4. CASE STUDY: LASNAMÄE “Inside each one of those damn boxes is a human being who just wants to be happy.” — Mati the literatus (Autumn Ball, 2007) Synonymous with panel housing districts and the aesthetic and political ‘problem’ they pose, Lasnamäe is deeply engrained in Estonians’ cultural imagination of post-Soviet space. The extent of Lasnamäe’s significance as a shorthand for all post-socialist housing districts is evident from it setting the backdrop for innumerous films depicting Tallinn’s other districts of Mustamäe and Õismäe (See Fig. 7), positing it as the most distilled and evocative embodiment of Estonia’s post-soviet housing. Built in the 1960s-70s, Lasnamäe is representative of broader pan-Eastern European mass housing projects constructed in phase of late socialism which, as discussed in Chapter 2, was characterised by enlarged private flats at the expense of public provision of community facilities and landscaping – design choices that have earned them an international reputation for post-Soviet squalor and prefabricated monotony. This too has been poignantly captured in international film, with ‘Autumn Ball’ Estonia, (2007), ‘Cheryomushki’ Russia (1963) and ‘Panelstory’ Czechoslovakia (1979) frequently recycling the trope of romantic escapades being lost with the memory of where a lover lived, as space is portrayed in tragicomic abstraction, ubiquitous and infinitely replicated (Alonso & Palmarola, 2014). Although such landscapes represent international trends in late socialist housing and their common cultural perceptions, Lasnamäe is unique in the Estonian context as Tallinn’s sole example of late Soviet-era housing projects and in the socio-spatial challenges these present. The unique intersection of the legal, spatial and ethnic processes it exemplifies makes Lasnamäe fertile ground for the study of marginalised Russian-speakers’ socio-spatial experiences and memory culture. As the most ethnically segregated area (Kährik, et al., 2019) of the fastest segregating European capital (Tammaru, et al., 2015), Lasnamäe houses a distinctive demographic of blue-collar Russian-speaking minorities (Kährik & Kõre, 2013). Recent studies reveal the area’s rising levels of stigma and unpopularity among Estonian-speakers, largely on premises of this ethnicity (Kährik and Tammaru 2010; Leetmaa et al. 2015). On similar ethnic grounds, however, these estates are most preferred by Russian-speakers (ibid). Alluding to the dignity and desirability uncovered by Morris (2016) and Boym’s (1994) work in Russia’s post-Soviet districts, these polarised preferences suggest the presence of strong Russian-language social infrastructure and accompanying spatial practices that form the heart of the proposed research.
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