For those who think that Iran is the only place where freedom of expression is disapproved of by the powers that be, have a heart for Sirje Kiin, growing up in Soviet Estonia during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1980, the now famous “Letter of Forty Intellectuals” was signed by 40 Estonian writers and intellectuals complaining about the lack of press freedom, and hoping to preserve the Estonian language and culture. Their wish for it to appear in Pravda was ignored. And they were all ultimately interviewed by the KGB.
The extracts below come from Sirje Kiin's English-language website. The full story of her political biography can be read there.
Sirje Kiin (born 1949) published the autobiographical sketch below in the cultural album or almanac entitled Wellesto, which has been mentioned elsewhere on this blog. Nowadays she has become a poetry critic and lives in the United States.
My Political Biography (extracts from an essay)
In 1980 the political pressure of the Soviets became intolerable. I wrote in my diary of unendurable silence, in which it seemed like everything was alright, but deep inside tension was building. In October, flare-ups occurred in the schools against Russification of the school system. The Soviet militia responded to this misbehavior by beating the high school students who were involved. For some of us, this was the limit of our tolerance.
I was involved in writing a letter of protest and getting 40 well-known intellectuals to sign it. We did it in an attempt to protect those young people, as well as the Estonian language and culture, against Soviet repression. For two weeks there was feverish activity around our kitchen table. Sometimes we worked through the night, then collected signatures during the day. There were conversations with dozens of people, silences, refusals, disappointments, tensions, fights, new friends and the loss of some old ones, before the letter was actually sent by mail on the 28th of October. We rushed the process because there was a pressing need – we had already received threats from the KGB to search our house.
At a party meeting in the Writers’ Union, the leadership punished an older lady, a translator named Ita Saks, who was one of the 40 signers of the letter. In my fiery speech defending her, I used a statute of the communist party which said that every communist had a right to send letters to communist party newspapers.
During a recess in the meeting, the chairman of the Writers Union, Paul Kuusberg, invited me to an empty room and asked me strongly to stay silent. He asked why did I not sign this letter, if I was willing to defend it now in such fiery terms? I told him that only one person from each family signed the letter, because we were ready for the worst, for the signers to be arrested. My husband and I agreed that he would sign it so that I could stay home with our six year old son. “Then we should really punish you, too, because you were so deeply involved in writing the letter,” he said. “You had better be silent,” Kuusberg suggested, like he was my wise father. Other older communist writers Vladimir Beekman and Villem Gross accused me of being under the spell of strange enemy forces, an agent of some foreign ideology. When I tried to explain that it’s not right to punish a messenger for reporting a fire, Villem Gross said that you cannot quench a fire with gasoline from the CIA.
The actual text of the whole "Letter of Forty Intellectuals" itself is available here on the same website.
The translators on this occasion are Jüri Estam and Jaan Pennar
The extracts below come from Sirje Kiin's English-language website. The full story of her political biography can be read there.
Sirje Kiin (born 1949) published the autobiographical sketch below in the cultural album or almanac entitled Wellesto, which has been mentioned elsewhere on this blog. Nowadays she has become a poetry critic and lives in the United States.
My Political Biography (extracts from an essay)
In 1980 the political pressure of the Soviets became intolerable. I wrote in my diary of unendurable silence, in which it seemed like everything was alright, but deep inside tension was building. In October, flare-ups occurred in the schools against Russification of the school system. The Soviet militia responded to this misbehavior by beating the high school students who were involved. For some of us, this was the limit of our tolerance.
I was involved in writing a letter of protest and getting 40 well-known intellectuals to sign it. We did it in an attempt to protect those young people, as well as the Estonian language and culture, against Soviet repression. For two weeks there was feverish activity around our kitchen table. Sometimes we worked through the night, then collected signatures during the day. There were conversations with dozens of people, silences, refusals, disappointments, tensions, fights, new friends and the loss of some old ones, before the letter was actually sent by mail on the 28th of October. We rushed the process because there was a pressing need – we had already received threats from the KGB to search our house.
At a party meeting in the Writers’ Union, the leadership punished an older lady, a translator named Ita Saks, who was one of the 40 signers of the letter. In my fiery speech defending her, I used a statute of the communist party which said that every communist had a right to send letters to communist party newspapers.
During a recess in the meeting, the chairman of the Writers Union, Paul Kuusberg, invited me to an empty room and asked me strongly to stay silent. He asked why did I not sign this letter, if I was willing to defend it now in such fiery terms? I told him that only one person from each family signed the letter, because we were ready for the worst, for the signers to be arrested. My husband and I agreed that he would sign it so that I could stay home with our six year old son. “Then we should really punish you, too, because you were so deeply involved in writing the letter,” he said. “You had better be silent,” Kuusberg suggested, like he was my wise father. Other older communist writers Vladimir Beekman and Villem Gross accused me of being under the spell of strange enemy forces, an agent of some foreign ideology. When I tried to explain that it’s not right to punish a messenger for reporting a fire, Villem Gross said that you cannot quench a fire with gasoline from the CIA.
The actual text of the whole "Letter of Forty Intellectuals" itself is available here on the same website.
The translators on this occasion are Jüri Estam and Jaan Pennar
