Paneellinn eesti proosas 1970.–1980. aastatel
The Panel Town in the Estonian Prose of the 1970s and 1980s

Summary/Abstract: Panel housing districts are in many ways an outstanding phenomenon in (Soviet) Estonian culture. First and foremost, they are illustrators of a period in Estonian history, in particular, the stagnation era of the 1970s and 1980s. In that politically tense era spent under Soviet rule problems associated with cultural colonization were becoming more and more evident. The building of new mass-produced residential areas in Tallinn was followed by a wave of immigration from other parts of the Soviet Union. From the ideological point of view the new residential areas were supposed to support the idea of a collectivist way of life, but instead, they bred anonymity and a feeling of fear and uncertainty in the citydwellers. Judging by the recurrence of this motif in the literature of the stagnation era panel housing districts can be considered as a specific scene used in Estonian urban prose. Between 1975 and 1985 many relevant short stories and some novels such as Janu („Thirst”) by Teet Kallas, Sügisball („Autumn Ball”) by Mati Unt and Raisakullid („Vultures”) by Jaak Jõerüüt were written. The so-called „anti-urbanism” is clearly manifested in these texts, which present the aforementioned city space in a sociocritical way. The „panel city literature” was rich in metaphors as the anti-urbanist message had to be implicit, yet intelligible to the reader who, due to heavy ideological censorship, was used to reading between the lines. Today, panel housing districts accommodate almost half the citizens of Tallinn. Therefore it is important to study their phenomenon and its cultural background by analyzing its relations with other disciplines such as literature, art, music etc.

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