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- Title
DIVERSIFICATION AND ALTERNATIVE SUBJECTIVITIES IN ESTONIAN MUSEUMS: MEMORY OF SOVIET COLLABORATION AND COMPLICITY REVISITED.
- Authors
Kõresaar, Ene; Jõesalu, Kirsti
- Abstract
This article investigates how Estonian cultural history museums display controversies inherent in the communist past related to complicity and collaboration, which were avoided and externalized in post-communist nationalist visions of the past. Taking recent theorizations of reflexive and dialogic memory modes as a background, we ask about alternative subject positions in the representation of communism and complicity with the regime in recently opened history exhibitions. As a result, we argue that the general incoherence and indecisiveness in understanding Soviet collaboration in political and cultural memory is reflected in Estonian history museums taking diverse positions when approaching subject positions related to the memory of complicity. At the same time, the availability of different, even contradictory, positions in the public sphere adds to memory culture's democratization. The analysis shows that the ways museums deal with the issue of complicity and collaboration arise from the museums' different definitions of their role in society. Concurrently, the museum narratives negotiate and contest each other. Museums use various methods and approaches to re-politicize Soviet complicity, with different degrees of success in acknowledging nuanced interpretations of the past and applying pluralist viewpoints.
- Subjects
ESTONIA; HISTORICAL museums; COMMUNISM; MEMORY; POSTCOMMUNIST societies
- Publication
Slavic & East European Journal, 2023, Vol 67, Issue 3, p344
- ISSN
0037-6752
- Publication type
Article