Reverse, restore, repeat!

Abstract

In this article, I look at Russian-speaking miners' perception of their position in Estonian society, along with their moral economy. Former heroes, glorified for their class and ethnicity, they feel like a racialized underclass in neoliberal Estonia. Excluded from the nation on the basis of ethnicity, they try to maintain their dignity through the discourse of hard work as a basis for membership in society. Based on the longer-term analysis of Estonian history, I argue that the current outcome for the Russian-speaking working class is related to longer historical processes of class formation whereby each period in the Estonian history of the twentieth century seems to be the reversal of the previous one. I also argue for analysis of social change in Eastern Europe that does not focus solely on ethnicity but is linked to class formation processes.

Understanding Russophone Estonian Identity Through Popular Culture: An Analysis of Hip-Hop Hit “für Oksana”

“…The third step of Fairclough’s (1992) framework considers discourses as social practice, reflecting existing power structures in societies. Within Estonian national discourses, Russophone Estonians are often understood as an “underclass” (Kesküla 2015), generally holding lower economic status than ethnic Estonians (Aasland and Fløtten 2001, 1024). “für Oksana” may partly reinforce these existing power dynamics, particularly in the Russian language lines alluding to negatively connoted behaviors including heavy drinking (“Давайте выпьем виски” – “Let’s drink whiskey”) and a fondness for money (“Твой папа любит деньги, деньги, деньги” – “Your father loves money, money, money”), which may be stereotypically associated with “gopniki,” as described above (Loeb 2020).…”

Narratives of peripheralisation: Place, agency and generational cohorts in post-industrial Estonia

“…As Estonia's working class population consists largely of Russian-speakers who moved from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other Soviet republics during the Soviet period and their descendents, the class-related marginalisation intersects with ethnicity (Kesküla, 2015) and was intensified by nationalising policies adopted in the aftermath of the restoration of Estonia's independence. In the early 1990s the Russian-speaking minority made up more than a third of Estonia's total population and was seen as potentially dangerous and destabilising for a small nation of less than a million.…”

“…Rarely examined in conjunction (see however Greskovits, 2007, 2012;Kesküla, 2015) these processes have led to a decline of industrial spaces inherited from the Soviet period and economic and symbolic dispossession among its largely Russian-speaking working-class populations.…”