Kolhoosifolkloori kogumine ja uurimine varajases Eesti NSV-S
The Collection and Research of Kolkhoz Folklore in Early Soviet Estonia

Summary/Abstract: In early Soviet Estonia, folkloristics had to conform to the new ideology. The institutions were reorganised, the previous work was re-evaluated, while new folklore on Soviet topics was expected to be collected, published and studied. The directions on what and how to study came from Soviet research conferences visited by Estonian scholars. Recommendable Soviet folklore such as, for example, materials about the Great Patriotic War or worker movement being hard to find, kolkhozes looked a more promising terrain. As soon as in 1950, a year after mass collectivisation in Soviet Estonia, folklorists and folklore students were interviewing kolkhoz members in the hope of finding suitable folklore. The material archived as kolkhoz folklore includes songs, proverbs, sayings, descriptions of traditions and also the fading of certain customs, but a bulk of this material consists merely of information about the kolkhozes without any folkloric content. Especially for students, this was an unwelcome outcome. The materials that did match the Soviet paradigm were analysed and presented at conferences, but kolkhoz folklore never made a topic of research in Soviet Estonia as after the death of Stalin folklorists gave up the endeavour altogether. Nevertheless the examples gained were optimistically presented in newspapers and school books as the typical folklore of the time. The very fact that kolkhoz folklore was collected and the ways it was presented served to normalise the system of collective farms. The work on Soviet folklore instrumentalised the discipline of folklore studies. Although folklorists themselves abandoned this kind of ideological work after Stalinism, there were some volunteer collectors who still regarded kolkhoz folklore as a relevant topic. In summary, for the folklorists kolkhoz folklore was a tool to survive the politically complicated years and for the discipline to be fitted in the Soviet model in order to enable folkloristic research to go on.

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