The 1940 Soviet Coup-dtat in the Estonian Communist Press:

Constructing History to Reshape Collective Memory

Tiiu Kreegipuu and Epp Lauk

Department of Journalism and Communication
University of Tartu
Keywords:

1940 Soviet Coup-dtat, Estonian History, Collective Memory,

The Press, Discourse Analysis

Abstract
Since historical memory is a vital element of national unity and identity in oppressed nations that
challenges the legitimacy of an occupying power, an important goal of the oppressors becomes
the distortion of this memory. The Soviet authorities put a massive effort into the legitimization
of their power by creating official versions of histories of the nations they occupied to prove that
their incorporation into the Soviet Union was a voluntary act. The article demonstrates how in
Estonia, the so-called June Myth was created to justify the Soviet take-over on 21st June 1940 and
the consequent annexation of Estonia. Discourse analysis of 25 articles from the leading
Communist Party daily Rahva Hl/ The Peoples Voice demonstrates how argumentation strategies,
us them polarization and three types of antagonisms were used for constructing the June Myth.1

Introduction
Studies on nationalism clearly point out the central role of history a common
(glorious) past in the formation of the ideologies of nationalism, and in the nation
building processes (cf. Gellner 1983; Hroch 1996; Pearson 1999). They also emphasize
the practice of (re)construction of the past in nations whose pasts are either lacking or
hidden from view by subsequent accretions (Smith 1989, 178). As Smith argues, such
histories, usually elaborated by nationalist intellectuals, are in most cases combinations
of existing elements, myths and motifs, but they can also contain bits of pure
fabrication. These nationalist histories serve the purpose of developing common
identity with the help of giving people a common past as an integral element of
national consciousness and solidarity. Occupying totalitarian regimes also use
constructed histories for influencing peoples collective memory, but for a different
purpose. The oppressed are subjected to a fabricated and distorted picture of their
historical past that aims at justifying the occupying regime (cf. Scherrer 2002). In order
to govern the present and future, one also has to govern the past the ways that the
preceding regimes, processes and events are remembered, interpreted and assessed.
______________________________
Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2007 (University of Westminster, London), Vol. 4(4):
42-64. ISSN 1744-6708 (Print); 1744-6716 (Online)

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The concept of collective memory is hereby understood, not so much as a form of
memory, but rather as a type of knowledge. We proceed from James Wertschs
viewpoint that remembering is a mediated action, and that collective memory is
learnt more from various textual resources which mediate past events, than being
shaped by immediate experiences (Wertsch 2002, 24-29). Collective memory can
be conceptualized as a construction that is based on social interaction and
communication and is structured by language. In collective memory, a continuous
dialogue takes place between different times, realities, experiences and
interpretations. In this way, collective memory becomes an important component
of identity building (both collective and individual) and a bearer of continuity. The
knowledge about the shared experience functions in the memory as a certain
collective stronghold that helps to perceive the time period and to sense ones
own life in this time (Kresaar 2005, 10-11, 204; cf. also Korkiakangas 1997).
This approach permits the circumvention of questions about the (in)compatibility
of history writing with collective remembering (cf. Nora 1990, Halbwachs 1992, le
Goff 1992) and view them in mutual interaction while studying written historical
narratives newspaper texts, memoirs, life stories, diaries etc. (Kresaar 2005).
Serhy Yekelchuk (2004, 8) has summarized this interaction as follows:
present-day collective memory incorporates both historical memory as our
knowledge of the past and social memory of our lived experience, but the
latter is bound to disappear and be replaced in the next generations by the
learned historical memory about our time.

The fact that the ways of understanding and interpreting the past have an influence
on peoples understanding and interpretation of the present makes history writing
an important tool for political purposes. The Soviet authorities put a great deal of
effort into rewriting the histories of occupied nations, including those of the Baltic
States. Ideologically correct official versions of the historical past were created
that allowed neither deviations nor alternative interpretations. Soviet history
writing followed only those ideological canons and dogmas that supported
Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist historical interpretations and ignored anything that might
have questioned them.
Such official constructions of history generally
contradicted not only the pre-Soviet national history interpretations that existed as
a component of collective memory, but also individual remembrance of the events
of the recent past. The difficulties in reshaping collective memory by mediating
constructed history interpretations are reflected in the emergence of quite
powerful, quasi-institutionalized forms of unofficial histories as resistance to the
official histories (Wertsch 1998, 143). During the Soviet regime, two parallel
interpretations of history existed in Estonia as well an official one that was
taught in schools which people were forced to accept and publicly recognize, and
another that consisted of elements of both history and collective remembrance
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that was passed in whispers in everyday life through the generations. As AarelaidTart (2006) demonstrates, in the pre-war republican generation (born between
1914 and 1930) and the Stalinist era generation of Estonians (who were young
adults during the darkest years of repression between 1946 and 1956) a certain
double-mindedness or double thinking developed. It was understood by the
republican generation as a coerced mental pattern and a grievous mistake of
history, by the Stalinist generation as a self-defensive and intentional white lie, but
for the post-Stalinist generation it had become a natural mixture and normal
coexistence of conflicting world views (194-195). By the mid-1950s it had
become evident that Soviet power would not end soon, and thus, parents did not
want to intimidate the new generation with dissident stories (201-202). For this
younger generation, the official history became dominating, since alternative
information was hardly available and the general mental atmosphere had been
largely Sovietized. It is hard to disagree with Aarelaid-Tart that if the Soviet
regime had lasted double thinking may have disappeared, replaced by full
Sovietization (Aarelaid-Tart 2006, 204).
This article focuses on how a particular historical event was constructed as a part
of the history process and introduced into the public discourse by using the press.
As a case study we chose one of the key events in the destiny of the Baltic nations
the Soviet coup-dtat in June 1940 and the consequent incorporation of the Baltic
countries into the Soviet Union. Using the method of discourse analysis of 25
texts published in the main organ of the Communist Party of the Estonian Soviet
Socialist Republic, the leading national daily Rahva Hl /The Peoples Voice2
between 1945-1960, we demonstrate how the so-called June Myth was constructed
as a key element of the new Soviet Estonian history. The June Myth was used as
the main means for justifying the legitimacy of the Soviet regime in Estonia both
within the country and abroad as it completely excluded the question of
occupation and annexation.
Constructing the Soviet History of Estonia
The Soviet model of history writing and its phraseology were developed in the
Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s. The same concept was introduced in all
the Soviet Socialist Republics, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Communist ideologists and scholars started extensive campaigns to destroy
national historical approaches and replacing them with a Marxist one. An
important role in developing and disseminating the correct version of Estonian
history was laid on the Soviet Estonian press.
The paragon of Soviet historiography during the Stalinist period was The Brief
Course of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was published in
local languages throughout the Soviet Union. In Estonia it was translated and
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published for the first time in 1940. Between 1945 and 1955, this book was issued
in Estonian four times, the print runs reached up to 50 200 copies in 1946 and 10
000 in 1951 in a population of approximately 850 000. The extensive and massive
production of official history texts was common practice; school textbooks as well
as other history books were easily accessible and inexpensive. The intent of this
effort was to promulgate a single, authoritative narrative that could be
appropriated as part of the process of forming a group identity (Wertsch 1998,
163). These massive efforts, however, met resistance expressed most frequently in
the development of unofficial histories.
Soviet history writing unambiguously served ideological and political purposes,
typically by using falsifications, the tendentious selection of facts and sources and
their arbitrary interpretation (cf. Ivanovs 2005). Similar methods were gradually
introduced into Estonian history writing, eliminating previously dominant values
and concepts by supporting Soviet ideology instead of national and cultural values.
The three dominant Soviet dogmas that had to become basic concepts of Estonian
history were class struggle, Russian-Estonian friendship and Estonian-German
antagonism (Viires 2003, 38). The first of them the leading principle of the
Marxist methodology telling that the whole history of humankind is a struggle of
progressive working classes towards a Communist society was the most difficult
to meet. Soviet historians had to demonstrate that regardless of either the context
or the period, the Estonian working class had always fought for its rights and
freedom against the feudal and bourgeois oppressors. This was a challenge for
even the most orthodox Soviet historians as in Estonian history there had never
existed a working class in the Marxist sense. The two other dogmas RussianEstonian friendship (a statement inferring that the Estonian people had always felt
and highly appreciated the support of the strong and friendly Russian nation) and
Estonian-German antagonism (depicting German landlords who governed
Estonian territory for 700 years as evil enslavers) were much easier to adopt.
Neither of the two mentioned concepts was completely new Baltic German
landlords were characterized as oppressors from the early days of the Estonian
national awakening in the 19th century. As a counterforce to Germanys
superiority, contacts with Russians in various qualities were emphasized and the
political status of Estonia as a province of the Russian empire was interpreted as
the most natural and useful for the Estonians future during the late 19th century
Russification campaigns (Jansen 1997, 40).
According to the Soviet paradigm the most decisive moments of Estonian history
occurred at the beginning of the 20th century, when the centuries-old endeavours
of escaping from Baltic German superiority were finally accomplished. The
Revolution of 1905 and the Great Socialist October Revolution in 1917 were
viewed as great victories of the Estonian working people. This, of course, could
not become true without the strong support and positive example of Russia. The
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years of Estonian Independence were interpreted as a brief and temporary setback
and a brutal intervention of the bourgeois-nationalist forces. Within this context,
the Soviet occupation and annexation in June-August 1940 were described as
justified acts of re-liberation of the Estonian working people.
Historical Background
In the summer of 1940 Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania met the similar fate of losing
their independence and were annexed by the Soviet Union. On 14th June 1940,
the Soviet Government presented an ultimatum to Lithuania and on 16th June, to
Estonia and Latvia, in which all were blamed with violating The Treaty of
Friendship and Co-operation which had been contracted with all three countries
the year before. The Soviet Union also demanded the formation of new
Governments that would ensure the proper observance of the Treaty, and permit
an increase in the presence of the Red Army in their territories by letting in
complementary military forces. The day following each ultimatum, the Red Army
crossed the Baltic borders into Lithuania (15th June) and into Latvia and Estonia
(both on 17th June). The occupation of the Baltic countries was completed by
18th June 1940.
Moscow Emissaries arrived with the Red Army: Andrei Zhdanov in Estonia,
Andrei Vyshinski in Latvia and Vladimir Dekanozov in Lithuania. They dictated
the compositions of the new Governments and did not allow any changes.
Individuals without any political competence were appointed as the leaders of the
new Governments: a physician and modernist poet Johannes Barbarus (Estonia); a
well-known, but politically inexperienced journalist Justas Paleckis (Lithuania) and
Augusts Kirhenshteins, a bacteriology professor with liberal views (Latvia). A
Revolution was then master-minded by the Emissaries with the assistance of the
Red Army and local Communist collaborators that ended with the reestablishment of Soviet power on 17th June in Lithuania, 20th June in Latvia and
21st June in Estonia. It should be pointed out that Communist Parties in the
Baltic countries were illegal at that time and their membership was small: 133 in
Estonia, 1000 in Latvia and 1 500 in Lithuania (Misiunas and Taagepera 1993, 24).
At the beginning of July, Soviet style peoples representation elections were
engineered, with over 90 per cent of the voters supporting candidates of the
Workers United Front. All three peoples representations gathered on 21st July
where, at least in Estonia, Soviet military men were present. On the same day,
Lithuanian and Latvian peoples representations passed a resolution about joining
the Soviet Union, and in Estonia the same happened on 22nd July. After that,
delegations were sent to Moscow and during the 1st August session of the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the delegations passed on their peoples
requests for joining the Soviet Union. The request of the Lithuanians was
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accepted on 3rd August and those of the Latvians and the Estonians on 5th and
6th August, respectively. In this way, the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States
was completed in less than two months. As a consequence, the First Secretary of
the Communist Party of each of the new Republics became the highest power
holder both in theory and practice, replacing the previous heads of state. President
Antanas Smetona (Lithuania) was able to leave the country on 15th June.
President Karlis Ulmanis (Latvia) was arrested and deported to Voroshilovsk on
22nd July before the annexation was completed. President Konstantin Pts
(Estonia) was deported to Ufa on 30th July. At the same time, many other high
Government officials of the Baltic States were arrested, deported and executed.
Construction of the June Myth
The first example and standard-setter of Soviet Estonian history writing was The
history of Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic printed in 1952, during the years of
the harshest Stalinist ideological pressure. In this book the basic keywords for
presenting the official version of the events of 21st June 1940 were given (Naan
1952, 373-385):

voluntary act the establishment of Soviet power, the replacement of the

Estonian Government with the Soviet institutions and the deposing of
the President were the wishes of the Estonian (working) people;
spontaneous act the Estonian working classes spontaneously took an
active role in the events organizing demonstrations and meetings in
support of the establishment of the Soviet power;
guiding role of the Communist Party the voluntary and spontaneous
activities of Estonian working people would never have achieved their
aim without the help of the Communist Party. The illegal Estonian
Communist Party is mentioned most but the role of the CPSU is also
frequently emphasized;
non-interference of the Soviet power institutions and the Red Army the
support from the Party and Russian comrades was moral and tactical, and
the Soviet military forces did not intervene in the Revolution in Estonia;
massive event the importance of the event was stressed by showing it
as overwhelming in engaging a large portion of Estonian inhabitants.
Exact numbers were not, however, given; instead adjectives such as
many, massive, large-scale were used.

These keywords also became the cornerstones of the so-called June Myth. As the
power supporting myths played an important role in Soviet ideology and
propaganda, it has become quite common in the post-Soviet Estonian
historiography to describe Soviet society as mythologized. The June Myth, thus,
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presents the Soviet occupation and annexation as a Revolution that was the result
of deep conflicts which existed in the Independent Estonian Republic. The
Revolution was a voluntary act of will by the Estonian nation without any
interference by the Soviet Union and its armed forces (cf. Adamson 1994, 3).
However, this concept was not born without difficulties. The construction of the
June Myth was a long process that took nearly thirty years. Estonian Soviet
historians debated what should be the emphases and interpretations of particular
details of this ideologically correct version (e.g., was it a Socialist Revolution or a
Peoples Revolution that was supposed to precede a Socialist Revolution; what role
should the individuals who participated in the Revolution in various capacities
have; how should the role of the Estonian Communist Party and CPSU be
presented, as well as the role of the Red Army etc.). It has been argued that the
construction of the June Myth was not completed until the early 1970s (Adamson
1994), although only minor variations in its details were made after 1960. In that
year, two large volumes of documents and memoirs were published that dealt with
the events of, and around the 21st June 1940 (see: Maamgi 1960; Teder 1960).
The June Myth is a very informative case for studying how the Soviet concept of
Estonian history was gradually constructed and introduced into the public
discourse. This process was largely carried out, indeed is best reflected, in the
pages of the most powerful propaganda tool of the time the Soviet press.
Empirical Material and Research Method
The period under observation from 1945-1960 were the years of the institutional
and ideological settling of the Soviet regime and the designing of the official
version of Estonias history. The years 1945-1960 represent the period of
ideological development spanning the harshest Stalinist time till the waning of
ideological control in the second half of the 1950s. The 1940s are especially
significant for the perspective of history writing. Ritter, who has analysed the
distortion of collective memory in Soviet Lithuania, points out that during the late
1940s and early 1950s the process contained a notable element of legitimization
and justification of Soviet power in Lithuania (Ritter 2003, 88). During the same
period legitimization was also strongly present in Estonian history texts. An
important moment here is that peoples memories of life in Independent Estonia
were still fresh and comparisons made between the present and the past favoured
the latter. As a consequence, this past presented a challenge to Soviet ideology and
had to be destroyed and forgotten. This was attempted by banning all literature
published between 1918 and 1940, by blowing up all monuments of the War for
Independence in 1918-1920, by eliminating enemies of the nation, by blocking all
possible alternative information sources and by establishing an all-embracing
mechanism for controlling public information. Simultaneously, a massive
propaganda exercise about the advantages of the Soviet social order was
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conducted, strongly emphasizing the fact that socialism was a natural and
inevitable phase of societal development. The late 1940s and early 1950s were also
the time of the most brutal violations of history not only in Estonia and the Soviet
Union, but also elsewhere in Eastern and Central Europe. For example, Polish
History was subjected to the most widespread distortion during the ideologization
education between 1948-1953 (Jarosz 2002, 46). This was connected to the launch
of Cold War politics in 1947, an integral part of which was the formation of a
strong East-European Socialist bloc. Jelena Zubkova argues that the Sovietization
of Eastern Europe was thoroughly prepared, with Estonia a rehearsal of the tactics
and practical mechanisms of Sovietization (Zubkova 2001).
The 25 texts under analysis have been chosen from the national daily Rahva Hl
/The Peoples Voice (henceforth RH) which was the organ of the Central Committee
of the Estonian Communist Party, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian Soviet
Socialist Republic and the Government. This newspaper, positioned at the
pinnacle of the hierarchical Soviet press system in Estonia was the standard-setter
for the whole Estonian press until the end of the 1980s. RH, as Estonias local
Pravda was in the position of supervising and criticizing the rest of the Estonian
press, setting ideological canons and journalistic standards. Above all, RH was
privileged by always being able to print the most important information of the day
first. Published for the first time on 22nd June 1940, the second day of the Soviet
coup dtat, RH continued to operate until January 1993, when it was sold to private
owners. Its circulation was extensive print runs during the late 1940s and early
1950s were around 85 000 to 105 000, and from the 1960s-1980s between 155 000
and 188 000 (Hoyer et al. 1993). However, by the late 1980s, and with the
Estonian independence movement gathering momentum, the paper started to
distance itself from the Communist Party. In January 1990, the Communist
Partys name was moved from first to third place in the newspapers title, while by
March 1990 formal links with the Communist Party were completely severed with
the partys name removed from the publication once and for all (Ibid 1993, 269).
The sample under review consists of all the articles, editorials and all other types of
texts that dealt with the events of 21st June 1940 and were published in the 21st
June issues of RH between 1945 and 1960. If the newspaper did not appear on
21st June, the previous or following days paper was chosen. There was, however,
one deviation from this cycle that colourfully characterizes the hierarchical
structure of the Soviet media and the special position of the Central Party
newspaper. In the issue of the 21st June 1950, the day of the tenth anniversary of
the re-establishment of Soviet power in Estonia RH did not publish a single word
about the coup. Instead, all four pages were filled with a piece by Stalin titled
About Marxism in Linguistics. An editorial, translated from Pravda Under the
Wise Leadership of Great Stalin preceded the article. Nothing, not even the
historical legitimization of the Soviet regime in Estonia, could be more important
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than Stalins latest words. Previously prepared materials relating to the events of
June 1940 were published on the following two days.
The following analysis attempts to demonstrate how the June Myth was constructed
in RH by using various textual means. De-constructing a concept that aimed at
having strong political and ideological effects on society and disclosing its
manipulative character requires viewing the texts in their historical context,
simultaneously focusing on the social identities (us and them) and the social
relations between them. Therefore the methods of historical discourse analysis
(Fairclough 1992, Fairclough and Wodak 1998, Titscher et al. 2000) are used in our
work. The analytical apparatus of historical discourse methodology comprises
three analytical levels: contents, argumentation strategies and forms of linguistic
implementation (Titscher et al. 2000, 158). In our study we concentrate on the
following aspects: (1) argumentation strategies, (2) the linguistic means of the
construction of us and them and (3) the use of antagonisms and falsifications (to
manipulate content).
In our case, the argumentation strategies have the function of implanting the
correct understanding and interpretation of historical truth into public discourse
that in the long run sought to influence collective memory. In the texts, they most
frequently appear through the methods of manipulation, such as exaggerations,
black and white oppositions, comparisons, omissions etc. The strategies may not
always be transparent in the discourse as their realisation can range from automatic
to conscious and they can be located on different levels of peoples mental
organization (cf. Wodak 2002). In decoding the strategies of Soviet political
discourse, the dimension of context as the environment in which current discourse
functions gains central importance. Therefore, in what follows, contextual
explanations are given together with text examples.
Findings
Argumentation Strategies of the June Myth Construction
(1) Labelling
The language of Soviet Communism Newspeak (Thom 1989) subjected language to
ideology; the meanings of words were replaced by values. Every phenomenon had an
ideological value (positive or negative) and therefore, it had to carry a label to guide
everyone towards a correct understanding of it. The way in which the 21st June was
labelled gave direction to the whole conception of the historical presentation of this
day. Since labelling was a basis for the construction of the June Myth, it can be regarded
as a constructive strategy in itself, which was practiced in order to set and fix an
appropriate label to the event. Most often the 21st June was named as the turn of June but
also as seizing the power, dethronement, change of the government.
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A corner stone dogma of Marxism class struggle was brought into Estonian
historiography by labelling the events of 21st June as a great victory of the Estonian
working people. Here Soviet ideologists and historians faced another Marxist dogma
the Revolution of the proletariat. To interpret the 21st June as a proletarian
revolution led by the Communist Party was problematic. This concept was in
contradiction with the facts (Soviet military intervention, the illegal status of the
Estonian Communist Party at the time of the June events etc.) and could not be
presented as a proper Revolution of the proletariat. First, in Estonia a social layer
that could be called proletariat did not exist in the summer of 1940. Secondly, the
political situation in the late 1940s and early 1950s did not allow the glorification of
the day of 21st June as the culmination of the establishment of Soviet power in
Estonia because the collaborators, whom the Soviet emissaries put in leading posts
after the coup, were soon condemned by the Soviets as being bourgeois
nationalists.
To overcome the gap between orthodox Marxist dogma and the prevailing political
and ideological situation, historians worked out the theory of two Revolutions.
The theory accorded that the events of 21st June could be viewed as a people's
revolution, being the first stage of a socialist revolution (Adamson 1994, 55-56).
This approach was dominant in the early 1950s, not only on the level of academic
and ideological discussions, but also in the newspapers. Whereas in the texts of
1950, the events of June 1940 were called a beginning of the Socialist revolution,
the people's revolution began to be used in 1952. In 1955, however, RH again
wrote about the beginning of the Socialist revolution:
The revolutionary turn of the 21st June 1940 was the beginning of the
socialist development of our people. Being convinced of the huge
advantages of the Socialist order, the Estonian people strengthen the power
and potency of our Socialist homeland, the stronghold of peace and progress
of the whole world with their obstinate and creative work under the
leadership of the Communist Party (Rahva Hl 21 June 1955).

The definition of the June events as the beginning of the Socialist revolution was
frequently used on later occasions, until historians finally gave it up as late as 1969.
(2) Irreversible turn
The events of 21st June 1940 were presented as a turning point, completely
changing the contemporary and especially the future development of Estonia. It
was repeatedly stressed that the Soviet regime liberated the Estonian people from
exploitation, that the gloomy days of bourgeois oppression ended with the 21st June and
would never return, that the working people have become the masters of their destiny,
and that from this day onwards they could decide about their lives by themselves.
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The most common practice was to use nouns and verbs referring to turn or turning
(pramine) something. The 21st June 1940 was the summer solstice - a crucial day
in the Estonian calendar representing the end of long dark days and beginning of
lightness; a day of turning from one season to another. In the very first
interpretations in 1940 the word turning day (pripev) appears. This was one of the
methods of integrating Soviet ideology into national traditions with the goal of
making it a part of these traditions in peoples minds, inserting it into the
structures of collective memory. Linking the day of the Soviet coup to a day of
symbolic meaning in Estonian cultural tradition provided an opportunity to
transfer the positive associations connected with an old tradition to a political
event. It was also the purpose of having singers and dancers celebrating Soviet
holidays dressed in Estonian national costumes.
In 1946 the construct, the turn of June (juunipre), was brought into use, a signifier
that became fixed as a canon in later Soviet historiography. The fact that the turn of
June was repeatedly (22 times) used in 10 articles out of 25 clearly reflects the
ideological importance of this construct. The verb to turn was also often used to
emphasize the importance of the day in history. 21st June was named as a historical
turn/turning point in Estonian history; one article was even titled A historical
turning point in the life of Estonian working people (Rahva Hl 21 June 1947).
Coup dtat (riigipre), which in Estonian is also derived from the verb to turn was
used only once in 1946. Later this phrase was discarded as dangerous for the
construction of the historical continuity of Soviet power in Estonia. According to
the ideologically correct version of history the period of Independent Estonia,
1918-1940, was a brutal intervention of bourgeois powers, a kind of interregnum
between establishing Soviet power in Estonia in 1917 and re-establishing it in
1940. The state and power institutions of the Estonian Republic were labelled as
illegitimate. To officially call the events of June 1940 a coup dtat would have given
the impression that Soviet ideology acknowledged the Estonian Republic as a state
with legal institutions to overthrow. Also the associations of the term of coup dtat
with violence and interruption contradicted the idea of the Soviet overthrow as a
peaceful voluntary and spontaneous act of the Estonian people. Therefore, the
term was never used in the public texts of the Soviet period, whereas in todays
Estonian historiography this is the most widespread term to characterize the 21st
June.
(3) Exaggerations
A strategic method to construct the legitimacy of the Soviet regime was to stress
that a huge mass of people, countless amounts of people, a large number of people, plenty of
people, enormous crowds participated in the demonstrations of the 21st June.
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Continuous columns of workers are approaching along Nunna Street. There
are workers from Krull, Sits and other textile factories, candy and chocolate
factories. From Lasname, men and women from the cellulose factory are
arriving. From the direction of Prnu Road a column of Luthers factory
workers is approaching. The workers are coming from all directions, just
from behind the workbenches. Today Victory Square is soon full of
overflowing crowds (Rahva Hl 23 June.1950).

Exact numbers, however, were never given. Estimations that appeared in

newspapers were between 6 000 and 40 000; though after World War Two hundreds
of thousands were sometimes mentioned. Later on, through RH an estimation of
30,000 participants became the most frequently repeated and was finally accepted
as the correct number (Adamson 1994). Historians today, however, claim that
there were no more than about 5 000 people demonstrating, including Soviet
soldiers and Russian workers (Krna et al. 1990, 17).
The exaggerations also apply to the descriptions of emotions expressed during the
meetings and processions. People were allegedly overflowing with enthusiasm and
the meetings and demonstrations took place all over the country. Expressions
like: On June 21st 1940 Estonian working people gathered together for
demonstrations all over the country (Rahva Hl 21 June 1946) were typical. At the
same time, the locations of demonstrations outside Tallinn were never named,
except in a single analysed text (Rahva Hl 21. June 1945). Some hints to activities
in other towns outside the capital appeared in memoir-articles at the end of the
1950s. In fact, only a few meetings organized by the Soviet authorities and
supported by the Red Army took place outside the capital Tallinn (Tannberg et al
2006).
To emphasize the component of the June Myth about the overall will and wish of
the Estonian people to join the Soviet Union, totally unrealistic generalizations
were frequently used:
All the Estonian people know that only Soviet order gave them their current
happy life. Only under the leadership of the Party and Comrade Stalin has
our big success become possible (Sirp ja Vasar/Sickle And Hammer 11 March
1950).

(4) Aggressiveness of presentation

From the beginning of the 1950s the presentation of the June events became more
and more aggressive. The words changing and turning were replaced by breaking,
dethronement etc with the concept of (historical) victory starts representing the idea of
class struggle as the progressive feature in history. The use of words that refer to
struggle, battle etc. is characteristic to the language of Communism. In the
editorials, it appears, for example, as Seizure of Power by the Working People in Estonia
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(1950), Successful Struggle of the Working People (1952), A Historical Victory of Estonian
Working People (1955). The aggressiveness was, at the same time, presented only
through a positive and victorious perspective: June 21st 1940 will be indelibly
glowing in the history of the Estonian working people as a day of their great
victory (Rahva Hl, 21 June 1947).
The fact that many terms in the vocabulary were taken from military language
refers a dogma of Soviet ideology that the world is deeply divided into two
hostile and irreconcilable camps (Thom 1989, 28). The change in narrative of the
analysed texts is related to the general increase of aggression and terror during the
last years of Stalins reign and to the launch of Cold War propaganda that was
largely based on military terminology.
(5) Creation of illusory historical continuity
Among the constructive strategies of the creation of the June Myth one can also
find the strategies of perpetuation and justification through the creation of
historical continuity. It was considered important to show the events of the 21st
June as a result of natural historical development and an inevitable course of
events. Therefore, establishment of Soviet institutions of power in 1940 was
always coined as the re-establishment of Soviet power. The October Revolution of 1917
was regarded as the first victory of the Soviet order when the Bolsheviks seized
power in a large part of Estonian territory. Sometimes the evidence referring to the
struggle of the Estonian working people against oppressors and bourgeois regimes
was looked for in even earlier periods, such as the Revolution of 1905 or workers
strike in the 19th century.
In the summer of 1872, the first large strike began in the Kreenholm Factory
in Narva. The workers started actively fighting for their class rights and in
1905 the armed uprising spread all over the country. The uprising was
suppressed, but the struggle of the working class strengthened and along
with the growth of political consciousness the proletariat established their
progressive vanguard and leader of their struggle the Communist Party. In
the days of the Great October Revolution in 1917, the Party led the
Estonian proletariat in the victory of Soviet power. During the years of
bourgeois suppression, the struggle smouldered like a fire under ashes and
the Communist Party was deep under ground. The flames burst out again on
the 21st June... (Rahva Hl 20 June 1948).

(6) Speaking with the voice of the Party

Up to the late 1950s, the June Myth was developed by local Communist leaders and
Marxist historians, so-called Party historians (Adamson 1994, 24-25). Articles on
the events of the 21st June were portrayed as being the result of historical research
conducted and written by authoritative historians, with the intention of adding
credibility to the myth.
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While articles by politically prominent authors were written in an impersonal and
declarative manner, the writings of historians pretended to be objective research,
but their language was propagandistic and persuasive, representing the voice of the
Party. From the late 1950s onwards, within the conditions of easing censorship
and ideological pressure, memoirs of eye-witnesses and active participants, written
in a more personal and subjective manner began to be published, but still in
accordance with the official version of the June events. Van Dijk (2004)
characterizes this method as evidentiality which is supposed to make the
argumentation more plausible by assuming that the author as eyewitness tells the
truth.
Construction of US
One of the strategies of ideological discourse is to give positive self-presentation
and negative other-presentation. Van Dijk (2006) has defined four principles,
strategic use of which enables to present the us them confrontation in political
discourse:

Emphasize positive things about US

Emphasize negative things about THEM
De-emphasize negative things about US
De-emphasize positive things about THEM

The construction of us in the Soviet political discourse typically appears through

the term people, because these two signifiers semantically coincide (Ventsel 2005,
87-88). Therefore, in what follows we will, through the examination of how the
term people appeared in the descriptions of the June events, analyse the
construction of us.
Although in reality the Soviet people did not form an integral group, the official
language of the Soviet regime under Stalin stressed the harmony of social interests.
(Davies 2000, 47). Text analysis still shows that people in connection with the
events of June 1940 did not mean the whole population, but only working people and
that part of society that was loyal to the Soviet authorities. Thus, especially in
earlier periods, our country, victory, power meant the country, victory or power of the working
people. In other connotations, people and us were typically generalised to cover
the whole population. Speaking in the name of us, the authorities created and
strengthened the impression of a general consensus and loyalty by Estonian people
to the Soviet regime.

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(1) People as an active us group
Analyses of Soviet historical discourse reveal that in general, people as a signifier
of us was not an active subject of self-perception, but a passive one, the will of
which was entirely framed and determined by Marxist-Leninist ideology (Ventsel
2005). Dealing with the June events, the Soviet Estonian press presented this
limited desire as the peoples real, inner dream and wish that took an active form
after a long bourgeois suppression. Representation of people as an active subject was
especially necessary in connection with the June events in order to support the
concept of the Estonian peoples voluntary acceptance of the Soviet regime. It was
demonstrated that the progressive and best part of Estonian people was an active
subject that spontaneously gathered to the meetings and demonstrations demanding
the establishment of a new, Socialist Government. The importance of stressing
this activeness declined over time as the Soviet authorities took over the role of the
representatives of the peoples will.
The activeness of the people appears in the newspaper discourse in a clearly
aggressive form. People seized power, pulled down the Government, demonstrated, demanded,
accomplished their demands, attacked, broke through, achieved freedom, took their destiny in their
own hands, took the law into their hands, organized an armed defence, established the
dictatorship of proletariat, destroyed the old bourgeois state machine, tore their slave chains to
pieces. The only neutral words were came and decided. This aggressive tone was not
reproachful but was only supposed to create negative associations towards the
previous, bourgeois social order against which whatever violent act was justified
according to Soviet ideology.
Although the Estonian people were described as active in realizing their own will,
their activities were never presented as entirely independent. All texts emphasized
the important role of the Communist Party, which explained, directed, instructed, led,
showed, united, assembled etc. and thus, played a stimulating and leading role. Another
stimulating factor was the great friendship and support from the friendly Russian nation.
Interestingly, while frequently stressing this support and help, concrete examples
were never given.
(2) People and class
Since the June events had to be presented as a Revolution, the dimensions of
class and class struggle were imported. For the Estonian nation-centred society,
the concept of people was easier to accept, and not as difficult to identify with, as
class. Thus, from the first days of the Soviet regime, the notion of people was
typically used for expressing social and not ethnic belonging and where possible, in
combination with class. Therefore, the adjectives working and progressive were
used most frequently with people, referring to their ideological meaning. To
express the class character of people, expressions like our working people, our
Estonian working people, the majority of Estonian people, Estonian workers were used. The
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events of June 1940 were frequently presented as a victory of Estonian working
people over the bourgeoisie, the capitalists and the imperialists, stressing that this was our
victory. The notion of working class was also sometimes used in trying to
emphasize the class struggle. This was usually done in conjunction with
mentioning other classes the working class in the alliance with the peasantry, the working
class in the alliance with the working intelligentsia. At the same time, a distinction was
made between people and the working class when using expressions such as
alliance of the working class with the working people. This inconsistency in terminology
reflects the fact that there was no consensus among Soviet historians and
ideologists about how to introduce the concept of class struggle into the Estonian
public discourse.
Construction of THEM
(1) Enemy-building
One of the universal methods of justification and legitimization of Soviet power
(and also its violent character) was the construction of internal and external
enemies of us. Those who were not with us, were regarded as being against us
and were consequently regarded as the enemies. An example list of such enemies
was provided in the first pages of the dogmatic history text The Brief Course of the
History of the CPSU: landlords, capitalists, proprietors, bourgeoisie, kulaks, spies, the agents of
the capitalism. The list was gradually complemented with examples given in the
speeches of the leaders of the Party and Soviet State and in the press including,
international imperialism, bloody warmongers, capitalist monsters, imperialist sharks, bourgeois
nationalists, enemies of the nation, fascists, exploiters, cosmopolitans, etc. This largely became
the vocabulary of the Cold War period press. As the June events signified the
irreversible victory of Socialist order and the defeat of them the enemies the
strategy of warning was expressed only in hyperbolic form:
What would have happened if the Estonian working people had not made a
decisive step on June 21st 1940 and had not taken their destiny into their
own hands? The Estonian bourgeoisie would have led the Estonian nation
down a ruinous road into the desperate war for realizing Hitlers plans of
conquering the world as the Finnish, Hungarian, Romanian and later other
German satellite countries bourgeoisies did with their people (Rahva Hl
20 June 1948).

(2) Concretization
While the positive picture of us was rarely illustrated with facts, negative pictures
of them were frequently decorated with colourful details. The economic, political
and cultural environment of Estonian society before the Soviet period was
described as corrupt, repressive, poor, underdeveloped and unfair, abundantly using
statistics and examples. The sources of the statistics and examples were, however,
never mentioned.
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(3) Negative lexicalization
Anything that was not ours was therefore theirs, and given a negative
connotation. The vocabulary was rich and colourful, using metaphors,
comparisons etc. For example, the President of Independent Estonia was often
called bloodhound, insidious fox, henchman of Hitler and fascist; the Government of
Independent Estonia was known, as the bootlicker of capitalists, bunch of robbers, bloody
dictatorship, and government of warmongers. Political orders other than the Soviet were
always characterized with negative words. The Independent Estonian Republic was
stagnant, reactionary, bourgeois, fascist, a regime of terror.
(4) Negative generalizations
A strategy of creating a negative image of something or somebody, wide and
arbitrary conclusions and generalizations were often made, transferring a negative
connotation to many objects on a basis of selected examples. For example, the
whole period of Estonias Independence was labelled as regressive, while making
no distinction between the democratic and authoritarian periods in Estonian interwar history. The politics of the Estonian State was described as hostile and dangerous
to people, economic contacts with Western countries were presented as cooperation
with Hitlers camp. One of the most dangerous enemies was the (international)
bourgeoisie. As a result, anything that could be described as bourgeois was
automatically put into the enemy camp. Almost anything that did not correspond
to the criteria of socialist was labelled as bourgeois: bourgeois parties, bourgeois
cultural policy, bourgeois ideology, bourgeois art, literature, science etc.
It was a tragedy of the Baltic nations that the turning days turned around the labels
of us and them and people were brutally forced to accept the Soviet their reality
and mentality as ours.
Use of antagonisms in construction of the June Myth
Three clear categories of antagonisms, in addition to the above analysed
polarizations, can be revealed in the analysed texts. They appear on three levels:
political and social orders, social structures, and ideologies.
(1) The Soviet political regime versus all other political orders
All political and social orders other than the Soviet regime constituted them.
Our State or country was first and foremost the Soviet Union; Estonia came a
distant second. The most evil enemy of the Soviet regime was, indeed, the former
Independent Estonian Republic. Similarly negative was the representation of the
Latvian and Lithuanian Republics, which shared the destiny of Estonia, and was on
a par with the extreme post-war hostility towards Hitlers Germany. Continuously
since 1949 the objects of ideological attacks were the imperialist Western countries.
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This clearly reflects the division of the world into two opposite camps during the
Cold War period: us socialist and them capitalist.
(2) Working class (people) versus bourgeoisie and capitalists
Although the use of the term working class was problematic, the positive us
determinant and the negative them determinant were mainly constructed on the
basis of class opposing working class with the bourgeois capitalists. The most
frequently mentioned representatives of other classes in the sample texts were:
bourgeoisie, capitalists, landlords, kulaks. Some more specific expressions associated to
the social status of them also occur, such as bourgeois nationalists, bankers,
international financial capitalism etc.
(3) Communism versus other ideologies
Antagonism of Communism with all other political ideologies penetrated all
spheres of the Soviet society. The most frequent hostile ideologies appearing in the
analysed texts were fascism and nationalism. Ironically, the most colourful negative
picture was created about the representatives of the ideologies that were closest to
Communism socialists who opposed bolshevism, such as Trotskists, Mensheviks and
other anti-Leninist groups.
Falsifications, lies and concealments
A typical strategy of constructing the positive us image is to put aside facts that
contradict the correct interpretation, and lie about objectivities of the past that
could damage the wishful image (Wodak 2002, van Dijk 2006). The analysed texts
revealed many historical distortions, exaggerations and construction of pseudofacts.
We have already touched upon the falsification of the number of participants in
the demonstrations on 21st June. In addition, their social and ethnic origins were
also falsified. According to the memories of many eyewitnesses and also historical
documents (Tannberg et al. 2006) a large number of the demonstrators were
Russian workers, seamen and soldiers, driven to Tallinn by the Soviet authorities
and dressed in civilian clothing. August Rei, a prominent Estonian politician
during the 1930s and the ambassador of the Estonian Republic in Moscow from
1938 to 1940 recalled:
To my great surprise I heard the demonstrators singing Soviet-Russian songs,
which I had first heard in Moscow and which were definitely unknown to
everybody in Estonia. At first when I heard the singing from a distance and
couldnt see the singers, I thought that groups of Soviet soldiers or seamen
were participating. But my guess was wrong: everybody who was singing was
dressed in civilian clothing. Their clothes, faces and whole appearance left no
doubt, that they were Russians and Soviet citizens. (Maasing 1956, 20)

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Another fact, totally denied in any form, shape or manner, was the political dictate
and military interference of the Soviet Union in Estonia. The fact that the natural
historical course of history and the voluntary act of the Estonian people was
actually a carefully prepared plan executed by Moscow, and that the Soviet army
was ready to invade Estonia for several months before June 1940 were totally
denied in the Soviet narrative of Estonian history. Even photographs and
documentaries were altered to give the right impression, e.g., by removing Soviet
military men and tanks. The role of the Red Army was completely omitted from
official descriptions of the events of the 21st June in the history books. The
newspapers, however, still mentioned the presence of the Red Army in the texts of
the late 1940s, but their role was gradually reduced over time.
Discussion and Conclusions
We proceeded from the idea that collective memory is a type of knowledge,
formation which is essentially determined by various textual resources that carry
information about the past. In this way, collective memory plays an important role
in collective and individual identity building. The Soviet authorities forcefully
introduced a distorted version of Estonian history into the public discourse in
order to affect collective memory and to gain a hold over peoples minds.
Newspaper text as discourse is a substantial component of public discourse and
also a source of information that influences the formation of peoples knowledge
and interpretation of the past.
The newspaper texts devoted to the events of the 21st June 1940 clearly reflect
how the press was used for deforming historical narrative and constructing
canonized texts. The methods used for creating these texts include various
argumentation strategies (labelling, exaggerations and aggressiveness of
presentation), polarization of good us and bad them, as well as pure lies and
falsifications. Three levels of antagonisms appeared in the texts: political and social
orders, social structures, and ideologies. Polarization of us them served the
purpose of legitimizing the Soviet regime in two ways: 1) by constructing the
overall consensus of the people with the Soviet authorities and 2) by cultivating
enemy discourse to create an atmosphere of fear and suspicion (see also Lauk
2005). Presentation of the 21st June 1940 in Estonian newspaper texts is an
example of the robust attempts at correcting history according to the ideological
canons, interests and power-practices of the Communist Party that all served the
purpose of perpetuating the Soviet regime. This mechanism worked in the ways
that are best described by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four:
And if the facts say otherwise then the facts must be altered. Thus history is
continuously rewritten. This day-to-day falsification of the past, carried out
by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability of the regime as the

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work of repression and espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love
(Orwell 1966, 170).

The role of the public texts was to monopolize the word and in this way, help the
Soviet regime to take control over the language, and consequently over the
peoples minds; or as Francoise Thom (1989, 13) summarized No other regime
knows better how to take control of language and use it for its own ends.
Linguists and psychologists have demonstrated how strongly language influences
the formation of peoples attitudes and deliberate adoption of preferred models of
behaviour (cf. Harr 1985, van Dijk 1993, 1996). Van Dijk (1993, 1996) has also
demonstrated how the lack of alternative discourses contributes to the adoption by
the audience of models persuasively presented by the authorities through the mass
media. By the 1960s, within a context where the public word was manipulated and
strictly controlled by the authorities, and the alternative sources were eliminated,
the efforts of the Soviet authorities to distort Estonians historical memory
gradually started taking effect and formed a foundation for further Sovietization.
Generations born after World War Two did not, naturally, have either experiences
or memories from life in the Independent Estonian Republic, or of the events of
June 1940, which were effectively its end. Their picture of the real historical past
was deficient and full of gaps. At the same time, the Soviet education system and
mass media suggested a systematic and complete official version of history, where
the events of the 21st June had a crucial importance at odds with the historical
memory. Aarelaid-Tart (2006) has demonstrated how for the pre-War, post-War
and the 1950s generations, a transformation of double thinking took place. While
for the pre-War generation the opposition of own and alien was complete, for
the 1950s generation own and alien had changed places. As Wertsch emphasizes,
despite the existence of unofficial histories as a mixture of the historical facts and
experiences of older generations, the official history was always present as a
second speaker (Wertsch 1998). Wertsch also noticed that important elements of
Soviet historiography (as for example schematic narrative templates) continue to
appear in the post-Soviet history texts (Wertsch 2002, 176).
However, Soviet newspeak (Thom 1989), its exaggerations, obvious lies and
hollow rhetoric alien to Estonian language, made it difficult to persistently infiltrate
the ideology that this rhetoric carried. Double thinking gained new impetus in
connection with strengthening ideological pressure after the events of 1968 in
Czechoslovakia; with a silent opposition surfacing in literature, theatre and the
cultural media. Unofficial history remained a component of this silent opposition,
since it supported the national self-consciousness and identity of Estonians. This
also largely explains the relative failure of widespread Soviet propaganda among
Estonians.

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The interpretation of the history of Estonia and Estonians by the Russian-speaking
immigrant population demonstrates that where the unofficial history is missing,
the official version takes over and becomes a component of knowledge. The
Estonian Russophone population, who settled in Estonia in the decades after
World War Two, was acquainted with only the official version as an element of the
history of the USSR. As a result, Russophone people who lived in Estonia for
decades often did not see Estonia as something different from the rest of the
Soviet Union and could not understand Estonians national aspirations. The
interview response of a former Soviet naval officer who lived in Estonia with his
family for almost twenty years is typical of this attitude: For me, Estonia was one
of the republics, the technical equipment of which was better than the others. The
fact that it is a so called native nation I realized in 1988-1989, when Estonian
intellectuals started writing about Independence (Aarelaid-Tart 2006, 234). Surveys
in the early 1990s showed that at least one-third of the Russophone population
believed that the Independent Estonian Republic was a backward bourgeois
authoritarian regime with features of fascism and that the incorporation of Estonia
into the Soviet Union in 1940 was by the will of Estonian people. The Soviet
period was perceived as the years of positive development under the guidance of
the Communist Party (Ruutsoo 1997, Valk 1997).
The carefully mastered June Myth was only one detail of the Soviet ideological
newspaper discourse. Many other parallel historical issues like collectivization,
elimination of the anti-Soviet elements, participation of Estonia in the Great
Patriotic War etc. were constructed for the legitimization of the Soviet regime in
Estonia. Deconstruction of these and similar concepts helps to understand the
effects of the brainwashing machinery of the Soviet Union and restore historical
truth. It has become especially important in the current political situation where
anti-Estonian propaganda, nationally and internationally, largely rests on these
concepts and an incomplete knowledge of real Estonian history.

Notes
The authors are grateful to their colleague Dr. Ene Kresaar for her critical reading and
remarks, and to the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.
2 All translations are the responsibility of the authors.
1

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