1. Territoriality and Spaces of Power1-1. The Ideological Machinery: Communist Education and Its Agents
All spheres of life in the Soviet Union were under the control of the party-statemachinery (apparat), organised in a hierarchical system of power under the leadershipof the CPSU on the territorial level. Which local actors then controlled and shaped theconstruction of Soviet spatial identity? Since the identity of New Soviet Man (NSM)
was to be based on the communist ideology, it was the local party organisations who
were responsible for disseminating the main narratives related to the education of themasses. Membership in the Communist Party was absolutely essential for any career
beyond a certain level. As a consequence, the overall number of party members in theSoviet Union rose from 6.3 million (DeWitt 1961: 533) in 1947 to some 17 million in
the early 1980s (Vert 1994: 462). In Karelia, there existed 1500 primary party organisations in 1949/50, with a total number of 17,200 members (one and a half times morethan in 1940). Between January 1956 and January 1966, the Party accepted 18,000
new members, or candidates (Vavulinskaia 2001: 669 and 675). In 1979, there were1245 primary communist organisations, 864 shop (tsekhovykh) cell and 735 party cells,
accounting for over 39,000 members and candidates (Leninskaia Pravda, 19 January1979). In 1985, the Karelian Communist Party counted more than 43,000 members.
The number of party members was thus increasing until the very last years of the Party’s history (Maksimov 1987: 256 and 258).
In Sortavala, the Party’s town committee (gorkom) was established in July 1940and continued its activities until 1991, except for the short period of war between August 1941 and June 1944. Its secretaries and bureau members were confirmed in1944
by the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the Karelo-Finnish
Soviet Socialist Republic (KFSSR). In early 1945, a meeting of the town’s communists
elected the plenum and the bureau. Due to administrative changes, the committee waslater twice renamed into ‘district committee’ (Sortavalskii raikom), between November
1954 and December 1962 and, again, between January 1965 and December 1970.
The gorkom was organised into several departments: general services (obshchii
otdel), administrative organs, propaganda and agitation, ideology, industry and transportation, military, and cadres. Archival documents clearly show the leading role of the
gorkom in local affairs, whose members thus formed the local political elite (Kop’ev
2003: 48–51). As the local branch of the CSPU it was ‘a leading force’ of the society,whose main tasks included the ‘selection and promotion of cadres who were able tocarry out the Party’s decisions, ideological and political work aimed at educating themasses in the communist worldview etc.’ (see among others Fedoseev 1985; Kniazev
and Nikishov 1987).
In early 1948, 1335 persons held top-level positions in the state machinery andthe so-called public organisations (trade unions etc.) of Soviet Karelia. The nomenklatura on the municipal and district level (gorkom and raikom) was composed of 7150
positions. During the 1950s and 1960s, personnel for the nomenklatura continued to be
selected along the same principles. However, at the oblast level (obkom), the numberof positions declined from 1700 in 1952 to only 480 in 1961 (Vavulinskaia 2001: 670).

5

In Sortavala, the local nomenklatura was established in 1944, right after the Soviets arrived in town. It included positions on the local party committee (gorkom), which
numbered about seventy members: the directors of the most important local establishments, several ordinary workers, members of the intelligentsia and party members.
Heads of departments held permanent positions. The bureau counted about ten people.
Members of the leading bodies in the local party branch were elected at an annual party
conference. Krasnoe Znamia [The Red Banner]; hereafter referred to as KZ), the local
newspaper published in Soviet times, informed about these conferences, producing shortaccounts of communist leaders’ reports on their work, discussions of the main report andfinal resolutions. Usually, a visiting speaker from the obkom of the Karelian Republic
intervened at the conference (e.g. KZ, 28 November 1978 and 25 November 1980).
The local political elite also included members of state institutions. These wereorganised along similar hierarchical principles and their activities took place under theguidance of the CPSU. The main local body was the town council (soviet), represented
by its executive committee in daily affairs. While the party was responsible for generalleadership, the executive committee controlled all issues of socio-economic development. As far as Soviet identity construction is concerned, the local party branch wastherefore in overall control and members of the state nomenklatura were tasked withrelaying and implementing party directives. The documents issued by the council thus
form a major source for the present investigation.
The earliest documents date back to autumn 1944, after Soviet troops arrived intown. It was then that the Soviet state bodies were established. The executive committee consisted of five members: the secretary of the town committee of the All-Union
Communist Party (Bolsheviks), or VKP(b); the head of the NKVD’s municipal branch;
the head of the NKGB’s municipal and district branch; and the chair of the district’s
executive committee (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 1/2, l. 7).
In December 1947, elections for the local administrative bodies took place. In
1948, five permanent commissions were created: Budget, Education, Trade, Communal
Services and Housing, Public Health. In 1949, seven commissions were added to help
with reconstruction and the attribution of housing funds (Comsods). Moreover, thetown council decided to create fourteen street committees (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. l. 36 and38), which mostly dealt with applications and complaints made by residents (f. R-2203,
op. 1, d. l. 39). In the official discourse, so-called electors’ mandates were seen as evidence for the democratic nature of Soviet society. In practice, they were suggestions
to improve the functioning of schools, hospitals, cultural and educational institutions,as well as of commercial and municipal establishments (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 7/249, l.
19 and 20). However, this form of participation was severely hampered by the bureaucratic system supposed to implement them, and efforts by ordinary local residents werethus generally doomed to fail.
The leading position of party members in the administrative bodies was a main
characteristic of the communist system. In January 1950, for example, twenty-four of
the thirty-seven members of Sortavala’s town council were members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 7/250). Similarly, in February
1951, ten out of eleven members of the executive committee were party members (f.
R-2203, op. 1, d. 9/372, l. 8).

6

The Soviet understanding of the difference between capitalist and socialist democracies is clearly manifest in local documents and newspaper narratives. Socialist
democracy, proclaimed to be the democracy of the working people (trudiashchiesia),‘is fulfilled through the representation of people in the state-power bodies—soviets [i.e.
councils; A. I.], as well as by participation of citizens in electoral meetings, working
collectives, as members of trade unions and other public organisations’ (Maksimov
1987: 264). It was also argued that wide participation of the masses in the managementof the state would allow for the regular renewal of councils. In Soviet Karelia, one out of
three citizens was participating in council activities according to official data from thefirst half of the 1980s (ibid.). There were fifteen raion councils, thirteen town councils,
two raion councils in urban-type areas, 150 rural councils and 43 settlement councils.
In 1987, the republic’s local councils had over 7000 elected members. Their executive
bodies took the form of permanent commissions (postoiannye komissii) whose titles
and tasks corresponded to those of the main social and economic sectors. In otherwords, they were responsible for the executive management of whole sectors of theeconomy and of social welfare. In the late 1980s, the region thus counted over 1300
such commissions, composed of some 6000 local council members (Maksimov 1987:
267). Another feature of socialist democracy were the so-called public self-governingorganisations (obshchestvennye samodeiatel’nye organizatsii),3 of which there weremore than ten thousand, including comrades’ courts, voluntary people’s patrols, groupsof peoples’ control, housing and street committees, parents’ committees at schools andwomen’s councils. In late 1987, more than 100,000 activists were reported to participate in their activities. Foremost among these organisations were the trade unions,tasked with ‘socialist competition,’ taking care of working people’s needs, as well as
improving labour discipline and productivity. In 1986, the trade unions of Soviet Karelia, whose organisation resembled that of the party and the councils, had over 425,000
members (Maksimov 1987: 268).
The coexistence of the nomenklatura’s power and of propaganda proclaiming the
democratic nature of Soviet society is an indication of the dual reality of the system
which accounts for one of the major contradictions in Soviet man’s identity: he or she
was supposed to be a ‘master of life’ whose every step was under the control of the political elite. The publicly declared ‘power of the people’ became a utopian slogan under
the conditions of total control by the ruling Communist Party. The Soviet system wasvulnerable in terms of sharing real political power with the people, because this could
lead to the loss of power and control over the society. Although all communist leaders
were sensitive to this issue during certain periods, such as the Thaw and the perestroika,
they tried to push reforms aimed at democratisation.
The attempts made by Gorbachev and other leaders of the perestroika to renew
ideological views were, however, hampered by Soviet bureaucratic traditions. Indeed,
these new approaches strongly contradicted earlier methods used by the Party, which
3 Formally these organisations could be associated with NGOs, but is reluctant to keep thisterm here because of absent of civil society in the former USSR. These organisations appear
to have been to a large extent controlled and influenced by the Communist Party or the state.

7

now appeared to be antiquated. One instance of the obsolescence of ideological propaganda is the destiny of wall newspapers produced in competition by factories and similar
establishments with the aim of educating the masses. In January 1986, Sortavala’s local
newspaper commented with sadness that wall newspapers at the railway engine depot,
which had been famous not only in town but throughout the entire republic, no longer
interested people: ‘Nobody wants to write, nobody wants to read’ (KZ, 21 January 1986).
To sum up, in Soviet times, methods of communist socialisation (vospitanie)
have been undergoing significant transformations. But their main goal has always been
the construction of an ideological identity in accordance with tasks defined by the political elite. Ideological education, starting in early childhood, was meant to enable
Soviet man to become a reliable part of the Soviet political and societal system. The
media played a key role in this process by transmitting core communist values to the
local community. These values were implanted in the local sense of place. The spatial
imagination of Sortavalans in Soviet times combined these enforced representations ofSoviet values with meanings produced in the pre-Soviet past.4
1-2. Political Discourses in the Late Stalin and Early Post-Stalin Years
The framework of political institutions related to identity construction, describedin the preceding section, operated by reproducing a meta-narrative shaped by the central political elite. Soviet official discourse reflected the geopolitical imagination of thiselite and its strategy for building communism: from World Revolution to Socialism
in One Country. During the Cold War, the ambitions of a global superpower were expressed in a discourse of nation-building communism and of support for all pro-socialist, or pro-Soviet, and revolutionary forces in the world. In terms of internal identity,
Marxist-Leninist ideas of constructing a new society with a new kind of human being
had, since the times of the early Bolsheviks, prevailed in the official discourse. Soviet
symbols and rituals, as well as, more generally, ideological propaganda, served as instruments to inculcate Soviet citizens with a new societal consciousness. In Sortavala, the new
authorities from the very beginning began to popularise Soviet symbols and traditions,above all the celebration of the October Revolution’s anniversary on 7 November. On
1 November 1944, the chairman of the town council and the head of the NKVD’s town
branch thus actively participated in passing a resolution in favour of ‘preparing thecelebration of the twenty-seventh anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution,’ which included a recommendation to all directors of local establishments to hoist
flags on buildings (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 1/2, l. 6). In the sense of geographical theoriesof place-making, these celebrations and similar public manifestations can therefore beseen as contributing to processes that produce locality.
Soviet public narratives as a form of identity construction also included a mythologised past. Soviet history since the October Revolution was perceived through the
4 Kraevedenie lessons that were the key-instrument in this work had been taught already inthe pre-revolutionary Russia in the beginning of XX century. But in the Soviet school it
became an element of ideological socialisation (vospitanie) in process of teaching on/or
learning of locality.

8

lens of Stalin’s writings. A personality cult had been established where Stalin figured,
next to Lenin, as one of the sacred leaders of the Bolsheviks. In the 1950s, a bust ofLenin was thus erected on the grounds of Sortavala’s military hospital.5 It can be addedthat there is another statue of Lenin in the area—in Värtsilä in front of the VMZ metallurgic factory. Another important task of the ideological education of the masses was tostress the exemplary role of heroes from the Great Patriotic War. On 2 February 1945,
the town’s executive committee passed a resolution to establish a municipal commission to promote and protect the memory of these war heroes (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 1/5,
l. 1). Historical memorialising was therefore a key element of public place-making in
Soviet times.
The grand narratives of the centrally produced Soviet ideology were to be reproduced on the regional and local levels through communist organisations, notably the
Komsomol,6 schools and the mass media. Children, for example, received their first
lessons of communist ideology in nursery schools. In March 1945, during a meeting of
the executive body of Sortavala’s town council, it was noted that this kind of work withchildren would have to be strengthened (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 1/8, l. 12). The spatio-temporal life experience of Sortavalans was thus profoundly shaped by the reproductionof social relations in Soviet society and, above all, by mechanisms designed for theirideological and political education.
The Pioneer organisation, for older children, was responsible for communist education in schools. A July 1945 meeting of the executive committee of the town council
thus dealt with creating a House of Pioneers and a Komsomol Club in Sortavala (NARK, f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 2/88, l. 32). Other forms of propaganda and political socialisation were targeted at the adult population. A widespread element of this was Krasnyi
ugolok [Red Corner], a separate room in factories and other establishments, where
posters, portraits of political leaders, self-made wall newspapers presenting politicalnews and other objects were exhibited and equipment for lectures, amateur shows andfilm projections were stored. A report by the town’s department for culture and public
enlightenment addressed to the town authorities noted, for example, that Red Corners
would ‘have to become the centres of mass agitation work among workers’ (f. R-2203,
op. 1, d. 1/8, l. 16). Another report on the activities of this department stressed the task
‘to use lectures for propaganda, as a tool for mobilising the masses in the struggle forthe fulfilment and over-fulfilment of Stalin’s Fourth Five-Year Plan.’
The Red Corners in factories should be centres of mass agitation work among workers (agitatsionno-massovoi raboty sredi rabochikh). Film shows during election campaigns should be one of the foremost methods of ideological education (f. R-2003, op.
1, d. 2/88, l. 16 and 18).
5 In 2010, local communists moved the statue to the town centre.
6 The Komsomol (short for Vsesoiuznyi Leninskii Kommunistichekii Soiuz Molodezhi),
or All-Union Leninist Young Communist League was established in 1918, was the Soviet
Union’s youth organisation for 14-to-28-year-olds, created to help the older generationof communists with the construction of the new society and to prepare young people tobecome members of the CPSU.

9Communist rhetoric and slogans occupied a central place in the socialisation(vospitanie) of the masses.7 In the early years after the war, Sortavala represented a particular challenge in this regard. The narrative constitution of an identity in a highly diverse community of migrants called for differentiation of its various component groups
and for control over newcomers. In the 1940s, Stalin’s suspicious attitude towards Soviet citizens who had come under foreign influence (through captivity or occupation)
thus led to the decision that children who had lived in occupied territories should be
registered and educated separately (provodit’ s nimi rabotu po vospitaniiu otdel’no) (f.
R-2203, op. 1, d. 1/6, l. 8)—a perfect illustration of Stalinist fears of difference thatmight endanger identity construction.
Communist educational work (vospitatel’naia rabota) already started at preschool age. In 1945, when there was only a single nursery school in Sortavala, theexecutive committee, in a resolution from 28 March 1945, evoked the task ‘to enforce
educational work with children and to enlist parents to control and participate in preschool education’ (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 1/8, l. 12). The local political elite mainly expected nursery schools to help local residents identify with the Soviet people and adopt thevalues of communist society at a very early age.
For schoolchildren, the main institution of communist education and propaganda
was the Pioneer organisation. As early as June 1945, a decision was taken to establish
a network of Pioneer camps, where eighty Young Pioneers would spend their summer
holidays (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 1/13, l. 2). In July, the executive committee passed a resolution that called for the creation of a House of Pioneers and a Komsomol Club in town:‘Taking into account the number of schools and FZOs [schools for vocational training;
A. I.] and consequently the necessity of organising the leisure time of young people,
we decide to allocate for these purposes the building on the corner of Kirov Street andOgorodnaia Street (former Prayer House).’ And: ‘A space for establishing the House of
Pioneers is necessary for the ideological education of the students in town’ (f. R-2203,
op. 1, d. 1/16, l. 3 and d. 2/88, l. 32).
Despite these measures, the town’s political elite criticised the political activities
and the ideological work of those responsible as lacking efficiency. In a chapter dedicated to ‘political and ideological work,’ a report by the town council’s Department
for Communal Services noted: ‘Political discussions, lectures, collective readings ofnewspapers do not take place; wall newspapers are not being published; there is nocollective watching of films’ (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 2/88, l. 20). Similarly, it was reported
that factory cadres did not show enough interest in this kind of work. This suggests thateveryday practices related to the creation of NSM continued to suffer from the same
handicaps in the 1940s as in the 1930s, a situation which recently published literature
7 Whereas obrazovanie means formal education in the sense of becoming proficient in a
discipline and refers to the knowledge transmitted by educational institutions, vospitanie,or socialisation, more generally, refers to upbringing (in the family, at school, in the army
or a labour collective) in moral, political, ideological and cultural terms. The most radical
division between the two can be found in the pedagogical works of Anton Makarenko(Frolov 2006: 12).

10

has seen ‘a sign of symbolic instability of the social order in Soviet Russia’ (Oushakine
2004: 406). Obviously, the massive transformation of social conditions, especially if
the specific situation of Sortavala is taken into account, had still not produced a discursive basis on which the regime could build symbolically. This can probably be related
to the shift that occurred in a number of classic Soviet writings on NSM (e.g. in Maxim
Gorky’s journalistic texts) from the normative to the performative and the procedural.
NSM was understood as an active man capable of producing enough objective evidence to be recognised as such (ibid.). The above quote precisely demonstrates theways in which the elite forced local actors to behave.
Educational work was considered a key instrument in producing NSM within
the Stalinist framework of building Socialism in One Country. In the official discourseof the time, there was no significant distinction between the activities of the so-called‘institutions of culture and public enlightenment’ (Houses of Culture and clubs) on the
one hand and ideological structures on the other. Archival documents from 1951/52
offer evidence of critical views, such as that of a chairman of the town’s permanentcommission for culture and public enlightenment:
Can we be satisfied with the work on culture and public enlightenment? No, because
wall newspapers as a weapon of visual agitation work and propaganda for the communist education of workers are not being used. Boards of honour, boards with indicators of labour achievements in factories, slogans and posters are missing or are left
hanging for a long time. This practice just devalues the idea of visual agitation work.
Propagating political knowledge is a duty for every factory leader, engineer, technician, trade union leader etc. (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 11/375, l. 25–28).

In the official discourse, mythologised Soviet man identified with a person livingin the most just and freest society of the world. In February 1946, for instance, KZ informed readers about the forthcoming elections to the Supreme Soviet, describing themas ‘elections based on the most democratic constitution in the world.’ The paper notedthat party organisations had allotted tasks to hundreds of agitators from the party, theKomsomol and the non-party intelligentsia, opened propaganda centres and organised
mass and political activities. Agitators from the railway depot in particular were reported to have held 365 debates in which some five thousand electors participated. The
working people of the town were said to have nominated Josef Stalin and several othermembers of the central and the Republic’s government as candidates for the Supreme
Soviet (KZ, 5 January 1946).
One of the methods of shaping the Soviet political system consisted in promoting‘good examples.’ Successful activities of local actors were meant to spread to other territories of the KASSR. After the XXI Congress of the CPSU (27 January – 5
February 1959) had adopted yet another programme for the full-scale construction ofcommunism, the Karelian government, in December 1959, adopted a resolution on thework of permanent commissions in local councils and recommended to all local authorities to follow the experience of the councils of the Sortavala and Prionezhskii [Petrozavodsk; A. I.] districts, as the political and public activities developed there were held
to be shining examples for other local councils. In Sortavala’s case, this referred to
the following characteristics: 1. regularly convening council sessions; 2. establishing11

working permanent commissions; and 3. exemplary working methods of deputies (f.
R-2203, d. 25/727, l. 5–13).
Official documents show that in the Soviet bureaucratic system the deputies ofthe permanent commissions and their volunteer assistants were rather executors of orders than decision-making political actors. An official in charge reporting on activities
during 1949 thus stated at a meeting of the executive committee that
Our analysis shows that the work of deputies has been unsatisfactory. No commission
is dealing with issues whose implementation has been mandated by the electors intheir plans. There is no body of voluntary activists. The organisation of work is chaotic and lacks planning. Meetings of the commissions take place irregularly. Not often
enough and, to be honest, there is a lack of initiative.
The commissions have not raised any questions before the executive committee. Can
it really be true that the activity of the organisations under their control do not sufferfrom any shortcomings? The commissions are indifferent to the results of their work.
Their only activity consists in producing formal reports (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 7/249, l.
32–34).

The Khrushchev period brought a revival of early Bolshevik utopian ideas. As
already noted, Khrushchev’s basic understanding of communism as a developed society that could be built in the near future led to conceptual reformulations in Soviet
identity politics. In particular this meant a revision of the until then dominant Stalinist
discourse that had emphasised a rigorous us-versus-them dichotomy. In terms of international policy, the new discourse shifted the accent from Socialism in One Country
to prospects of a global victory of communism. This spatial imagination based on theideological views might explain the international policy of the USSR, in particular,
active support for pro-communist regimes in the Third World. Newspaper articles from
KZ show that the mass media, which had been institutional agents of Stalinism until the
mid-1950s, became relays for the new dominant discourse. The intelligentsia, which
was intensely involved in public activities, was being given the opportunity to more
freely express their view. Although censorship still played a crucial role in a closed
border town such as Sortavala, the local media began to reflect much more openly
everyday practices. Local actors were able to publicly admit the existence of contradictions or shortcomings in socialist society, a process in which letters written by readers
played a significant role.
1-3. Public Narratives during the Thaw and the Era of Stagnation
The Thaw brought a major socio-economic sea change to Soviet society, notably
remarkable reforms of the territorial and administrative setup. The most visible changes on the local level concerned the rural areas around Sortavala, which benefitted fromthe so-called ‘enlargement of rural settlements’ policy (see below). Spatial changes inurban territories included the building of a growing number of cheaply built housing
estates with five storeys, so-called khrushchevkas, which offered small flats to people
who had until then be housed in communal flats or barracks. In Sortavala, a number of
tower blocks were being erected right in the historical centre of the town. Along withnew approaches to territorialisation and spatial planning came social and economic

12improvements (Baron 2007). Salaries in particular were increased compared to Stalin’s
times. At the same time, the period saw several chaotic and little-discussed reforms thathave led historians to speak of a contradictory period.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the institutions of Soviet identity production were enlarged and developed. One such institution was the so-called ‘comrades’ courts,’ basedon Soviet ideas about the educational role of labour collectives.8 Those who defied
discipline or deviated from the moral norms of socialist society were brought before
a court composed of elected members from their labour collective to be fined or to betransferred to a regular court of justice.
Documents of the commission for socialist law and public order show that the
town council controlled and discussed the activities of these courts, set up at local establishments. The commission also checked compliance with labour laws. According
to a report conserved in the archives, the commission’s activity was based on the Proposal Concerning Permanent Commissions adopted by the presidium of the KASSR’s
Supreme Soviet on 7 July 1960, and on the resolution On the Violation of Labour Laws
in Factories, adopted on 24 December 1963 by the KASSR’s Council of Ministers andthe presidium of the trade unions’ regional council. Its tasks included supervising thelegal conformity of local organisations (both councils and economic establishments),
monitoring compliance with labour laws on the councils’ territory, assisting voluntarybrigades and comrades’ courts, and dealing with applications, complaints and letterswith suggestions submitted by citizens (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 38/935, l. 73 and 75).
However, there is evidence that the work of these commissions was not as effective as expected. In May 1964, a deputy of the Sortavala town council, in a report on
the activity of the permanent commission for socialist law and public order in Värtsilä,thus stated that the commission had only met once during the last 18 months, in early
1963, for its founding session, and that no other meeting had been convened to deal
with other questions (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 41/967, l. 26).
The Brezhnev era, too, introduced new methods to promote NSM identity, articulated in the discourse on ‘complex education.’ Typical of the ideological education ofyoung people in labour and educational collectives were the Lenin Lesson (Leninskiiurok) and the Lenin Pass (Leninskii zachet), both going back to an initiative taken
by leaders of Leningrad’s large Komsomol organisations. Their goal was based on an
individual approach to achieve a complex (ideological, scientific, aesthetic, physical,etc.) education. In Oleg Kharkhordin’s words, ‘the public ritual of the Lenin Pass included the institutionalised adoption of annual obligations for self-improvement. Theseobligations were to be written down on a standard print form, called “the composite
personal plan” (lichnyi kompleksnyi plan), according to the three main dimensions of
personal development: moral, labour and intellectual. Some versions of these plans
8 Comrades’ courts were seen as part of a Russian tradition where a peasant’s commune
was responsible for the personal worldviews, moral behaviour and economic activity ofits members. A Soviet labour collective was similarly accountable for the behaviour of its
members. With the arrival of the perestroika, these courts were no longer taken seriously
and became a frequent target of criticism in the media and particular in satirical films.

13included “military-patriotic” and “aesthetic” dimensions as well’ (Kharkhordin 1999:
246). Lenin Lessons were used to discuss certain texts of Lenin in the presence oflong-standing party members or veterans of the Second World War (ibid.: 332).
In Sortavala, a territory on the edge of the socialist homeland, these socio-political rituals, aimed at socialising people through Soviet rites of passage, played a specialrole in producing locality. In February 1970, the chairman of Sortavala’s executive
committee claimed in a report read during a meeting of the town council that
all the Komsomol organisations in town take part in the Lenin Pass. As a discussion at the gorono [municipal department for public enlightenment (Gorodskoi otdel
narodnogo obrazovaniia); A. I.] held in December 1969 has shown, the ideologicaleducation of older students still does not refer to the Lenin theme as central for these
purposes. The Lenin Pass is a report for school children about their main duty—
studies. Students also report about participating in socially valuable activities of a
Komsomol collective. The students report about their successes in learning Lenin’s
theoretical legacy. This learning is related to both obligatory studies required by theschool curriculum and additional work planned by a Komsomol group.
Class teachers (klassnye rukovoditeli) do not fully realise in their activity that bourgeois propaganda uses all kinds of ways and methods to provoke ideological instability among young people (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 58/1180, l. 19, 20, 40 and 41).

The chairman particularly criticised teachers of secondary schools for ‘weak scientific content and the low level of communist ideology.’ He suggested that in orderto turn communist ideas into ‘a weapon of ideological struggle for schoolchildren,’they should take these ideas more to their hearts, feel them deeply (f. R-2203, op. 1,
d. 58/1180, l. 35). In addition to official narratives and propaganda clichés, he alsomentioned real challenges in the process of raising young children. He thus referred totrends of the late 1960s and early 1970s of increasing incomes, which not only had led
to changes in living standards but also to transformations in the public’s mentality andoutlook. ‘What we see is a kind of inflation of materialist values with a certain category of teenagers. Expenses for children are growing faster than parents’ incomes. The
real income of workers and employees has increased two and a half times over the lasttwenty years. Meanwhile, expenses for an eighth-grade schoolboy have increased three
to three and a half times and up to five times for a ninth- or tenth-grade schoolgirl?’ (f.
R-2203, op. 1, d. 58/1180, l. 36) His report also noted the formalism and boredom ofactivities organised by the Young Pioneers. Already in 1970, officials responsible foreducation mentioned that the ‘content and methods of activities of the Pioneer organisations as well as their events are monotonous. Therefore the Pioneers don’t care forthem’ (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 58/1180, l. 42).
This insight did, however, not lead to changes in the methods of NSM identity-shaping. As a solution, the subsequent resolution recommended to organise study
sessions to explain and propagate materials from the CPSU Congress. It was also suggested to arrange for regular conferences on Marxist-Leninist theory, to hold meetings about the political situation and to supply schools with visual agitation material.
Schoolchildren should be encouraged to participate in public activities outside school.
For these purposes it was recommended to set up two-stage reviews (smotr) for the14

activities of Pioneer detachments and regiments (druzhina), aimed at fulfilling the mandates defined by the Congress (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 66/1250, l. 23).
In the late 1970s, yet another dominant discourse emphasised the need for ‘acomplex approach to the development of the personality’ (kompleksnyi podkhod k
vospitaniiu), which had been formulated by the XXV Congress of the CPSU in 1976.
The core of this new concept consisted in advocating the combination of ideological-political education with labour and moral education of the masses as well as theelaboration of specific approaches for different social groups. It was intended to givelabour collectives a greater role in the implementation of these new plans of shaping
socialist identity. All these new theoretical visions reflected and supported a trend in thedevelopment of Marxist-Leninist theory during the second half of the 1970s towards
a concept of ‘developed socialism.’ Soviet commentators interpreted this as a transition from the earlier goal of communist education to create a harmonious personality
towards one more adapted to the conditions prevailing in a developed socialist society.
In the local context of Sortavala, KZ launched a section entitled ‘Lenin Lesson
Continues.’ Local leaders used newspaper space to report on their activity, and articles
tried to link Sortavala’s community to the theme of the ‘new unity of the people.’ Indeed, the media played a remarkable role in placing Sortavala into the framework ofthis new Soviet national identity, all under the leadership of the CPSU. The committee
secretary of the primary Komsomol organisation at a local sewing factory thus wrote
in June 1978 that in accordance with the decisions taken by the XVIII Congress of
the VLKSM, a Lenin Lesson should be held under the banner ‘Always with the Party, Always with the People’ in every Komsomol organisation. Party headquarters set
the agenda for Komsomol members: themes for speeches, presentations, papers androom designs. Participants of such events watched the film The Story of a Communist(Povest’ o kommunizme) and discussed Brezhnev’s memoirs The Small Land (Malaia
Zemlia) and The Revival (Vozrozhdenie). A propagandist lecturer told his audience
about Brezhnev’s efforts to ‘ensure world peace’ (KZ, 17 June 1978).
During the Brezhnev years, modernised Soviet society was still seen as the goalof communist propaganda, the main instrument of political education. In the narratives
studied, any positive changes and achievements in Soviet society were attributed to theleadership of the Communist Party. Official speeches always started with expressionsof gratefulness to the central government, as in the following speech by the local hospital’s medical director held during a session of the town council in 1969.
Comrades, deputies!
All efforts of our Party and of the Soviet government are aimed at transforming thelife of the Soviet people in the sense of the founders of scientific communism as well
as of our leader and teacher V. I. Lenin. Everything for Mankind, All in the Nameof Mankind, this is the motto of our glorious Communist Party (f. R-2203, op. 1, d.
54/1133, l. 2).

The quote shows that the main Soviet narratives of political agitation work were acorner stone of the entire system of the education of the masses. After the early years of
the Thaw, characterised by the de-institutionalisation of Stalinism, the Brezhnev period

15witnessed the institutionalisation of both a new dominant discourse and its competitors(Hopf 2002, 18). A crucial social factor during this period was the continuing role of theintelligentsia as an agent of the discourse of difference. Cinema, literature and theatre
presented alternatives to the Stalinist model of Soviet identity which became known to
the world outside the Soviet Union.
On the periphery, such as in Sortavala, the dominant discourse prevailed. Local
media reproduced the grand narrative promoted by the political elite. The town’s party
committee, as the main political agency, continued to practice methods typical of NSM
identity production in previous decades. In 1978, for instance, the committee regularly
held ‘conferences on methodology’ for political agitators and educators. One of its
members, responsible for political propaganda, gave a presentation on ‘The rhetoricof political agitation in labour collectives and ways to improve it.’ The KGB’s local
representative lectured on an ‘Explanation of the foreign policy of the CPSU as one of
the main directions of mass agitation work’ during the same conference (KZ, 24 June
1978).
Theoretically, the terms of building a communist society were being revised in
the Brezhnev years. In contrast to Khrushchev’s promise of the final victory of communism within the present generation’s lifetime, this goal was now to be achieved in amore distant future. Implicitly, this meant that the new type of human being associatedwith it also faced an uncertain future. The soviets were still seen as ‘schools of Soviet
democracy’ and instruments through which NSM was to be educated. Sortavala’s local
media reflected this political rhetoric of democracy. In 1971, the town council adopted
a resolution On the Work of the Executive Committee of the Town Council of the People’s Deputies of Sortavala that called upon the executive committee of all local councils ‘to safeguard the democratic principles in their work and to give greater importanceto their sessions.’ It was also recommended that the permanent commissions and the
deputies should make greater efforts (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 62/1222, l. 57). Permanentcommissions would have to create a community of social interaction, in the sense explained by David Harvey (Harvey 2000: 194). Public activities meant the involvementof local actors in producing a sense of place. However, the Soviet political system did
not favour such efforts. The studied documents show contradictions between meanings,
ideas, projects and practices.
Soviet political power and the state authorities were working within a frameworkof spatial hierarchy. Efforts to improve mechanisms of local economic management
led the regional political elite to introduce administrative changes. According to David
Harvey’s (ibid.) argument about the social production of place, such processes of territorialisation are a result of socio-political action. In the early 1970s, Sortavala’s administrative boundaries were extended and included henceforth two settlement (poselok)
and four rural (selo) councils.9 Official narratives of this changing political identity
9 In fact, Sortavala experienced several administrative changes in its post-war history. In
October 1959, Sortavala, until then directly attached to the regional government of the
Republic, was merged with two neighbouring territories of North Ladoga, Lahdenpohja
and Pitkäranta, and given the status of a district. This reorganisation was reversed in theearly 1970s.

16were couched in the phraseology of political rhetoric and legal regulations. The participation of ordinary citizens in the permanent commissions was seen as an approval ofsocialist democracy.
Another element of this narrative of Soviet political identity were the so-called‘mandates of electors.’ The archival material consulted contains tens and even hundreds of such mandates, most of them attached to regular plans for local socio-economic development. In the official discourse, these mandates manifested the democratic
nature of the Soviet political system. This rhetoric ignored the absolute power of the
CPSU and interpreted the participation of the public and of public organisations in the
management of society as one of the main achievements of socialism, thus contributing
to shape local identity.
Everyday practices in Sortavala show that these mandates served as instruments
to solve socio-economic issues on the local level. The local authorities appealed to theresidents’ management of socio-economic sectors to improve the low level of trade,the poor quality of public services, poor living conditions, problems encountered in the
agricultural sector and other issues. The permanent commissions of the town council
arranged meetings in the rural areas surrounding Sortavala to address such questions
as the asphalting of streets, improvements of housing or production shortages in agriculture. In 1972, for instance, a permanent commission reported ‘serious shortcomings
in cattle-rearing,’ noting the poor conditions of cattle-yards and problems with cattle-feeding in the sovkhoz The Bolshevik (f. R-2203, op. 1, d. 67/1260, l. 57).
In the official Soviet discourse, Soviet man was proclaimed a master of life. In
reality, involvement of the public in political affairs was largely rhetorical. Even thelocal nomenklatura had to work within the strictly defined limits imposed by decisions
that the party hierarchy had taken. This was even more true of ordinary citizens who
acted as volunteers or activists.
During the preparation of a new constitution in the late 1970s, the central powerorganised so-called ‘public debates’ of the project, a political manifestation of the identity shifts marked by the new dominant discourse of developed socialism (razvitoi sotsializm). While this public debate certainly did not have any impact on the constitutional
project defined by the central political elite, it produced renewed interest in the foundations of the Soviet system, particularly through a new vision of the nationalities policy.
The draft for the new constitution stated the existence of a new societal unity of the Soviet people, and its ideas were seen as an example for the elaboration of constitutions for
the Soviet republics. In Soviet Karelia, the local media contributed to the debate mainly
by reproducing the official rhetoric that emphasised the political role of the central Soviet power for development in the region. In an article titled ‘We Believe in the Great
Future,’ an engineer technologist working at the printing house in Sortavala thus wrote:
It is with great interest and approval that the workers of Sortavala are looking at the
project of a new constitution for the KASSR, convinced of the glorious path coveredby our Karelia together with the entire Soviet people. We see how the work and daily
lives of the people have changed. The cultural level of people has risen. An illiterate
population on the peripheral area of former Tsarist Russia has been turned into themost avid readers of the world (KZ, 25 May 1978).

17

Here, Karelia is seen as an integral part of the USSR, its development dependingon that of the entire Union. Official narratives often ignored political and economic
self-development of the region. The public debate was reduced to a wholesome approval of the new constitution, never raising any real regional or local issues. The shapingof a regional identity was subordinated to the project of constructing a national identity,
proof that All-Soviet socio-political processes dominated place-making in Sortavala.
1-4. Discursive Shifts in the Perestroika Rhetoric
Gorbachev’s reformist discourse was yet another attempt to improve the socialist
project. But his new approach to building a Soviet national identity not only referred to
Marxism-Leninism but also to universal human values. The policy of glasnost marked
the beginning of the de-institutionalisation of NSM. The media received greater freedom to report on problems confronting the Soviet economy and, later on, press freedom
extended to political matters. Lastly, the new discourse on Soviet identity was closely
tied to Gorbachev’s rethinking of foreign policy.
The democratisation characteristic of the perestroika resulted in the involvementof new actors in public life. It was held that the election campaign of spring 1989 for
the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Soviet Union (then the supreme legislativebody) should ensure the participation of people from a ‘wide democratic social basis.’
As a consequence, a new rule stipulated, for example, that a third of the deputies shouldbe elected as representatives of public organisations, such as the Communist Party,
Komsomol and the trade unions. This was a radical departure from practices common
in the 1970s and early 1980s.
The political rhetoric of the late 1980s also created new forms of ‘newspeak.’Newspaper articles were full of new slogans such as the headline ‘Perestroika is theCall of Our Time’ (velenie vremeni). The following quote from a report shows how thesecretaries of Sortavala’s primary party organisations, during a seminar in June 1986,
discussed the way perestroika should affect their organisations:
Acceleration (uskorenie) [of social and economic development; A. I.] and perestroika
should guide our life and work today. We should direct labour collectives to implement the general policy the Party is pursuing (general’naia liniia partii). We should
implement acceleration right now in a course of perestroika (KZ, 17 June 1986).

Gorbachev and the central elite had indeed called for changes in conducting thework of the Party and of other political organisations. However, the latter had neither
the experience nor the will to make independent decisions. They faced uncertainty how
to carry out their work on the local level, because until then they had always waited fororders from above.
Numerous examples from the local media illustrate the disorientation perestroika caused in the minds of local Komsomol leaders. One of them admitted how misled political actors were in their attempts to rethink political work. In an article, thefirst secretary of the town’s Komsomol committee noted that the persons in charge ofthe committee’s apparatus did not themselves understand how to break up entrenchedviews (lomka ukorenivshikhsia vzgliadov). At the same time, the author claimed, thesetasks required the perfection of work style, forms and methods at the Komsomol (KZ,

18

20 March 1986). Obviously, during the late stages of perestroika, the institutionalframework of NSM construction was gradually disappearing because its agents felt
completely directionless.
Public narratives were transformed in accordance with the new dominant discourse. As a result, the Komsomol organisations tested new methods of Soviet identity
construction. In an article titled ‘Perestroika Should Not Be Faked’ (Perestroika, a ne
podstroika nad nee), the secretary of a Komsomol primary organisation at the local
furniture and ski combine recognised socio-political certification (obshchestvennopoliticheskaia ottestatsiia) as one of these methods, that would allow for an ‘effective
way to increase the activity of Komsomol members and other young people.’ According to the certification procedure, every participant had to carry out Lenin tasks that is
specific public work and acceleration targeting the social and economic developmentof his or her establishment (KZ, 17 June 1986). The new narratives, rituals and social
practices represented socialisation methods for young people in the local community at
this stage of societal development, and it was through these forms of public activities
that locality was being reproduced.
All the while, political discourse in the late Soviet period still focussed on improving the system by perfecting existing political institutions. In the late 1980s, theCPSU proclaimed a new course of increasing the political power of councils. The
CPSU’s Nineteenth Party Conference declared that ‘the key direction of political reform is safeguarding the sovereignty of the soviets of people’s deputies as a foundation
for the socialist state and self-government in this country.’
In contrast to earlier Soviet practice, the narrative constitution of political identity
during the late perestroika years brought not only formal but real democratisation to theelectoral system, since it was now possible for the first time in Soviet history to choose
between several candidates. Pre-election meetings in 1989, which were to nominate
candidates for the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Soviet Union, demonstrated
that ‘unanimity’ was no longer on the agenda. KZ commented with enthusiasm on one
such meeting taking place at the biggest local factory, SMLK:
There was no unanimous vote during the appointment of candidates. Three candidates
have been proposed and discussed at the meeting: Aleksandr S. Dziublik, the directorof SMLK; V. Zeziulin, a deputy director, and Vladimir S. Stepanov, the first secretaryof the Party’s regional committee (obkom).
This time, speeches concerning Stepanov were not only positive and laudatory. Many
speakers adopted a critical attitude towards him, mentioning problems in the retailsector and shortages of consumer goods for the population. Some participants opposed his candidature. Thus, the long period of formal attitudes and indifference ofthe electors towards the constitution of state bodies has become a thing of the past. It
has been replaced by a conscious approach and active participation in elections on thisnew basis (KZ, 24 January 1989).

Soviet political narratives were indeed dramatically reconfigured during the later
years of the perestroika. In the late 1980s, old and new approaches, views and traditions coexisted at the micro-level of political life, too. During pre-election meetingsin 1989, for example, the SMLK collective supported the candidature of Vladimir S.

19

Stepanov, whereas the collective of the sovkhoz The Bolshevik discussed two candidates, Stepanov and Aleksandr E. Iudov, the leader of a local tenants brigade, and,after a ‘democratic discussion,’ nominated both men (KZ, 3 January 1989). In terms ofspatial identity-construction, this meant that local interests and perspectives were now
being taking into consideration in political discussions and practices.
Gorbachev and those members of the political elite who supported him wanted touse people’s activism to inject enthusiasm into the traditional institutional framework:
the Party, the Komsomol and other public organisations. But their plan failed in theend, because these institutions were not ready and there was no real will to change
their forms of activity and their methods. A newspaper article titled ‘Perestroika in the
Komsomol: More Questions than Answers’ illustrates this dramatic change in Soviet
biographical narratives through the words of an ordinary Komsomol member:
I remember, as schoolchildren and students, we did not like apparatchiks. We could
not say this loudly and openly at meetings, but we condemned them among ourselves.
We condemned them for their haughtiness and moralism. In the course of perestroika,
this haughty view is disappearing. The plenum of the VLKSM’s town committee has
claimed a new approach: now apparatchiks and ordinary Komsomol members areworking together. However, these new norms are hardly implemented in practicalwork. Komsomol apparatchiks discredit themselves because of their inactivity andunprincipled behaviour (KZ, 4 January 1989).

The work of several secretaries of Sortavala’s primary Komsomol organisations
was criticised in similar terms. Over the last two years, one author noted, five membersof the town’s Komsomol committee had been expelled from the Party, four of themsecretaries of a primary organisation. Therefore, the Komsomol was losing its authorityand prestige.
The institutions responsible for NSM identity construction began to lose theirimportance. The overall number of Komsomol members in the country dropped from
42,000 to 36,000, and the trend continued. In Sortavala, Komsomol organisations lost
four hundred members in the late 1980s. Fifteen members were expelled. The female
author of the above quoted report attempted to answer the question why Komsomol organisations lost members and found that those who had been asked argued that nobody
could give them a reason why they should become a member of the Komsomol (ibid.).
Many Komsomol members ‘voted’ in favour of a permission to ‘freely leave’
the Komsomol. Political institutions were thus losing their capacity to influence andeven initiate people’s activities. Their powers gradually shifted towards other politicalactors, most often informal networks.
In the late 1980s, the local political space experienced dramatic changes. Somelocal political activists began to believe that the system could be changed and started
to criticise the local authorities for their incompetence to carry out their duties. Thus,
Alexandr Iudov, who had finally been elected deputy to the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Soviet Union, critically pointed out that most electors’ mandates (almost 90
per cent) had a ‘local character,’ that is addressed local needs. In his view, this meantthat local councils, or soviets, were therefore unable to fulfil people’s primary needs.
This clearly represents a shift in the socio-political representation of locality and senseof place.

20

Political discourse during the later years of perestroika emphasised the importance of grassroots-level political life. In his article ‘A Lesson of Democracy,’ Aleksandr Iudov stated that as a people’s deputy he would work towards the elaboration of alaw on local self-government, in which local authorities would be allocated a real shareof power. Electors in turn should obtain the right to control councils (KZ, 23 March
1989). This statement, made by a local political newcomer, shows a good understanding of what was still a key problem of political life in Russia, namely that local communities continued to lack real power. It also demonstrates that political discourse andmedia narratives of the late Soviet era were already attempting to shape local territorial
identity in new ways.
The deterioration of the social and economic situation resulted in the public
adopting a largely negative attitude towards state institutions. In the local context ofSortavala, this political trend reached its apogee in December 1990, when the town
council met for its fourth annual session. In his report, V. E. Bogdanov, the chairmanof the council, noted the town’s grim situation: ‘People are not sure whether the workof the local authorities has taken the right direction.’ He pointed out that the situation
in town depended on ‘the tense and uncertain situation of the country as a whole,’
explaining that communal services were heavily constrained because of lacking fuelsupplies and that the local construction sector was facing increasing problems (KZ, 5January 1991).
In the early 1990s, critical opinions of the political institutions, unheard of inprevious decades, became common currency. Deputies were highly critical of the work
done by the council’s chairman and presidium. As a result of this debate, a decision
was taken to abolish the executive committee—a truly historical event. For the firsttime, deputies openly expressed distrust of the council’s leadership, similarly to what
was happening on the national level in Moscow. In an interview about the IV Congressof People’s Deputies of the Soviet Union, Iudov noted that the Congress has raised thequestion of lack of confidence in the President of the Soviet Union and that he himself
had supported a no-confidence vote, which had however failed to obtain a majority(KZ, 16 January 1991).
In practice, the heated debates in the town council ended in changes of the local
political personnel. Valery A. Var’ia, a former administration head of the town council,
replaced V. E. Dovbnia as chairman of the executive committee. But in a speech madeafter his election, he pointed out that a decision to abolish the committee would be unconstitutional in the KASSR.
The early 1990s also brought the most visible changes to public narratives. Thevery foundations of Soviet political rhetoric were being questioned in public debates.
During the last months of the Soviet period, in late 1990 and early 1991, the media
shifted the focus of their attention towards events in former Soviet national republics.
In January 1991, KZ reported on the military operations in Lithuania, where Soviet
tanks appeared in the streets of Vilnius and a landing force attacked the offices of therepublic’s radio and TV station and its TV tower, killing Lithuanian civilians in theprocess. At the centre of the public debate in Sortavala’s local newspaper was an article
written by one of its readers, ‘The (Soviet) Empire Hits Back,’ of a clearly anti-Soviet

21and anti-Communist character, whose publication obviously was made possible withthe support of the newspaper’s editorial board. Follow-up articles written by other readers offer evidence, that the publication had found a broad echo within the local community. A group of local residents thus voiced their opinion that the military operations in
Lithuania were a threat to ‘democracy and freedom’ and that ‘the future of the country
today depends on all of us’ (KZ, 17 January 1991).
Other local residents, however, supported the central government’s policy of ‘defending Soviet power’ and argued that this was the only way to maintain public orderin the Lithuanian republic. So did the local party organisations, which strongly opposed
the anti-Soviet views expressed in the pages of the local newspaper. A meeting of theparty committee at the SMLK in January 1991 discussing the ‘attitude of communists
towards the events in Lithuania’ thus was reported to have ‘condemned the precipitate
publication of articles such as the one written by Comrade Kemov,’ the author of theinitial article. The bureau of the town’s party committee was reported to have organiseda broader debate of the issue, in which representatives of Sortavala’s sixty-five party organisations as well as several military officers, outraged by these anti-military publications, had participated and condemned these anti-Soviet and anti-Communist articles.
In contrast to this, numerous deputies of Sortavala’s town council supported theright of the Lithuanian people to decide on its independence, clear evidence that Soviet
official discourse was increasingly being overshadowed by new discourses, exemplified by the following reports of speeches made by two deputies.
Already three or four years ago, it was possible to take a decision on Lithuania’s
independence. At the time the central government could have done it in a bloodlessmanner. It is hard to believe what is happening now! There is no way to communicate
with people through the army. The order to let the combined forces of the militia andthe army patrol the streets rings in the last act of the perestroika show. The Army has
been turned into an All-Union gendarme (KZ, 9 February 1991).
I think it is impossible to use the Army to solve civil issues. It is the right of the Republic of Lithuania and its people to decide whether they should be part of the USSR
or not. Moscow should not concern itself with this issue. Only Vilnius, the Lithuanianparliament and the entire population of the republic may decide this (question). My
attitude towards the events in Latvia is the same. I believe that Moscow, the Soviet
Ministry of Defence and the entire central government, including the President, can beblamed for the bloody events in the Baltic republics (KZ, 9 February 1991).

A third deputy even went as far as declaring: ‘I believe a dictatorship is coming.’
In fact, he predicted only what was going to happen a few months later, in August 1991:‘We are only half a step away from seeing tanks appear in our streets. We are not far
from savage reprisals against deputies and ordinary citizens. Our only hope are thepeople. It is necessary to struggle against a dictatorship’ (ibid.).
An analysis of the rhetoric deployed in local newspaper articles shows that freedom of speech reached its apogee during the latest stage of the perestroika. On the local
level, this period witnessed the most intense criticism of government when compared toboth earlier decades and the post-Soviet years of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Partsof the population no longer identified themselves with the official Soviet worldview,22reproducing instead anti-Soviet views of the national press and other national media.
Ideological rhetoric in the late 1980s had been contradictory: Soviet ‘newspeak’ wasstill obligatory, while glasnost led to reformulations of the official language. Thus, in
1986, the secretary of a primary party organisation at a secondary school in Värtsilä
wrote an article titled ‘To Raise Patriots of the Homeland’ in which she explained:
Mass public and political events are one form of counter-propaganda. These events
make it possible to raise Soviet patriotism among students. We have organised such
events, for example a meeting under the banner ‘A Planet without Wars for the Children of the World!’ The event included a competition for producing political posters
and the singing of political, military and patriotic songs. Several circles were formed,
such as ‘Our Lenin’s Komsomol,’ ‘The Law of Komsomol Life’ and ‘An Introduction
for Young People into Communist Morality.’ Communist teachers run these circles.
We are looking for new ways to influence the souls of children (KZ, 15 March 1986).

Another article headlined ‘The Celebration of the Pioneer Organisation’ informed
readers of the local newspaper that the town’s Young Pioneers were celebrating the anniversary of a Pioneer organisation named after Lenin. Students from every school reported
the results of their work. According to the article, Pioneer detachments from Secondary School No. 1 had a rich experience of Pioneer self-administration. Pioneer activities
took place outside school as well, such as participation in the Revolutionary March. The
newspaper reminded readers that the Pioneer movement had received its directions at the
XXVII Congress of the CPSU (KZ, 25 January 1986). This shows that Soviet rituals ofrepresenting locality were still common during the early years of perestroika.
Media narratives of the period contained frequent references to everyday life andthe individual lives of people, as well as to family and gender values. Significant attention was also being paid to leisure time activities. Discussions about fashion, music andother interests of young people became quite typical for the period. Soviet identity was
not seen as the only model of identity. Values perceived as Western made their appearance in the local newspaper, whereas subjects that were obligatory in earlier decades
started to disappear. The KZ issue of 22 April 1986 made no mention of the anniversaryof Lenin’s birthday, publishing instead an entire page discussing youth culture. Biographical narratives changed as well in these years, as can be seen from the following
comment by a 15-year-old girl, reacting to a letter written by another girl:
Imagine a 17-year-old girl who does not like discos and prefers attending a hobby
circle (kruzhok) instead! She doesn’t like this kind of music. But what does she really want? Kalinka-Malinka? [‘Cranberry-Raspberry,’ a reference to the popular nineteenth-century folksong ‘Kalinka’; A. I.] Another reader wrote that boys wearing filets
in their hair are imitating Western punks... This is not true. This style has nothing to
do with punks. I wear the same filet because it’s fashionable. If you do not believe me,just have a look at The Fashion magazine (KZ, 22 April 1986).

This is obviously a critique of clichés that could be found in traditional public
narratives of Soviet identity. Young people were bored by dull formal Soviet norms
and no longer identified with Soviet values. An interest in Western culture that had long
been confined to a tiny social underground suddenly found its way into mainstream
media. The subculture appeared in headlines: ‘We Are Waiting for Changes.’ Referring23

to a hit by the rock band Kino, the article suggested that a club for young people becreated in Sortavala (KZ, 5 June 1986). In an article titled ‘Punks from Our Town,’ thejournalist Vladimir Mokienko criticised the Komsomol organisations for offering only
formalism and boredom and attempted to win over youngsters to ‘our’ side:
The behaviour of those rock fans who dress and have hair styles like punks is provocative and aggressive. They are getting drunk and then pay a visit to Helylä and get into
fights over there. They make money by selling tapes with rock music and fashionableclothes. They try to be different from the ‘grey mass.’ But these attempts are clumsy
and misplaced. Their membership in the Komsomol is limited to paying their dues.
The Komsomol organisations offer them only meetings with a boring agenda or
subbotnik [voluntary community service on Saturdays; A. I.].
These teenagers have no interest in real business during leisure times. What about thefollowing idea: we have to win them over to our side? We ought to find a businessfor them. Then they will not be punks anymore, they will be ordinary boys. (KZ, 17
May 1986)

Criticism of Western mass culture was an essential part of Soviet public narratives. However, Komsomol organisations had, for instance, been attempting to integrate the disco movement into their activities since the late 1970s. As Soviet pop music
could not offer good dance music for clubs, disc-jockeys mainly played recordings ofWestern music. For Komsomol activists, disco-clubs were a means of involving young
people in contemporary music culture and informing them about the latest trends inshow business. Disc-jockeys were seen as working hand in hand with the Komsomol
to take care of the moral and aesthetic education of the young. As Western pop music
was at the same time completely absent from TV channels and magazines, this conveyed something of an informal character to discotheques run by the Komsomol, thus
bringing a new impetus to the creation of locality and its meanings through expanding
spatial imagination. These grassroots-level alternatives to official cultural initiatives
can therefore be interpreted as forerunners of identifications prevalent during the perestroika years.
To sum up, the NSM promoted by CPSU ideologues was an archetypal personality with political, moral and other qualities that were thought to become dominantamong all citizens of the USSR. For this to happen, all particular identities (ethnic,
gender, social, territorial, etc.) would have to be reshaped to achieve this homogeneous
Soviet identity. Communist education based on Marxist-Leninist ideology was to be
the main tool employed. According to the official public narrative, stated for example
in the first Soviet constitution, a society without antagonist class interests had alreadybeen built in the 1930s. Class struggle could only exist in capitalist countries. The
state border therefore symbolised a fault line of the struggle that opposed two radicallydifferent worlds. As a border town, Sortavala was in the vanguard of this struggle, andits geographical position was one of the main socio-political facets that contributed toits sense of place during the post-war decades, until this spatial identity dramaticallychanged in the late perestroika years.
Politically, all Soviet citizens ought to have identified themselves with the Communist Party’s policies. Articulating and reproducing the official discourses and nar-24

ratives produced by the political elite at the highest level was obligatory during theentire Soviet period. At the same time, the educational and cultural development of
the population increasingly came to be seen as contradictory with the shortcomings ofthe country’s socio-economic system. Propaganda which stressed the achievements ofsocialism was confronted with dissatisfaction about the lack of consumer goods in the
shops, the low quality of services etc. To many young people, the Western way of life
looked more attractive. The more liberal the regime became, the more these contradictions in public narratives and social practices became apparent.
As shown above, the erosion of the Stalinist model of NSM began right after thetyrant’s death. Nonetheless, the ambition of creating a new kind of human being was
not abandoned. The more recent concept of developed socialism, prevalent in the late1970s, characteristically produced a discourse that emphasised the new historical social
unity of the Soviet people, whose creation was stated to be a new stage in constructing
NSM. To implement this goal of creating a communist society, the CPSU defined threemain fields of indispensable societal improvement: politics, economics and human personality. Changes of the latter were to be achieved through ‘complex education,’ aconcept specific of the late 1960s and 1970s.
All these ideological mechanisms were only gradually disappearing in the late1980s, at the height of perestroika. The political rhetoric of local actors in Sortavalaechoed the situation in the rest of the Soviet Union. Many residents no longer identified themselves with the Party’s policies, some of them even adopting an anti-Soviet
stance. While the Communist Party continued to promote its discourse in the media,
new forms of political representation were emerging. The formerly monolithic Soviet
identity produced in official discourses became a sort of hybrid identity that included
both old and new components.

2. Patriotic Education, Paramilitary Training and People’s Patrols:
Defending the Socialist Motherland
Military themes were a key element of Soviet identity politics and place-making
in Sortavala. Military discourses and practices were, of course, present in many spheresof Soviet everyday life, but were even more obvious in a garrison town located near
the Soviet state border, where people wearing the uniform of the Soviet Army or theBorder Troops were a common feature of the urban landscape.10 A division of the 6th
Army was stationed in Sortavala11 and only left in 2001 (Ladoga, 2 March 2001; Izotov
10 A source of particular interest is the weblog run by former border guards that have servedin the North Ladoga area during the Soviet post-war period (see: URL Odnoklassniki.ru
web-page ‘My iz Sortavala’/‘We are from Sortavala’). Its users often publish photographs
showing them in uniform.
11 The 6th Army (see e.g. Feskov et al. eds. 2004) was a part of Leningrad Military District(1960–1998). Headquarter of the Army located in Petrozavodsk before it was finally disbanded in a course of the Military reform in 1998 (Boiko, Karelia 4.04.2002). The 6th
Army listed the 111th Motor Rifle Division, of which the 185th Motorised Rifle Regimentstationed in Sortavala, and several other military units stationed in Lahdenpohja.

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