Harri Moora – Nõukogude Eesti etnograafia sihiseadja

Harri Moora (1900–1968) was an Estonian archaeologist who became an internationally acclaimed researcher in the 1930s. He was also a proponent of the democratic line of Estonian nationalism and a critic of the authoritarian president Konstantin Päts. In 1940, he took part in establishing Soviet power in Estonia but quickly grew disillusioned with the communist regime and returned to his academic career at the University of Tartu. For their part, the Nazi occupiers stripped him of his position, seeing him as a Bolshevik supporter, after which he briefly participated in the resistance against the Nazis. He did not manage to flee the new Soviet occupation for the West, as many others did, and remained in Estonia along with his large family. The security apparatus forced him to cooperate: for years he was a KGB agent, but due to lack of sources, we do not know how active a role he played. In the second half of the 1940s, Moora held on to his position as professor of archaeology at the University of Tartu. The leading figures in Estonian ethnography had fled to the West or died in the Soviet prison camps, so it fell upon Moora to teach ethnography at the university level. At the same time, he also guided the adaptation of the Estonian National Museum to the ideological demands of the Soviet regime. A skilled diplomat, he helped to build a Soviet facade for Estonian ethnography, while also attempting to preserve its continuity and national traditions. His professional relationships with influential colleagues from Moscow and Leningrad forged early on, played an important role. The hardest years for Moora were 1949–1951, when, like many other Estonian intellectuals, he faced accusations of bourgeois nationalism. Nevertheless, he retained his position as head of the archaeology (and ethnography) sector of the Estonian SSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of History. From 1952, he lived and worked in Tallinn. In the 1950s, he mainly dealt with Estonian ethnogenesis. He spearheaded the development of comb ceramic culture theory, which held that the Finno-Ugric language-speaking forefathers of the Estonians arrived in today´s Estonia in the 3rd millennium BCE. Moora’s interdisciplinary approach garnered broad recognition, especially in the Soviet Union. Moora never joined the Communist Party. In 1957, Moora became an academician at the Estonian SSR Academy of Sciences, which gave him more opportunities. One of his first projects was steering the revival of the Estonian National Museum, which had been gutted under Stalinist repressions. On Moora’s recommendation, Aleksei Peterson was appointed director, a post he would hold for more than 30 years. Moora’s position as an academician also paved the way to travel abroad and contact with Western colleagues. Connection with the KGB allowed him to travel unusually frequently to capitalist countries. It is likely he bore this burden reluctantly while taking advantage of it to pursue his academic interests. His collaboration with security agencies did not influence the content of Moora’s research. By the 1960s, Moora had attained noteworthy academic recognition and thus social status in the Soviet society. Moora’s role in Soviet Estonian ethnography was greatest in the second half of the 1940s and the 1950s. It was promoted by the closeness of archaeology and ethnography in the Soviet system, above all in the context of ethnogenesis studies. Secondly, it took time for a new generation of ethnographers to flower. In the 1960s, Moora’s significance as a trendsetter in Estonian ethnography declined gradually, but his ties and authority endured for the remainder of his life and even posthumously.