Võõraviha lõhenenud ühiskonna folklooris: kuulujutud kannibalismist sõjajärgses Eestis
Xenophobia in the Folklore of a Split Society: Rumours of Cannibalism in Post-War Estonia

Summary/Abstract: On the basis of post-war rumours, interviews and memoirs the article analyses the manifestations and possible reasons of the Estonians' self-identification as well as of their attitudes towards and opinions of their neighbours. The rumours of the time and the contextualized memoirs provide a simplified popular reflection of immigration and the establishment of a totalitarian state apparatus, as well as of the contours of the social relations network emergent due to the colonial policy of the new regime. Although most of them developed in the Estonia of the 1940s, many of the prejudices of the time were rooted in earlier tradition and historical circumstances. The ethnocentric attitude of the rumours communicated the feeling that the community had ceased to be homogeneous, at the same time pointing to the stranger. The cultural codes of the ethnic relationships of the time were manifested in the triad Estonians-Russians-Germans and the Estonian-Jewish and Estonian-Estonian pairs. The figure of an enemy stood out on a political and ideological rather than ethnic background. Such an attitude indicates that many Estonians had developed a simplified world model, which was stereotypical to the extreme as all immigrants were identified with occupants and proponents of the communist regime. The people's ideas of the "others", rooted partly in fact, partly in fiction, tell of an ideological, physical and cultural split between the immigrants and the natives.

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