Experiencing the 1990s on an Estonian peninsula: “Everything is Wonderful” by Sigrid Rausing8 min read
The 1990s was a tumultuous time in Estonia. Following independence in 1991, Estonian society was in a state of flux, and the country was deciding which path it would embark upon. It was during this crucial time that Sigrid Rausing spent a year (1993-1994) on a collective farm on Noarootsi, a peninsula on Estonia’s west coast that has historically been home to a Swedish-speaking population. In her subsequent book Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia, Rausing attempts to make sense of her time in Estonia, capturing the experience of transition from a planned economy to a market economy via examining the lives of the people residing there.
The first written mention of Swedes living in the western parts of what is today Estonia dates back to the 1200s. For hundreds of years, Swedish speakers lived on the western islands and coastlines, maintaining their own language and culture. However, following the outbreak of World War Two, most members of the Swedish minority were evacuated by the Swedish government, with the help of the Nazi German occupation forces. After the restitution of Estonia’s independence in 1991, ties with Sweden and Swedish-speaking communities in Finland began to re-emerge, which is what led Rausing to do her research there.
The anthropological research she gathered for her doctoral degree eventually led to two publications, the first of which was an academic monograph published in 2004. Ten years later, and twenty years after her stay on the peninsula, she published Everything is Wonderful.
Estonia’s past and present
Throughout Everything is Wonderful, readers are introduced to the variety of characters that make up the peninsula’s population. For example, there are the American Peace Corps volunteers who teach Estonian children English. There is the young and energetic history teacher Ivar, who is the driving force behind attempts to reconnect with the island’s Swedish heritage. There are Leida and Lydia, two elderly cousins who live together on a farm, and who were among the few Swedish speakers who had not been evacuated during World War Two.
One of the most important connections Rausing makes is with Veevi, who lives in Tallinn and who provides an occasional escape from rural life. Veevi tells her about the people who were deported to Siberia, and the Russians that came in their place. In particular, Veevi introduces Rausing to Matti Päts, the grandson of Estonia’s interwar president Konstantin Päts who was arrested and deported to Ufa in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan together with his family, including Matti, who was seven at the time. Matti’s parents were placed in prison camps while he grew up in an orphanage, and his grandfather later died in a psychiatric hospital somewhere in Russia. Away from Estonia for several years — he only returned in the 1950s following the release of his mother — Matti forgot his native language, a fate that may befall the tens of thousands of children being forcibly deported from Ukraine by the Russian government today. Matti’s story and that of many other Estonian children deported during the Soviet regime is a stark reminder that, while the colours of the flag have changed, the tactics of the regime remain the same.
The history of Estonia is interwoven throughout Rausing’s narratives of life in the village. Here and there, Rausing dives into the interwar period or the following occupations. She discusses the developments in the USSR during Khrushchev’s Thaw and Brezhnev’s Era of Stagnation, and how it all comes back to impact life on the peninsula in the 1990s. She also mentions the presence and the beginning of the departure of Russian troops from Estonia in the early 1990s, a process which was only completed three years after Estonia regained its independence from the Soviet Union. Rausing also comments on the new citizenship laws, which excluded a majority of the Soviet-era Russophone settlers.
Rausing frequently touches upon the darker aspects of Estonian history, features that are often not highlighted in the national history. One example of this is the Nazi collaboration that occurred in the 1940s following the German invasion of Estonia. In Everything is Wonderful, Rausing examines the concentration camps that were set up in Estonia, which received Jews from Estonia as well as from other parts of Europe. As Rausing notes, most of Estonia’s Jews were killed during the German occupation, with very few left behind to experience the next occupation. She also notes how no one she encountered would speak about the Holocaust in Estonia. While public narratives have adapted since the 1990s, Estonian collaboration in the Nazi occupation is still a sore subject.
The introduction of market economy
Another focus of Everything is Wonderful is on aspects of consumption and materiality, which are highlighted due to the scarcity both of the Soviet period but also in the immediate aftermath. Descriptions of food occur frequently, both depicting the generosity of the people who give what they have, and making note of the hard times. Boiled potatoes are a recurring meal, sometimes accompanied with a little meat, other times with just cabbage and sour cream.
In addition to food items, everyday products also took on new meanings in times of scarcity. At one point in the book, Rausing highlights a form of decoration in one of the villagers’ homes: “A collection of beer cans, arranged in a pyramid. I thought it was unique, until, a few days later, I saw a similar collection, identically arranged.” For people in the Soviet Union, these cans, and other items like them, symbolised something more than just metal packaging for a beverage. As Rausing writes, “When the villagers displayed empty Western shampoo bottles, they did so in the knowledge that Western bottles had become accepted forms of decoration, not in order to compete with their neighbours. Those bottles were signs that the whole village had a connection with the West, a way of expressing the new normal.”
Reflexivity in research
Rausing, a member of one of Sweden’s richest families, holds a doctoral degree in social anthropology from University College London, Since graduating, she has primarily worked in publishing as the owner of Granta. She is also a philanthropist and the founder of the Sigrid Rausing Trust, which provides grants to organisations working on human rights and environmental issues, among other things.
While Rausing reflects to some extent on her own positionality as a person from the West coming to live in a newly post-Soviet country, she lacks a deeper interrogation of her own role in relation to the villagers she was studying. Indeed, the main reflection of her work in Everything is Wonderful occurs via letters to and from her supervisor, who is himself based in London.
Reflexivity is especially important to consider given Rausing’s background. While she willingly went to live for a year in what was then one of the poorest corners of Europe, where hot water and heating were scant and consumer goods were few, there is a power imbalance in the fact that she could opt out of these living conditions at any time. Her ability to go to Tallinn for the weekend, fly to London to see friends, or even, as soon as the fieldwork is done, check in to the five-star luxury Hotel Sacher in Vienna, is a clear privilege that, had it been reflected upon more, would have provided more depth to the book. While she does reflect on the contrast between Sacher and the collective farm, this feels like the closest the reader gets to Rausing considering her privilege in comparison to the people she is studying.
In addition, Rausing’s lack of language skills could have been reflected on further by the author. At one point in the book, Rausing comments on how, although having taken some Estonian language courses at UCL, her Estonian is lacking, and how little she knew of the country’s history before going. The latter comment is partially explained by the fact that no one knew much at that time, since all the documents from the Soviet period had not yet been made accessible. However, taken together, these comments come across with an air of ignorance, which has, historically, been a problematically common attitude from the West towards Eastern Europe.
The 1990s were a difficult time for many of the people living in the countries which had previously been a part of the Soviet Union. The rapid transition to a market economy resulted in poor conditions for many, yet at the same time, borders were broken and old connections reestablished, such as between the emigre Estonian and Swedish-Estonian communities with their homeland. Though ostensibly Everything is Wonderful is a book about one small island, Sigrid Rausing’s work, when read in today’s context, makes the reader think about whose stories we tell and who is allowed to tell them. As Rausing herself states: “This, I know, is not the only story that could have been told of that time, about those people and that place.”
Book details: Rausing, Sigrid, Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia, 2014, Grove Press. Buy it here.
