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Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Socialist in Form, Nationalist in Content?
1he Others and Othering in Visual
Representations of Soviet-Era
Song and Dance Festivals in Estonia
The question posed in the title of this chapter’ reverses the famous Soviet for¬
mula, “Nationalist in form, socialist in content”, in an attempt to draw attention
to intricate relationships between cultural forms and contents as sites of agency,
collaboration, and submission in (post-)Soviet Estonia. Soviet nationality policies
regarded native languages, native dress, and other native cultural forms as tempo¬
rary vehicles for spreading socialist ideology on the way to communism. National¬
ist form was to be secondary to socialist content. However, when the Soviet Union
disintegrated in 1991, it did so along the lines of former union republics with the
new or newly independent nation-states. With hindsight, it seemed that the social¬
ist content rather than the nationalist form had been skin-deep and temporary.
Much has been written about contradictions inherent in Soviet nationality
policies and their post-Soviet legacies.* A growing body of scholarship draws on
colonial and postcolonial theorisation in order to explore new hybrid forms that
emerged in the Soviet Baltics from intersections between Soviet, pre-Soviet and
Western discourses.’ The present chapter seeks to contribute to these discussions by
looking at Soviet-era visual representations of song and dance celebrations, ethnic
Estonians’ most cherished collective performances that date back to pre-Soviet years
and have continued their existence in the Republic of Estonia, restored in 1991.4
Song festivals in particular have been considered to epitomise Estonian resist¬
ance to Soviet oppression. Guntis Smidchens (2013), among others, has analysed
how songs and singing served not only Estonians but also Latvians and Lithuanians
as a means of nonviolent anti-Soviet political action. At the same time, however,
1
Research for this article was supported by research grant [UT2-43 of the Estonian Ministry of Educa¬
tion and Research. I would also like to thank Kristiina Hoidre, Zoja Mellov, Aarne Mesikapp and Kerttu
Soans as well as the Art Museum of Estonia, Estonian History Museum and Estonian National Museum.
: See e.g. Brubaker 1996; Cordell et al. 2013; Gorenburg 2006; Hirsch 2005.
> E.g. Annus 2012, Annus 2016 and other contributions to Journal of Baltic Studies 2016 special issue,
A Postcolonial View on Soviet Eva Baltic Cultures (vol. 47), and to the 2011 special issue of the journal
Methis. Studia Humaniora Estonica (vol. 7).
* Ojaveski et al. 2002, and Arraste et al. 2009, provide overviews of individual song and festivals,
respectively.