In Estonia’s industrial east, basements, garages and dachas offer residents room to negotiate identity, memory and belonging; in The Future of Hiding, anthropologist Francisco Martínez explores these private worlds and challenges the idea of Estonia as a homogeneous society.
Ida-Virumaa, Estonia’s north-eastern region, has been shaped by oil shale mining, industrialisation, deportations and its position on the country’s eastern frontier. It is also a place where questions of language, history and national identity can feel especially charged.
In The Future of Hiding, Martínez draws on five years of research in the region to look beyond its familiar public image. He visits the basements, garages, bunkers and dachas where people can preserve memories, try out different versions of themselves and find some room to be at ease. His argument is that these hidden spaces reveal how people negotiate belonging, and what it means to be Estonian.
In conversation with Marian Võsumets, Martínez explains why he chose the phrase “Estonia’s Siberia”, what hiding places mean to people who live in Ida-Virumaa and what the region reveals about Estonia as a whole.
You chose a subtitle for The Future of Hiding that I find quite provocative, especially the last part, about “Estonia’s Siberia”.
Ha! My friend Siobhan Kattago, an associate professor of political philosophy at the University of Tartu, told me this would be one of the questions for sure. So here it is, the first one.
As an Estonian, I’m obviously intrigued by that choice of words, because it isn’t neutral …
The idea of Ida-Virumaa as a kind of Siberia was raised by some of my informants. For example, teachers of Estonian who move to Ida-Viru for work describe their experience as “moving to Siberia”, as if it were a place that feels like part of Estonia but not of Europe.
The comparison also appears in diaries I read about life in the region during the interwar period. In the 1930s, people referred to it as Siberia because of the economic opportunities generated by oil shale mining. The government at the time had an agrarian outlook and did not favour the migration of Estonians to newly urbanising cities, so workers from other countries moved there. As a result, one could easily hear Finnish, Polish, Swedish or Latvian in places such as Kiviõli, Järve and Narva. Gangs also formed, and people carried firearms. Indeed, if a series such as Peaky Blinders were to be shot in Estonia, it would be set there.
But there’s a third reason. Publishers’ marketing departments prefer keywords in subtitles that are easy to find on Google. Perhaps my favourite subtitle would have been something like “Tales from the Estonian East”. But the actual one also works because it raises questions, such as yours.
Nonetheless, I’m aware of the waves of deportations to Siberia, how Ida-Viru was repopulated after the war and the fact that half of the original population was not allowed to return. Interestingly, some of those who left, escaping to Sweden or Canada, buried some of their possessions near their houses and drew maps showing where the holes were, hoping they would be able to return soon. But it only happened fifty years later.
I’m glad we got the Siberian topic out of the way …
Yes, because the book has other layers. The first, and most obvious, is the history of Ida-Virumaa, focused mainly on oil shale mining but also exploring uranium and the processing of rare earth materials, which is happening now in connection with the incomplete European green transition and the new “superbatteries’” factory.
The second layer describes how local people use hiding places to negotiate questions of hybrid identity and complicated relations with different institutions. I mean the role played by basements, garages, bunkers and dachas in this process. The third layer is the conceptualisation of Ida-Virumaa as the shadow of national identity. The Estonian state has not been able to turn the heterogeneity of society into an asset, rather than a burden.
Let’s take a few steps back and talk about what I find most interesting about the book: the hiding places.
Ida-Virumaa is a liminal region, so locals hardly identify with just one identity. If they do, it is in a rather performative way, depending on the context. The region is characterised by an abundance of connections and disconnections, managed through ordinary practices. To edit their public persona, people use shadow spaces where they can feel at ease, where there is no need to perform an identity.
I’m not talking about escapism, but about negotiating how to be part of society. These hiding places extend local residents’ autonomy in relation to institutions, while allowing them to expand their social lives.
Many residents feel they have to protect themselves from society in order to be part of it. This is not new; it was also present in the Soviet period and in Tsarist Russia. But now, if we think of Estonia as a community, many of its members actively choose to ignore one another. The ignorance between one part of society and the rest has become normalised. And everyone pretends this is OK.
So, to be clear, you don’t mean hiding as disappearing, but as having a space where you don’t necessarily have to explain yourself.
Exactly. For decades, there has been a passive-aggressive relationship between the Estonian state and residents of the region: a kind of make-believe mutual ignorance, with one side pretending to care and the other pretending to listen. But since the war in Ukraine began, local residents have been turned into a geopolitical problem, considered both a risk and a residue of the aggressive empire, regardless of their views on the matter.
The removal of Soviet monuments, the removal of voting rights from those with grey passports and the radical change in language policies in schools have not helped people feel part of this country. As a result, there is a sense of mistrust towards institutions. People tend to expect the worst from the state and from change, even if they desperately need both: the state and change.
But your take on hiding places is also generative, not only defensive.
That’s correct. Places such as a garage, a dacha or a basement allow you to experiment with different sides of your personality. These corners make transformation possible. Their use shows that identity is dynamic, something we construct, sometimes in public and sometimes silently, in the dark. For example, in basements we place ideas and relationships that don’t fit in the present, without throwing them in the rubbish. It is a way of playing the lottery with the future. Ten years later, you might rediscover something that is now vintage, or have the chance to show your son things from your grandmother who came from Siberia: the things you learned in a Soviet school, or the music or cartoons you grew up with.
Humans have always needed hiding places: spaces where we can momentarily suspend society’s normative rules. These are spaces where the world loosens up for a moment. While no one is watching, we can rehearse other ways of being or transform ourselves. On the contrary, when you feel observed all the time, you stop asking questions and begin to seek conformity. This book defends the need not to be available or visible all the time.
These areas also allow the possibility of failure, right?
Yes, indeed. A garage or a dacha is like an artist’s studio or a laboratory. There, you can experiment without serious consequences, while ignoring the normative rules of the public game. In this light, the use of hiding places speaks to our ability to protect personal autonomy.
But hiding places don’t exist only on the scale of the body or the home. Societies also construct their own shadow zones. There are entire regions that function as geopolitical basements: territories where unresolved conflicts, uncomfortable memories and strategic resources that sustain visible life elsewhere are stored.
In this way, the book offers an unusual perspective on a key phenomenon of our time. Instead of analysing visibility, so often studied through surveillance and data, it shifts its focus to its opposite: the shadow as an object of knowledge. It proposes understanding hiding places as necessary social infrastructures where ways of life are tested and the relationship with power is negotiated.
In this context, opacity becomes an act of resistance.
I would not say resistance, but refusal. Shadow spaces are not necessarily adversarial. Such areas resist the demand to be sorted into neat categories: occupier or liberator, Estonian or Russian, communist or European.
Since 1991, Estonian identity has been constructed through a monolingual, ethnonationalist state, a legal framework and a historical narrative that continues that of the interwar republic. This has created a sense of incomplete belonging in the eastern part of the country.
Since independence, Estonia has pursued a nation-building project centred on language. For many ethnic Estonians, this represents a restoration of sovereignty postponed after decades of Soviet occupation. For many Russian speakers, it means they are considered occupiers, remnants of an empire that no longer exists and, now, after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, geopolitical pawns.
But this sense of incomplete belonging is not due only to ethnic reasons. It also stems from the region’s own ecological memory, characterised by mining, deportations, industrial militarisation and its position as a frontier of civilisations.
How did you get access to these private spaces?
I was speaking Russian with my Spanish accent and arriving there in a non-judgemental way. Then you meet one person, who introduces you to another, and so on. Many people have been very generous. But, of course, there were difficulties too. For example, some people thought I was a thief, a member of the secret police or a spy while I was doing research in local basements.
A few times, I also had to hear nasty opinions supporting the war in Ukraine or referring to Putin as their president, even though they live in Estonia. You listen, because this is also relevant information for understanding the region: it reflects the local structure of feelings. These people are part of society, nonetheless. I may disagree with what they say, but if I want to understand what’s going on in Ida-Virumaa and give voice to local people, I have to include some of these views.
And how did you handle that situation?
Well, if the person sharing these kinds of opinions is my taxi driver, I try not to bother him because my life is in his hands. On other occasions, I could politely disagree or just leave.
I remember one occasion in Sillamäe when a person showing us his basement bunker started to rant about our ignorance of what was going on in Ukraine and who had really started the war. Then the artist Anna Shkodenko sharply answered that the difference was that here he could express this opinion without fearing for his life, while on the other side of the Narva River you end up in prison or get beaten up for disagreeing with the hegemonic discourse.
What were you really looking for through your research in these spaces?
At the beginning of my research, in 2018, I met Aleksandr Popolitov at the Sillamäe Museum. As he showed me his collection of old postcards, he asked, “Why is someone from Spain interested in us?” At the time, I couldn’t give a good answer and mumbled something about Soviet modernity. I continued to get that question over the years, so at some point I decided to turn it around and use it to my advantage, asking in return, “And why are you surprised that I’m interested in this region?”
I didn’t always know what I was searching for, nor did I fully understand what was going on. I don’t mean in terms of language, but rather in terms of my own epistemic limitations. Then I realised that there is a deeper reality that is not always visible and plays a very important role in how society is organised here. It is like the submerged side of an iceberg.
If one of the people you spoke with picked up this book today and read it, would they be surprised by your ideas or agree with your interpretation?
Honestly, I think most of these people would be proud that their views had been heard and published by a good international publisher, Cornell University Press. The time they dedicated to me was not wasted. Indeed, I’ve already had that kind of feedback from some of them while presenting my book in Sillamäe or giving an interview in Narva a few months ago. I guess that if they continue inviting me, there must be a sense of trust.
Did you also meet Estonian speakers there?
Of course. Russian speakers mostly live in cities, in buildings from the Stalin or Khrushchev era. Many Estonian speakers live in more rural areas, perhaps because their properties were returned in the 1990s. So the relationship between urban and rural dwelling and ethnicity is very interesting. But, to my surprise, the biggest difference in the use of basements or dachas was not ethnic, but generational. Older people use these spaces more attentively than younger people.
The book has a dreamy atmosphere. The writing is romantic and passionate, and the reader gets carried away, with you very present in the descriptions.
I guess you mean that as a compliment, because I was rather careful not to romanticise things in the region. I made a lot of effort to make the book accessible to readers with different backgrounds. Also, the use of the self is typical of anthropological research, as we create relationships with people in order to study wider social relations.
When I started writing it, I had just moved back to Tallinn after working in Finland and England. I had bought an apartment and was trying to find my place in this society as a permanent resident. So I turned my own personal discomfort into a social investigation.
When I visited other people’s basements and garages, I often left with the suspicion that I had gone there to hide something myself, something I couldn’t name. From this experience I learned that patience is a form of intelligence. Not everything has to be resolved immediately; not everything has to have a clear answer.
I have lived abroad for half of my life, so my sense of identity is rather complex. In my effort to understand people in Ida-Virumaa, their incomplete sense of belonging and their complex identities, I identified with them. As a result, I felt at home there. After visiting Ida-Virumaa at least once a month for five years, I now relax when I pass Purtse, the mental boundary of the region, and think: “Home again.”
Do you consider this book a portal into Ida-Virumaa?
Readers will understand how the current situation came about and see meaningful connections between things that had not previously been linked. For instance, they will see how the extractivist history sets the frame for a difficult relationship with institutions and limits our capacity to imagine alternative futures for the region.
I would be happy if the book helped make perceptions of Ida-Virumaa less negative and helped readers understand that there are many ways of being Estonian. I have seen that this society is not as homogeneous as the media and the government depict it. But this diversity is still presented as a burden because of how current Estonian identity has been articulated.
However, many of the people I spoke with feel a strong connection with their own territory and with this country, even if in their own way, and despite the mine shafts, chemical stench, institutional mistrust and neglect by the rest of Estonia.
But the book is not only about Ida-Virumaa. Some of these ideas relate to the human condition more broadly. Half of life is a back room: spaces that are neither outside nor inside. Indeed, secrets make us human, and they do not disappear once we become part of digital societies.
And why is the perception of the region so negative?
Well, the whole book is an answer to that question. But, in short, it is because of the ecological memory of the place, its past and present mining and military uses, and the way Estonian identity has been constructed since 1991.
What other book about Estonia would you recommend?
In literature, The Master of Kõrboja (Kõrboja peremees) by Anton Tammsaare, Treading Air (Paigallend) by Jaan Kross, The Compromise (Компромисс) by Sergei Dovlatov, and The Man Who Spoke Snakish (Mees, kes teadis ussisõnu) by Andrus Kivirähk. In social sciences, the best, in my opinion, is Everything Is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia by Sigrid Rausing.
One last question: what are your future projects?
I’ve just finished a new book about collective feelings of geopolitical anxiety and hybrid threats in the Baltic region. Until the end of the year, I’m a fellow at NYU’s Remarque Institute. Then I’ll have an exhibition about Paljassaare with Viktor Gurov at Hobusepea Gallery.
This interview was originally published in Estonian by Edasi.
