The Task of a Cultural Researcher: Telling the Story of Siberian Estonians

This article analyses the roles of a folklore researcher and the media in introducing the Siberian Estonian communities to the Estonian public after Estonia regained independence. With the restoration of the Republic of Estonia in 1991, the Estonians in Siberia, who had previously lived in the Soviet Union as Estonian Estonians, suddenly became so-called “foreign Estonians”. Since 1991, the Estonian communities in Siberia have been in the focus of collecting and research at the Estonian Folklore Archives (EFA), and 16 field trips were carried out in the period of 1991–2013. When we began our fieldwork, I realised that for Estonians Siberia was primarily associated with cold and wilderness, the deportations of the 1940s and prison camps. In the 1990s, the Republic of Estonia did not do much to support its compatriots in Siberia. For the EFA, the inevitable side task to collecting and researching the folk culture of Estonians in Siberia was to inform and educate the general public in Estonia. Through the media we had a possibility to introduce and in some ways rehabilitate the Estonians in Siberia. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Estonians in Siberia became the focus of the general public in Estonia, prompting further increase in media coverage.