Archives and Researchers In the following presentation I have chosen the topic of the year 1905 as an example to introduce the above mentioned approach. Memories of the events of 1905 come from four different sources: studies and memories published by local amateur historians and people who participated in the events (Jürisson 1907; Aitsam 1937; Laikmaa 1991 [1938]; Jõgisalu 2005), recordings from my folkloristic fieldwork in 1990 and 1993 (EKRK I 89; MK: Keremann/Karemaa), materials from family archives (Karema 1953; 1970; Uring 1979), and archival texts created in the 1920s–1930s (EKLA f 172; 199 and 200). In my presentation I first introduce the problems of the historical–political framework as the general background to this study. This concerns two problems: the choice of events creating the image of history and the linguistic level of narrating the events, including how the events are named. Thereafter, I observe one way of understanding the year 1905 in Estonian society; this is a person–centred (not event– centred) view and is associated with the rise of political self–awareness and human dignity in the modernising society.
Background of the study When I read the dissertation by Anne Heimo about the 1918 Finnish Civil War (Heimo 2010), I noticed the continuity in dividing the fighters into the Reds and the Whites despite the relatively dynamic treatment of the images of history. In the Estonian context such consistent use of vocabulary and to some extent also ideology (two opposing parties with a clear view of the world) would not be conceivable. This is caused by the political frames of 20th century events, which have changed in 180–degree turns. These turns are first expressed by the selection of historical events. The selectivity of events is described, for example, by historian David Vseviov, using the image of a journey, in which the treatment of history moves along the main road of history, marked by certain stops (historical events). However, the main road could become a side road; for example, although during the Soviet period the Narva [Estonian Workers’] Commune was on the main road, today even most historians need to look it up to understand exactly what it was (Vseviov 2001).
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