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My paper challenges the traditional Nazi-centric view of studying Baltic discourses about communism during WWII by examining the agency and self-mobilization of the Baltic people under Nazi rule and how they made sense of the first Soviet year (1940–41). Focusing on the relationship between Nazi institutions and local actors, I argue that local initiatives and discourses, sometimes contradictory to official Nazi propaganda (and sometimes inspiring the latter), played a significant role in shaping Baltic memory culture about communism. Today’s Baltic memory culture about Soviet rule, I contend, was already forged to a significant extent during the war.

Kristo Nurmis is a historian and research fellow at Tallinn University School of Humanities. He holds a PhD in Russian and Eastern European history from Stanford University and a BA and MA from the University of Tartu. He has several publications on Soviet and Nazi rule in the Baltics and is currently working on a book project on the politics of legitimacy and mass influence in Soviet- and Nazi-occupied Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, 1939–53. 

The speaker series is part of the project Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past on the Global Arena, Tallinn University, Estonia as received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant agreement No 853385). The rest of the spring program can be found .