As Much as Necessary and as Little as Possible: The Interplay of National and Soviet in a Wedding Performance at the 1960 Folk Art Evening of the Estonian Song Festival

This case study explores the political uses of folklore during the Soviet colonial regime through an examination of a traditional wedding performance at the 1960 Folk Art Evening of the Estonian General Song Festival. The aim of the study is to understand the multiple meanings of such folklore performances within the framework of post-Soviet postcolonial studies, drawing on archival material, published memories of the creator of the wedding performance, Laine Mesikäpp, and interviews with her contemporaries. The wedding performance presented local pre-modern traditions and at the same time contributed to the articulation of Soviet ideology, exploiting the regime’s broader and everyday political themes and agendas. The analysis demonstrates the political anti-colonial significance of the staged tradition for the participants, the possibilities for ambivalent interpretations of the wedding performance, and the hybrid nature of some of its elements. A closer look at the personality of the main creator of the wedding performance, Laine Mesikäpp, a prominent singer of traditional songs of the period, as well as the assessments of her contemporaries, reveals how the positions of colonial subject and active creator were reconciled and what strategies were used to cope with the inevitable compromises with the demands of the authorities.