| This dissertation uses the analysis of urban design, architecture, and material culture to explore the state's goals of identity building and regulation and the acceptance, rejection, and negotiation of these by design professionals and the broader citizenry. I examine how meanings and ideologies are embodied in buildings and space; how governments and elites manipulate these spatial representations in shaping citizens; and the extent to which rival groups and individuals are able to challenge these intentions spatially or through competing representations.; This work is organized thematically in chapters that are presented longitudinally (over time). This arrangement accentuates the complexities inherent in claiming, appropriating, and redefining the material world but also allows the story to unfold more comprehensibly. The four themes, each of which is covered in a separate chapter, draw on aspects of the cultural landscape that are linked to the political and social contexts. The chapter themes are national symbols and myths; cultural fields and the state; memory and ideology; and the domestic realm and the state. Each aspect of the cultural landscape is nuanced in a particular way depending on its position within the larger society and the degree of interaction among the various sectors that contribute to its production. Therefore the knowledge that each sector discloses varies.; Over the course of the last century and a half (and earlier) many different governments have ruled Estonia. The six main periods of transition considered here are Estonia's national awakening in the 1860s during Russian Tsarist times and Baltic-German domination; the formation of the democratic Republic beginning in 1918; the 1934 coup; alternating Soviet and Nazi occupations (1940–1944); the early years of Sovietization; and some aspects of post-Soviet privatization (1991–present). Regardless of ideological framework, each government repressed and embellished history by appropriating, valorizing, hiding, defacing, and obliterating aspects of the existing material and symbolic world that did not conform to their needs. Sometimes the repression and embellishments were violently enforced. At other times, the myth was so deeply embedded that the original “truth” or rationale was lost. |
