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steeluloid's review against another edition
1.0
I finished it.
Nowhere near enough about collective farms or the people on them. A passing nod to history. way too much about Ingrid and the most tedious field trip in existence.
Maybe that was the point. This book shared with me the true spirit of a bleak and pointless existence by helping me to experience it for myself.
Nowhere near enough about collective farms or the people on them. A passing nod to history. way too much about Ingrid and the most tedious field trip in existence.
Maybe that was the point. This book shared with me the true spirit of a bleak and pointless existence by helping me to experience it for myself.
balancinghistorybooks's review
4.0
I chose Sigrid Rausing's Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia as part of my Around the World in 80 Books challenge. I was quite looking forward to it, particularly as I have included very little non-fiction on my list. It seemed as though it would offer something a bit different, and whilst a lot of the themes are similar to some of the other Eastern European literature which I read before it, the very fact that it is a memoir makes it all the more fascinating.
Between 1993 and 1994, Sigrid Rausing, a Swedish anthropology student working towards her PhD at University College London, travelled to Estonia to undertake fieldwork. She stayed in a former Soviet Union border protection zone named Noarootsi. She met and interviewed many different people for her project. The book's blurb proclaims that 'Rausing's conversations with the local people touched on many subjects: the economic privations of post-Soviet existence; the bewildering influx of Western products; and the Swedish background of many of their people.' In this memoir, published twenty years after her fieldwork ended, Rausing reflects upon history and political repression, and the way in which the wider world affected the individuals whom she met.
Of the aims of her PhD, Rausing writes that she wanted to explore the themes of history and memory in Estonia: 'I was there to study the local perception and understanding of historical events in the context of the Soviet repression and the censorship of history.' The collective farm which she stayed and worked on folded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was 'officially closed down in February 1993, following a vote by all the members in which just one person voted for its continued existence.' Rausing lived and worked in the village, immersing herself as much as she was able into gatherings and the like, and trying her best to learn the very difficult Estonian language.
One gets a feel for Rausing's surroundings almost as soon as the book begins. She writes: 'The rest of the villages on the peninsula - bedraggled collections of grey wooden houses with thatched rooves, sometimes propped up by shoddy white brick - were like villages all over the Soviet Union at that particular time. Forgotten places sinking into quiet poverty.' Rausing gives many examples of the visible changes within Estonia following the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and the effects which poverty and strict rule had: 'Haapsalu was the nearest town to my prospective field site. It had been a spick-and-span little coastal town in the 1930s, a summer spa where people came for mineral mud baths. Now, the baths were long since gone, the paint on the beautiful wooden houses flaking and unkempt... The main street was wide and muddy, with many shops selling few things, and almost no cars.'
The most fascinating element of Everything is Wonderful is the way in which Rausing manages to be at once a participant and an outsider in Noarootsi. Because of her position, she is able to gather so many different perspectives on issues affecting Estonian people. She builds a full picture of life for those villagers and townsfolk 'forgotten' by the wider world, often lived in poverty: 'The people on the collective farm had little connection either with the land or with high culture. They just got by, day by day, enduring the uncertainty, the confusion, and the quiet fear: fear of unemployment, fear of Russia, fear of the future.' Everything is Wonderful is stark and bleak, but very human; it is at once enlightening and harrowing. Rausing's memoir is a fascinating and important piece of social history, told from a position of retrospect, but working from the notes which she collected whilst on her fieldwork trip.
Between 1993 and 1994, Sigrid Rausing, a Swedish anthropology student working towards her PhD at University College London, travelled to Estonia to undertake fieldwork. She stayed in a former Soviet Union border protection zone named Noarootsi. She met and interviewed many different people for her project. The book's blurb proclaims that 'Rausing's conversations with the local people touched on many subjects: the economic privations of post-Soviet existence; the bewildering influx of Western products; and the Swedish background of many of their people.' In this memoir, published twenty years after her fieldwork ended, Rausing reflects upon history and political repression, and the way in which the wider world affected the individuals whom she met.
Of the aims of her PhD, Rausing writes that she wanted to explore the themes of history and memory in Estonia: 'I was there to study the local perception and understanding of historical events in the context of the Soviet repression and the censorship of history.' The collective farm which she stayed and worked on folded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was 'officially closed down in February 1993, following a vote by all the members in which just one person voted for its continued existence.' Rausing lived and worked in the village, immersing herself as much as she was able into gatherings and the like, and trying her best to learn the very difficult Estonian language.
One gets a feel for Rausing's surroundings almost as soon as the book begins. She writes: 'The rest of the villages on the peninsula - bedraggled collections of grey wooden houses with thatched rooves, sometimes propped up by shoddy white brick - were like villages all over the Soviet Union at that particular time. Forgotten places sinking into quiet poverty.' Rausing gives many examples of the visible changes within Estonia following the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and the effects which poverty and strict rule had: 'Haapsalu was the nearest town to my prospective field site. It had been a spick-and-span little coastal town in the 1930s, a summer spa where people came for mineral mud baths. Now, the baths were long since gone, the paint on the beautiful wooden houses flaking and unkempt... The main street was wide and muddy, with many shops selling few things, and almost no cars.'
The most fascinating element of Everything is Wonderful is the way in which Rausing manages to be at once a participant and an outsider in Noarootsi. Because of her position, she is able to gather so many different perspectives on issues affecting Estonian people. She builds a full picture of life for those villagers and townsfolk 'forgotten' by the wider world, often lived in poverty: 'The people on the collective farm had little connection either with the land or with high culture. They just got by, day by day, enduring the uncertainty, the confusion, and the quiet fear: fear of unemployment, fear of Russia, fear of the future.' Everything is Wonderful is stark and bleak, but very human; it is at once enlightening and harrowing. Rausing's memoir is a fascinating and important piece of social history, told from a position of retrospect, but working from the notes which she collected whilst on her fieldwork trip.
marcella's review
3.0
I enjoyed this book. The prose was almost lyrical, Rausing did a great job of demonstrating the dichotomy of feeling lost and sad and unwelcome in such a forbidding place while simultaneously falling for long lonely walks and slowly-made friends.
loppear's review
3.0
Mix of history and personal account of a year spent interviewing and working in a post-Soviet rural town. Perhaps the dissertation that this book came out of gives more of the tales of the residents pasts and experiences, but this account was hampered/meandering as a memoir for my interests.
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