History, Natural Monuments, and Estonian National Identity

104 Edm. Spohr, Looduse mälestusmärgid ja nende kaitsemine (Tartu, 1920), 3-4.

105 In this, of course, is nothing new. Just as Greenfeld has found that the adopted German national identity “was adapted to the cultural soil to which it was transplanted,” so too did Estonia attempt to make the unique qualities of its culture fit the model of European nationalism. Estonia was following a pattern seen in Germany decades prior where “the meaning (and connotations) of nationality was reinterpreted in a way which rendered it familiar, comprehensible, and consistent with other dominant traditions of discourse.” See Greenfeld, Nationalism, 314.

106 See Eric Hobsbawm, “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914,” in Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition, 303-304; and Rudy Koshar, Germany’s Transient Pasts, 105-106.

107 Ted Steinberg would likely disagree with this interpretation of Muir’s intent, for he writes that Muir “sought to bend nature to conform to the desires of humankind.” This may have been the case, but if so, it was only after Muir was forced to concede to political realities in the U.S. West. Similar to Estonian preservationists, Muir was indeed interested in human salvation, but unlike the latter, he felt it could only come by experiencing nature in its most wild and untamed state. See, Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York, 2002), 141; Richard Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks (New Haven, 1997), 15-16; Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature (New York, 1993), esp. 190-96; and Fredrick Turner, John Muir (Cambridge, 1985).

108 Viiding, "Eluta Looduse Kaitse Ajaloost Eestis," 9.

109 Spohr, Looduse mälestusmärgid ja nende kaitsemine, 5.

110 Karl Orviku, "Andmete kogumiseset suurte rändrahnude kohta eestis 1933 ja 1934 a. suvel," Eesti Loodus (1934, No. 5), 122.

111 “Gustav Vilbaste, in Memoriam,” Eesti Loodus (1967 No. 5), 325-326; G. Vilberg [Vilbaste], Eesti loodusmälestusmärke (Tartu, 1931), 22.

112 G. Vilbaste, "Suuremad rändrahnud vajavad tõsist kaitset," Eesti Mets (1935, No. 10), 357.

113 Vaike Hang, "Dr. Gustav Vilbaste Looduskaitsetegelasena," Teaduse Ajaloo Lehekülgi Eestist VI (Tallinn, 1986), 118-122.

114 Gustav Vilbaste, "Looduskaitse ülesandeid," Eesti Looduskaitse (1938, No. 2), 44.

115 Joosep Eplik, "Looduskaitse usaldustegelase Joosep Epliku aruanne, 1937a.," Eesti Looduskaitse (1938, No. 2), 57.

116 Öpik, "Rändkividest Eestis," 111.

117 Kenneth Olwig, "Reinventing Common Nature: Yosemite and Mount Rushmore - A meandering Tale of Double Nature," in ed. William Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York, 1995), 393.

118 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (Norton, 1961), 72; and Öpik, "Rändkividest Eestis,"110.

119 Gustav Vilbaste, "Looduskaitse küsimusi Eestis," Loodushoid ja Turism (1939, No. 1), 16.

120 Viiding, "Eluta Looduse Kaitse Ajaloost Eestis," 11; Hiie Kontor, "Pilk möödunule," Eesti Loodus (1985, No. 6), 343-348.

121 Phillip Pryde, Environmental Management in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, 1991), 247; Marx’s ‘labor theory of value’ holds that the value of commodities is almost entirely derived from the human labor used in their production. William Cronon suggests that in an ecological context, Marx’s ‘relations of production’ might better “be seen as relations of consumption [original emphasis], since all human labor consumes ecosystemic energy flows in the process of performing physiological and mechanical work.” See William Cronon, “Modes of Prophecy and Production: Placing Nature in History,” The Journal of American History (1990, Vol. 76, No. 4), 1124. For more on Stalinist and Soviet environmental policies and the so-called Great Transformation of Nature campaign that was launched in 1948, see Douglas Weiner, Models of Nature (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988), 169-171 and passim. See also Douglas Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1999), 149-177 and passim.

122 Viiding, "Eluta Looduse Kaitse Ajaloost Eestis," 14.

123 The editors of Eesti Loodus felt compelled to extol the virtues of "the large and mighty Soviet Union [which] highly values science," but their thinly veiled desire that "the new socialist society will create the same conditions as have prevailed to the present" came to naught. See Eesti Loodus (1940, No. 4/5), 167-168.

124 Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's Reich minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, was a Baltic German raised in Tallinn. This fact, and the fact that in 1941 comparatively few Jews were living in Estonia, could help to explain a comparatively less vicious Nazi policy.

125 Raun concludes that the Nazis executed nearly all of the Jews (regardless of political affiliation) who remained in Estonia in 1941, as well as another 3,000 to 4,000 communists or suspected communist sympathizers, a total of “about 6,000 people.” Misiunas and Taagepera “guesstimate” that, by comparison, Estonia suffered approximately 15,000 Soviet deportations and executions from 1940-41 and 10,000 Nazi deportations and executions (including about 1,000 Jews) from 1941-1945. See Toivo Raun, Estonia and the Estonians, 160-166; and Romuald J. Misiunas and Rein Taagepera, The Baltic States: Years of Dependence (Berkeley, 1993), 354-355.

126 A transcript of the Vilbaste's radio interview is to be found in the KMKO, Fond 152, M 81:4 - G. Vilbaste, Looduskaitsealane intervjuu raadios 8 Oct., 1942; KMKO, Fond 152, M 82:16, No.s 32-34 - Kõigile looduskaitse usaldustegelasile - Ringkiri, published by the Eesti Omavalitsus Metsade Keskvalitsus, 17 Apr., 1943.

127 Gekker, "K okhrane pamiatnikov nezhivoi prirody," 104.

128 For example, Moscow made an example of Nikolai Karotamm, the Estonian Communist Party First Secretary, by ousting him in a purge (1950-51) due to disagreements over the pace of collectivization and the relocation of displaced farmers. See Raun, Estonia and the Estonians, 178-179.

129 Eichwald, Kumari and Orviku, Looduskaitse küsimusi Eesti NSV-s, 5.

130 Ibid., 36.

131 K. Kajak, "Eluta looduse kaitsest Eesti NSV-s," Eesti Loodus (1958, No. 3), 159.

132 Lennart Meri, “Ubytochnaia pribyl’,” Literaturnaia Gazeta (July 1, 1989).

133 M. Taagepera, “Ecological Problems in Estonia,” Journal of Baltic Studies (1983, No. 4), 307.

134 Viiding, Lahemaa Kivid, 3-5.

135 Olwig, "Reinventing Common Nature,” 380.

136 Personal interview with Jaan Eilart, Nov. 12, 1998, Tartu, Estonia. Similarly, Eilart wrote in 1987 that “landscape and cultural monuments are one and the same.” See Jaan Eilart, “See on Meie Maa,” Sirp ja Vasar (July 31, 1987), 2. Heino Luik, Estonia's former chief environmental minister and founding board member of Lahemaa National Park expressed the same sentiment in an earlier interview. He went so far as to regret the creation of new national parks in post-Soviet Estonia, claiming that their primarily "natural character" should have no part in a "national" park. Personal interview with Heino Luik, Nov. 3, 1998, Tallinn, Estonia. Eilart insists, however, that he himself was in no way inspired by any anti-Soviet sentiment when he conceived the idea for a national park. He nevertheless concedes that the park eventually did assume that role.

137 For further details of Soviet-led environmental degradation in Estonia, see my unpublished doctoral dissertation, Perceptions of Nature, Expressions of Nation: An Environmental History of Estonia (University of Washington, 2002).

138 Younghusband as cited in Ÿrjo Sepänmaa, The Beauty of Environment (Helsinki, 1986), 147. It is instructive to point out that particular regions of the Daugava River served the same “harmonious” purpose for Latvia’s preservationists. Indeed, by the mid-1980s, Latvia’s environmental protest movement approximated Estonia’s in its power and scope. Centered on protests against a planned hydro-electric dam at Daugavpils, the movement had a similar catalytic effect in fostering that republic’s Soviet era “great awakening.” Even so, Misiunas and Taagepera, e.g., found that "the role of environmental issues as a catalyst in crystallizing opposition to the status quo proved even more dramatic in Estonia [than earlier Latvian protests against a planned hydro-electric complex at Pļaviņas (sic)]." (In fact, the dam at Pļaviņas was constructed in 1961-66. The authors confused the much earlier protests against the Pļaviņas dam with the successful glasnost era campaigning against another proposed dam at Daugavpils. Andrejs Plakans makes the same error. See Misiunas and Taagepera, The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 304-305; and Plakans, The Latvians (Stanford, 1995)169, for mistaken place references. See Juris Dreifelds, “Two Latvian Dams: Two Confrontations,” Baltic Forum, VI/1 (Spring 1989), 11-24; and Enciklopediska vardnica: 2 sejumos, Riga: Latvija enciklopdijiju redakcija, 1991- (vol. 2), 101 for the correct distinction between the Pļaviņas and Daugavpils dam projects. See also Graham Smith, ed., "The Resurgence of Nationalism," The Baltic States, 129; Jan Trapans, "Latvia's Popular Fronts," Towards Independence: The Baltic Popular Movements, 29.

139 E. Kask, "Jaani-Tooma Suurkivi," Eesti Loodus (No. 6, 1986), 360; Herbert Viiding, Lahemaa Kivid, 11.

140 Orvar Löfgren, "The Nationalization of Culture," Ethnologia Europaea, (Vol XIX, 1987), 5-24.

141 Richard White, Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island County, Washington, (Seattle, 1980), 153.

142 The term “modern” in this context does not describe an essential process. Rather, as Dean Tipps notes, once the term is “stripped of its scientific pretensions, the concept of modernization becomes little more than a classificatory device distinguishing processes of social change deemed ‘progressive’ from those which are not.” Dean C. Tipps, “Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies: A Critical Perspective,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Mar., 1973), 199-226.

143 Viiding, Lahemaa kivid, 3.

144 Joan Didion, The White Album, (New York, 1986), 146.

145 Ansel Adams, as quoted in Schama, Landscape and Memory, 9.

146 Herbert Viiding, "Eluta Looduse Kaitse Ajaloost Eestis," 5-6. Cf. second verse of the popular Estonian “national” folksong “Mu isamaa armas [My Beloved Fatherland]” (sung to the melody of a Thuringian folk song): “No cedars or palms grow in our land, but we have beautiful pines, firs and birches.” The homelore enthusiast J. Käis wrote in 1923 that “Nature is the source of fantasy and inspiration for our entire nation, which is so apparent in our folk songs.” See Joh. Käis, “Õpetaja ülesanded kodumaa looduse uurimises ja loodusekaitses,” Loodus (1923, 7), 393.

147 Elle Linkrus, "Lemeti kivi,” Eesti Loodus (1970, No. 12), 746.


Fig. 1. Kalevipoeg slinging a boulder. From the woodcut by G. Mootse, 1911. From A. Juski, "Kivid Piiblis, eeposes ja romaanis," Eesti Maaparandajate Selts, Toimetised Nr. 4 (Tallinn, 2000) 53.



Fig. 2. The 'Bronze Horeseman' in St. Petersburg. Author's photo, 1999


Fig. 3. Grom at Konnaia Lakhta. Iury Fel’ten. Engraving by Jakob van der Schley, 1768. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.



Fig. 4. Visiting Grom on January 20, 1770, Catherine the Great is depicted by Iury Fel’ten standing near the carriage at far left. Engraving by Jakob van der Schley, 1770. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Fig. 5. The Jõelähtme erratic in Harjumaa. Edmund Spohr, “Kodumaa mullastik,” Eesti Loodus (Eesti kirjaduse Seltsi Toimetused, 1925) 98.

Fig. 6. Schlater's romantic painting of one of Kalevipoeg's slingstones, destroyed in the second half of the nineteenth century. Jaan Eilart, Inimene, Ökosüsteem ja Kultuur (Tallinn, 1976) 8.


Fig. 7. The Jaani-Tooma boulder, a “recognizable symbol” of Lahemaa National Park. Drawing by Gregor von Helmerson, 1882. Source: Gregor von Helmersen, “Studien über die Wanderblöcke und die Diluvialgebilde Russlands,” Memoires de L’Academie Imperiale des Sciences de St. –Petersbourg, VII E Serie, Tome XXX, 1882, No. 5, 56.



Fig. 8. Young Estonia pondering the perceived ancient and ancestral natural Estonia. Eesti Loodus (1986), 10, inside cover.