Paper short abstract:

After the WWII, folkloristics in Estonia was restructured. Political institutional reorganization shattered a well worked-in situation, there were difficulties with staff. Some ideological control was exercised over the content of the archival materials, certain topics were favoured against others.

Paper long abstract:

With the establishment of the Soviet order in 1940, the former Estonian Folklore Archives were reorganised into the Folklore Department of the State Literary Museum. A folklore section with research staff of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences was founded in Tartu in 1947, later in 1952 all the departments of the Academy were moved to Tallinn. Thus many researchers were separated from the material, causing folklore collecting, organising of the records and research to suffer. The folklore section of the Institute had its main tasks in research, whereas the Folklore Department was left with providing materials to the researchers, collecting, and work on monumental publications.

Political institutional reorganization shattered a well worked-in situation, plus there were a lot less folklorists after the war. There was new ideology and new research rules in the soviet folkloristics - poetic folklore, working-class folklore, revolutionary topics, collecting war songs etc. In the early years of the Soviet Era there was also control over the content of already collected materials, which had to be ideologically corrected. Collecting ideologies during the Estonian Republic were disparaged, folk belief remained marginal. Nevertheless, old farm-house folklore was continuously collected; gaps from previous collecting work were being filled in, for example research on the correspondents and informants to Jakob Hurt, Matthias Johann Eisen, etc. The Soviet Era left its own long-lasting mark on the archival life, which I would like to reflect upon in my presentation.