In the MODSCAPES project the concept of historical GIS is one of the practical research tools to detect, map, and analyse large-scale landscape changes caused by modernist rural development schemes. Historical GIS enables us to synthesise human interactions with their surrounding landscape on temporal and spatial axes. In this paper, historical GIS is applied to create a map-based biography of one of the case study examples, Laeva, which was a collective state farm orsovkhoz in South Estonia between 1975 and 1993. Through combining historical maps and archival data we followed the process of collectivisation in Laeva. The Laeva sovkoz was a result of nearly 30 years of trial and error in collective farming, which in the area started with the establishment of seven small kolkhozes in 1948 and 1949. In the 1950s the small kolkhozes were amalgamated into larger and more effective agricultural units. After several mergers and reorganisation of production, in 1975 the sovkhoz of Laeva was established. In the second half of the 1970s the sovkhoz became an experimental cattle and pig breeding research institute of the Estonian Agricultural Academy. We also compared the land use dynamics of the area before, during, and after the collectivisation. The results showed that during the collectivisation the pressure to cultivate land was intensified, and through extensive melioration wetlands were drained, and forested.
The physical impact of modernism in the rural landscape and its remains are explored in order both to capture the results of past decisions and the current state of the rural landscapes and to connection these. But if we ask how, have these landscapes evolved over time and what actually remains, we often only look on built remains, artefacts or plans forming the raw material. Instead, we put the focus on the actions of the people living and working there, with their memories, reflections,their past desires and their plans achieved or destroyed. Compared with the built remains of collectivization schemes, many of the actors of the Soviet collectivisation process in the Baltic States are still alive, having a voice and opinions. To capture this involves a survey of case study landscapes and settlements through fieldwork and comparative analysis in order to compare the initial plans with the actual experience of the collectivisation and to relate the built results and spatial patterns to people’s memories. The actions that formed and still form the landscape were identified and assessed by qualitative go-along interviews with current and former residents, workers or decision makers in the area to create a “thick description” through which we uncovered everyday life aspects of dwellers or workers. What we found is that far from being a completely negative period, life in the collective farm was not all bad – housing improved, people had guaranteed jobs, medical care and education were provided. Young people unaware of politics enjoyed their childhoods and there is some degree of nostalgia remaining, even while the new freedoms and independence of the countries are celebrated(with a centenary in 2018).
Äksi is a small settlement near Tartu in Estonia. The typical Soviet era blocks of flats overlook Lake Saadjärv and the view is met on the other side by large open fields. Back in the Soviet time it was a kolkhoz known as “Avangard” (or “avant-garde”). The name, of course, symbolised the forward-looking new Estonian Soviet state and its accompanying modernisation of the rural landscape. Today the layers of history in the settlement and the landscape around it are visible in the white brick houses built in the early days of the kolkhoz and in the favoured choice of trees planted in the same period but now all grownup. Some of those houses are not in such a great shape anymore, some continue to be used in a similar way they used to be, after the end of the kolkhoz. For example, the workshop building now hosts a company that makes dolls and the piggery has survived despite the change of owners. There are many stories to be shared by those who were part of it all. To gather those memories, and to understand how the starting of new lives for young adults of that time, interviews were carried out using the go-along technique, where the interviewed subject can recall the memories in greater detail, as they walk down the same streets as some decades ago. Although the landscape has visually changed and over two decades have passed since the ending of the Soviet regime, the mind map in peoples’ heads remains vivid. The interviews revealed particular places, views, activities and memories of young adults who came here to start their independent lives, to build a future for them and for the kolkhoz at the same time at the peak of the Soviet era.
Maps have long been used as ways of understanding the land as a means of defining borders, land ownership, resources, estimating tax-gathering potential and for defensive purposes. Many of the national mapping agencies originated as arms of the military. When a new regime takes over a country it may decide to prepare its own set of maps – not least for defensive purposes – and to restrict who has access to these maps. When the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic States in 1945 – and these became front-line areas during the Cold War, with large areas devoted to military installations and border zones – a whole new set of maps were created. We took a sample of maps of Estonia from the inter-war years and from the period of political and military occupation from 1945-1991. The Soviet army maps became freely available in the post-Soviet period and studying them and comparing them with the older maps reveals the way the land was perceived. Military maps were produced using different projections and scales, especially regarding the topography and other features relevant for military operations. The maps included deliberate mistakes and if publicly available they contained many blank spaces to hide sensitive areas and to pretend they did not exist. We also found that maps played a key role in planning future landscapes – kolkhoz maps showed how Estonia was foreseen as a complete planned system covering the whole country outside urban areas.
In 1951 the first colour film in was produced Soviet Estonia–Valgus Koordis (“Light in Koordi village”). This never-before-seen medium applied effective ideological symbols to visualise the power of collective effort with the scope of difficulties building up the new life in a freshly established collective farm (kolkhoz). It was straightforward propaganda to demonstrate that in spite of difficulties, collective farming was the only correct way to achieve prosperity in the countryside. The theme of the film was to show the goodness of Stalinist improvements in a poor post-war rural community at the end of the 1940s. In a very simple manner, topics such as nationalism, the class struggle, socialist ideology, kulaks, collective ownership, mechanisation of agriculture and large-scale land improvements were presented. To capture the wider audience and to increase social impact, the film also starred the rising opera star Georg Ots, still considered as one of the greatest Estonian opera singers ever. In addition to ideologically charged films, a type of propagandist short documentary, the ringvaade (newsreel) was produced in Soviet Estonia. These concentrated on various aspects ofSoviet lifestyle, aiming to demonstrate the achievements of collectiveideology, and the high morale of the Soviet working class. We studied these and other examples in order to examine the range of themes andmotifs presented in them, focusing on the ideological impact on the rural landscape caused by mechanisation, forest management and land melioration. What is revealed is an attempt to persuade the new kolkhozniki (collective farmers) of the benefits of the new system – which, ironically, had dispossessed many of them of their own farms which they had built up in the inter-war years (and which were restored to them after the collapse of the Soviet system in the 1990s).
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