NÕUKOGUDEAEGNE MIGRATSIOON JA SELLE ILMNEMINE OMAELULUGUDES
SOVIET MIGRATION AND ITS APPEARANCE IN AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

Summary/Abstract: The article observes the appearance of the topic of Soviet migration in the autobiographical narratives of inhabitants of Estonia, written in the Russian language in the years 1989–1990 and 2006–2007. In the stories of people who were born outside Estonia, their movement all over the territory of the Soviet Union is not dealt with as migration. The topic of migration becomes an issue only after the restitution of independence in Estonia, from applying for citizenship to reinterpretation of their identity in the new political situation. Due to the historical background of Estonia, two important aspects come to the fore in these stories. Firstly, the processal nature of migration. The narrator might not understand spatial movement (in the geographical dimension) as migration – such understanding may have come much later, most recently after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Partly the new political situation, partly the new generation and changes in the family have made the writers discuss the renewal of their own status – this stage of the migration process seems to have been painful for most of the biography writers at the time of writing. Secondly, the interpretational aspect of migration: something that a part of the population has always understood as migration is just movement in search of a place of living and a job for the other part. The latter viewpoint was supported by the general compulsion to move (from forced appointment of graduates to jobs, evacuation etc., to deportation) with movement possibilities continuously simplified, and the prominence of Soviet ideology and the Russian language.

• Details
• Contents