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The Others and Othering in Visual Representations of Soviet-Era Song and Dance Festivals in Estonia
panied by an emblem that was used in breastpins and in the design of guidebooks
and other memorabilia. This tradition was continued with a crest that resembled
the emblem of the 1938 song festival: both featured oak leaves and a zither. The lat¬
ter, a symbol of music, had been used in the emblems of nearly all of the earlier song
festivals; in 1947 it was complemented with a five-pointed red star (Figs 1 and 3).
The festival and visual representations thereof laid special emphasis on folk cos¬
tumes. While this, too, contributed to an impression of continuity, it also was in
keeping with the principle of developing cultures that would be nationalist in form
and socialist in content. Information booklets published in the run-up to the cele¬
bration urged and instructed participants to make and wear folk dresses, while also
introducing them to the new Soviet approach to folk culture (e.g. Adamson 1947).
The hand-drawn cover of the celebration guide (artist Aleksander Koemets
(1912-1988); XZ tildlaulupeojuht) depicted optimistic, self-confident men and
women in folk costumes, as did the posters designed by the artists Alo Hoidre
(1916-1993) and Siima Skop (1920-2016), (see Figs 3 and 4)." Young women in
richly decorated national dresses dominated both placards. Ihe women are smil¬
ing, holding flowers in their hands and waving; their long blond hair is loose. Red
flags are included but not foregrounded: the main message seems to be that it is
time to relax and rejoice. Overall, from the official point of view, the 1947 celebra¬
tion had to look and sound Estonian in order to serve as a token for the Soviet
regimes care for and nurture of Estonian national culture and the Estonian people.
For the same reason, the event had to be truly massive and feature more perform¬
ers and participants than any of the previous celebrations (Ratassepp 1965: 135).
While the Soviet system was eager to salvage the form of song and dance festivals,
it had to state its opposition to previous political systems and, most of all, to the
capitalistic, bourgeois Republic of Estonia, which according to Marxist-Leninist
doctrine had oppressed the working people and their creative potential.
The 1950 Song and Dance Celebration as a Tool of Sovietisation
If the 1947 celebration aimed to convince the Estonian people that they and their
culture were to be safe under the new rule, the 1950 festival came to be used to
state a clear break from the past and a forceful implementation of sovietisation.
As such, it sent out the same message as forced collectivisation, deportations, and
other Stalinist repressive measures carried out in Estonia and many other parts of
the Soviet Union during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The status of the 1950 celebration as a watershed was made clear by various
visual means. Pre-Soviet numeration was discontinued “as something ‘outdated
10 The authors of posters discussed in this chapter were born in the 1910s and 1920s and graduated from
art schools either before or during WWII (Hoidre, Raunam, Viilup) or in the 1940s and early 1950s
(Skop, Soans, Vender). Several of them (Hoidre, Raunam, Skop, Viilup) were mobilised into the Red
Army or spent the years during WWII in the Soviet rear.
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