Enacting Identities in the EU–Russia Borderland

Abstract

Drawing on Rogers Brubaker's theoretical analyses of "nationness" and nationalism in post-communist europe, this article examines the dynamics of social identity within the nationally contested setting of the estonian-Russian borderland. Since 1991, the city of Narva (96% Russophone by population) has customarily been defined (both politically and academically) in binary national terms as a "Russian enclave" within a unitary and "nationalizing" estonian state. an ethnographic approach to the case, however, gives a rather different perspective, pointing to hybridity rather than nationality as the defining characteristic of identity politics within the city. In what follows, we bring to bear the results of extensive fieldwork carried out in Narva during 2006-2008. We first examine how different identity categories (local, national, meso-regional, and supranational) are being officially inscribed within Narva's sites of memory. Thereafter, we focus on how these discursive-material articulations of place are implicated within the everyday performance of identity amongst the city's population. Using the novel methodology of photo elicitation, we examine how residents of Narva appropriate but also subvert the identity categories that elites and outsiders (including ourselves as researchers) would seek to impose on them from above. This study (we argue) is significant for its methodological novelty, as well as in terms of giving a more nuanced understanding of Narva's situation at a time of continued ethnopolitical contestation within estonia as a whole.

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia

“…We can also visit a Swedish lion commemorating the Scandinavian period of the city, a Tsarist-era monument to those who fell during the Great Northern War, a restored World War II German military cemetery, a White Russian military cemetery and a Soviet memorial, all of them on the same road (Kattago 2008). Eventually, this array of different narrations of memory and society coexisting alongside one another exposes the limits of the 'nationalising' state (Smith and Burch 2011). Whilst the sovereignty of the Estonian Republic is enacted in Narva through the display of flags on public buildings and the use of the Estonian language in official documents, we find ourselves surrounded by Soviet-era traces (e.g., the statue of Lenin in the courtyard of the castle) or symbols of Russianness (in a bust of Pushkin erected in 1999 on a street dedicated to the poet).…”

“…There, identity appears as unfinished, as being in a constant making -as a quotidian negotiation and translation of vectors that come from elsewhere. Hence, the integration of Narva and its inhabitants into the ongoing cultural, economic and political processes would have positive effects, such as redrawing the contours of the nation-building project in Estonia and shifting towards a more multicultural and multiethnic understanding of the social composition (Smith and Burch 2011). Estonian identity has been often portrayed in security terms, as well as fused with the state; however, identities are not only constructed through interactions with other states, but also in interaction with their own societies and the multiple identities and discourses that constitute these groups (Mälksoo 2009).…”