Uku Lember received the 2012-13 AABS Dissertation Grant to complete his dissertation, “Silenced Ethnicity: Russian-Estonian Intermarriages in Soviet Estonia (an Oral History).” The AABS Dissertation Grant was crucial to his research — it enabled him to conduct and transcribe the follow-up oral history interviews that form the empirical basis for his work. Uku defended his dissertation at Central European University (Budapest) in Fall 2014.
My doctoral dissertation historicizes the tense coexistence of Estonians and Russian-speakers in Estonia. It is based on semi-structured life-story interviews with representatives of families that blended “Estonian local” and “Russian newcomer” backgrounds. My research traces the emergence and existence of two parallel but intermingled linguistically marked societies in Soviet Estonia. My dissertation highlights interactions, exchanges and negotiations in multi-cultural settings in favour of nationally bounded explanations; it seeks to flesh out concrete and diverse individual lives by looking at identifications with culturally available patterns. The work focuses on the period of “late socialism” – the time between Stalinism and perestroika.
Uku was the Telluride Association Visiting PhD Fellow at Cornell University in 2011-12. He has presented his work at AABS in Chicago, ASN in New York City, IOHA and ISA Buenos Aires (all in 2012), ASEEES in San Antonio (2014), and at various other conferences in Europe. Currently, Uku is a research fellow at Tallinn University. He is preparing for a new project of oral histories with Ukrainian east-west “mixed” families in summer 2015 (based in Kiev).