Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to elaborate the question of how the loss of home is narrated 50 years after the actual events and is asking how different power relations are influencing these narrations. My paper is based on video narrations, collected during the project Collect Our Story (kogumelugu.ee) in Estonia.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to elaborate the question of how the loss of home is narrated 50 years after the actual events and how different power relations are influencing these narrations. My paper is based on video narrations, collected during the project Kogu me lugu (Collecting Our Story / Our Whole Story) in Estonia. In 1941 and 1949 two mass deportations took place in Estonia with over 30 000 people being taken from their homes to Siberia. Written narratives about those events have been collected in Estonia since 1980s by different memory institutions. However, in June 2013, a youth NGO staged a performance at the main square in Tallinn. Having created a 1940s home scene on the square, the activists asked people to sit down at the table and imagine somebody coming and taking them away while they were having dinner. The NGO used this performance for drawing attention for their new campaign of collecting video stories about the deportations and other violence during WWII. By now, they have collected over 50 video stories both from deportees and exiled Estonians. They have also started a series of short video-stories for public and educational use. My paper focuses on the main principles of their editing those stories, and on the questions of power of both the narrator as well as the editor.