On 11 August Daniel Miller had written his last letter to me on the collective farm:
I am genuinely delighted with the way that it has end up for you. I cannot believe that an ethnographic field experience that has gone so well would not produce equally successful academic results. I am also very pleased that the subjective experience of seeing your own identity through the field situation has become in itself such a positive force in helping you empathise with the experience of otherness amongst those with whom you have been living.
He ended:
Above all I note the remark that you are thinking of living there. I know this is but fantasy but it suggests the kind of empathy and involvement which an ethnography is supposed to rest upon. It is exactly what a supervisor would want to hear in the last letter from an ethnographer. I am very glad indeed that the experience has been so worthwhile.
How strange it all was.
On 1 September I was back in my flat in Hampstead. I rearranged my books, both restless and pleased to be back. Everything seemed so easy, still, and would for a long time to come.
That first night back I dreamt that there was a trapped swallow in a room. I caught it, carefully, and held it. I felt its heart beating. Then I released it.
That was the end.
Afterword
Some ten years after I left the village, I came back for a visit, with Eric, my husband. We flew in from Helsinki, over thin brown ice. I had a sudden imaginary whiff of what Estonia used to smell like—brown coal, and stale poverty. The airport had been renovated, and now had a gleaming grey granite floor, and luggage trolleys with adverts for mobile phones: NOKIA EMT—DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT THEM. I sensed a slight whiff, again, of that smell. Was it real, or was it a sensory hallucination? There were more adverts, everywhere, for KPMG, for Reval Hotels. I thought of my Soviet textbooks on the collective farm:
When you come to New York you will see lots of cars, big and small, black and yellow, old and modern. You will also see and hear advertisements everywhere. They fill the newspapers and cover the walls. They are shouted through loudspeakers and shown in the cinemas.
My Nokia cell phone registered an Estonian network. We stood by the luggage carousel and waited, until it became clear that my suitcase wouldn’t arrive. Later we tried to change some money. Three young Swedes were queuing in front of us. It was morning, and they were drunk. “You can’t fall in love with them,” one of them said, insistently, but also slightly experimentally, “fucking hell, don’t sit there for hours kissing them—you can’t fall in love with a whore.” I stiffened behind them; they didn’t know I could understand them. They stood close together, tall, loud, and vaguely threatening. Eric didn’t understand the Swedish, but disapproved nevertheless, disdainful of their drunkenness. It was an awful combination, the drunk young Swedes, the degrading conversation, the gleaming floors, and the adverts.
Outside the airport was a new shopping centre, Prisma, and new, lit-up adverts everywhere. It was a new city, with shining glass buildings. It has to be said that it was hideous, the new capitalism. Hotel Viru was completely reconstructed, with garish, cheap luxury. We were on the “business” floor. Inside, however, it was not so bad, and not completely unlike what it was. Eric bustled, arranging our things, taking calls on his mobile. I sat eating salted peanuts from a tin. The moon in the darkening sky was full and yellow, half covered in a black cloud. I sat there by the window for a long time, listening to the trams, and the new traffic. Eric walked naked through the room, the post-Soviet room. He handed me his mobile phone on the way to the shower. “If somebody rings . . .” he said. “I answer,” I said, filled with this new gesture of intimacy, of trust. We were so newly married, still.
We woke up late the following morning, and suddenly it didn’t feel so exciting anymore. There had been a heavy beat in the night from Café Amigo, the new hotel nightclub. Across the square was Venus Club, emitting its own light and music. I sat for a while that morning, in the same place, looking out over the sea. Eric walked by, not looking at me, trying not to disturb me. I was writing notes, and looking at the vast black hulls at sea.
Later we walked through the beautiful town centre of Tallinn. There were only a few unrenovated houses left, all the flaking facades from the Soviet times painted and restored. Suddenly an Estonian woman asked us for money: a respectable person, maybe sixty years old, in a beret and good shoes. I looked at her in amazement; Eric, firmly, said no. Tinny music spilled onto the street, she walked on, as did we.
Later we set off for Haapsalu in a rented car. I remembered the way, more or less. The road was flawless, lined with huge signs at regular intervals: THIS ROAD HAS BEEN REBUILT WITH THE AID OF THE EU RECONSTRUCTION FUND. I saw a stork nest, and the forest looked much as it was, except for the new telecom masts dotting the landscape. We had a full mobile signal everywhere; it seems obvious now, but then it was not. About halfway we stopped for a picnic of oatcakes, sheep’s cheese, apples, and dark chocolate. Eric suggested wine; I refused.
We were getting closer, crossing into the peninsula. Many of the farmhouses were red now, that symbolic Swedish red. Even one of the old milk stands on the road was painted red. We passed the church, and then the old shop, which had closed down. The old dairy was being renovated. The stork nest was still there, resting on the tall chimney. We passed a sign to a new museum, LYCKHOLM, and then we drove into the village.
There we were. The square was the same. The ground around the blocks of flats was dug up; it looked like the work had come to a standstill. There was also, unexpectedly, graffiti on the wall of the old workshops, a yellow, pink, and red design. The village actually looked poorer than it had been, except for the manor house, which had been renovated, and rented rooms.
We stayed there. As I wrote notes, Eric was lying on the bed looking mildly unhappy, holding our room key (JOIN THE NAVY. SEE THE WORLD on the key chain.) Then Alar and Heli came by, and were exactly themselves, but more confident, and happier. They showed me the school. The whiff of urine, I noticed, was gone: the new lavatories were Swedish. And it was warm.
I asked them about the graffiti. It turns out to have been a school project—the students wanted to make the village less grey, and got permission to do it, made sketches, and then painted the graffiti. I had assumed a story of rebellion, and in fact it turned out to be a cosily communal, even a creative, story.
Before dinner we drove to the new nature reserve. There was a replica of a Sami hut, and a birdwatching tower, and many empty bottles of vodka in the grass. But the light, still, was ethereal, blue, pink, and purple. White young birch and reeds stretched for miles; the water in the sea inlet was still as a pond, with a thin skin of ice near the shore. Birds of early spring were calling in that cold blue dusk. I longed to see an elk, like a physical desire.
The next day we met Ets as we were having lunch—a small blond man coming into the kitchen, looking for something. He didn’t recognise me.
“Ets?” I said.
“Yes, I am Ets,” he said enquiringly.
“I am Sigrid,” I said.
“Oooh,” he said, a long oooh, and then he hugged me, gently, Swedish style. He looked at me intently when Eric left the room. “I remember your eyes,” he said quite unexpectedly.
That was in 2003. I think, now, ten years later, about the Estonian poet Jaan Kaplinski:
If I Wanted to Go Back
If I wanted to go back
I should know that the thoughts
I thought going through the empty houses
are as empty as the houses
where moths gnaw and fungus eats
the walls and where the spinning wheel stands alone
in the corner, where the spade stands alone
before the threshold. This emptiness is great indeed,
as is the land. Each one is someone else
from everywhere and leads the way
somewhere else, and no one could ever
walk through all this land:
every beginning is different after its end
than it was before it ended, and everything is always
something else: the houses remain empty
and I haven’t the strength, nobody has the strength
to live and die with everyone,
to step across your thresholds, sleep in all your beds.
(Translated from the Estonian by Sam Hamill)
The thoughts I thought going through the empty houses are as empty as the houses. The empty houses, that distorted nostalgia I felt. What was I nostalgic for? I wonder now. Not my lost home, but my lost homeland. This emptiness is great indeed, as is the land. Ah yes: the emptiness, the land. I haven’t the strength, nobody has the strength to live and die with everyone, to step across your thresholds, sleep in all your beds. Did I do enough? Did I stay for long enough? I hope so. This, I know, is not the only story that could have been told of that time, about those people and that place.
Every beginning is different after its end. Everything is always something else.
Timeline
13th–14th Century
The first Swedish farmers and fishermen settle in Estonia.
156
Northern Estonia submits to the Swedish Crown, whilst Southern Estonia forms the Duchy of Livonia under the control of the Lithuanian Duchy and the Polish Crown.
1629
All of Estonia becomes part of the Swedish Crown.
1721
Sweden loses Estonia to Russia in the peace treaty of Nystad, following the Great Northern War (1700–1721).
1862
The Estonian national epic, Kalevipoeg, is collated and published.
1918
The Estonian Declaration of Independence is issued but not accepted by the newly established Soviet regime. War on two fronts, against Russia and Germany.
1920
The Tartu Peace Treaty is signed. Parliamentary democracy is established.
1934
President Konstantin Päts stages an authoritarian coup to undermine the extreme right-wing Vaps movement.
August 1939
The secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is signed, in effect dividing eastern Europe into Russian and German spheres of interest.
16 June 1940
The USSR invades Estonia. Ninety thousand Red Army troops enter the country the following day. The Estonian government capitulates.
6 August 1940
The Estonian Soviet Republic is established.
14 June 1941
First Soviet mass deportations from Estonia.
28 August 1941
Tallinn is occupied by Nazi forces. Estonia is incorporated into the German province of Ostland. Jews are rounded up and killed. Several concentration camps and killing sites are established.
January 1944
The Red Army pushes back into Estonia. By autumn Estonia is under Soviet control.
Summer 1944
The Estonian Swedes are evacuated to Sweden by local SS officers, in return for payment.
March 1949
Second Soviet mass deportations from Estonia.
1953
Joseph Stalin dies. Some Gulag prisoners are freed and rehabilitated.
1961/62
First and second Soviet Holocaust trials in Tallinn and Tartu.
1989
The Singing Revolution. A human chain of more than two million people, stretching from Estonia, through Latvia, and into Lithuania, is formed to protest against Soviet rule.
20 August 1991
Estonian independence is declared.
26 December 1991
The Soviet Union is formally dissolved.
31 August 1994
The last Russian troops leave Estonia.
October 1998
President Lennart Meri sets up the Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity.
1 May 2004
Estonia accedes to the European Union after a referendum in September 2003 shows 66.8 percent support.
2008
The Estonian International Commission is succeeded by the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory, established by President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all the people who make an appearance in this book, particularly Alar and Hele Uus, Ivar Rüütli, Inna and Toivo Hammerberg, Ülo, Kalm, and Laine Belovas.
Ruth Kanarbik and Veevi Kirschbaum are sadly no longer alive. They both, in their own ways, contributed a great deal to this book, and I want to acknowledge their generosity.
Professor Daniel Miller, who was my PhD supervisor, was always supportive, and has consented to being quoted in this book. It was a great privilege to work with him.
Lisbet Rausing, my sister, has read and commented extensively. Her encouragement and advice have been invaluable. Thank you, also, to everyone else in my family—not least my dear husband, Eric Abraham.
Finally, I want to thank my publisher, Morgan Entrekin, and my patient and meticulous editor, Peter Blackstock, for taking on this book, and for handling it so well.
This book is dedicated to my parents, Hans and Märit Rausing. Thank you for everything.
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