Heritage Under Socialism by Eszter Gantner;Corinne Geering;Paul Vickers;

Author:Eszter Gantner;Corinne Geering;Paul Vickers; [Vickers;, Eszter Gantner;Corinne Geering;Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800732285
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2022-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

Soviet-Estonian restorers’ international travel demonstrates the active exchanges that they enjoyed with colleagues from both socialist and capitalist countries (Finland, Sweden, and West Germany, in particular). Estonian conservators were in contact with ICOMOS through its USSR Committee in Moscow and benefitted from opportunities to travel through ICOMOS, while also making the most of its channels of knowledge, such as participating in the conferences, accessing literature, and building new personal contacts.

External communication upheld and strengthened levels of professionalism. Seeing advanced restoration techniques and materials abroad contributed to the growing self-confidence of Estonian restorers in demanding the implementation of innovations and general improvement of Estonian conservation practice. This is why the activity of Polish conservators in Tallinn between 1978 and 1990 proved to be a somewhat controversial chapter in Estonian conservation history. Polish colleagues employed their restoration traditions in Estonia, with their methods differing slightly from what had become common practice in Estonia, namely an approach that was firmly rooted in historical and archeological research. Practical cooperation revealed differences in attitudes, which spared the discussions on the methodology of contemporary conservation. As a result, Estonia was not the passive receiver of Polish restoration works but established itself as a partner.

The Soviet-era intellectual leaders of Estonian heritage protection and practice were Helmi Üprus and Villem Raam. They were educated in the prewar period and enabled the continuation of Western European and Scandinavian know-how in the field of conservation. Having been oppressed by the Stalinist regime, they were opposed to Soviet rule. Nevertheless, after the end of Stalinism, they were able to maintain personal contacts with colleagues abroad and were allowed to travel to other parts of Europe again. Üprus and Raam remained recognized authorities for subsequent generations of conservators and historians in Soviet Estonia and in newly independent Estonia.

With its generous financing of heritage restoration in the republics of the Soviet Union and its support for intellectuals’ international contacts, the Soviet regime, somewhat paradoxically, actually strengthened Estonian national identity. Heritage became one of the basic platforms of constructing a national collective memory that drew on the prewar period. In the late 1980s people became widely involved in the patriotic heritage movement, with the Estonian Heritage Society, established in 1987, quickly growing into a mass organization. Promoting knowledge of local heritage, initiating campaigns of collecting oral histories in order to reveal unwritten history, and organizing manifestations and numerous events all contributed enormously to the restoration of the independent Republic of Estonia in 1991.61 The first Estonian government was labeled “the government of historians,”62 with the historian Mart Laar, who contributed to the work of the opposition while head of the National Heritage Department of the Ministry of Culture of the Estonian SSR, becoming the first Prime Minister of newly independent Estonia.

Karin Hallas-Murula is an Estonian architectural historian. A graduate of Repin Institute of Arts, St. Petersburg (Russia) and CEU in Prague, she was awarded a doctorate from the Institute of Art Studies, Moscow, in 1992. In 1991 she founded the Museum of Estonian Architecture, serving twenty years as director.

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