ABSTRACT

The title of this essay is inspired by a personal memory. This happened sometime before Perestroika, in the early to mid-1980s, in the Pelgurand part of Tallinn, in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR. We lived within the carefully guarded borders of a stagnating Soviet empire. Our part of Tallinn was inhabited predominantly by Russian-speaking, Soviet-era settlers, so the Russian language was heard everywhere around us.1 On our way home from school, we feared trouble from gangs of Russian youths. Russian-speaking soldiers were visible everywhere, and they guarded the seashore in the evenings.2