Oldal 517 [517]
The Others and Othering in Visual Representations of Soviet-Era Song and Dance Festivals in Estonia
employed in coffee-table books from the period of late socialism are indicative of
this coexistence as well as of its capacity to allow for different, even ambiguous
messages. Depending on the images that were selected to contextualise song and
dance celebrations and their arrangement principles, the festival tradition could
be represented as a Soviet achievement or, on the contrary, as an almost natural
phenomenon independent of ideological struggles. While in the former case, the
Soviet rule was represented as a guarantor of Estonia’s progress and development,
it emerged from latter representations as surface phenomena bound to leave the
national essence intact.
The relationship between national/Estonian form and socialist content was
thus more complex than one of simple subordination. Examples discussed here
illustrate how forms tend to outlive contents and how the permanence of form can
obscure shifts in contents. By controlling forms, one can modify contents and ulti¬
mately change the reality. As Michael Herzfeld notes (2005: 20), “The more fixed
the semiotic forms, the greater is the play of ambiguity and the more surprising
are the possibilities for violating the code itself”. New shifts in the content of song
and dance celebrations began already in the late 1980s before Estonia had restored
independence. The permanence of form, once again, conveyed a sense of continu¬
ity amid drastic political, social, and economic changes and what appeared to have
been the form, turned out to be the content.
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