Russian culture in Estonia today — old and new, everyday and elevated
After Estonia regained independence, Russian cultural associations were established as well. The largest of them — Union of Slavonic and Charitable Societies in Estonia — had been originally set up in 1923. This process seems to indicate the continuing attention and interest in the survival of Slavonic national culture in Estonia.
“Slavjanskij venok” (Slavonic Chaplet) has become a grand undertaking in the 1990s, rather resembling Estonian song and dance festivals. “Slavjanskij venok” traditionally starts with a festive procession in national costume along the streets of Old Tallinn. People arrive from Russia and other countries with Slavonic culture to perform their culture.
An interest in traditional Russian customs and festivals has also emerged in recent times. Russian cultural societies as well as various Russian groups celebrate ‘maslenitsa’ that denoted the arrival of spring and the retreat of winter, the triumph of the sun. In honour of the sun, hundreds of Russian pancakes called ‘bliny’, resembling the sun both in form and colour, are baked that day. The pancakes are eaten with butter, cream, caviar, salted fish or jam, exactly as it was done in Russian villages of ancient times.
Despite a certain fascination with ancient folk customs, the Russian culture in Estonia today is primarily urban, receptive to the open world and globalisation. People around 30 years of age probably feel least connected with Estonian culture and society — the Estonian language level has remained low due to the small number of lessons and bad teaching. At the same time, they have a knowledge of English or some other foreign tongue and are prepared to try their luck elsewhere in Europe after Estonia has joined the EU.
There are those, however, whose foreign language skills are so modest that any thought about going to Europe will inevitably remain a dream. Such people, more often than not representatives of older generations, are especially enthusiastic promoters of Russification. The younger generation is considerably more flexible and liberal-minded, knowing both Estonian and foreign languages and use the word ‘we’ when talking about Estonia. Still, not many of them consider themselves citizens of the world, setting their aim at not being strangers in Estonia.
As a people’s self-determination always relies on the language, Russian culture should be viewed in connection with the places where the Russian language survives in all its variety. Such centres are first of all universities with departments of Russian (and Slavonic) linguistics and literature, i.e. University of Tartu and the Tallinn Pedagogical University. These universities offer higher education to the Russians who will teach their mother tongue and literature at Russian schools and to Estonians who have a scholarly interest in Russian language and culture.
Over 40 years, the world famous academic Juri Lotman (1922–1993) worked at the University of Tartu at the department of Slavonic philology. After graduating from the St Petersburg University in 1949, he was unable to get a job because of his Jewish origin. Hence Tartu, where the academic atmosphere was more liberated, became Lotman’s new home. He was an outstanding Russian linguist, a superb expert on Russian literature and culture. Largely on his initiative, structuralism and semiotics became popular in the Russian cultural space in the early 1960s. Lotman’s work resulted in the emergence of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics that gradually became known all over the world. Talking about Russian culture in Estonia, other outstanding scientists of Russian origin should be mentioned here as well — economist Mikhail Bronstein (born in 1923), art historian Boriss Bernstein (1924), cinema historian and critic Tatjana Elmanovich (1934).
After the slack years in the early 1990s, the Russian media in Estonia has braced up considerably. There are four radio stations, regular programmes on Estonian TV, Russian-language news programmes are broadcast daily and, additionally, a private channel produces Russian cultural programmes as well. In Tallinn alone, two Russian dailies and two weeklies are published; Pärnu and East Virumaa also issue Russian-language papers. The Russian-language internet portal Delfi is popular especially with the young.
On 14 March 2002 the Cultural Endowment of Estonia issued for the first time a literature award to an author writing in Russian. The first award winner was Larissa Vaneyeva (1955). Various other Russian writers live or work in Estonia, e.g. prose writer Mikhail Veller (1948), an Estonian citizen who lives in St Petersburg, Tallinn and Israel and whose works appear in Russia in hundreds of thousands of copies; Yelena Skulskaya (1950), poet and prosaist whose poems have been considerably influenced by the Estonian poetry of the 1960s; Svetlan Semenenko (1939) poet and an eminent translator of Estonian literature; and some others.
The output of Russian writers is mainly published in three literary and cultural magazines: ‘Vyshgorod’ (Toompea Hill), ‘Raduga’ (Rainbow) and ‘Tallinn’, although they contain a fair number of translations from Estonian authors as well. Quite a few books by both Russian and Estonian authors have recently been published in the Russian language, with the most active period falling in the early 1990s. Today, a few publishing houses specialising in Russian literature have remained: ‘Antek’, ‘Avenarius’, ‘Ingri’, ‘KPD’. Besides fiction, they also issue, to a lesser extent, scientific and popular scientific books by Russian authors.
One of the centres of Russian culture in Estonia is the Russian Drama Theatre where plays by the best Russian, Estonian and world authors are performed. Estonians are by no means rare visitors there. Especially popular was the production ‘To Moscow! To Moscow!’, a dramatisation based on Anton Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters’, including elements and fragments depicting the departure of the Soviet military from Estonia. One of the most successful plays amongst the Russian audiences is Eduard Vilde’s ‘The Hobgoblin’. The history of Russian theatre in Estonia actually starts at the beginning of the 20th century. Between 1918 and 1940, numerous émigré actors and directors worked in the Russian theatre here; the leading Russian theatre directors often offered guest performances here (e.g. the world-renowned theatre director and actor Mikhail Chekhov, nephew of the great writer). The tradition of guest performers and concerts has continued to this day — Russian theatres, mainly from Moscow and St Petersburg, bring over performances of 2-3 prominent actors and even entire theatre companies.
A large number of talented artists are busy in the figurative arts. Some have acquired higher education in Estonia, and the influence of e.g. Estonian graphic art is clearly evident in their work. The contact and merging of Estonian and Russian traditions has yielded interesting results in the output of several artists. Mention should be made here of Vladimir Baiu (1965), Veera Stanishevski (1953), Vladislav Stanishevski (1947), Anatoli Strahhov (1946), Viktor Sinjukajev (1941) and sculptor Mikhail Dukhomjonok (1950).
In music, too, there is a lot going on. A symphony orchestra was founded in Narva, the Russian Philharmonic Society is active in Tallinn as are various Russian rock bands that enjoy popularity among young Estonians as well.
The depicted picture of Russian culture seems quite pretty and optimistic, but the future of Russian culture in Estonia is not entirely cloudless. An increasing number of children in Russian families go to Estonian-language school, with parents hoping to provide them with a better chance on the labour market. The ever-busy parents, however, have little time for their offspring and the supposedly bilingual children learn Russian only on an everyday level. Reading and writing skills remain modest, and they know Russian literature only by way of translation and to the extent required in the Estonian school curriculum.
Similar to in Sweden where children speaking another home language are offered extra lessons from experienced teachers who help them maintain their mother tongue and culture, Russian children in Estonia should also have a chance to study Russian language and history of culture more thoroughly. This would help them find their identity and become truly educated people whose opinions about nationality-related problems is usually more tolerant than the average. The Russian community should retain the possibility to reproduce its own intelligentsia, especially in the area of the humanities. Shaping a strong Russian intelligentsia and cultural elite is not just a question of the fate of the Russian community in Estonia, it may well be significant regarding the vibrant and harmonious development of the Estonian state as a whole.
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