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Bezig met laden... Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia (2014)door Sigrid Rausing
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Just like it was taken for granted that houses could be abandoned and slowly decay, so it was taken for granted that people died in prisons, and that it was possible that no-one would really ever know the cause of death. This is the nature of totalitarianism. In 1993-94 Sigrid Rausing completed her anthropological fieldwork on the peninsula of Noarootsi, a former Soviet border protection zone in Estonia. Abandoned watch towers dotted the coast line, and the huge fields of the Lenin collective farm were lying fallow, waiting for claims from former owners, fleeing war and Soviet and Nazi occupation. Rausing’s conversations with the local people touched on many subjects: the economic privations of post-Soviet existence, the bewildering influx of western products, and the Swedish background of many of them. In Everything Is Wonderful Rausing reflects on history, political repression, and the story of the minority Swedes in the area. She lived and worked amongst the villagers, witnessing their transition from repression to freedom, and from Soviet neglect to post-Soviet austerity. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)947.98086History and Geography Europe Russia and eastern Europe [and formerly Finland] Baltic States [Formerly, Caucasus Generally] EstoniaLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (3.64)
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Philanthropist Sigrid Rausing is perhaps best known as the publisher of Granta Magazine and Granta Books. In 1993-94 she was completing work on her anthropology PhD by doing fieldwork while also teaching English in the village of Pürksi in the parish of Noarootsi in northwestern Estonia. The PhD paper became the basis of her 2004 book History, Memory, and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia: The End of a Collective Farm and the experience itself became the basis for this 2014 memoir which came out in paperback in early 2016 as Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia.
Estonia had declared its renewed independence from Soviet Russia on August 20, 1991 but it took a further 3 years until August 31, 1994 for the occupation troops to leave. The early post-Soviet years were difficult as the new democracy broke with the centralized Soviet system and worked towards a free-market economy. The system of Soviet collectivized farms had never been a success under the totalitarian regime which led to shortages of food and market goods being supplemented by the black market.
The area of Noarootsi is unique in Estonia due to its history of a Swedish speaking minority. Rausing billets at various private homes while learning about the local history and dealing with the local populace. Some of the alcoholics are a bit menacing, but the overall tone of the book is melancholic. It gives a picture of a people failed by an earlier system and in a limbo while a future tries to begin. The history of the area and of odd trivia such as the founding of the Swedish village Gammalsvenskby in the Ukraine is covered quite well.
Trivia note: One of the unnamed Estonian prog-rock albums that Rausing hears is the group In Spe’s “Typewriter Concerto” written by its then leader Alo Mattiisen:
… whilst Ivar played particular pieces of Estonian music from the mid 1980’s for me. Grave avant-garde ensembles, some based on folk songs, most with no lyrics. One famous one was dedicated to the typewriter, and featured a typewriter as an instrument, subtly antibureaucratic, and hence anti-Soviet. “That was the time for Estonian music,” he said. “Now it’s all in English, all the same." (