Symbolic Boundaries and National Borders: The Construction of an Estonian Russian Identity

If the destruction of the Berlin Wall came to symbolize freedom in Central Europe, for the republics of the former Soviet Union it was the construction and recognition of new walls in the form of national borders that represented liberation. In the case of Estonia, the end of what was considered illegal Soviet occupation marked a return to the country's republic's rightful place as an independent, European nation. In demographic respects, however, Estonia could not easily escape the legacies of Soviet rule, due in part to the migration of hundreds of thousands of non-ethnic Estonians to the Estonian SSR. Far from completing a clean break with the past, Estonian independence has replaced legal distinctions between nationalities with social and symbolic boundaries between ethnic groups. This paper will draw on oral histories, focus groups, and ethnographic observation to examine how self-described Russians living in Estonia construct a unique Estonian Russian identity by explicitly comparing themselves to ethnic Estonians and to Russians living in Russia. By analyzing these comparisons, we can discern the symbolic boundaries that form the contours of a common Estonian Russian identity. Contrary to expectations, moreover, I find that the experience of discrimination based on nationality has not provoked Estonian Russians to target ethnic Estonians as a negative out-group. Instead, Estonian Russians articulate a cultural superiority over Russians in Russia, and in doing so both distance themselves from what they perceive to be uncivilized "Eastern" practices, on the one hand, and assert their own affinity with the values of ethnic Estonians and "the West," on the other. © 2005 Association for the Study of Nationalities.