Title: Oral History and Life Stories as a Research Area in Estonian History, Folkloristics and Ethnology
Abstract: Although the term oral history has not been adapted in Estonian history, folkloristics or ethnology either as a translation or as a foreign term, the methodological approaches are still analogous to those employed in the area of oral history. A characteristic feature in the general tradition of oral history research in Estonia is that it relies a lot on written narratives, similarly to the tradition of the Scandinavian countries. The following review focuses on the events of the 1990s to shed light to the current situation in its evolution, which joins the research traditions of Estonia, their interdisciplinarity and international contacts. The turn to the study of life narratives in Estonian ethnology, folkloristics and history research in the 1990s started separately: each departed from the specifics and traditions of its branch. The more general research framework is the same in all of them: as the research paradigm changed, new sources and methods were taken into use. Interdisciplinary collaboration started to develop through the activities, seminars, conferences and mutual publications of Estonian Life Stories Association, culminating in the collection She Who Remembers, Survives in 2004. This collection comprises all forms and methods of cooperation in the area of life stories and oral history – collecting, publication, discussion. At the same time it shows how many or few there are of us. The research of oral history was affected by the political background in Estonia. In 1991 independence was regained in the Republic of Estonia. This was preceded by political pressure in the earlier years (e.g. expansion of the sphere of influence of the Russian language; intensified immigration into Estonia from the eastern parts of Soviet Union; prevention of industrial development and distortion of natural balance), which in turn provoked the resistance movement at first by means of literature and drama, but in the 1980s also in the press and in the work of societies. (See Jansen & Ruutsoo 1999, 551–560.) All these topics were discussed both spontaneously and in dialogue with the above-mentioned open channels. The situation of political changes on the one hand and the intensity of the discussions on the other caused reminiscencing and narrating of real life as well as interpretation of the