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On January 29, 2026, the head of the research team, Karsten Brüggemann, organized this year's annual seminar on Tallinn-Tartu Soviet Studies on late-Soviet everyday life. We invited to the symposium scholars from Tartu University, Tallinn University, as well as the Estonia National Museum (Eesti Rahva Muuseum).
The Tallinn–Tartu seminar on Soviet studies brought together researchers from Tallinn and Tartu to discuss Soviet Estonian society through everyday life, language and institutions.
The seminar was opened by Kaarel Piirimäe and Karsten Brüggemann. In the first panel, Anu Kannike examined sources on domestic and food culture from an ethnological perspective, while Ivan Lavrentjev analysed exceptions in housing allocation policies using the Dvigatel case. In the second panel, Heli Reimann explored the specific features of Soviet public language through jazz-related writings, Timur Guzairov discussed meeting minutes from Estonian SSR schools as a source for new research questions, and Katariina Sofia Päts analysed the role of exile Estonians in the activities of Estonian information bureaux. The day concluded with papers by Juhan Sahharov on the Estonian SSR State Planning Committee’s 1987 development scenarios and their impact on the emergence of the self-management proposal, and by Silvia Lotman on the reasons why the Estonian SSR became the first Soviet republic to adopt a nature conservation law. The next year's symposium will be organized by the Estonian National Museum, furthering our team's cooperation with ethnographic studies of Soviet everyday life.
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