Bringing war into everyday life
strange “dialogues” about values from the 1940s
The ongoing war in Ukraine makes many people ask how such devastation is possible in 21st-century Europe. The arguments of the Russian side create misunderstanding and leave us perplexed. The incitement to hatred and destruction by Putin's regime can even be compared to the Stalinist era. In the 1940s when the Baltic states were occupied by the USSR, Soviet sanction mechanisms were implemented which implied arrests, imprisonments and deportations of thousands. All this was accompanied by interrogations and torture at the NKVD/KGB (Soviet security organs). Documents of the NKVD/KGB characterise diverse forced situations and make up a significant part of Coercive Archives. Most of those interrogated did not understand the accusations or the questions of the interrogator, thus they were unable to give the right answers. The two worlds that had clashed were too different.
Thousands of NKVD personal files with interrogation protocols are kept in Estonian archives. This is complex source material the use of which is rather problematic. At this point we must not forget that this material was transferred to the archives as late as in the 1990s, before that it was kept and used at the Ministries of Internal Affairs and State Security of the ESSR. Archivists gained access to these files only after the "archival revolution". Thus, compared to several other sources, the personal files of NKVD are a relatively new material for historians and the source critical analysis of this material is still in under way.
NKVD personal files reflect the process of how people's understandings and assessments were adapted to the standards established in the Soviet Union. How were people "transferred" from one cultural space to another through "re-education". How to turn something that seemed natural into something unnatural. This task could not be fulfilled in one day. As professor of literature Gustav Suits said:"For our students who were brought up as "Westerners" it is simpler to turn the hands of a clock onto Moscow time than to pick up Moscow's theoretical concepts".1
The degree to which the views of the people of the newly annexed Baltic states differed from those of other Soviet people was revealed in notes made by the USSR government councillor in Estonia, Andrei Ždanov, on the days of the coup d'état in Tallinn in June 1940. The new Soviet authorities had no clear understanding what kinds of measures were needed for "re-educating the strangers" so that they would become "new people".2
First of all, the people began to be re-educated by means of intensive propaganda, life in pre-Soviet Estonia was contrasted to the new Soviet life.3 Life in the capitalist world, just as in pre-Soviet Estonian society, acquired a negative image. Bad "bourgeois" behavioural standards valid in the West were opposed to the "progressive" Soviet standards. People were made to lie, falsify, all kinds of campaigns for disclosing the "enemy" were launched and all this lasted until the death of Stalin in 1953. Control was established in all walks of life.4
Arrests of people parallel to the establishment of Soviet rule in the summer 1940 proceeded from the principle of arresting first of all the persons who were able to organise resistance as well as those who were more radically against Soviet power. In 1944, the whole Estonian population was "suspicious" in the eyes of Moscow since they had stayed in the territory occupied by the Nazis during World War II. There were numerous elements which needed to be "cleansed" from the society, with members of the national resistance being considered most dangerous. State security defined them as "bourgeois-nationalist underground".
In spring 1945, a major wave of arrests hit the intellectuals of the former Republic of Estonia. Many of them had been in contact with members of the Estonian National Committee or belonged to their circle of friends and naturally tried to maintain contacts with them both in Estonia and beyond. As part of a plan to eliminate the Estonian National Committee, more than 200 people were arrested. The Soviet security organs regarded the Estonian National Committee as an underground centre of bourgeois nationalism which served as a coordinating unit for various groups and forces whose activity was directed against the Soviet regime. Additionally, they were accused of collaboration with German and Finnish intelligence who had left several secret espionage organisations in Estonia. Maintaining and seeking contacts with Estonian emigree centres in Sweden, related to the representatives of English intelligence, was also regarded as criminal.5
Here, I will focus on Estonian intellectuals and their personal files compiled by the NKVD to demonstrate how Soviet power "spoke" and how accused individuals and witnesses responded through a sustained "dialogue" during the interrogations. This approach illustrates what kinds of conflicts emerged and how different the understandings of the principles existing in society could be from the viewpoint of a democratically-minded person and the authoritarian power aiming to re-educate him or her.
The activity of student organisations in the Republic of Estonia, particularly one of them, the "Veljesto" fraternity, was especially remarkable. Numerous historians and scholars of literature belonged to "Veljesto" and many of its members and alumni were arrested in 1945. Numerous arrests for anti-Soviet activity were also based on accusations of participation in some student organisations as they were treated by Soviet interrogators as a form of underground activity against the USSR.
After the capture of the members of the Estonian National Committee, their close acquaintances and sympathisers began to be arrested and interrogated. The aim of the NKVD was to find out all possible contacts between the persons they were interested in, both in case they had stayed in Estonia or fled during German occupation. In the beginning of 1945, a group of intellectuals who were working at the University or museums (9 men, 2 women) were arrested in Tartu, accused of anti-Soviet activity. At about the same time in Tallinn, employees of the Historical Museum began to be arrested, altogether 15 persons (8 men, 7 women). The persons arrested both in Tartu and Tallinn knew one another through family or friendship ties and a number of them had belonged to "Veljesto".
They were all accused of anti-Soviet activity but the specific contents of their activity varied. But there was one cross-cutting theme which emerged in all interrogation protocols: the interrogators had made extra efforts to frame their questions in such a way that the social interaction between the detainees could be qualified as organised underground activity. For the NKVD uncovering a group crime was particularly valuable. Thus, the people were first accused of belonging to the student organisation "Veljesto", regarded as an illegal counter-revolutionary organisation. Investigators who were not aware of the local situation could not understand the nature, style of interaction, or the mentality of student organisations at all. Their minds were overwhelmed by one legal party only – the Communist Party, all other organisations were regarded as anti-Soviet.
As the records of cross-examination reveal, the interrogators struggled interpreting the meetings of intellectuals, laying a charge and making friends or acquaintances testify against one another. In an attempt to attach an organisational dimension to the mutual meetings, various names have been attached to the persons detained, sometimes members of an organisation „Free Estonia", then of the National Committee or just of an underground nationalist organisation. Merely the fact that the persons had lived in "bourgeois" Estonia gave rise to calling them bourgeois nationalists. Uno Ussisoo, arrested in the course of the trial of the Historical Museum was not content with the investigator's attitude to him as a bourgeois nationalist, and received an explanation: "If you lived for 20 years in bourgeois Estonia, subsequently, you are a bourgeois nationalist".6 Likewise, the use of the term "nationalist" caused contradictions when Tartu university professors were cross-examined. Professor Peeter Tarvel considered it important to correct the investigator's viewpoint about his colleague Paul Ariste. "It is not true to say that Ariste is a nationalist, this is only correct in the sense that he is an Estonian and loves his people".7
Those under arrest were united by their similar mentality, professional or friendship relations. It was natural that friends discussed issues, essential or burning for them – whether the Soviet regime was temporary; whether it was possible to try and escape from Estonia; how superpowers of the world would solve the problem of the Baltic states, whose help would be expected; how to protect Estonian cultural values and save them from destruction. The NKVD regarded all this as anti-Soviet activity.
In more detail, what was the fault of all those people? "Conversations" with investigators started in a calm tone as the person under arrest had to speak about his/her life and activity, political views. Thereafter the person was questioned about his or her acquaintances, where and when they had met, what they had talked about etc. The more a person spoke, the more both the speaker and the people concerned got entangled in the web of accusations. As mentioned above, the student organisation "Veljesto" was "suspicious" in the eyes of the investigators and questions about the activity, membership, and meetings were repeatedly asked during cross-examinations.
This is illustrated by a few questions from the personal file of the director of the Literary Museum Mart Lepik (RA ERAF. 130SM-1-2708). – What was the political nature of the student organisation "Veljesto"? like, could he name more active leaders of the organisation and their present location, where are they at present? Could he speak about contacts with well-known nationalists? When and where did "Veljesto" meet during the German occupation, what was discussed etc. Mart Lepik was appointed as director of the Literary Museum by the Soviets in 1940, thus, he had to explain his activities at the Political Police twice during the German occupation.
The following excerpt characterises the understandings about educational activities, cultural contacts and travel abroad from the viewpoints of the former citizens of the Republic of Estonia and the Soviet authorities.
Question (interrogator Ivanov): When and where did you go abroad?
Answer (Mart Lepik): My first visit to Finland was in 1925 to study Finnish. Since 1927 I have often worked in the archives of Riga. In 1938, I travelled from Tartu to Krakow, Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin and Riga.
Q: What was the purpose of your travelling?
A: Research work. When I worked in Krakow, I found some important material about Estonian culture and art.
Q: Who authorized your research trip?
A: I took the trips on my own initiative.
Q: Who was your interpreter?
A: I travelled on my own as I can speak Estonian, Russian, German, Finnish and a little French.
Q: In which other countries have you been?
A: In June 1939 I and my co-workers went to Finland to attend a scientific conference.
What kinds of conclusions were drawn from these answers? Firstly, the interrogator Ivanov could not understand how Mart Lepik was allowed and could go abroad on his own initiative, alone and without an interpreter – and even more, without any necessary assignment. In the USSR it was always important to obtain a permit to travel, almost any private contact with the West was controlled by the state and subjected to the purposes of the state. Secondly, Lepik's statements revealed his mentality and personal contacts with Westerners, this made it quite easy to accuse him of anti-Soviet mentality and "bourgeois" views. Everything seen and experienced abroad, relationships with people living there gave reasons for various accusations. Mostly, people travelled abroad in connection with their work, studies, self-education or holidays.
In the case of Mart Lepik as director of the Literary Museum his main fault was collecting leaflets with counter-revolutionary content that had been produced by the underground nationalist organisation "Free Estonia" during the German occupation. As the questions put to Lepik reveal, the investigators did not understand the nature of such an activity (the questions are compiled of several protocols of cross-examinations):
Question: Does it mean that your museum collected leaflets with counter-revolutionary contents?
Answer: Yes, our museum received both German and Soviet leaflets as well as those that called upon the fight against Germans and for free, independent Estonia.
Q: So, you are given a leaflet with counter-revolutionary contents and you save the leaflet with such a content?
A: Yes, it may be so.
Q: Who from higher authorities gave you an order to collect leaflets?
A: There was no such order.
Q: Did German authorities know that you collected leaflets?
A: No, neither German authorities nor the administration of the University of Tartu were aware of it. I could have been punished for it by the police.
For the employees of the museum (Mart Lepik, Rudolf Põldmäe, August Palm) who were accused of collecting leaflets, the gathering of materials, including leaflets was a part of museum work and they saw nothing condemnable in it. The question put to all of them received a similar answer: they did it for future research so that historians and writers could describe this period in Estonian history (R. Põldmäe); to let Estonians of the post-war period know what we did during the war (M. Lepik). The longest explanation was given by August Palm:"For many years the museum has first of all been engaged in collecting materials. Thus e.g., the museum has preserved all Estonian printed matter of the bourgeois period, Soviet period and the period of German occupation and those include books, journals, newspapers etc. Likewise, leaflets from various organisations belong to them, […] so that it would be possible to reflect struggles from one side and from the other. Collecting such materials has never […] been banned".8 The investigator’s view was that the leaflets indicated the struggle of underground organisations against Soviet power.
These are just a few excerpts from conflicts manifest in the interrogation protocols. It is quite obvious that the interrogators and those under cross-examination came from different cultural spaces, the records tell the reader about mutual miscomprehension, and it is not far from the truth to say that it was a cultural conflict caused by irreconcilable views.
The forced situations in which people found themselves as a result of the Soviet regime in the 1940s were often comparable with a war that has no end. The long and seemingly endless list of "internal enemies" and systematic filtering of "unreliable elements" were signs of constant struggle. The general background of violence in society, punishment of people, continuous intimidation, interference into people's personal and work life, dismissals, calls to "talk", humiliations at meetings, various restrictions, manipulations etc – all these factors poisoned the society and traumatized the individuals concerned.
Over time, the research questions used to examine investigation files have changed to some extent. After the collapse of the communist regime when we started to deal with the past of the repressive regime, more general issues were in the foreground. The extent and brutality of the communist regime have been widely discussed in different commissions or non-governmental organisations to investigate massive violations of human rights and injustice. To date (for the last during about 30 years or so), the topic of political violence committed in Soviet society has been described in numerous studies, it has been discussed publicly and privately. Yet, following different discussions, we often have to conclude that a number of problems, challenges and sufferings have remained unrecognised or have been described in a simplified or insufficient manner. Besides clearly perceivable phenomena there were those that can be examined only by comparing materials of different institutions and different cases. They are quite often related to diverse measures of control, searches for compromises, dilemmas of adaptation and coping strategies. The use of interrogation files is a serious challenge for historians.
Footnotes
Leili Iher, Gustav Suitsu jälil, fakte ja mõtisklusi (Varrak, 2011), 149.↩︎
Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul. Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachussets), London, 2003); Jelena Zubkova, Baltimaad ja Kreml 1940–53 (Tallinn: Varrak, 2009), 95.↩︎
Oleg Kharkhordin, The collective and the individual in Russia. Study of practices (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999).↩︎
Tõnu Tannberg (ed.), Eesti NSV aastatel 1940-1953: sovetiseerimise mehhanismid ja tagajärjed Nõukogude Liidu ja Ida-Euroopa arengute kontekstis (Eesti Ajalooarhiivi toimetised (508). Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv. 2007).↩︎
Estonian National Archive, RA, ERAF.1.47.38, 147–150.↩︎
Sirje Annist, "Ajaloomuuseumi protsess 1945.-46. aastal," Tuna 3 (2002), 49.↩︎
Sirje Annist, "Tartu haritlaste vestlused NKVD-ga 1945-1946", Varia historica I. Eesti Ajaloomuuseum. Töid ajaloo alalt 6 (2006), 164–165.↩︎
Estonian National Archive, RA, ERAF.130SM.1.2708, 71–72.↩︎