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The 1940 Soviet Coup-dtat in the Estonian Communist Press:
Constructing History to Reshape Collective Memory
Tiiu Kreegipuu and Epp Lauk Department of Journalism and
Communication University of Tartu
Keywords: 1940 Soviet Coup-dtat, Estonian History, Collective
Memory, The Press, Discourse Analysis
Abstract Since historical memory is a vital element of national
unity and identity in oppressed nations that challenges the
legitimacy of an occupying power, an important goal of the
oppressors becomes the distortion of this memory. The Soviet
authorities put a massive effort into the legitimization of their
power by creating official versions of histories of the nations
they occupied to prove that their incorporation into the Soviet
Union was a voluntary act. The article demonstrates how in Estonia,
the so-called June Myth was created to justify the Soviet take-over
on 21st June 1940 and the consequent annexation of Estonia.
Discourse analysis of 25 articles from the leading Communist Party
daily Rahva Hl/ The Peoples Voice demonstrates how argumentation
strategies, us them polarization and three types of antagonisms
were used for constructing the June Myth.1
Introduction Studies on nationalism clearly point out the
central role of history a common (glorious) past in the formation
of the ideologies of nationalism, and in the nation building
processes (cf. Gellner 1983; Hroch 1996; Pearson 1999). They also
emphasize the practice of (re)construction of the past in nations
whose pasts are either lacking or hidden from view by subsequent
accretions (Smith 1989, 178). As Smith argues, such histories,
usually elaborated by nationalist intellectuals, are in most cases
combinations of existing elements, myths and motifs, but they can
also contain bits of pure fabrication. These nationalist histories
serve the purpose of developing common identity with the help of
giving people a common past as an integral element of national
consciousness and solidarity. Occupying totalitarian regimes also
use constructed histories for influencing peoples collective
memory, but for a different purpose. The oppressed are subjected to
a fabricated and distorted picture of their historical past that
aims at justifying the occupying regime (cf. Scherrer 2002). In
order to govern the present and future, one also has to govern the
past the ways that the preceding regimes, processes and events are
remembered, interpreted and assessed.
______________________________ Westminster Papers in Communication
and Culture 2007 (University of Westminster, London), Vol. 4(4):
42-64. ISSN 1744-6708 (Print); 1744-6716 (Online)
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Kreegipuu and Lauk, The 1940 Soviet coup dtat...
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The concept of collective memory is hereby understood, not so
much as a form of memory, but rather as a type of knowledge. We
proceed from James Wertschs viewpoint that remembering is a
mediated action, and that collective memory is learnt more from
various textual resources which mediate past events, than being
shaped by immediate experiences (Wertsch 2002, 24-29). Collective
memory can be conceptualized as a construction that is based on
social interaction and communication and is structured by language.
In collective memory, a continuous dialogue takes place between
different times, realities, experiences and interpretations. In
this way, collective memory becomes an important component of
identity building (both collective and individual) and a bearer of
continuity. The knowledge about the shared experience functions in
the memory as a certain collective stronghold that helps to
perceive the time period and to sense ones own life in this time
(Kresaar 2005, 10-11, 204; cf. also Korkiakangas 1997). This
approach permits the circumvention of questions about the
(in)compatibility of history writing with collective remembering
(cf. Nora 1990, Halbwachs 1992, le Goff 1992) and view them in
mutual interaction while studying written historical narratives
newspaper texts, memoirs, life stories, diaries etc. (Kresaar
2005). Serhy Yekelchuk (2004, 8) has summarized this interaction as
follows:
present-day collective memory incorporates both historical
memory as our knowledge of the past and social memory of our lived
experience, but the latter is bound to disappear and be replaced in
the next generations by the learned historical memory about our
time.
The fact that the ways of understanding and interpreting the
past have an influence on peoples understanding and interpretation
of the present makes history writing an important tool for
political purposes. The Soviet authorities put a great deal of
effort into rewriting the histories of occupied nations, including
those of the Baltic States. Ideologically correct official versions
of the historical past were created that allowed neither deviations
nor alternative interpretations. Soviet history writing followed
only those ideological canons and dogmas that supported
Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist historical interpretations and ignored
anything that might have questioned them. Such official
constructions of history generally contradicted not only the
pre-Soviet national history interpretations that existed as a
component of collective memory, but also individual remembrance of
the events of the recent past. The difficulties in reshaping
collective memory by mediating constructed history interpretations
are reflected in the emergence of quite powerful,
quasi-institutionalized forms of unofficial histories as resistance
to the official histories (Wertsch 1998, 143). During the Soviet
regime, two parallel interpretations of history existed in Estonia
as well an official one that was taught in schools which people
were forced to accept and publicly recognize, and another that
consisted of elements of both history and collective
remembrance
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that was passed in whispers in everyday life through the
generations. As Aarelaid-Tart (2006) demonstrates, in the pre-war
republican generation (born between 1914 and 1930) and the
Stalinist era generation of Estonians (who were young adults during
the darkest years of repression between 1946 and 1956) a certain
double-mindedness or double thinking developed. It was understood
by the republican generation as a coerced mental pattern and a
grievous mistake of history, by the Stalinist generation as a
self-defensive and intentional white lie, but for the
post-Stalinist generation it had become a natural mixture and
normal coexistence of conflicting world views (194-195). By the
mid-1950s it had become evident that Soviet power would not end
soon, and thus, parents did not want to intimidate the new
generation with dissident stories (201-202). For this younger
generation, the official history became dominating, since
alternative information was hardly available and the general mental
atmosphere had been largely Sovietized. It is hard to disagree with
Aarelaid-Tart that if the Soviet regime had lasted double thinking
may have disappeared, replaced by full Sovietization (Aarelaid-Tart
2006, 204). This article focuses on how a particular historical
event was constructed as a part of the history process and
introduced into the public discourse by using the press. As a case
study we chose one of the key events in the destiny of the Baltic
nations the Soviet coup-dtat in June 1940 and the consequent
incorporation of the Baltic countries into the Soviet Union. Using
the method of discourse analysis of 25 texts published in the main
organ of the Communist Party of the Estonian Soviet Socialist
Republic, the leading national daily Rahva Hl /The Peoples Voice2
between 1945-1960, we demonstrate how the so-called June Myth was
constructed as a key element of the new Soviet Estonian history.
The June Myth was used as the main means for justifying the
legitimacy of the Soviet regime in Estonia both within the country
and abroad as it completely excluded the question of occupation and
annexation. Constructing the Soviet History of Estonia The Soviet
model of history writing and its phraseology were developed in the
Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s. The same concept was
introduced in all the Soviet Socialist Republics, including
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Communist ideologists and scholars
started extensive campaigns to destroy national historical
approaches and replacing them with a Marxist one. An important role
in developing and disseminating the correct version of Estonian
history was laid on the Soviet Estonian press. The paragon of
Soviet historiography during the Stalinist period was The Brief
Course of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
which was published in local languages throughout the Soviet Union.
In Estonia it was translated and
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published for the first time in 1940. Between 1945 and 1955,
this book was issued in Estonian four times, the print runs reached
up to 50 200 copies in 1946 and 10 000 in 1951 in a population of
approximately 850 000. The extensive and massive production of
official history texts was common practice; school textbooks as
well as other history books were easily accessible and inexpensive.
The intent of this effort was to promulgate a single, authoritative
narrative that could be appropriated as part of the process of
forming a group identity (Wertsch 1998, 163). These massive
efforts, however, met resistance expressed most frequently in the
development of unofficial histories. Soviet history writing
unambiguously served ideological and political purposes, typically
by using falsifications, the tendentious selection of facts and
sources and their arbitrary interpretation (cf. Ivanovs 2005).
Similar methods were gradually introduced into Estonian history
writing, eliminating previously dominant values and concepts by
supporting Soviet ideology instead of national and cultural values.
The three dominant Soviet dogmas that had to become basic concepts
of Estonian history were class struggle, Russian-Estonian
friendship and Estonian-German antagonism (Viires 2003, 38). The
first of them the leading principle of the Marxist methodology
telling that the whole history of humankind is a struggle of
progressive working classes towards a Communist society was the
most difficult to meet. Soviet historians had to demonstrate that
regardless of either the context or the period, the Estonian
working class had always fought for its rights and freedom against
the feudal and bourgeois oppressors. This was a challenge for even
the most orthodox Soviet historians as in Estonian history there
had never existed a working class in the Marxist sense. The two
other dogmas Russian-Estonian friendship (a statement inferring
that the Estonian people had always felt and highly appreciated the
support of the strong and friendly Russian nation) and
Estonian-German antagonism (depicting German landlords who governed
Estonian territory for 700 years as evil enslavers) were much
easier to adopt. Neither of the two mentioned concepts was
completely new Baltic German landlords were characterized as
oppressors from the early days of the Estonian national awakening
in the 19th century. As a counterforce to Germanys superiority,
contacts with Russians in various qualities were emphasized and the
political status of Estonia as a province of the Russian empire was
interpreted as the most natural and useful for the Estonians future
during the late 19th century Russification campaigns (Jansen 1997,
40). According to the Soviet paradigm the most decisive moments of
Estonian history occurred at the beginning of the 20th century,
when the centuries-old endeavours of escaping from Baltic German
superiority were finally accomplished. The Revolution of 1905 and
the Great Socialist October Revolution in 1917 were viewed as great
victories of the Estonian working people. This, of course, could
not become true without the strong support and positive example of
Russia. The
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Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 4(4)
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years of Estonian Independence were interpreted as a brief and
temporary setback and a brutal intervention of the
bourgeois-nationalist forces. Within this context, the Soviet
occupation and annexation in June-August 1940 were described as
justified acts of re-liberation of the Estonian working people.
Historical Background In the summer of 1940 Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania met the similar fate of losing their independence and
were annexed by the Soviet Union. On 14th June 1940, the Soviet
Government presented an ultimatum to Lithuania and on 16th June, to
Estonia and Latvia, in which all were blamed with violating The
Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation which had been contracted
with all three countries the year before. The Soviet Union also
demanded the formation of new Governments that would ensure the
proper observance of the Treaty, and permit an increase in the
presence of the Red Army in their territories by letting in
complementary military forces. The day following each ultimatum,
the Red Army crossed the Baltic borders into Lithuania (15th June)
and into Latvia and Estonia (both on 17th June). The occupation of
the Baltic countries was completed by 18th June 1940. Moscow
Emissaries arrived with the Red Army: Andrei Zhdanov in Estonia,
Andrei Vyshinski in Latvia and Vladimir Dekanozov in Lithuania.
They dictated the compositions of the new Governments and did not
allow any changes. Individuals without any political competence
were appointed as the leaders of the new Governments: a physician
and modernist poet Johannes Barbarus (Estonia); a well-known, but
politically inexperienced journalist Justas Paleckis (Lithuania)
and Augusts Kirhenshteins, a bacteriology professor with liberal
views (Latvia). A Revolution was then master-minded by the
Emissaries with the assistance of the Red Army and local Communist
collaborators that ended with the re-establishment of Soviet power
on 17th June in Lithuania, 20th June in Latvia and 21st June in
Estonia. It should be pointed out that Communist Parties in the
Baltic countries were illegal at that time and their membership was
small: 133 in Estonia, 1000 in Latvia and 1 500 in Lithuania
(Misiunas and Taagepera 1993, 24). At the beginning of July, Soviet
style peoples representation elections were engineered, with over
90 per cent of the voters supporting candidates of the Workers
United Front. All three peoples representations gathered on 21st
July where, at least in Estonia, Soviet military men were present.
On the same day, Lithuanian and Latvian peoples representations
passed a resolution about joining the Soviet Union, and in Estonia
the same happened on 22nd July. After that, delegations were sent
to Moscow and during the 1st August session of the Supreme Soviet
of the Soviet Union, the delegations passed on their peoples
requests for joining the Soviet Union. The request of the
Lithuanians was
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accepted on 3rd August and those of the Latvians and the
Estonians on 5th and 6th August, respectively. In this way, the
Soviet annexation of the Baltic States was completed in less than
two months. As a consequence, the First Secretary of the Communist
Party of each of the new Republics became the highest power holder
both in theory and practice, replacing the previous heads of state.
President Antanas Smetona (Lithuania) was able to leave the country
on 15th June. President Karlis Ulmanis (Latvia) was arrested and
deported to Voroshilovsk on 22nd July before the annexation was
completed. President Konstantin Pts (Estonia) was deported to Ufa
on 30th July. At the same time, many other high Government
officials of the Baltic States were arrested, deported and
executed. Construction of the June Myth The first example and
standard-setter of Soviet Estonian history writing was The history
of Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic printed in 1952, during the
years of the harshest Stalinist ideological pressure. In this book
the basic keywords for presenting the official version of the
events of 21st June 1940 were given (Naan 1952, 373-385):
voluntary act the establishment of Soviet power, the replacement
of the Estonian Government with the Soviet institutions and the
deposing of the President were the wishes of the Estonian (working)
people;
spontaneous act the Estonian working classes spontaneously took
an active role in the events organizing demonstrations and meetings
in support of the establishment of the Soviet power;
guiding role of the Communist Party the voluntary and
spontaneous activities of Estonian working people would never have
achieved their aim without the help of the Communist Party. The
illegal Estonian Communist Party is mentioned most but the role of
the CPSU is also frequently emphasized;
non-interference of the Soviet power institutions and the Red
Army the support from the Party and Russian comrades was moral and
tactical, and the Soviet military forces did not intervene in the
Revolution in Estonia;
massive event the importance of the event was stressed by
showing it as overwhelming in engaging a large portion of Estonian
inhabitants. Exact numbers were not, however, given; instead
adjectives such as many, massive, large-scale were used.
These keywords also became the cornerstones of the so-called
June Myth. As the power supporting myths played an important role
in Soviet ideology and propaganda, it has become quite common in
the post-Soviet Estonian historiography to describe Soviet society
as mythologized. The June Myth, thus,
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presents the Soviet occupation and annexation as a Revolution
that was the result of deep conflicts which existed in the
Independent Estonian Republic. The Revolution was a voluntary act
of will by the Estonian nation without any interference by the
Soviet Union and its armed forces (cf. Adamson 1994, 3). However,
this concept was not born without difficulties. The construction of
the June Myth was a long process that took nearly thirty years.
Estonian Soviet historians debated what should be the emphases and
interpretations of particular details of this ideologically correct
version (e.g., was it a Socialist Revolution or a Peoples
Revolution that was supposed to precede a Socialist Revolution;
what role should the individuals who participated in the Revolution
in various capacities have; how should the role of the Estonian
Communist Party and CPSU be presented, as well as the role of the
Red Army etc.). It has been argued that the construction of the
June Myth was not completed until the early 1970s (Adamson 1994),
although only minor variations in its details were made after 1960.
In that year, two large volumes of documents and memoirs were
published that dealt with the events of, and around the 21st June
1940 (see: Maamgi 1960; Teder 1960). The June Myth is a very
informative case for studying how the Soviet concept of Estonian
history was gradually constructed and introduced into the public
discourse. This process was largely carried out, indeed is best
reflected, in the pages of the most powerful propaganda tool of the
time the Soviet press. Empirical Material and Research Method The
period under observation from 1945-1960 were the years of the
institutional and ideological settling of the Soviet regime and the
designing of the official version of Estonias history. The years
1945-1960 represent the period of ideological development spanning
the harshest Stalinist time till the waning of ideological control
in the second half of the 1950s. The 1940s are especially
significant for the perspective of history writing. Ritter, who has
analysed the distortion of collective memory in Soviet Lithuania,
points out that during the late 1940s and early 1950s the process
contained a notable element of legitimization and justification of
Soviet power in Lithuania (Ritter 2003, 88). During the same period
legitimization was also strongly present in Estonian history texts.
An important moment here is that peoples memories of life in
Independent Estonia were still fresh and comparisons made between
the present and the past favoured the latter. As a consequence,
this past presented a challenge to Soviet ideology and had to be
destroyed and forgotten. This was attempted by banning all
literature published between 1918 and 1940, by blowing up all
monuments of the War for Independence in 1918-1920, by eliminating
enemies of the nation, by blocking all possible alternative
information sources and by establishing an all-embracing mechanism
for controlling public information. Simultaneously, a massive
propaganda exercise about the advantages of the Soviet social order
was
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Kreegipuu and Lauk, The 1940 Soviet coup dtat...
49
conducted, strongly emphasizing the fact that socialism was a
natural and inevitable phase of societal development. The late
1940s and early 1950s were also the time of the most brutal
violations of history not only in Estonia and the Soviet Union, but
also elsewhere in Eastern and Central Europe. For example, Polish
History was subjected to the most widespread distortion during the
ideologization education between 1948-1953 (Jarosz 2002, 46). This
was connected to the launch of Cold War politics in 1947, an
integral part of which was the formation of a strong East-European
Socialist bloc. Jelena Zubkova argues that the Sovietization of
Eastern Europe was thoroughly prepared, with Estonia a rehearsal of
the tactics and practical mechanisms of Sovietization (Zubkova
2001). The 25 texts under analysis have been chosen from the
national daily Rahva Hl /The Peoples Voice (henceforth RH) which
was the organ of the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist
Party, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic
and the Government. This newspaper, positioned at the pinnacle of
the hierarchical Soviet press system in Estonia was the
standard-setter for the whole Estonian press until the end of the
1980s. RH, as Estonias local Pravda was in the position of
supervising and criticizing the rest of the Estonian press, setting
ideological canons and journalistic standards. Above all, RH was
privileged by always being able to print the most important
information of the day first. Published for the first time on 22nd
June 1940, the second day of the Soviet coup dtat, RH continued to
operate until January 1993, when it was sold to private owners. Its
circulation was extensive print runs during the late 1940s and
early 1950s were around 85 000 to 105 000, and from the 1960s-1980s
between 155 000 and 188 000 (Hoyer et al. 1993). However, by the
late 1980s, and with the Estonian independence movement gathering
momentum, the paper started to distance itself from the Communist
Party. In January 1990, the Communist Partys name was moved from
first to third place in the newspapers title, while by March 1990
formal links with the Communist Party were completely severed with
the partys name removed from the publication once and for all (Ibid
1993, 269). The sample under review consists of all the articles,
editorials and all other types of texts that dealt with the events
of 21st June 1940 and were published in the 21st June issues of RH
between 1945 and 1960. If the newspaper did not appear on 21st
June, the previous or following days paper was chosen. There was,
however, one deviation from this cycle that colourfully
characterizes the hierarchical structure of the Soviet media and
the special position of the Central Party newspaper. In the issue
of the 21st June 1950, the day of the tenth anniversary of the
re-establishment of Soviet power in Estonia RH did not publish a
single word about the coup. Instead, all four pages were filled
with a piece by Stalin titled About Marxism in Linguistics. An
editorial, translated from Pravda Under the Wise Leadership of
Great Stalin preceded the article. Nothing, not even the historical
legitimization of the Soviet regime in Estonia, could be more
important
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than Stalins latest words. Previously prepared materials
relating to the events of June 1940 were published on the following
two days. The following analysis attempts to demonstrate how the
June Myth was constructed in RH by using various textual means.
De-constructing a concept that aimed at having strong political and
ideological effects on society and disclosing its manipulative
character requires viewing the texts in their historical context,
simultaneously focusing on the social identities (us and them) and
the social relations between them. Therefore the methods of
historical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992, Fairclough and
Wodak 1998, Titscher et al. 2000) are used in our work. The
analytical apparatus of historical discourse methodology comprises
three analytical levels: contents, argumentation strategies and
forms of linguistic implementation (Titscher et al. 2000, 158). In
our study we concentrate on the following aspects: (1)
argumentation strategies, (2) the linguistic means of the
construction of us and them and (3) the use of antagonisms and
falsifications (to manipulate content). In our case, the
argumentation strategies have the function of implanting the
correct understanding and interpretation of historical truth into
public discourse that in the long run sought to influence
collective memory. In the texts, they most frequently appear
through the methods of manipulation, such as exaggerations, black
and white oppositions, comparisons, omissions etc. The strategies
may not always be transparent in the discourse as their realisation
can range from automatic to conscious and they can be located on
different levels of peoples mental organization (cf. Wodak 2002).
In decoding the strategies of Soviet political discourse, the
dimension of context as the environment in which current discourse
functions gains central importance. Therefore, in what follows,
contextual explanations are given together with text examples.
Findings Argumentation Strategies of the June Myth Construction (1)
Labelling The language of Soviet Communism Newspeak (Thom 1989)
subjected language to ideology; the meanings of words were replaced
by values. Every phenomenon had an ideological value (positive or
negative) and therefore, it had to carry a label to guide everyone
towards a correct understanding of it. The way in which the 21st
June was labelled gave direction to the whole conception of the
historical presentation of this day. Since labelling was a basis
for the construction of the June Myth, it can be regarded as a
constructive strategy in itself, which was practiced in order to
set and fix an appropriate label to the event. Most often the 21st
June was named as the turn of June but also as seizing the power,
dethronement, change of the government.
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A corner stone dogma of Marxism class struggle was brought into
Estonian historiography by labelling the events of 21st June as a
great victory of the Estonian working people. Here Soviet
ideologists and historians faced another Marxist dogma the
Revolution of the proletariat. To interpret the 21st June as a
proletarian revolution led by the Communist Party was problematic.
This concept was in contradiction with the facts (Soviet military
intervention, the illegal status of the Estonian Communist Party at
the time of the June events etc.) and could not be presented as a
proper Revolution of the proletariat. First, in Estonia a social
layer that could be called proletariat did not exist in the summer
of 1940. Secondly, the political situation in the late 1940s and
early 1950s did not allow the glorification of the day of 21st June
as the culmination of the establishment of Soviet power in Estonia
because the collaborators, whom the Soviet emissaries put in
leading posts after the coup, were soon condemned by the Soviets as
being bourgeois nationalists. To overcome the gap between orthodox
Marxist dogma and the prevailing political and ideological
situation, historians worked out the theory of two Revolutions. The
theory accorded that the events of 21st June could be viewed as a
people's revolution, being the first stage of a socialist
revolution (Adamson 1994, 55-56). This approach was dominant in the
early 1950s, not only on the level of academic and ideological
discussions, but also in the newspapers. Whereas in the texts of
1950, the events of June 1940 were called a beginning of the
Socialist revolution, the people's revolution began to be used in
1952. In 1955, however, RH again wrote about the beginning of the
Socialist revolution:
The revolutionary turn of the 21st June 1940 was the beginning
of the socialist development of our people. Being convinced of the
huge advantages of the Socialist order, the Estonian people
strengthen the power and potency of our Socialist homeland, the
stronghold of peace and progress of the whole world with their
obstinate and creative work under the leadership of the Communist
Party (Rahva Hl 21 June 1955).
The definition of the June events as the beginning of the
Socialist revolution was frequently used on later occasions, until
historians finally gave it up as late as 1969. (2) Irreversible
turn The events of 21st June 1940 were presented as a turning
point, completely changing the contemporary and especially the
future development of Estonia. It was repeatedly stressed that the
Soviet regime liberated the Estonian people from exploitation, that
the gloomy days of bourgeois oppression ended with the 21st June
and would never return, that the working people have become the
masters of their destiny, and that from this day onwards they could
decide about their lives by themselves.
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The most common practice was to use nouns and verbs referring to
turn or turning (pramine) something. The 21st June 1940 was the
summer solstice - a crucial day in the Estonian calendar
representing the end of long dark days and beginning of lightness;
a day of turning from one season to another. In the very first
interpretations in 1940 the word turning day (pripev) appears. This
was one of the methods of integrating Soviet ideology into national
traditions with the goal of making it a part of these traditions in
peoples minds, inserting it into the structures of collective
memory. Linking the day of the Soviet coup to a day of symbolic
meaning in Estonian cultural tradition provided an opportunity to
transfer the positive associations connected with an old tradition
to a political event. It was also the purpose of having singers and
dancers celebrating Soviet holidays dressed in Estonian national
costumes. In 1946 the construct, the turn of June (juunipre), was
brought into use, a signifier that became fixed as a canon in later
Soviet historiography. The fact that the turn of June was
repeatedly (22 times) used in 10 articles out of 25 clearly
reflects the ideological importance of this construct. The verb to
turn was also often used to emphasize the importance of the day in
history. 21st June was named as a historical turn/turning point in
Estonian history; one article was even titled A historical turning
point in the life of Estonian working people (Rahva Hl 21 June
1947). Coup dtat (riigipre), which in Estonian is also derived from
the verb to turn was used only once in 1946. Later this phrase was
discarded as dangerous for the construction of the historical
continuity of Soviet power in Estonia. According to the
ideologically correct version of history the period of Independent
Estonia, 1918-1940, was a brutal intervention of bourgeois powers,
a kind of interregnum between establishing Soviet power in Estonia
in 1917 and re-establishing it in 1940. The state and power
institutions of the Estonian Republic were labelled as
illegitimate. To officially call the events of June 1940 a coup
dtat would have given the impression that Soviet ideology
acknowledged the Estonian Republic as a state with legal
institutions to overthrow. Also the associations of the term of
coup dtat with violence and interruption contradicted the idea of
the Soviet overthrow as a peaceful voluntary and spontaneous act of
the Estonian people. Therefore, the term was never used in the
public texts of the Soviet period, whereas in todays Estonian
historiography this is the most widespread term to characterize the
21st June. (3) Exaggerations A strategic method to construct the
legitimacy of the Soviet regime was to stress that a huge mass of
people, countless amounts of people, a large number of people,
plenty of people, enormous crowds participated in the
demonstrations of the 21st June.
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53
Continuous columns of workers are approaching along Nunna
Street. There are workers from Krull, Sits and other textile
factories, candy and chocolate factories. From Lasname, men and
women from the cellulose factory are arriving. From the direction
of Prnu Road a column of Luthers factory workers is approaching.
The workers are coming from all directions, just from behind the
workbenches. Today Victory Square is soon full of overflowing
crowds (Rahva Hl 23 June.1950).
Exact numbers, however, were never given. Estimations that
appeared in newspapers were between 6 000 and 40 000; though after
World War Two hundreds of thousands were sometimes mentioned. Later
on, through RH an estimation of 30,000 participants became the most
frequently repeated and was finally accepted as the correct number
(Adamson 1994). Historians today, however, claim that there were no
more than about 5 000 people demonstrating, including Soviet
soldiers and Russian workers (Krna et al. 1990, 17). The
exaggerations also apply to the descriptions of emotions expressed
during the meetings and processions. People were allegedly
overflowing with enthusiasm and the meetings and demonstrations
took place all over the country. Expressions like: On June 21st
1940 Estonian working people gathered together for demonstrations
all over the country (Rahva Hl 21 June 1946) were typical. At the
same time, the locations of demonstrations outside Tallinn were
never named, except in a single analysed text (Rahva Hl 21. June
1945). Some hints to activities in other towns outside the capital
appeared in memoir-articles at the end of the 1950s. In fact, only
a few meetings organized by the Soviet authorities and supported by
the Red Army took place outside the capital Tallinn (Tannberg et al
2006). To emphasize the component of the June Myth about the
overall will and wish of the Estonian people to join the Soviet
Union, totally unrealistic generalizations were frequently
used:
All the Estonian people know that only Soviet order gave them
their current happy life. Only under the leadership of the Party
and Comrade Stalin has our big success become possible (Sirp ja
Vasar/Sickle And Hammer 11 March 1950).
(4) Aggressiveness of presentation From the beginning of the
1950s the presentation of the June events became more and more
aggressive. The words changing and turning were replaced by
breaking, dethronement etc with the concept of (historical) victory
starts representing the idea of class struggle as the progressive
feature in history. The use of words that refer to struggle, battle
etc. is characteristic to the language of Communism. In the
editorials, it appears, for example, as Seizure of Power by the
Working People in Estonia
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54
(1950), Successful Struggle of the Working People (1952), A
Historical Victory of Estonian Working People (1955). The
aggressiveness was, at the same time, presented only through a
positive and victorious perspective: June 21st 1940 will be
indelibly glowing in the history of the Estonian working people as
a day of their great victory (Rahva Hl, 21 June 1947). The fact
that many terms in the vocabulary were taken from military language
refers a dogma of Soviet ideology that the world is deeply divided
into two hostile and irreconcilable camps (Thom 1989, 28). The
change in narrative of the analysed texts is related to the general
increase of aggression and terror during the last years of Stalins
reign and to the launch of Cold War propaganda that was largely
based on military terminology. (5) Creation of illusory historical
continuity Among the constructive strategies of the creation of the
June Myth one can also find the strategies of perpetuation and
justification through the creation of historical continuity. It was
considered important to show the events of the 21st June as a
result of natural historical development and an inevitable course
of events. Therefore, establishment of Soviet institutions of power
in 1940 was always coined as the re-establishment of Soviet power.
The October Revolution of 1917 was regarded as the first victory of
the Soviet order when the Bolsheviks seized power in a large part
of Estonian territory. Sometimes the evidence referring to the
struggle of the Estonian working people against oppressors and
bourgeois regimes was looked for in even earlier periods, such as
the Revolution of 1905 or workers strike in the 19th century.
In the summer of 1872, the first large strike began in the
Kreenholm Factory in Narva. The workers started actively fighting
for their class rights and in 1905 the armed uprising spread all
over the country. The uprising was suppressed, but the struggle of
the working class strengthened and along with the growth of
political consciousness the proletariat established their
progressive vanguard and leader of their struggle the Communist
Party. In the days of the Great October Revolution in 1917, the
Party led the Estonian proletariat in the victory of Soviet power.
During the years of bourgeois suppression, the struggle smouldered
like a fire under ashes and the Communist Party was deep under
ground. The flames burst out again on the 21st June... (Rahva Hl 20
June 1948).
(6) Speaking with the voice of the Party Up to the late 1950s,
the June Myth was developed by local Communist leaders and Marxist
historians, so-called Party historians (Adamson 1994, 24-25).
Articles on the events of the 21st June were portrayed as being the
result of historical research conducted and written by
authoritative historians, with the intention of adding credibility
to the myth.
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Kreegipuu and Lauk, The 1940 Soviet coup dtat...
55
While articles by politically prominent authors were written in
an impersonal and declarative manner, the writings of historians
pretended to be objective research, but their language was
propagandistic and persuasive, representing the voice of the Party.
From the late 1950s onwards, within the conditions of easing
censorship and ideological pressure, memoirs of eye-witnesses and
active participants, written in a more personal and subjective
manner began to be published, but still in accordance with the
official version of the June events. Van Dijk (2004) characterizes
this method as evidentiality which is supposed to make the
argumentation more plausible by assuming that the author as
eyewitness tells the truth. Construction of US One of the
strategies of ideological discourse is to give positive
self-presentation and negative other-presentation. Van Dijk (2006)
has defined four principles, strategic use of which enables to
present the us them confrontation in political discourse:
Emphasize positive things about US
Emphasize negative things about THEM
De-emphasize negative things about US
De-emphasize positive things about THEM The construction of us
in the Soviet political discourse typically appears through the
term people, because these two signifiers semantically coincide
(Ventsel 2005, 87-88). Therefore, in what follows we will, through
the examination of how the term people appeared in the descriptions
of the June events, analyse the construction of us. Although in
reality the Soviet people did not form an integral group, the
official language of the Soviet regime under Stalin stressed the
harmony of social interests. (Davies 2000, 47). Text analysis still
shows that people in connection with the events of June 1940 did
not mean the whole population, but only working people and that
part of society that was loyal to the Soviet authorities. Thus,
especially in earlier periods, our country, victory, power meant
the country, victory or power of the working people. In other
connotations, people and us were typically generalised to cover the
whole population. Speaking in the name of us, the authorities
created and strengthened the impression of a general consensus and
loyalty by Estonian people to the Soviet regime.
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56
(1) People as an active us group Analyses of Soviet historical
discourse reveal that in general, people as a signifier of us was
not an active subject of self-perception, but a passive one, the
will of which was entirely framed and determined by
Marxist-Leninist ideology (Ventsel 2005). Dealing with the June
events, the Soviet Estonian press presented this limited desire as
the peoples real, inner dream and wish that took an active form
after a long bourgeois suppression. Representation of people as an
active subject was especially necessary in connection with the June
events in order to support the concept of the Estonian peoples
voluntary acceptance of the Soviet regime. It was demonstrated that
the progressive and best part of Estonian people was an active
subject that spontaneously gathered to the meetings and
demonstrations demanding the establishment of a new, Socialist
Government. The importance of stressing this activeness declined
over time as the Soviet authorities took over the role of the
representatives of the peoples will. The activeness of the people
appears in the newspaper discourse in a clearly aggressive form.
People seized power, pulled down the Government, demonstrated,
demanded, accomplished their demands, attacked, broke through,
achieved freedom, took their destiny in their own hands, took the
law into their hands, organized an armed defence, established the
dictatorship of proletariat, destroyed the old bourgeois state
machine, tore their slave chains to pieces. The only neutral words
were came and decided. This aggressive tone was not reproachful but
was only supposed to create negative associations towards the
previous, bourgeois social order against which whatever violent act
was justified according to Soviet ideology. Although the Estonian
people were described as active in realizing their own will, their
activities were never presented as entirely independent. All texts
emphasized the important role of the Communist Party, which
explained, directed, instructed, led, showed, united, assembled
etc. and thus, played a stimulating and leading role. Another
stimulating factor was the great friendship and support from the
friendly Russian nation. Interestingly, while frequently stressing
this support and help, concrete examples were never given. (2)
People and class Since the June events had to be presented as a
Revolution, the dimensions of class and class struggle were
imported. For the Estonian nation-centred society, the concept of
people was easier to accept, and not as difficult to identify with,
as class. Thus, from the first days of the Soviet regime, the
notion of people was typically used for expressing social and not
ethnic belonging and where possible, in combination with class.
Therefore, the adjectives working and progressive were used most
frequently with people, referring to their ideological meaning. To
express the class character of people, expressions like our working
people, our Estonian working people, the majority of Estonian
people, Estonian workers were used. The
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Kreegipuu and Lauk, The 1940 Soviet coup dtat...
57
events of June 1940 were frequently presented as a victory of
Estonian working people over the bourgeoisie, the capitalists and
the imperialists, stressing that this was our victory. The notion
of working class was also sometimes used in trying to emphasize the
class struggle. This was usually done in conjunction with
mentioning other classes the working class in the alliance with the
peasantry, the working class in the alliance with the working
intelligentsia. At the same time, a distinction was made between
people and the working class when using expressions such as
alliance of the working class with the working people. This
inconsistency in terminology reflects the fact that there was no
consensus among Soviet historians and ideologists about how to
introduce the concept of class struggle into the Estonian public
discourse. Construction of THEM (1) Enemy-building One of the
universal methods of justification and legitimization of Soviet
power (and also its violent character) was the construction of
internal and external enemies of us. Those who were not with us,
were regarded as being against us and were consequently regarded as
the enemies. An example list of such enemies was provided in the
first pages of the dogmatic history text The Brief Course of the
History of the CPSU: landlords, capitalists, proprietors,
bourgeoisie, kulaks, spies, the agents of the capitalism. The list
was gradually complemented with examples given in the speeches of
the leaders of the Party and Soviet State and in the press
including, international imperialism, bloody warmongers, capitalist
monsters, imperialist sharks, bourgeois nationalists, enemies of
the nation, fascists, exploiters, cosmopolitans, etc. This largely
became the vocabulary of the Cold War period press. As the June
events signified the irreversible victory of Socialist order and
the defeat of them the enemies the strategy of warning was
expressed only in hyperbolic form:
What would have happened if the Estonian working people had not
made a decisive step on June 21st 1940 and had not taken their
destiny into their own hands? The Estonian bourgeoisie would have
led the Estonian nation down a ruinous road into the desperate war
for realizing Hitlers plans of conquering the world as the Finnish,
Hungarian, Romanian and later other German satellite countries
bourgeoisies did with their people (Rahva Hl 20 June 1948).
(2) Concretization While the positive picture of us was rarely
illustrated with facts, negative pictures of them were frequently
decorated with colourful details. The economic, political and
cultural environment of Estonian society before the Soviet period
was described as corrupt, repressive, poor, underdeveloped and
unfair, abundantly using statistics and examples. The sources of
the statistics and examples were, however, never mentioned.
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(3) Negative lexicalization Anything that was not ours was
therefore theirs, and given a negative connotation. The vocabulary
was rich and colourful, using metaphors, comparisons etc. For
example, the President of Independent Estonia was often called
bloodhound, insidious fox, henchman of Hitler and fascist; the
Government of Independent Estonia was known, as the bootlicker of
capitalists, bunch of robbers, bloody dictatorship, and government
of warmongers. Political orders other than the Soviet were always
characterized with negative words. The Independent Estonian
Republic was stagnant, reactionary, bourgeois, fascist, a regime of
terror. (4) Negative generalizations A strategy of creating a
negative image of something or somebody, wide and arbitrary
conclusions and generalizations were often made, transferring a
negative connotation to many objects on a basis of selected
examples. For example, the whole period of Estonias Independence
was labelled as regressive, while making no distinction between the
democratic and authoritarian periods in Estonian inter-war history.
The politics of the Estonian State was described as hostile and
dangerous to people, economic contacts with Western countries were
presented as cooperation with Hitlers camp. One of the most
dangerous enemies was the (international) bourgeoisie. As a result,
anything that could be described as bourgeois was automatically put
into the enemy camp. Almost anything that did not correspond to the
criteria of socialist was labelled as bourgeois: bourgeois parties,
bourgeois cultural policy, bourgeois ideology, bourgeois art,
literature, science etc. It was a tragedy of the Baltic nations
that the turning days turned around the labels of us and them and
people were brutally forced to accept the Soviet their reality and
mentality as ours. Use of antagonisms in construction of the June
Myth Three clear categories of antagonisms, in addition to the
above analysed polarizations, can be revealed in the analysed
texts. They appear on three levels: political and social orders,
social structures, and ideologies. (1) The Soviet political regime
versus all other political orders All political and social orders
other than the Soviet regime constituted them. Our State or country
was first and foremost the Soviet Union; Estonia came a distant
second. The most evil enemy of the Soviet regime was, indeed, the
former Independent Estonian Republic. Similarly negative was the
representation of the Latvian and Lithuanian Republics, which
shared the destiny of Estonia, and was on a par with the extreme
post-war hostility towards Hitlers Germany. Continuously since 1949
the objects of ideological attacks were the imperialist Western
countries.
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Kreegipuu and Lauk, The 1940 Soviet coup dtat...
59
This clearly reflects the division of the world into two
opposite camps during the Cold War period: us socialist and them
capitalist. (2) Working class (people) versus bourgeoisie and
capitalists Although the use of the term working class was
problematic, the positive us determinant and the negative them
determinant were mainly constructed on the basis of class opposing
working class with the bourgeois capitalists. The most frequently
mentioned representatives of other classes in the sample texts
were: bourgeoisie, capitalists, landlords, kulaks. Some more
specific expressions associated to the social status of them also
occur, such as bourgeois nationalists, bankers, international
financial capitalism etc. (3) Communism versus other ideologies
Antagonism of Communism with all other political ideologies
penetrated all spheres of the Soviet society. The most frequent
hostile ideologies appearing in the analysed texts were fascism and
nationalism. Ironically, the most colourful negative picture was
created about the representatives of the ideologies that were
closest to Communism socialists who opposed bolshevism, such as
Trotskists, Mensheviks and other anti-Leninist groups.
Falsifications, lies and concealments A typical strategy of
constructing the positive us image is to put aside facts that
contradict the correct interpretation, and lie about objectivities
of the past that could damage the wishful image (Wodak 2002, van
Dijk 2006). The analysed texts revealed many historical
distortions, exaggerations and construction of pseudo-facts. We
have already touched upon the falsification of the number of
participants in the demonstrations on 21st June. In addition, their
social and ethnic origins were also falsified. According to the
memories of many eyewitnesses and also historical documents
(Tannberg et al. 2006) a large number of the demonstrators were
Russian workers, seamen and soldiers, driven to Tallinn by the
Soviet authorities and dressed in civilian clothing. August Rei, a
prominent Estonian politician during the 1930s and the ambassador
of the Estonian Republic in Moscow from 1938 to 1940 recalled:
To my great surprise I heard the demonstrators singing
Soviet-Russian songs, which I had first heard in Moscow and which
were definitely unknown to everybody in Estonia. At first when I
heard the singing from a distance and couldnt see the singers, I
thought that groups of Soviet soldiers or seamen were
participating. But my guess was wrong: everybody who was singing
was dressed in civilian clothing. Their clothes, faces and whole
appearance left no doubt, that they were Russians and Soviet
citizens. (Maasing 1956, 20)
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Another fact, totally denied in any form, shape or manner, was
the political dictate and military interference of the Soviet Union
in Estonia. The fact that the natural historical course of history
and the voluntary act of the Estonian people was actually a
carefully prepared plan executed by Moscow, and that the Soviet
army was ready to invade Estonia for several months before June
1940 were totally denied in the Soviet narrative of Estonian
history. Even photographs and documentaries were altered to give
the right impression, e.g., by removing Soviet military men and
tanks. The role of the Red Army was completely omitted from
official descriptions of the events of the 21st June in the history
books. The newspapers, however, still mentioned the presence of the
Red Army in the texts of the late 1940s, but their role was
gradually reduced over time. Discussion and Conclusions We
proceeded from the idea that collective memory is a type of
knowledge, formation which is essentially determined by various
textual resources that carry information about the past. In this
way, collective memory plays an important role in collective and
individual identity building. The Soviet authorities forcefully
introduced a distorted version of Estonian history into the public
discourse in order to affect collective memory and to gain a hold
over peoples minds. Newspaper text as discourse is a substantial
component of public discourse and also a source of information that
influences the formation of peoples knowledge and interpretation of
the past. The newspaper texts devoted to the events of the 21st
June 1940 clearly reflect how the press was used for deforming
historical narrative and constructing canonized texts. The methods
used for creating these texts include various argumentation
strategies (labelling, exaggerations and aggressiveness of
presentation), polarization of good us and bad them, as well as
pure lies and falsifications. Three levels of antagonisms appeared
in the texts: political and social orders, social structures, and
ideologies. Polarization of us them served the purpose of
legitimizing the Soviet regime in two ways: 1) by constructing the
overall consensus of the people with the Soviet authorities and 2)
by cultivating enemy discourse to create an atmosphere of fear and
suspicion (see also Lauk 2005). Presentation of the 21st June 1940
in Estonian newspaper texts is an example of the robust attempts at
correcting history according to the ideological canons, interests
and power-practices of the Communist Party that all served the
purpose of perpetuating the Soviet regime. This mechanism worked in
the ways that are best described by George Orwell in Nineteen
Eighty-Four:
And if the facts say otherwise then the facts must be altered.
Thus history is continuously rewritten. This day-to-day
falsification of the past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is
as necessary to the stability of the regime as the
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Kreegipuu and Lauk, The 1940 Soviet coup dtat...
61
work of repression and espionage carried out by the Ministry of
Love (Orwell 1966, 170).
The role of the public texts was to monopolize the word and in
this way, help the Soviet regime to take control over the language,
and consequently over the peoples minds; or as Francoise Thom
(1989, 13) summarized No other regime knows better how to take
control of language and use it for its own ends. Linguists and
psychologists have demonstrated how strongly language influences
the formation of peoples attitudes and deliberate adoption of
preferred models of behaviour (cf. Harr 1985, van Dijk 1993, 1996).
Van Dijk (1993, 1996) has also demonstrated how the lack of
alternative discourses contributes to the adoption by the audience
of models persuasively presented by the authorities through the
mass media. By the 1960s, within a context where the public word
was manipulated and strictly controlled by the authorities, and the
alternative sources were eliminated, the efforts of the Soviet
authorities to distort Estonians historical memory gradually
started taking effect and formed a foundation for further
Sovietization. Generations born after World War Two did not,
naturally, have either experiences or memories from life in the
Independent Estonian Republic, or of the events of June 1940, which
were effectively its end. Their picture of the real historical past
was deficient and full of gaps. At the same time, the Soviet
education system and mass media suggested a systematic and complete
official version of history, where the events of the 21st June had
a crucial importance at odds with the historical memory.
Aarelaid-Tart (2006) has demonstrated how for the pre-War, post-War
and the 1950s generations, a transformation of double thinking took
place. While for the pre-War generation the opposition of own and
alien was complete, for the 1950s generation own and alien had
changed places. As Wertsch emphasizes, despite the existence of
unofficial histories as a mixture of the historical facts and
experiences of older generations, the official history was always
present as a second speaker (Wertsch 1998). Wertsch also noticed
that important elements of Soviet historiography (as for example
schematic narrative templates) continue to appear in the
post-Soviet history texts (Wertsch 2002, 176). However, Soviet
newspeak (Thom 1989), its exaggerations, obvious lies and hollow
rhetoric alien to Estonian language, made it difficult to
persistently infiltrate the ideology that this rhetoric carried.
Double thinking gained new impetus in connection with strengthening
ideological pressure after the events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia;
with a silent opposition surfacing in literature, theatre and the
cultural media. Unofficial history remained a component of this
silent opposition, since it supported the national
self-consciousness and identity of Estonians. This also largely
explains the relative failure of widespread Soviet propaganda among
Estonians.
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The interpretation of the history of Estonia and Estonians by
the Russian-speaking immigrant population demonstrates that where
the unofficial history is missing, the official version takes over
and becomes a component of knowledge. The Estonian Russophone
population, who settled in Estonia in the decades after World War
Two, was acquainted with only the official version as an element of
the history of the USSR. As a result, Russophone people who lived
in Estonia for decades often did not see Estonia as something
different from the rest of the Soviet Union and could not
understand Estonians national aspirations. The interview response
of a former Soviet naval officer who lived in Estonia with his
family for almost twenty years is typical of this attitude: For me,
Estonia was one of the republics, the technical equipment of which
was better than the others. The fact that it is a so called native
nation I realized in 1988-1989, when Estonian intellectuals started
writing about Independence (Aarelaid-Tart 2006, 234). Surveys in
the early 1990s showed that at least one-third of the Russophone
population believed that the Independent Estonian Republic was a
backward bourgeois authoritarian regime with features of fascism
and that the incorporation of Estonia into the Soviet Union in 1940
was by the will of Estonian people. The Soviet period was perceived
as the years of positive development under the guidance of the
Communist Party (Ruutsoo 1997, Valk 1997). The carefully mastered
June Myth was only one detail of the Soviet ideological newspaper
discourse. Many other parallel historical issues like
collectivization, elimination of the anti-Soviet elements,
participation of Estonia in the Great Patriotic War etc. were
constructed for the legitimization of the Soviet regime in Estonia.
Deconstruction of these and similar concepts helps to understand
the effects of the brainwashing machinery of the Soviet Union and
restore historical truth. It has become especially important in the
current political situation where anti-Estonian propaganda,
nationally and internationally, largely rests on these concepts and
an incomplete knowledge of real Estonian history. Notes 1 The
authors are grateful to their colleague Dr. Ene Kresaar for her
critical reading and remarks, and to the anonymous reviewer for
helpful comments. 2 All translations are the responsibility of the
authors.
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