Abstract

The introduction introduces the question of how people that live in a society with an extremely complicated, violent past and only a short history of independence engage with the past, both within their families and as members of a national community. According to the literature, they will long for stability, a strong collective story and closure. The chapter then describes the ‘War of Monuments’; the context of insecurity in which the ethnographic fieldwork took place. Subsequently, it positions the book within the literature on the anthropology of post-communist remembering. Finally the Introduction describes which methods have been used to gather the data and it introduces the social groups the book focuses on.

Keywords: Insecurity, collective memory, closure, war of monuments, ethnography, Estonia

In the sauna later that evening Anna felt like sharing stories about her family. ‘My grandmother tells me stories about how Estonians were deported,’ she said respectfully. Suddenly, she began to complain about the Russian minority which does not want to learn the Estonian language: ‘I was once in Tallinn in a shop and wanted to buy white bread. The cashier was not able to understand me.’