The Estonian SSR, the smallest union republic by population, occupied a special place in the USSR, not only due to its union-wide reputation as the “Soviet abroad” or its close bilateral cooperation with capitalist Finland, which was unique in the Soviet context. Due to its relatively high living standards, economic efficiency, and comparatively sophisticated technological and infrastructural advances, Estonia developed into a showcase republic for visiting foreign delegations, and Moscow’s favored setting for experimental economic reform from the 1960s onwards. The joint seminar brings together scholars from three countries who approach Estonia’s privileged status within the strictly centralized Soviet economy from different angles to investigate the room for maneuver of local actors before and during perestroika and its impact on Estonia’s exceptionally successful post-Soviet economic performance.
This event will take place in a hybrid format: live + via Zoom.
Venue: DissertantInnenraum, Institute for Eastern European Studies, Spitalgasse 2, Hof 3, Campus.
Kevin Axe (Free University of Berlin): “Top-Down Proposals, Bottom-Up Policies: Estonian Experiments with Late Soviet Economic Reforms”
Living within a Soviet economic laboratory, Estonian economists experimented with concepts and reforms, often imported from socialist allies, before they were spread to the rest of the Soviet Union. Although originating as top-down requests from Moscow to investigate economic reforms in other socialist polities, some economic reforms and ideas were localized and spread in a bottom-up process. The resulting findings, policies, and discussions played a key role in the economic and political transformation sparked by perestroika.
Juhan Saharov (University of Tartu): “From ‘Future Scenarios’ to ‘Sovereignty Declarations’: Estonian Expert Concepts and the Breakup of the Soviet Union”
In 1987–88, Estonian reformists invented the language in opposition against the Soviet regime through expert languages and concepts. Three particular concepts, “future scenario”, “self-accounting”, and “sovereignty” were transferred from expert fields to the Estonian political sphere in 1987. This process culminated on November 16, 1988, with the adoption of Declaration of Sovereignty. This event catalyzed adopting similar declarations in other Soviet republics which helped cause the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Lars Fredrik Stöcker (University of Vienna): “Globalizing Estonia: Pursuing an Autonomous Foreign Economic Policy Strategy under the Conditions of Perestroika”
Moscow’s decision to open up the Soviet economy to the world market and to emasculate the all-union Ministry of Foreign Trade was widely welcomed in the Estonian SSR, where the new course of economic internationalization was seen as a sine qua non for the transition to self-management and, later, full economic sovereignty. The presentation traces the evolution of Estonia’s autonomous foreign policy strategy from the foundation of the first Soviet republic-level foreign trade association in Tallinn in 1987, to the swift reorientation of Estonian trade towards the West after 1991.
Kevin Axe is a Contemporary History PhD candidate at the Free University of Berlin and researcher in the "Peripheral Liberalism" Junior Research Group within Berlin's "Contestations of the Liberal Script" (SCRIPTS) Cluster of Excellence. He is currently writing a dissertation entitled "From 'Model Pupils' to Model State: Estonian Economists and the Globalization of the (Post)Socialist World."
Juhan Saharov (PhD) is a Research Fellow of Political Theory in the research group "Self-Determination of Peoples in Historical Perspective" at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu. His research interest is a conceptual history of reform socialism in East-Central Europe. He is currently writing a book on the role of expert languages during the perestroika and breakup of the Soviet Union, focusing on the Estonian SSR.
Lars Fredrik Stöcker holds a PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute in Florence. He currently serves as principal investigator of the joint project “A Breach in the System: The ‘Polonia Firms’ 1976–1994” at the Research Center for the History of Transformations at the University of Vienna and works on a book entitled “Perestroika on the Margins: Globalization, Marketization, and the Creation of a (Proto-)National Economy in Estonia, 1987-1992.”
