Estonian Song Celebrations during the Soviet Era:Two Ways of Constructing Nationalism

The First Estonian-Finnish Music Library SeminarHelsinki

26/05/2016

Anu Kõlar, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre

The First Song Celebrationwas held in 1869 in Tartu

The festival is held once everyfive years in July on the TallinnSong Festival Grounds

In 2003, the tradition ofEstonian song and dancefestivals was added toUNESCO’s List of IntangibleCultural Heritage

Estonians – the singing nation?

Song Celebration - this is almost a sacred notion. It stands for the truebirthday of Song, a great spiritual feast, a tradition not to be missed.

Estonia and Song Celebration – these two belong together like Norwayand skiing or England and the Oxford-Cambridge boat race.

(The Management Commitee for the Song Festivals; http://2014.laulupidu.ee/en/story/)

Some issues:

• how was it possible thatthe Soviet totalitarianregime allowed thecelebration of the songfestivals?

• were there any specificfeatures that the Sovietera introduced to theorganization, and thepolitical significance ofthe song felebration?

• what were the mostimportant differencesbetween the oppressivepower and oppressedtowards the songfestival?

The Song Celebrationprocession in 1950

… and in 2014

The Song Celebrations in the history of Estonia

Estonia: political history

• 1721-1918: Estonia was a province ofthe Russian Empire. Cultural practicesand ideology were led by the BalticGermans.

• 1918-1940: Republic of Estonia, thefirst independence period.

• 1940: Estonian Republic was occupiedby the Soviet Union. 1941-1944: naziGerman occupation. 1945-1990 :Soviet era. Cultural life was controlledby the Communist Party; attempts torussify the education and culture

• 1988: „Singing Revolution” started

• 1991: The restoration of theindependence of the Republic ofEstonia

Song Celebrations

• 1869: The First Song Celebration in Tartu.In the first three festivals, only men's choirsand brass bands participated. Since 1896:song festivals in Tallinn.

• 1918-1940: choir movementflourished; 7 song festivals took place

1923: almost 500 Finns visited Estonian Song Festival;

1928: Suomen kuoroliitto (with 650 members) tookpart

• 1940-1990: 10 festivals were held (in1947, 1950, 1955…1969,…1990). Theauthorities forced Soviet songs into therepertoire. Estonians: „We had to singpropagandist songs in order to preservethe chance to sing Estonian songs”

• 1988: In September, the re-establishment of Estonia'sindependence was demanded for thefirst time at the Song Festival Grounds

First Song Celebration inSoviet Estonia (1947)

The period of „cautioussovetization” (Elena Zubkova):

• The repertoire consisted ofmainly Estonian songs

• 12 000 female and childsingers were transported toTallinn

• The choirs were given fabricfor festivals costumes; freemusic scores and free food

Ambivalent relationship betweenthe oppressors and theoppressed Female choirs in 1947

Soviet policy onnationalities„The development ofcultures national in form andsocialist in content …… is necessary for the purposeof their ultimate fusion intoone General Culture, socialistas to form and content, andexpressed in one generallanguage”Iosif Stalin 1934

„Socialist realism was to be themethod of cultural production,the code through which theregimented unity of artisticlabour was to translate into anideal unity of the aestheticrealm”Encyclopedia of ContemporaryRussian Culture 2007: 575

The guests from Uzbek and Kazakh SovietSocialist Republics at the Song Festival in1955

Soviet Estonian SongFestival in 19501949: mass deportation: about 22,000Estonians were sent to Siberia1950: accusations of bourgeois nationalismand formalism

The festivals held in 1950and 1955 were the mostpoliticised:• Many songs were

performed in Russian;special place was givento the songs about „wiseStalin and the dearestParty”

• Choirs and orchestra ofthe Soviet Army andthe miner´s choir tookpart

• Slogans, critisisingcapitalist „war mongers”were carried

The choir and orchestra of the Soviet Army atthe Soviet Estonian Song Festival in 1950

1969: jubilee Song Festival, celebrating the centennial of the First SongCelebration. The song festival flame was lit in Tartu, the site of the first festival.From there it was carried through all the districts of Estonia to Tallinn

1969 Song Celebration

• The structure of thejubilee Celebration wasto a large extent copiedfrom the first SongCelebration

• The majority of the 68songs in the festivalprogram were pieces thathad been included inearlier festivals

• The special monumentand the wall of honourwere opened

• One hundred oak treeswere planted etc

Song celebration’s meaningfor the Estonian community

On the bases of different articles, overviews and memories of thesingers and listeners:

• song festivals are described as the most important bearers ofnational identity and unity

• at the collective level, the song festivals as ritualistic, regularlyrepeated events have served as means for maintaining Estoniancultural values

Cultural memory studies as an appropriate method for exploring cultural event’sand tradition’s significance to the particular community

Jan Assmann, German Egyptologist and cultural historian oncultural memory:

• „Cultural memory has its fixed point; its horizon does notchange with the passing of time. These fixed points are fatefulevents of the past, whose memory is maintained throughcultural formation (texts, rites, monuments) and institutionalcommunication (recitation, practice, observance)”

• „Cultural memory preserves the store of knowledge from whicha group derives an awereness of its unity and peculiarity

• „Cultural memory is based on texts, images, and rituals specificto each society […], whose “cultivation” serves to stabilize andconvey that society’s self-image”

(Assmann 1995)

Pierre Nora, French historian and publisher on sites of memory(a lieu de mémoire):

• „A lieu de mémoire is any significant entity, whether material ornon-material in nature, which […] has become a symbolicelement of the memorial heritage of any community”.

• Sites of memory are “where cultural memory crystallizes andsecretes itself”

• Sites of memories include venues (palaces, cemeteries,archives), concepts and practices (rituals, symbols, emblems,basic texts), etc.

• The purpose of sites of memory is “to stop time, to block thework of forgetting”

(Nora 1989)

The ideas about song festival

The Soviet regime:

• being a mass event, the song festivalwas in some ways familiar andattractive to Soviet authorities, andthus the tradition of song festivals waspermitted to continue

• applied the same model to EstonianSong Celebrations as it did to all Sovietnations’ cultures: national in form andsocialist in content, with the ultimategoal of achieving a unified socialistmonolingual culture

• eventually, the project of making thefestival socialist in content, had failed

„Singing Estonians“ as the culturalmemory comunity:

• the Estonian nation has remembereditself often as a product of musicalimagination

• the song festivals are for Estonians akind of ritual, which task is to fixcertain behavioural patterns inpeople’s memories, and to tie past,present and future into a whole

• the song festival is one the mostimportant sites of memory in Estonia

• a national cultural communityaccentuates its specific and uniquefeatures, preserves them and passesthem on to the future generations

Songs have been our weapons, song festivalsour victories

Estonian President Lennart Meri,

July 1999

Thank you for your attention!

Gustav Ernesaks in 1969, afterthe jubilee Song Celebration:“Everybody was speechlessdue to the enormoussuccess of this festival. It isunlikely that we will everforget it”

Gustav Ernesaks (1908–1993),an Estonian composer and achoir conductor. He was oneof the father figures ofthe Estonian Song Festivaltradition. One of his songsLand of my Fathers, Land That ILove became anunofficial national anthemduring the years of Sovietoccupation.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9EhUDkY8Sc