Our father – 78 Radio speech 3rd July 1941 – 240, 391 Stalingrad – 40–41, 147, 283 Stalinism – 115, 183, 263–264, 272– 273 Stalinist education – 93 Stamp (system) – 138 Food – 123 Staraya Russa – 10, 39, 53 Stereotypes – 4 Stigma – 287 Stigmatised – 22, 386, 402 Streife – 204 Subjectivity – 17, 21, 28 Sudetenland – 218, 368 Summer War 1941 – 38, 240, 243, 391 Survival – 320, 377 – as an obligation – 396–397 – motive – 16 – of the Czech Hell – 366 – skills – 268–273 – stories – 18, 366 – strategy – 249, 259–264, 262– 264, 268–273, 289 Agenda of – 268 Best option for – 374 Daily – 396 Fight for – 103 Key to – 371 Means of – 232

Price paid for – 287 Question of – 243 Suffering and survival – 21, 23 Survivor(s) – 265–262, 400 (see also Homo Soveticus) – of Czech Hell – 368, 375, 379– 380 Homeland survivor – 380 Sverdlovsk – 63, 126–129, 135 Swastika – 112, 176, 286 Sweden – (see Escape) 146, 258, 276, 339 Evacuated to – 44 Flee/fled/flight to – 77, 175–176, 216–217, 219, 374, 376 Preferred destination – 258, 339 Return from – 157 Sworn enemy (see Archenemy) Symbolic universe – 16–17, 22 – of war – 16–17, 19 Syphilis – 88 Tabivere – 199 Taboo(s) – 4, 266, 286, 343, 399 Forbidden episode – 7 Staying silent – 266 Taisto (see Finnish Defence Forces) Tallinn – Hippodrome – 101 – Military School – 145 (see also Tondi Military School) – Polytechnic Institute – 155–156 – power station – 175 – Technical School for Earth Sciences – 219 – Technical University – 205, 224 Fall of – 286 Liberation of – 286 Liberator of – 291 Pikk Hermann – 153, 158, 176, 286 Sprat Town – 119, 141 Toompea – 153, 158, 161, 199, 229, 286 – Castle – 341

Word Index Talve, Ilmar – 274 Tannenberg Defence Line – 43 Tapa prison camp – 84 Tarand, Helmut – 247 Tartu – Front – 202 – Prison – 63, 258 – Technical School – 189 – Technological Gymnasium – 49 – Town Hall Square – 50 TB (tuberculosis) – 165–166 Tcherbakul – 134, 137 – camp – 135 Teär, Julius Captain – 215 Tehumardi – 292 Testimony – 245, 250–252, 256, 313 Testimonial – 297, 345, 369 Third way (see Finnish boys; freedom fighting) Estonians’ pursuit of independence – 349 Thoen, Aino – 304 Thoen, Erik – 305 Tief, Otto – 359 Time-window – 366 Grande histoire – 325 Lived time – 325 Ordinary time – 325 Soviet time – 14, 292 Temporal – 5, 294, 369 Temporally –23 Timing – 366, 373, 375, 377 Tomsk Oblast – 259 Tondi Military School – 50, 59, 61, 99 Tõnu cargo ship – 101 Torm, Maria – 328 Torma – 196 – Church – 199 Manhunt in – 353, 360–361 Torpedo Boat (see Finnish Defence Forces) Tortured – and executed – 265 – and murdered – 215

439

Tõstamaa – 79–82, 391, 404 – manor – 75 Trade union – 290 – membership card – 126 Trajectory – Life – 373, 381 War – 22 Trauma (see cultural trauma) Travel Permit – 226, 229 Trotski – 68, 73 Truth – Crisis of – 3 Noble and true – 300 True – 264, 266, 300 – and untrue –300 Tuglas, Friedebert – 183, 335 Tuul, Harald Dr. – 249 Tuulik, Ülo – 305, 312 Tykkivenes (gunboats) (see Finnish Defence Forces) Ufa Oblast (Province) – 49, 71, 88, 397 Uue-Irboska – 83 – station – 83 Uibo, Lieutenant – 61 UK – 359 Ukraine – 27, 41, 109, 192, 203, 350, 354, 360 Ultimatum (by the Soviet Union) – 36, 265 Uluots Jüri, Prime Minister and acting-President of the Republic of Estonia – 44 Umsiedlung – 35 University of Tartu – 12–13, 58, 245–246, 253 Faculty of Physical Education – 58 Tartu University – 61, 145, 339 Urals – 88–89, 101, 121, 151, 264– 269, 307, 397 – Military Districts – 11, 105, 107

440

Word Index

– Military (geographical) Division – 149 Ursumsk – 137, 269 USA – 37–38, 40, 46, 226–229, 359 (see also Anglo-Saxons) Uudam, Jaan – 135 Uusimaa (see Finnish Defence Forces) USSR – 72, 141, 237, 240, 259, 262–267, 271, 274, 308, 346 State Defence Committee – 40, 105, 148, 307 Soviet Union – Collapse of – 349, 351, 359 Dissolution of – 344 All-Union – 292 Valgma, Juhan – 210 Valgamaalane, newspaper – 370 Valgre, Raimond – 221 Välja, Lieutenant – 133 Valler, A. – 176 Valner, Lieutenant Cavalry Regiment – 58 Vares, Johannes – 307, 328 Varma, Aleksander – 327 Värska – 50, 83 – summer camp – 50–51, 71 – camp – 50, 241 Velikiye Luki, Battle – 11, 40, 107– 110, 150, 152, 283, 292, 305, 307 Veliko-Polye – 108 Verkh-Neivinsk – 128 Vermet, Juhan Lieutenant Colonel – 28, 246, 249 Veteran – – culture – 22–23, 231, 350 – lore – 231 – organization – 356 Association of Veterans of the 20th Estonia Waffen Grenadier Division – 28 Federation of Estonian Freedom Fighters – 8–9, 24, 27, 392, 405

League of Independence War Veterans – 7, 26 Pärnu Association of Estonian Soldiers – 392 Estonian – 24, 27, 343 – of the German army – 347– 348, 351, 359–360, 369, 371 – of the War of Independence – 279 German – 9, 15, 259 Graduates of Soviet military schools – 279 Great Patriotic War – 22, 291 Red Army (Soviet) – 6, 15, 19, 21, 22, 259, 268 Russian – 24, 295 Wounded – 287 Victim – 23, 83, 252, 343, 356 – of history – 89 – of the Soviet system – 388 Innocent – 298 Not/neither a victim – 262, 266 Victimhood – 372 Victor – 290–291 Viies, Director – 224 Viipuri Bay – 167, 330 Viljandi – 60, 78, 84, 139, 189–196, 199–206, 258, 351 – Viljandimaa (region/county) – 59, 84, 143, 246 Villakvere – 49, 71 Vlassov, Andreij Lt.General – 376, 381 Volga Germans – 147 Volkovo – 310 – logging centre – 103–104 Volkswagen, amphibious version – 197 Vologda – 86 Voluntary (see ALMAVÜ, see also Choice) – armed organization (see Kaitseliit; see Omakaitse; see Rahva Omakaitse) – basis – 12, 280–276

Word Index – conscription (see Conscripts) – mobilization – 323 – resettlement (see Umsiedlung) – service – 250–252 – SS – 187–192, 354 – surrender – 247 Involuntary – 232, 252 Voluntarily against one’s will – 252 Voluntarily by force – 264 Von Döbeln (see Finnish Navy) Võrk, Vassili, Colonel – 153 Voroshilov, Klement, Marshal of the Soviet Union – 107, 208, 226 Võru – 51, 238 Võrumaa – 224 Vyborg Bay – 170–172 Waffen-SS (see Estonian Ethnic Military Units; German Armed Forces) War – – Commissariat (Estonian) – 101, 104, 114, 133, 201 – memorial – 300 Monument – war – 27 Battle of the monuments – 1 Bronze soldier – 8–9, 289 Tallinn Liberator statue – 9 Lihula – 8, 24, 358, 360 Monument-conflicts – 369 Pärnu – 8, 360 Red Army – 8 War of Independence – 165, 328, 346

441

Warsaw Rebellion – 198, 208 Wartheland German steam-ship – 174 Wedge formation (see Panzerkeil) Wehrmacht (see Estonian Ethnic Military Units; see German Armed Forces) Western Estonian Islands – 38–39 Western Front (European) – 36, 45 White and Red Russians – 50 White Ship (see Saviour) Window method – 381, 289 Winter War 1939–1940 – 35, 97, 326, 340 Witness – 2–3, 5, 229, 287, 298, 337, 349, 353, 370, 375, 388 Wooden – Barracks – 55 – Suitcase – 91 Work certificate – 215 Yellow cloth badge – 187, 194 Young Eagles (see Youth organisation) Youth organisation – Estonian Boy Scouts – 216, 373, 378 Estonian Youth – 216, 373, 378 Kodutütred (Nation’s Daughters) – 117 Noored Kotkad (Young Eagles) – 117 German Hitlerjugend – 373 Zil 5 – 124 ZIS-5 – 201