Shadowlands

Meike Wulf studied at the University of Munster in Germany and gained her doctorate from the London School of Economics. She has taught at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, the University of Konstanz in Germany, and Maastricht University in the Netherlands, in addition to having been a visiting fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

“The book includes many important insights and presents valuable testimonies of Estonian intellectuals in the early 2000s on establishing a new historical culture in independent Estonia.” • European History Quarterly“The main strength of Shadowlands is the careful construction of collective memories of the First Republic, World War II, and the Communist era, as articulated by Estonia’s historians… [It is] an important contribution to the study of memory and generations. Furthermore, it can provide guidance for scholars who base their research primarily on oral history documents.” • History: Reviews of New Books“The book presents an elegantly written synthesis of Estonian war and post-war history, which manages the biographical documents with great authority and convincingly conveys the complexity of post-Soviet historical narratives to a broader readership.” • Sehepunkte“…a fascinating ride through Estonian post-war intellectual and cultural history, told through the personal narratives of historians of different age cohorts.” • Slavic Review“The book is an elegant synthesis of Estonian war and postwar history, which confidently deals with personal accounts and conveys to a broader readership the complexity of post-soviet historical narrative. Of interest especially for the informed reader is the critical assessment of the struggle for the interpretation of the national memory.” • Journal of East Central European Studies“The strength of this study lies in its rich contextualization of issues, ranging from the restrictive condition of Soviet history production to subversive cultural memory evident in Andrus Kivirahk’s work, with Wulf’s life-story interviews that give us insights into these historians’ minds. Those readers who are curious about the contentious memory politics of contemporary Estonia should not miss this book.” • Slavonic and East European Review“Shadowlands is an engaging, thoroughly researched, and well-written analysis of the often highly charged debates over the interpretation of Estonia’s history in the post-Soviet era. The author has a sound and nuanced understanding of the literatures on memory and identity and uses these conceptual frameworks to very good effect.” • Richard C. M. Mole, University College London“This book addresses the important concepts of collective memory and national identity in a country whose history has made both of them highly contested and often traumatic. It does so in a highly original way, drawing on oral history interviews with Estonian intellectuals that add color, immediacy, and a human dimension.” • Patrick Salmon, British Foreign and Commonwealth Office

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: ShadowlandsChapter 1. Understanding Collective Memory and National IdentityChapter 2. Between Teuton and SlavChapter 3. Historians as ‘Carriers of Meaning’Chapter 4. Voicing Post-Soviet HistoriesChapter 5. A Winner’s Tale: The Clash of Private and Public Memories in Post-Soviet EstoniaChapter 6. Conclusion: Framing Past and FutureAppendicesBibliographyIndex