| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
I was born in Kohtla-Jarve, in northeastern Estonia, a city with a chemical plant, an oil shale plant, and several mines. My Russian parents, who had come to Estonia when they were children, had moved there in the 1960s from the capital, Tallinn, to help build the socialist future. My peculiarly named hometown was, and still is, located quite close to the Russian border, but at a time when the radio constantly played the popular song "Moi adres ne dom I ne ulitsa, moi adres Sovetski Soyuz" (My address is not a house or a street, my address is the Soviet Union), the meaning of the border between Estonia and Russia was something completely different for me than it is now. Most ordinary people at the time believed the Russian propaganda, reflected in everything from education to interior design, that all fifteen republics joined the Soviet Union voluntarily. To doubt this-or worse, share your doubts with someone-was a punishable crime. Later I also realized that for us, as Russians, it was easy to believe in the friendship of nations because our ethnic group was clearly in a privileged status in the vast Soviet family.
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