Generations in Estonia: Contemporary Perspectives on Turbulent Times Approaches to Culture Theory Volume 5 Aims & scope The Approaches to Culture Theory book series focuses on various aspects of the analysing, modelling, and theoretical understanding of culture. Culture theory as a set of complementary theories is seen to include and combine the approaches of different branches of science, among them the semiotics of culture, archaeology, environmental history, ethnology, cultural ecology, cultural and social anthropol- ogy, human geography, sociology and the psychology of culture, folklore, media and communication studies. Series editors Kalevi Kull (Tartu, Estonia) Valter Lang (Tartu, Estonia) Monika Tasa (Tartu, Estonia) Editorial board Eileen Barker (London, United Kingdom) Regina Bendix (Göttingen, Germany) Anu-Mai Kõll (Södertörn, Sweden) Tom Moring (Helsinki, Finland) Roland Posner (Berlin, Germany) Marek Tamm (Tallinn, Estonia) Peeter Torop (Tartu, Estonia) Generations in Estonia: Contemporary Perspectives on Turbulent Times Edited by Raili Nugin, Anu Kannike, Maaris Raudsepp This volume has been financed by the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (CECT, European Regional Development Fund) and is related to the Estonian Sci- ence Foundation Grant No. 9130 “Human time and generational consciousness”. Managing editors: Anu Kannike, Monika Tasa Language editors: Daniel Edward Allen, Mara Woods Technical editors: Tuuli Kaalep, Kaija Rumm Design and layout: Roosmarii Kurvits Cover layout: Kalle Paalits Copyright: University of Tartu, authors, 2016 ISSN 2228-060X (print) ISBN 978-9949-77-055-7 (print) ISSN 2228-4117 (online) ISBN 978-9949-77-056-4 (online) University of Tartu Press, www.tyk.ee/act Contents List of illustrations 7 List of figures 7 Notes on editors and contributors 9 Acknowledgements 12 Introduction. Mapping generations in the Estonian context 13 Raili Nugin, Anu Kannike, Maaris Raudsepp The generational kaleidoscope Cohort-specific value patterns in the new millennium 36 Laur Lilleoja, Maaris Raudsepp Parental home characteristics of the 1924–1983 birth cohorts in Estonia 70 Luule Sakkeus, Martin Klesment, Allan Puur Memory and identity The Soviet past through the lenses of different memory communities 106 Aili Aarelaid-Tart Estonian memory culture since the post-communist turn: conceptualising change through the lens of generation 128 Ene Kõresaar, Kirsti Jõesalu Temporal horizons in two generations of Russian–Estonian families during late socialism 159 Uku Lember Religion and generation: exploring conversion and religious tradition through autobiographical interviews with Russian Orthodox believers in Estonia 188 Irina Paert Looking for generational profiles A happy old age: individual life trajectories through cultural change 214 Maaris Raudsepp Winners and losers in the generation of winners 256 Ellu Saar, Margarita Kazjulja Constructing a transition generation: the 1970s cohort 282 Raili Nugin The emergence of the ‘digital generation’ in Estonia’s transition period 319 Veronika Kalmus Index of names 342 7 Introduction List of illustrations Grandfather with child. Photographer unknown. The photo collection of Estonian National Museum. ERM Fk 2835:65. front cover Family with acquaintances in Pärnu. Photographer unknown, 1920s–1930s. The photo collection of Estonian National Museum. ERM Fk 2837:3. 34–35 Deported Estonians playing in an instrumental ensemble. Photographer unknown, 1952. The photo collection of Estonian National Museum. ERM Fk 2819:13. 104 Aili Aarelaid with her parents. Photographer unknown, mid-1950s. Personal archive of Indrek Tart, reproduced with permission. 107 Taking a package to Maternity Hospital No. 1 on Sakala street. Photo: Kalju Suur, 1966. The photo collection of Estonian Film Archives (National Archives of Estonia). EFA.457.0-385014. 158 The Odamus family – the best skiing family at Estonian Country Winter Games in March 1980. Photo: Kaido Jakobi, 1980. The photo collection of Võrumaa Museum. VK F 837:34 F/n. 212 The Baltic Chain near Türi. Photo: Enno Kapstas, 1989. The photo collection of Museums of Virumaa. RM Fn 1543:953. 280–281 Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves taking a selfie at the XXVI Song Festival, 05.07.2014. Photo: Tairo Lutter. Postimees/Scanpix, reproduced with permission. 318 List of figures Definitions of the motivational types of values in terms of their core goal 42 Circular structure of the basic value theory of Schwartz 42 Question formulations for the PVQ-21 value scale, with abbreviations and value type affiliations 43–44 Sample distribution of different age cohorts, for Estonian-speakers and Russian-speakers 48 Comparison of Estonian-speaking cohort value hierarchies 50 Comparison of Russian-speaking cohort value hierarchies 51 Intra-cohort trajectories of conservatism versus openness to change across lifespan 52 Intra-cohort trajectories of self-enhancement versus self-transcendence across lifespan 52 8 List of 7gures Dendrogram of hierarchical cluster analysis of the value profiles of cohort groups 61 Cohorts and higher-level value dimension response category similarities, based on multiple correspondence analyses 62 Respondents from intact parental homes, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 75 Respondents with step-parents, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 77 Respondents by number of children in the parental home, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 79 Mean number of siblings in the parental home, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 80 Mean age gap between mother’s and daughter’s generation, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 81 Respondents from ethnically homogeneous parental homes, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 82 Respondents from urban parental homes, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 84 Respondents by education attainment of parents, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 86 Respondents from religious parental homes, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 88 Respondents by size of domestic library at parental home, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 89 Respondents with politically repressed parents, Estonia, birth cohorts 1924–1983 91 Acquiring tertiary education, 1980–2012. Enrolled students and tertiary education graduates 287 Tertiary education attainment by birth year, 2011 288 Unemployment rate by age group, 1993–2013 289 Net income by age group, 2003–2011 291 Cumulative percentage of women who had started their sexual lives by the age of 18–20, 2008 292 The number of marriages among women by age group, 1927–2012 293 The age of women at childbirth, the 1970s cohort 295 Structural characteristics of new media use by age group in 2002 and 2011 328 Use of media channels and TV formats, attitudes towards the Internet, and the spatial reach of media use by age group, 2011 331 Perception of intergenerational differences as predicted by media use preferences, attitudes towards new media technologies and spatial reach 334 9 Introduction Notes on editors and contributors Aili Aarelaid-Tart (1947–2014) was head of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the Estonian Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University. Her research focused on theoretical problems of human time and generational consciousness as well as adaptation to cultural changes in the 20th century. She was the head of the research group of contemporary cultural studies at the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (CECT). Kirsti Jõesalu (kirsti.joesalu@ut.ee) is a researcher at the University of Tartu. She is currently writing her PhD thesis on remembering “mature socialism”. Her main interests include the cultural and political memory of socialism, the study of socialist everyday life, and oral history. She has published in several journals on remembering socialism. Veronika Kalmus (veronika.kalmus@ut.ee) is a professor of sociology at the Insti- tute of Social Studies, University of Tartu. She acts as the vice president of the Estonian Association of Sociologists and as an independent expert to the Euro- pean Commission in the field of the information society and media. Her research focuses on socialisation, intergenerational relationships, the social mediation of children’s media use, social and personal time, patterns of media use, and cultural values and mental structures. Anu Kannike (anukannike@yahoo.com), PhD in ethnology, is a managing editor of the book series Approaches in Cultural Theory, CECT. Her research focuses on everyday life in Estonia from historical and contemporary perspectives, par- ticularly the home and food culture. Margarita Kazjulja (kazjulja@iiss.ee) is a researcher at the Institute of Inter- national Social Studies, School of Governance, Law and Society at Tallinn Uni- versity. Her research interests include education, different aspects of social strati- fication in the labour market, and life course studies, in particular the individual strategies of coping with changes in a transition society. Martin Klesment (klesment@tlu.ee) is a senior researcher at the Estonian Institute for Population Studies, Tallinn University. His research interests include family 10 Notes on editors and contributors and fertility patterns, intra-household income distribution, and historical income dynamics. Ene Kõresaar (ene.koresaar@ut.ee) is an associate professor of ethnology at the University of Tartu. Her main fields of research are the culture and politics of memory of World War II and socialism, socialist everyday life, and oral history. She is an editor of several books and special journal issues on post-socialism and memory. Uku Lember (lember.uku@gmail.com) recently graduated from the PhD pro- gramme of comparative history at Central European University (Budapest). His main fields of interest are late socialism, cultural memory, and oral history methods, particularly multi-ethnic families in Soviet Estonia. Currently, he is a post-doctoral scholar working on an oral history project with the Ukrainian “east”–“west” families. Laur Lilleoja (laur@tlu.ee) is about to complete his PhD at the School of Gov- ernance, Law and Society in Tallinn University. His primary research interests are basic values and, more broadly, the development of methodology for study- ing values. Raili Nugin (nugin@tlu.ee) is a researcher at Tallinn University. She defended her PhD in sociology, concentrating on the social portrait of the 1970s cohort in Esto- nia. She has been involved in youth studies, conducting research on conceptions of youth and adulthood, the transition to adulthood, and rural youth. Besides youth sociology, her research interests include also generations and memory – she has studied the remembering of the Soviet time, but also how memories are mediated to young people. Irina Paert (irina@paert.com) is a senior researcher at the Department of Theol- ogy, University of Tartu. Her research interests are in the historical, social, and theological aspects of Orthodoxy within and outside Russia. She has written on Orthodox memory processes using oral-history interviews made with the Orthodox believers in Estonia. Allan Puur (allan.puur@tlu.ee) is a lead researcher at the Estonian Institute for Population Studies, School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University. His fields of expertise include fertility, family formation, and population data 11 Notes on editors and contributors collection in Estonia and Europe. Puur is an expert for the Population Europe network and belongs to advisory board for population census at Statistics Estonia. Maaris Raudsepp (maaris@tlu.ee) is a senior researcher at Tallinn University. Her research interests include the socio-psychological aspects of environmentalism, interethnic relations, and individual coping strategies for sociocultural change. She has published on the regulative role of values in culture and in the mind. Ellu Saar (saar@iiss.ee) is a professor at the School of Governance, Law and Soci- ety, Tallinn University. She coordinated the EU Sixth Framework Project Towards a Lifelong Learning Society in Europe: The Contribution of the Education System (LLL2010). Her research areas are social stratification and mobility, educational inequalities, and life course studies. She is an editor of Studies of Transition States and Societies and a member of the editorial board of European Sociological Review Luule Sakkeus (luule.sakkeus@tlu.ee) is a senior researcher at the Estonian Insti- tute for Population Studies, School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn Uni- versity. She has expertise in migration processes, ageing, and national popula- tion data collection. Sakkeus is responsible for the scientific coordination of the project SHARE in Estonia. Her recent research relates to family demography, population health, and ageing. 12 Halliki Harro-Loit Acknowledgements This book has been inspired by the work of Estonian cultural theorist Aili Aarelaid-Tart (1947–2014), who studied the problems of time, memory, and cul- tural change extensively for more than four decades, gaining an international reputation in this field. In the last years of her life she focused on issues of human time and generational consciousness, leading a research project in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural studies, Tallinn University, on the transmission of common memories and cognitive and behavioural patterns between several suc- cessive generations. In 2012, the preliminary results of this project were published in Estonian in the book Nullindate kultuur II: Põlvkondlikud pihtimused ( Culture of the 2000s II: Generational Confessions ). This book mapped the main problems of constructing and representing Estonian generations from the viewpoints of sociology and cultural studies and opened up discussions in this field. Generations in Estonia: Contemporary Perspectives on Turbulent Times grew out of the wish to continue and develop Aili Aarelaid-Tart’s work. It took shape within the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (CECT), thanks to close interdisciplinary co-operation between the University of Tartu and Tallinn Uni- versity, especially the research groups of contemporary cultural studies, ethnol- ogy, cultural communication studies, and religious studies. Various people have contributed to this volume. We would like to thank all the reviewers for provid- ing valuable comments and contributing to the discussions on generations from a variety of perspectives. Finally, our special thanks go to the team responsible for producing the series. 13 Introduction. Mapping generations in the Estonian context Introduction. Mapping generations in the Estonian context Raili Nugin, Anu Kannike, Maaris Raudsepp Generation is a widespread concept in contemporary Estonian public discourse and academic discussion. Several studies have been published over the last dec- ades that tackle specific aspects of generation from the viewpoint of sociology, social policy, demography, or cultural studies (Tulva & Murs 2004; Katus & Tellmann 2006; Laidmäe 2007; Hinrikus 2008; Kalmus et al 2009; Lindemann & Vöörmann 2010; Kurg 2010; Tiit 2011; Kasearu 2011; Hatšaturjan 2012; Piirits 2014). However, we have lacked a more comprehensive publication that would highlight the generational patterns in a longer historical perspective with an interdisciplinary approach. This volume has grown out of collaboration between several research groups in the humanities and social sciences looking for nov- el approaches to intergenerational relations and formation of generational consciousness. The contributions to this book study generations of 20th- and 21st-century Estonia, yet, this is not an encyclopaedic survey of statistical or cultural char- acteristics of all generations over the past hundred years. Several authors take an interest in generational dynamics, i.e. how and by whom have the genera- tions been constructed, and how generational identity has been perceived and reshaped over time. Others use generation as a concept or an analytical tool to analyse different social processes. Methodologically, some of the chapters rely on qualitative analyses of biographical, thematic and focus-group interviews, and life stories, or the broader cultural context (including cultural texts), while oth- ers interpret representative population survey data combined with sociological analyses. Hence, different approaches to generations are applied. We can find both etic descriptions of particular birth cohorts, as well as emic self-descriptions (life narratives) of members of different age groups. Estonia has become a multi- national country over the past 70 years, and this is also reflected in the contribu- tions to this volume that study both major ethnolinguistic groups, Estonian and Russian, and their demographic characteristics, values, and worldviews, as well as their conceptions of history. Nugin, R., Kannike, A. & Raudsepp, M. (eds) (2016) Generations in Estonia: Contemporary Perspectives on Turbulent Times. Approaches to Culture Theory 5, 13–33. University of Tartu Press, Tartu. 14 Raili Nugin, Anu Kannike, Maaris Raudsepp The book opens with analyses that give a general picture of the complicated generational patterns across several decades, followed by a closer insight into issues of memory and identity through the lenses of different social and age groups, and attempts to map the profiles of specific generations. This collec- tion not only suggests new viewpoints on different age cohorts of Estonia, but also offers different approaches to generational theory, thus providing grounds to open several theoretical discussions on the topic. Construction and perception of generations While the term generation dates back to Antiquity (Misztal 2003, 83), the most influential theorist contributing to defining generations in contemporary social sciences is Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), who was inspired in his theory building by social movements initiated by young people since the 18th century (Lovell 2007, 2). Sometimes the terms generation and youth have been used as syno- nyms, indicating that each socioeconomic period is identified via the young who lived during that era (Lovell 2007, 7; López 2002, 111). Generation con- struction is thus one mode of social differentiation, classifying people accord- ing to their location in historical time or relative location to each other. Unlike an age-based classification (for example young or old), a generational typology focuses on external influences on human development – the social changes and specific socio-cultural, technological, and political circumstances that influence the socialisation of a birth cohort. Such influences are supposed to persist and differentiate generations throughout the successive passing of life stages and are reflected in generational self-consciousness, as well as in the perception of other generations in society. Speaking of generations in the social sciences, a distinction between two meanings of the word should be kept in mind – on the one hand generation is a birth cohort, comprising everyone born in a certain historical period, and on the other, generation in a narrower sense comprises only the active elites who have significant societal impact. This distinction was first made by Mannheim (1952 [1927/1928]), who differentiated between naturalist (“generations as poten- tialities”), and romantic-historical (“generation as actuality” or “social genera- tions”) approaches to generations (op cit, 276). The ‘naturalist’ definition of a generation relies on demographic, sociologi- cal, or psychological comparisons between different birth cohorts. According to Mannheim “the unity of generations is constituted essentially by a simi- larity of location of a number of individuals in a social whole” (op cit, 290). Their common location in historical time is an objective fact, irrespective of its 15 Introduction. Mapping generations in the Estonian context acknowledgement. So, according to Mannheim, such similar location forms the potentiality of a generation. Aggregate differences can be detected between any arbitrarily chosen birth cohorts who, during their primary socialisation, met similar specific environmental opportunities and barriers as a consequence of developing technology, economic circumstances, and political or cultural change. Such a naturalist and comprehensive approach is used in psychology and sociol- ogy (generational cohort theory, for example Edmunds & Turner 2005 or inter- generational value change theory, Inglehart 1977), and history (for example the theory of generational cycles by Howe & Strauss 1991). In a narrower sense, Mannheim’s conception of social (or historical) genera- tion (generation as actuality), defines a generation through reflexivity (genera- tional self-consciousness) and the capacity to generate new identities and mean- ings, new modes of thought and action in society (specific generational culture, distinct generational style). Thus, a generation as actuality emerges during severe social changes, or, in Mannheim’s words “only when a concrete bond is cre- ated between members of a generation by their being exposed to the social and intellectual symptoms of a process of dynamic destabilization” (1998, 183), when “similarly ‘located’ contemporaries participate in a common destiny and the ideas and concepts which are in some way bound up with its unfolding” (op cit, 186). During severe social changes, the young are the first to experience and negotiate the new social conditions during their socialisation years (Corsten 1999, 250; Chauvel 2006, 2). Young people, who are establishing their places in society, must do so in this new context. This aspect limits them “to a specific range of potential experience, predisposing them to a certain characteristic mode of thought and experience, and a characteristic type of historically relevant action” (Mannheim 1997, 36) and “participation in a common destiny” (op cit, 46). Instead of being only an object of socialisation, such generations become agents of transformation, of social change. This theoretical approach to generations does not presuppose that all those born in the same time frame belong to the generation as actual- ity. Such social generations are defined by the groups of elites within the birth cohorts who are the initiators and carriers of social change. Thus, a generation is not homogeneous because different generational units, based on distinct life experiences, political views, social status, etc., can always be distinguished within a generation. These are different “forms of the intellectual and social response to an historical stimulus experienced by all in common” (Mannheim 1998, 183). Actual generations are constituted of differentiated and antagonistic generational units (op cit, 187); dominant generational units are the most clearly visible. Mannheim’s theory has inspired many others to contribute ideas to comple- ment his framework. One such theorist is Bryan S. Turner (2002, 14), who has 16 Raili Nugin, Anu Kannike, Maaris Raudsepp distinguished between active and passive generations, arguing that social change is brought forth when birth cohorts with strategic advantages in social structures gain moral or hegemonic leadership. In his approach, the strategic generations are the ones that have both structural advantages and moral hegemonic leader- ship and are reluctant to give up their privileged position. Thus, subsequent age cohorts face a “lag in social opportunities” and can be henceforth defined as passive (Turner 2002, 14; see also Chauvel 2006). In his constructing of genera- tions, Turner pays attention to both structural conditions and certain shared values, or potential mutual worldview, trying to consolidate generation as loca- tion as well as actuality. In his view, class consciousness has increasingly been sidelined or replaced by gender or generational consciousness. Using the paral- lel of Marx’s class theory, Turner with his colleague June Edmunds calls active generations “generations for itself ” (i.e. those who are conscious of their strategic position and exploit this position) and passive generations “generations in itself ” (i.e. unconscious of their position) (Edmunds & Turner 2005, 562). ‘Strategic’ (Turner 2002) or ‘significant’ (Levada 2005) generations with self-reflective gen- erational consciousness are exceptional, coming of age during social changes and under economic growth (Chauvel 2006). However, apart from the Mannheimian definition of a generation, there are other possible ways to construct generations. One option is the relative defini- tion of generations according to successiveness in certain socialisation spheres (for example the second generation of immigrants, the third generation of Soviet people, etc.). In parallel to analytical conceptions of generations, common sense representations of generations exist in the collective discursive field (generations as discursive constructions). Both the social and demographic understanding of generations can co-exist in public discourses; they do not exclude each other. The discursive construction of generations depends largely on the public perio- disation of history (for example based on the succession of Tsars (in Russia), chief secretaries of the Politbureau (in the Soviet Union), or on outstanding his- torical events (for example the “sputnik generation” and Soviet baby boomers)) (for example, Raleigh 2006). The discursive construction of generations is also related to intergenerational relations, for instance, who won and how. The pragmatic value of using an easy classification based on only one dimen- sion – the year of birth – has made the concept of generation popular and wide- spread in marketing practice and research (for example, Williams & Page 2011), where a naturalistic and simplified conception of generations is generally applied. Generations are here understood as ‘natural’ categories, disregarding their origin through the processes of social construction and symbolic battles. Ascribing cer- tain tendencies and characteristics to representatives of such ‘natural’ categories 17 Introduction. Mapping generations in the Estonian context leads to homogenisation and essentialisation of people on the basis of their loca- tion in historical time. According to this approach, all members of a generation, irrespective of their social, ethnic, gender and other societal differentiations, are supposed to possess distinct generational characteristics. This generational approach has proved to be useful in various applied fields such as marketing and institutional management. While going through a biological life cycle, every generation has some free- dom to choose how to use the past to interpret the present. Thus the term ‘gen- erational time’ has been coined as a “cluster of opportunities or life chances” (Edmunds & Turner 2002, 5). Within every cohort there is a continuous and age-dependent social acknowledgment of the past–present–future axis, which is dynamic, i.e. permanently changing together with identity (Aarelaid-Tart 2006, 27). In addition, in the course of an individual life, generational consciousness formed in youth may disappear later or be fundamentally reconstructed due to social upheavals, and a traumatic event can substantially change the way a per- son constructs his or her life trajectory with respect to the inner order of time (Aarelaid-Tart 2006; 2009; 2011a; 2011b; 2014). In biographical narrating, the past is recreated and reformulated “into different pasts from the point of view of the emerging present, which in its turn is framed by the social agreement of a right and usable past” (Aarelaid-Tart 2006, 32). Thus, the told life is a kind of ‘time within time’ as the narrators create their own version of what they have lived through. Consequently, a lived life is “like a reservoir for a told life, from where one can repeatedly draw new memories to adapt them to the needs of the next self-clarification in a permanently changing social reality” (op cit, 34). Western, Soviet, and Estonian generations: the sociohistorical context Generations are dynamic constructions and in constant interrelations with each other. The self-perception of a generation, as well as its construction, depends on how an age-cohort looks in regard to other age groups or generations because there is always an imagined other generation upon which self-perception is dependent. Stereotypical schemes about generation-specific modes of thought and action can function as informal social norms in relation to which a person may take a position (to adopt, to reject, to modify, etc.). In similar vein, genera- tional constructions depend on the perception of past generations, or the gen- erations across the borders. Different national generations are shaped not only by national developments, but are also inspired by the generational constructions in other countries. In fact, Edmunds and Turner (2005) call for use of the concept of global generations to mark the influence of global events and processes that 18 Raili Nugin, Anu Kannike, Maaris Raudsepp shape generations with similar social characteristics. Therefore, in the following, we attempt to outline some of the social developments that have initiated the construction of different birth cohorts as generations. These sketches indicate that these constructions are dynamic and flexible in time as the events or social processes are re-evaluated, but also that similar social conditions do not neces- sarily result in similar generational constructions, just as common generational labels may entail different content. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (1988, 96) has argued that the simpler a society is, the more important a person’s age is in allocating social roles. However, when these roles change, and when those changed circumstances are acknowledged, aware- ness of new generations arises. In other words, noticing that contemporary youth is different from previous youth helps to articulate the characteristics of the elder cohorts as well. Generational consciousness is often formed ex-post (Weisbrod 2007, 23), i.e., subsequent to realising their shared experiences differ from those of contemporary younger and older age cohorts. However, not every social change generates awareness of a particularity of certain cohorts. Tommi Hoikkala, Semi Purhonen, and J. P. Roos (2002) have hypothesised that the negative events and times of crises do not give rise to generational consciousness, as these do not pro- vide an opportunity of positive self-identification. Hence, only what have been called strategic generations (Turner 2002) may form generational consciousness – those age groups who have been lucky in terms of high upward social mobility, secure employment, and economic prosperity. The cohorts who become social- ised during times of economic growth tend to secure their positions in society, while those age groups who come of age during times of economic crises tend to remain in weaker positions even if the situation in the economy gets better: a ‘scarring effect’ emerges (Chauvel 2006, 7). In different societies distinct discursive generations emerge, depending on the age groups that manage to identify with the changes and distinguish themselves either from the younger or older (or both) age groups. However, contrary to the thesis of Hoikkala et al (2002), not all generations that have been crystallised in cultural memory discourse can be characterised as winners of the change. For example, Ernest Hemingway, in his book The Sun Also Rises (1926), popular- ised the term lost generation to mark those young people who came of age dur- ing World War I. The lost generation was characterised as lacking their parents’ patriotism and idealism because they were disillusioned and had to deal with several economic crises in Europe. As Hemingway’s notion was used in a broader European context, it is a good example of how a generation can be constructed cross-nationally. The concept is still used retrospectively as a cultural tool to explain certain phenomena in history or culture. 19 Introduction. Mapping generations in the Estonian context In Estonia, those who came of age during World War I were also those who witnessed and fought in the War of Independence, securing the state of inde- pendence for Estonia. Thus, in Estonian cultural texts, this generation is hardly if ever depicted as a lost generation in the sense that Hemingway had in mind. This does not necessarily mean that in 1926, when Hemingway’s book depicting the lost generation was published, there were no disillusioned people in Estonia in the age group Hemingway was writing about. However, despite the economic hardships and political struggles of the 1920s, retrospective studies of this period in Estonia reflect the contemporary enthusiasm for building the first nation-state in local history; a similar trend can be found in the retrospective histories of other newly independent East and Central European countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland). Especially in the 1990s, the interwar period became a sort of national ideal in Estonia, and the generation who fought for independence and built the Republic of Estonia was often depicted as heroic, not disillusioned. This suggests that the shared events of the past, such as World War I or II, which affect several states influence societies differently depending on the nature of their involvement in the event (and, in the case of war, perhaps also on whether they participated on the winning or losing side). In the 20th and 21st centuries, Estonians have intensely and immediately experienced several abrupt socio- political changes. People who have lived throughout the 20th century have been subjected to numerous traumatic turns and the subsequent need for regular re-orientation. Voldemar Miller (Estonian historian and archivist, 1911–2006), in a biographical interview, illustrates this point well: There have been seventeen great turns in Estonian history, and my generation has survived eight of them. Hence, if we count Estonian history from the year 1200, people like us are by far older than four hundred years, considering our life experiences, of course. We have repeatedly seen how an absolute truth becomes an absolute lie (Miller in Aarelaid 1998, 85). During the first decades of the 20th century, Estonia was shaped by the Russian Revolution of 1905, World War I, and the War of Independence (1918–1920) against Soviet Russia and the Baltic Germans. In 1918 this former province of the Russian Empire established itself as an independent democratic nation-state. The brief period of parliamentary democracy and rapid modernisation came to an end with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, leaving Estonia in the Soviet zone of influence after the breakout of World War II.