Baltic States & St. Petersburg 2005
White Nights & Baltic Tears
Some Thoughts on St. Petersburg & the Baltic States
July 2005
From July 1 – 20, of this year, David and I were in St. Petersburg (and environs), Russia, and then Riga (capital of Latvia), Estonia (all parts), and finally, briefly, in Helsinki. This was an interesting and very thought-provoking trip in many ways, and I want to record some of my memories and reflections as a result of this trip.
Let me first explain the title I’ve chosen, because it touches on two of the most special aspects of the trip. Citizens of St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad, formerly Petrograd) call the very long days of mid-summer (from late May to mid-July) the “White Nights” because it never gets quite dark in that northerly latitude. Given the long, cold, gray, and grim winters, with only a few hours of daylight in December and January, residents of the city swing to the opposite extreme when mid-summer arrives, and virtually do not sleep. This was a wonderful time to be in the city, and I will talk more about it.
The other part of the title is “Baltic Tears” and this represents my gut-level deepening awareness of the terrible, terrible, heartbreaking history of countries such as Estonia and Latvia, which one cannot escape once you are there. At the moment, the outcome for these three small nations seems so very promising, but theirs is a history with so few moments of joy, and so many of awful catastrophe, that one hopes this is finally the opening of a long chapter of good fortune, but one hesitates to be too confident.
The origin of the trip was David’s love of choral singing – he decided to participate in the group singing tour of The New Amsterdam Singers, the group he sang with when he lived on the upper Westside in New York City back in the 1970’s. The group does a singing tour overseas every other year, usually selecting a fairly limited geographic region, and almost always somewhere in Europe. Because David did not have enough free time for me to join him at the end and travel on our own for three weeks, I decided to take a chance and sign up for the group tour, and then we agreed to travel on our own for about 10 days, once the formal tour was completed. This we did, beginning July 10, spending all our time in Estonia, except for our last 24 hours, which we spent in Helsinki, Finland, from whence we flew back to the U.S.
I knew that a group tour would be a stretch for me, as I never go on them, and for a reason. But it was the only way to see this part of the world with David, and it was an area we had long talked of visiting, so I decided to give it a try. Needless to say, I am now totally convinced that I am not a group tour person. The tour group – singers and “groupies” (as spouses and partners of the singers were called) was about as good a bunch of people as you could ask for. Professionally accomplished, culturally sophisticated, well-traveled – but still, the constraints of being part of a group, having group dinners in restaurants I might not have always chosen on my own, of being held up by one person who failed to show up at the appointed time, of being guided through a famous place in a herd, meant too many sacrifices for me.
I will say, however, that our two guides (Natasha in St. Petersburg and Riina in Riga / Tallinn) added great depth to our experience, based on their sharing much of their own personal histories with us. These histories were closely tied to the histories of their respective countries. Riina, a very attractive Estonian woman, born on the day that Stalin died (March 5, 1953) added immeasurably to our sense of place and events, through her graphic, powerful descriptions of Estonian history, particularly from the Soviet-German pact which led, quickly, to the end of the mere 20-year period of independence of the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) in the inter-war period.
The three capital cities (of course, St. Petersburg, for hundreds of years the capital of Russia, has not been the capital for almost a century) display architecture that is primarily recent – the grandiosity of the 18th century, through some magnificent examples (particularly in Riga and Helsinki) of Style Moderne and Art Noveau architecture. (The old town center of Tallinn is an exception – almost entirely medieval and not re-constructed, as unlike Riga’s old town, it was minimally bombed in World War II.)
One’s whole way of traveling was different in lands where at 11:00 p.m., the sun was still hitting the buildings. When David and I travel, typically we are so exhausted, we are in bed by 9:00 or 9:30 at night, recuperating and getting ready for another day of serious exploring (that is, of very hard work). But we too were so energized by societies where everyone was out on the streets late at night, eating dinner in outdoor restaurants where peak crowds did not show up until 10:00 p.m., that going to bed at midnight (with residual twilight to look out on) was not uncommon. Another delightful, if somewhat eerie experience was those times when I got up shortly after 5:00 a.m. to explore Riga or Tallinn (since on the group tour we just did not have enough days in these wonderful cities). The sun would already be high in the sky, the cities were splendidly lit up, but there was not a soul on the street, virtually no cars – it was as if it was midday and the cities had been entirely evacuated. It was a wonderful way to explore and feel that each of these places was mine.
Russia is obviously a much poorer country than the Baltic States, and at the other extreme, Estonia seemed very close in its sense of “with-it” modernity to Finland. Estonia is very close to Finnish – one of only three major languages (the other is Hungarian) in the Finnish-Ugaric group. There was a sense of stylishness in Tallinn that was almost on a par with the Scandinavian countries. And the language, like Finnish, was plain fun to try to read, and to listen to, as it is very vowel laden, particularly the use of identical double vowels (aa, oo, uu, or these same with umlauts over them) – one magazine in English called Estonian a language in which the vowels have gone completely haywire. Most of the words look unrecognizable to an English speaker, but getting along was easy since all younger Estonians learn excellent English in school.
On the other hand, in Russia I discovered I could understand many words on stores and signs, once I decoded the Cyrillic alphabet. I had found a very nice table of the alphabet on the Web, and did some practicing before leaving home. In St. Petersburg I was like a child, playing a deciphering game, and internally squealing with joy when I discovered a word that looked utterly strange, phoneticized into a perfectly understand word like “university” or “supermarket.” And it turned out quite useful as well, since in the elaborate St. Petersburg metro, all signs are in Russian only.
I should say that we were extraordinarily fortunate with the weather. While western Europe was having flooding rains, we had virtually three weeks of gorgeously sunny, warm days and cool nights, and almost lost sight of the fact that typically, summers can be very gray, chilly, and rainy. And having the fine weather allowed us to enjoy the uniqueness of the very long days to its full flavor.
In its way, St. Petersburg is a very, very grand city, of magnificent public buildings and palaces built by Peter the Great and those he ennobled. I had numerous opportunities to do walks on my own, along the Neva River, that bisects the city, through some more remote districts (like the northern islands of the city), and while much restoration is needed (and many, many buildings are currently under scaffolding, to return them to their former splendor), there is an unmistakable air of grandeur about this artificially created city, built on marshland by order of Peter the Great, starting in 1703. Thousands of virtually enslaved laborers died to give Peter the Great the magnificence he degreed.
We also saw many large buildings and statues from the Communist era, and they are an extraordinarily forbidding experience (for the government buildings) and an immeasurably depressing one in terms of public housing. It is hard to imagine structures that are so dispiriting to human needs as the apartment flats we saw, not only in St. Petersburg, but in Riga and Tallinn as well. Fortunately, despite 70 years of Communist rule and the utter barbarism of the Germans during World War II, much has survived. (On the latter score, we visited Peterhof, the summer palace of Peter the Great, on the Gulf of Finland, and Tsarskoe Selo, the summer place of Catherine the Great, further out in the village of Pushkin). Both of them have pictures of what was left after the Nazi invaders pulled out (they never occupied Leningrad, of course, but laid siege to it for 900 days and caused the death of one million residents!). Even though Catherine the Great was of German origin, in their desire to annihilate every trace of Russian culture and history, they burned these places to the ground, and both palaces contain extensive photographs of what the Russians found upon taking their country back.
The labor of love that the curators and caretakers of these palaces extended, for decades, to return these grandiose structures to their former glory is truly beyond imagining. One can find little good to say of the Soviet era, but it is beyond dispute they supported cultural endeavors as few other governments have. Even in the Baltic countries, the Soviet administration was very dedicated to preserving and restoring the cultural patrimony of these lands.
One whole day of my brief stay in St. Petersburg was spent at the Hermitage, the former Winter Palace which was the seat of the Russian government until the Bolshevik revolution. Although there on a Sunday (the busiest day), with mind-boggling crowds, through careful planning, David and I managed to see a significant part of the glories of the holdings. Sadly, the conditions of presentation are way below Western standards, which considering that the art collection is right at the top, by worldwide measures, is terribly sad. No air conditioning, windows wide open with sunlight coming in and breezes stirring. All the same, the holdings of Rembrandts, Italian Renaissance masters (including two Leonardo’s), and Impressionists and post-Impressionists, was utterly dazzling. The Rembrandts were the finest I had ever seen. In the Impressionist wing, there was one entire room of Gauguin, one entire room of Cezanne, and beyond belief, four entire rooms of Matisse, and two of Picasso. And the date of acquisition of everything essentially stops at the date of the Revolution! Since the Hermitage is a former palace (and a gigantic one), I also explored some of the great rooms – the ballrooms, the state rooms, the Malachite room, etc., which have no art, but are spectacles in themselves. Certainly this was one of the great art experiences of my life.
Something that impressed me in these northern lands, was that even in the big cities, there were extensive parks that were essentially wild. The northern forests, with their mighty birch trees and evergreens, and with meadows filled, as if a natural carpet, with gorgeous wildflowers, was something I will never forget. Both within capital city boundaries and in the countryside, the deep green boreal forests and the lush meadows, with carpets of white flowers (similar to but not quite the same as Queen Anne’s lace) and fireweed (a beautiful spike of deep pink flowers which can be found in the northern Rockies and Alaska) were dazzling.
In fact, the sense of the countryside, within the city, was particularly notable in Riga and Tallinn, both of which had extraordinarily extensive networks of city parks, that contained mixes of elaborately landscaped portions, filled with every manner of blooming perennial and annual, but also of these wild places, as if it is so terribly important to not lose touch with the countryside that historically, was where they lived.
The Estonians and the Latvians, for hundreds of years, were serfs in their own countries. German traders, via the Knights Templar and the Hanseatic League, primarily out of the great commercial city of Lubeck, colonized the Baltics in the 1200s. They brought that typical combination of Christianity and subjugation. It was only in the mid-19th century that the ethnic natives of these lands were “freed” from serfdom, and only in the late 1800’s that national movements and a sense of national identity reached a powerful critical mass.
It is quite interesting to realize that the Baltic States were the last part of Europe to convert to Christianity – in the 1200s, as mentioned above. As a result, the persistence of pagan practices remains quite strong. Unfortunately, we arrived just after Mid-Summer Eve, the night of June 24, which the Christian Church, rather than fight an impossible battle, brought into the fold by calling it St. John’s Day. This is the biggest holiday in the Baltic, and the revelries and festivities are wild, extensive, and closely related to pagan customs from the pre-Christian era. One of the most fascinating sights David and I saw, when we explored Estonia on our own (we rented a car for most of that time) was a tree, way out in the countryside near the northeast coast, where local residents tie long ribbons and wreaths made of plants, as a way of paying homage to the local spirit and asking favors, much as gifts would be left at the statue of a saint in a Catholic church. This was on a tiny backcountry road, and were it not for a detailed brochure we got from the local travel office, we would never have found such an intriguing place.
The churches in Estonia are all late – none are from before the 1300’s, and virtually all severe and simple, because Estonians are mainly Lutheran (whereas Latvians are overwhelmingly Catholic). But after the lavishness of churches in Italy, let’s say, these simple, whitewashed, lime-coated churches, out in small country villages, created a powerful impression.
Of all that I experienced on this trip, what stuck with me most powerfully was the terrible, sad recent history of the Baltics. The roughly 50 years from 1940 to 1991, when they were mainly occupied by the Soviets – except for three years under Nazi rule – represent an experience of brutality and degradation that are impossible for Americans to imagine. We simply have no comparable experiences that allow us to get a handle on it.
The fate of the Baltics was, in a sense, worse than of occupied Eastern Europe (e.g., Hungary, Poland), because they were absorbed into the Soviet Union, and not even acknowledged as having their own governments, which fiction was maintained in the case of occupied Eastern Europe. Although, as a teenager I had little appreciation of this, I remember thinking that all the harping, by exile groups from these countries was some kind of rightwing extremism, and that nothing could be done about the situation – it should just be accepted.
Well these peoples never accepted it for a moment. In Riga, the strongest experience we had was a visit to The Occupation Museum, which is dedicated to that terrible 50-year history of all the Baltics (although the focus tends to be on Latvia). It has displays devoted to historical events, but the part that leaves an indelible impression are the extensive displays of artifacts of Latvians deported to the Gulag. Every item has an unbelievable story behind it – and you can understand it, since there are binders in numerous languages that give you the story behind each little item retrieved from the camps. Gloves made from tiny, tiny bits of cloth, because the inmates were only relieved of outdoor work when the temperature dropped below 40 degrees below zero, and they were not provided with warm clothing. The cumulative effect of reading the stories behind just a few items is to overwhelm you with a tale of horror beyond imagining.
In one night in June 1941, barely a week before the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union itself, the Soviets rounded up and deported tens of thousands of ethnic Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians – men, women, and children – under the most barbaric conditions imaginable – in cattle cars that rolled through the Soviet Union literally for weeks, resulting in many of the deportees dying before they even got to their destinations.
That is the immeasurably sad part. But the inspiring part, the part that makes you feel that “freedom” and “liberty” are not just phrases to be thrown around, but have life-giving meaning, is the story of the independence movement that swelled in the 1980’s and reached its goal in the early 1990’s with the demise of the Soviet Union.
While in each of three Baltic States, the story is inspiring, I found the Estonian version one of incomparable uplift that constantly brought tears to my eyes. When the Soviets deported a huge percent of the population to Siberia, they, at the same time, replaced them with ethnic Russians from the interior of Russia, people who had little sense of 20th century life – this act was intended to destroy the ethnic unity of the country. (Today, the problem of integrating these ethnic Russians, who make up 35% of Estonia’s population, is no simple matter).
The inspirational tale in the case of Estonia, is the role of song and choral groups in keeping alive the belief in ultimate independence. Beginning in the 1880’s, the Song Festival began in Tallinn – a gathering of literally tens of thousands of singers on a hillside on the outskirts of Tallinn, overlooking the Baltic Sea, called The Song Bowl. Every 5 years these Song Festivals took place, and groups from all over the country sang there. Part of the festival was songs of national meaning sung by everyone – 30,000 voices lifted together. While the Song Festival was allowed to continue in the Soviet period, songs that might engender nationalistic feelings were banned. But with the weakening of the Soviet Union, beginning in the mid-1980’s, the never dead sense of national unification, re-emerged openly and most powerfully, through the Song Festivals, when everyone – everyone – knew and sang the banned songs – tens of thousands of voices in unison – and through this, inspired a tiny nation to get its independence back. Hence, in Estonia, the years leading up to the restoration of independence are called “The Singing Revolution.”
Our guide, Rinna, told us that as part of this Revolution, hidden away, for all those decades of occupation, were flags – large and small – often little more than scraps of cloth - of the Estonian colors – white, black, and blue, and as the Singing Revolution gathered force, people would turn out – without organization or planning – with the bits of flag they had hidden away all these years, and they all waved the colors together. Grandparents had stored them away in the attics, waiting for the day, however far off, when their freedom would return. They never lost hope.
The sense of joy in their newly won independence was very reminiscent for me of the kind of enthusiasm I felt in Israel, in the late 1960’s, shortly after the Six-Day War. And I could not help reflecting whether a country like Estonia, so obviously happy in its re-independence, would evolve to a far more complicated and messy phase of its life cycle, as has Israel.
One of the things I struggled with was my sense that there was a lot of complicity with the Germans during World War II. As a Jew, the Nazis have always felt like the most horrifying example of human barbarism. So learning how the German invaders were greeted by the local populations in World War II was a tough one for me. But it appears that the sense of liberation from the Soviets was short-lived, since these people were also considered inferior races by the Germans.
All the same, most of us in the tour group – a high percentage of whom were Jewish – really could understand that under the circumstances, the Soviets will far and away always be seen as the monstrous element in the lives of these people. For one thing, out of the 50 plus years of occupation, 3 were under the Germans, and 47+ under the Soviets. In Latvia, for example, out of a population of approximately 1,600,000, 550,000 disappeared – sent to the camps to be worked to death, murdered in their own country, fleeing in rickety boats across the Baltic Sea to Sweden (many not making it), or simply unaccounted for.
The Jews of these countries suffered terribly – that goes without saying -- but the whole population went through sheer hell, and so fine distinctions as to who suffered the most become meaningless.
It was very painful for me to make the walk to what had been, in 1941, the “Great Synagogue” of Riga, which had been a center of Yiddish culture and Rabbinical learning. Three days after the Nazis occupied the city, on July 4, 1941, they set the synagogue on fire, with hundreds of worshippers inside, who died. Today, in a shabby district of modern Riga, just on the outskirts of the central city, is a park, built around the remains of the synagogue – the low wall of the perimeter of the building. A large boulder in the park is simply inscribed with the date of the calamity, and a brass plaque on an inside wall, in three languages (Latvian, English, Hebrew) is dedicated to the synagogue and those who lost their lives. I was terribly relieved to not find any awful graffiti – swastikas and the like but also saddened by the teenagers hanging out, smoking and talking on cell phones, inside the walls of the synagogue. How much do they know? How much do they care? I would not want to hazard a guess
And in the end, I could not help but think that while the Nazis did not succeed in destroying the Jews, as a people, they did largely succeed in snuffing out centuries and centuries of a rich cultural and religious element of European life. Today, here and there, are forlorn artifacts of once thriving communities that were rich in traditions – these communities are gone, and even all the individual Jews are gone. Those left, in most places, cannot rebuild or rekindle what once flourished. Over and over again, one feels this and grieves for the incalculable loss to all humanity.
My experience led to other reflections on contemporary life. As an American in the Baltic States, and even more so in Helsinki, several observations impressed me. First, because these are not powerful countries, they seem to not have that endless concern for “security” that feels like it is pulverizing our sense of freedom in the U.S. Everything felt laid back and comfortable. The sense of ethnic unity and a kind of civic trust was very refreshing. As in other European countries, all of these places have extraordinarily good public transportation systems used by all segments of the population. No time is wasted buying tickets, inserting computerized fare cards, etc., since it is assumed that you have a ticket. Once in a while, there is a spot check, and if you don’t have a ticket or pass, there is a stiff fine, but one senses this is really not even an issue.
Cities are clean, lively, and functional. Civic harmony is almost a presence you can feel. I could not help thinking, especially as I get older, that there is a lot to be said for living in a small, comfortable country, where the endless scares of power politics and terror alerts are very little evidenced. Money is spent to support public needs, not funneled entirely into private wealth and displays of acquisition. One little example that struck me: in Helsinki, a fairly big city, at key locations, bicycles are available, free, for anyone’s use. You pay a nominal deposit (2 euros = $2.50) and that’s all there is to it!
The most impressive direct experience David and I had of the sense of community and shared values I am trying to convey occurred on the Estonian Baltic Sea island of Saaremaa (which means “Land of Islands”). We had rented bicycles to explore the island (this was before we rented a car) – the island, like much of Estonia, is essentially flat. On our return – we were doing about a 50-mile loop (Saaremaa is larger than Rhode Island) David crashed into the back of my bicycle (long story), and fell, bleeding profusely just below the left knee. We managed to get it bandaged (a young driver stopped and had a huge roll of gauze in his first-aid kit), and bike 13 kilometers to the “main” highway. But David could go no further. I was able to stop an older Estonian woman on a bicycle (she did not speak English) and get across the idea that David needed help. She understood, indicated she would make a call when she got home (wherever that was, for we were far out of the main town where we were staying); uncertain if anything would really happen, I began hightailing it in to Kuresaare to get a taxi and help. About 40 minutes later, I heard a vehicle stop behind me. It was a large ambulance, with David inside, a driver and two medical personnel. They got me in, with my bike as well – they had cleaned David’s wound, given him stitches, bandaged him, told him what he needed to do and wrote up a report in Estonian so that in one week he could have the stitches out. They took us to our hotel and when David asked about arranging payment, they waved him off and said that in Estonia, emergency medical assistance was a free service to all people. We had the same experience when a week later we wandered into the hospital of a small provincial town in southeastern Estonia to have the stitches removed!
I played a mental game with myself, based on this experience. You can actually take it quite far if you want to. You begin with a very fundamental question. You ask yourself: what does it say about a society and its view of its members when medical help is simply available when needed? It raises a wide net of questions about many aspects of who one is as a people. Try it – I believe you will find it a very interesting thought game. I could not help comparing this with my accident in October 2004, when I collapsed in my bank and the municipal fire department was called, took me by its ambulance to Santa Fe’s one hospital, one mile away, and sent me a bill for $425 (and that was only the beginning of my endless battles with health care administration, USA-style!)
People bicycle and exercise and obesity is almost unknown. Everyone is casual about little things like male/female shared public restrooms, changing into bathing clothes at the beach, and such things that we fuss about. These are still places where even in a tiny village, ordering a simple meal at the one restaurant, means a delicious home cooked meal with all fresh ingredients. Breakfast buffets at hotels are lavish spreads of real food, not little plastic wrapped packages of noxiously unhealthy “food products” that pass for so much of what we consume. Many people speak multiple languages fluently. It is hard not to be impressed by all this. I begin to think that like the Romans, in their latter years, we Americans have gotten too fgar comfortable with who we think we are. Small countries rarely have that luxury!
I suppose it all had such an impact on me because here in the U.S., from my perspective, we seem to have wandered so very far from some of the core values I have always treasured as part of being an American. I read the words of the founders of our country, I think of the high-minded leadership of this country at the end of World War II, when America was such a beacon for the whole world, and I relate deeply to these core values. So many of them seem dormant, or hidden away, and I can only hope I see them return in my lifetime.
So, in this particular case, I found travel broadening, in the best sense of the word. I learned a lot, I experienced a lot, and inevitably, I reflected on the mostly sad history of mankind. There are moments and flickers where justice and freedom triumph, but they are so special and so valued, because against the broad field of history, these triumphs have been so rare.
Ponder and reflect,
Ken
And now, a few words from David
Ken’s travel essay is excellent, in my view. I will add only a few additional comments.
Ken refers to a sort of Lutheran Gothic, and to the fact that the Gothic came late to the Baltics. I was fascinated by the churches from the 1300s and 1400s, all in the same style and following the same plan. Unlike Mr. Ruskin, I find normal “Gothic” to be a peculiar, over-aestheticized style. How is it that, as France, in part, and Italy (as a whole) were inching toward the pre-modern in the Renaissance (and, as to architecture, looking back to Classical forms and spirit), powerful men in northern Europe were flinging up such a finicky, mannerist style in their cathedrals? Well, I don’t know the answer, but the late, Lutheran Gothic indeed suggests a religious impulse that taps into a deep human need, to reach up toward God in whatever voice comes naturally – a voice different, and far plainer, in the far northeastern Europe of the day. All the churches are in the extreme perpendicular ratio, but, unlike the English ones, they are without decorative aspects such as elaborate altar screens, rose windows, highly worked pulpits, wall tombs, bas-reliefs, and the like. The exterior is entirely without buttresses, because the basic structure does not need that kind of support. There are a couple of side additions snugged up to the main structure; it turns out when you enter the interior, that they are separate spaces (like a sacristy or choir room), not extensions to the main sacred space. And a tall single spire atop a rather low square base. The interiors are nothing but form, but a shaped form that is often quite crude. The actual geometric shaping of the arches and ogives is, even to the casual eye, very approximate. It is as if the workers did not use careful plans, and certainly not tension-strung guides. The curves are rough, irregular: you can see inaccurate trowel marks (or the equivalent), and you can sense that the underlying bricks or stones were rather carelessly built up. It is a journeyman’s version of Gothic, I suppose formed by the workers’ referring to simple religious pictures or the recollections of the local curate. The floors are invariably brick or worn wood. I found it all very moving.
Unlike Ken, I did not care much for St Petersburg as a city. Everything you might attend to is likely to have been constructed sometime in the century following 1725 – which makes for monotony. That, in fact, is the reason I find Paris less attractive than do most people: to me, the endless procession of heavy, mansarded masonry palaces, set square on straight avenues, is pompous (though obviously there are beautiful structures of other periods and styles in Paris). In St Petersburg, the building style is Rococo / Neoclassic, with the exterior decorative elements, such as pilasters, pedimental scrollwork, and carvings, done in painted stucco simulating stonework, and it looks as phony as it is.
My “take” on Estonia is that it is like what I think Finland to be -- with an admixture of some Polish or Ukrainian soul. The Finnish resemblance is physical: same flat, green, flowered (in mid-summer), heavily treed, well-watered landscape, with the sign of human presence here and there (a castle, fortress, parish church) but with no large notable built ensembles, except for Tallinn. Houses and buildings, in town as well as in the countryside, set under beech and aspen trees, with thatched roofs, storks on the chimneys, huge stacks of firewood pushed up against the barn, part of the house dug into a protective berm (for root cellars, I think), a bicycle or two leant up near the door.
The soul part may have less to do with geography or ethnicity, and more to do with religious history. As our excellent guide stressed, and as all the guide books comment, Estonia is still part pagan, underneath a strong Lutheran (or Russian Orthodox) surface. The Eastern lands were the last in Europe to be Christianized, several hundred years after the remotest parts of the Balkans. I sense the atavistic aspect in the Estonian passion for the light and openness of mid-summer – so brief, so achingly brilliant – and the supreme importance of the midsummer night’s eve festival, with its orientation to growth in the botanical world, immersion in water, and mating rituals in the human realm. (I haven’t checked, but surely the birth rate must peak in March or April.) And in the way the people spread out in the woods: soberly walking two by two, or with older women and children berry-picking far from any town, even far from a road. (Berry picking is not an idle hobby, nor primarily a cash enterprise, but some instinctive part of summertime culture.) The young woman who shared generously the fraises du bois she had gathered that morning, but when asked where she picked, said with a sly smile, “It’s a secret.” And in the way Estonians still have sacred woods and mounds, in or on which they stroll. Ken mentions the huge sacred tree standing out in a copse, a couple of hundred years old, onto which locals have tied dozens or ribbons and religious trinkets as a kind of offering or perhaps a ritual decoration.
Perhaps it’s reflected in the way most of the graves around the churches have, in summer, fresh-growing flowers planted in them, as if to say that each summer the soul of the departed bears a fructifying force. Certainly in the bogs, of which there are many, and which are treated not only as a great ecological resource but also as the focus of terror: so many, in the old days, got lost and drowned in them, and there are so many ghost stories around them. That reminds one of Irish folklore, and the small villages seem a bit like Druidic hamlets in Britain, with their sacred yew trees, mysterious woods, and Maytime rites devoted to fertility and propitiation of that which would interfere, in human life, with reproduction.
Finally, I infer (with some evidence) that Estonians typically hunt for game, in the fall, like the Germans and Poles and Hungarians. This is not only a reflection of the cycle of nature – since fall is the time when food on the hoof is most easily obtained – but also, I think, a bit of the pagan. Animals can have power over people, and what better way to control matters than, at the right time, for people to kill animals?
One comment on singing in this part of the world. Ken mentions its political role in re-establishing independence in Estonia. This could not have happened had it not been for the place of choral music in Estonia and Latvia -- and also in Finland and Hungary. (These are the countries where I know something about music in the society; there may be other instances in this part of the world.) In all these countries, every tiny village will have at least one active “community” chorus, which meets at least once a week and plays a role somewhat like going to the movies did in our society in the 1940s – a routine activity in which almost everyone participates, partly for its own sake, partly as a form of ordinary social intercourse. Every elementary school has a children’s choir. Larger towns and small cities may have several young people’s choirs, graded by age, and a women’s choir, a men’s (working man’s or agricultural workers’s) choir, and of course a choir with each church of any size. In larger cities the choirs will come together regularly as district organizations. Why all this? Partly tradition, of course, but in Hungary and Finland, at least, the basis for choral participation begins in the national schools. Small villages may organize their “elementary” education around singing and ear-training: i.e., counting and rhythm as the basis for beginning mathematics, folk song the basis for reading and literature and national history, singing in non-native tongues the basis for foreign language learning. In larger towns and small cities, “singing schools” will normally be an option, much as an arts or a science magnet school is a choice in some American cities.
From this basis there flourish music camps, instrumental training, community orchestras, folk dance and the exposure to folk literature; and a set of educational and social institutions that extend upward throughout people’s lives. There are two broad implications. One is how the fabled “musicality” of these societies is built on active personal experience and on solid musicianship founded on singing. “Being musical” is not a matter of specialized intensive instruction later in life, but a potential, at least, which exists for almost everyone. The second is, of course, the social integration and sense of national tradition that result from this lifelong shared participation, which is what Ken was referring to in his comments on Estonia and the “singing revolution.”
David