Paper short abstract:

In the presentation I focus on the problem how drastic changes in the political situation affect the interpretation of the pre-change situations and the self-description of the narrator. I observe this through the example of autobiographical narratives.

Paper long abstract:

In the presentation I compare memories supporting on autobiographic narratives, describing everyday activities in connection with events of general history (period of revolution or war, establishment of the Soviet power in Estonia, period of restitution of independence in Estonia). The stories were narrated in the 1920s-30s, 1970s-80s and 1990s-2000s. The majority of the researched texts are retained in public archives (in the Estonian Cultural History Archives and the Tartu University Library). I compare these interpretations of the past, created at the initiative of researchers and told by narrators who were aware of the presence of the public, with materials from family archives. This enables to monitor the oppositions as well as the interplay between the general political and public attitudes and the personal or communal attitudes, concentrating on the role of the narrator - the first-person-character - in the described historical processes.