Migration and Narration several countries have attempted to alleviate their shortage of labour by facilitating repatriation, e.g. Japan in the 1980s (Tsuda, 2001, pp. 60-61). The return to Estonia was considerably easier during the period in question, as it did not involve crossing borders. Still, an attempt to slow the wave of Russian-speaking immigrants by facilitating the repatriation of ethnic Estonians is to be detected behind the 1960s-1970s “Estonians back to Estonia” campaign: /–/ The Estonian side went campaigning in Verkhniy Suetuk for Estonians to return in ’67. Leontina and Aleks will know more about that, they came here. /–/ For starters, they all went down to Kanama1 and then started to spread out. /–/ I think it was all on a government level, too. Now I, I don’t know that much about it, I could be telling you tales here. But they all got apartments here at first and more or less jobs at collective farms, say, the women as milkmaids and the men in the fields or working some machine. But it really, that project, it kind of failed a little. Still people drifted off and.../–/ (Woman, born 1952, interview by author, Harju County, Laagri < Siberia, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Verkhniy Suetuk V, October 2003, audio recording ERA, MD 245 (9), the Estonian Folklore Archives, Tartu, Estonia.) The following key issues have been cited in relation to immigrant adaptation in Estonia today: conflict of identity, poor knowledge of Estonian, reticence of the natives, and uncertainty about the future (Tammaru, 1999, p. 21). Similar problems were faced by postwar and later arrivals as well. For returned Estonians, though mostly fluent in Estonian, adaptation to life in the country was no easier than for nonEstonian immigrants, and many failed. For some, the main reason for returning was the conscious wish to remain Estonian. They feared that in Russia their children would be Russified, and a return to the motherland was perceived as the only option to prevent that. Unfortunately, many repatriates were disappointed: after growing up in mixed Russian-Estonian villages and being schooled in Russian, not all of the children would live up to their parents’ dreams: Well, we feared Estonian would disappear. And children get all Russified and... We figured they’d come here, marry Estonian girls and, but it didn’t work out that way. They still married Russian girls. /–/ See, that
Kanama—a village in Harju County, North Estonia.
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