Margaret Tilk challenges Tallinn’s view of Narva

Margaret Tilk argues that people in Tallinn often treat Narva as an empty, deficient space that the capital must fill. Her essay, published on ERR’s website for the Feministeerium portal, reflects on how outsiders view the city and its residents.

Tilk spent two weeks in Narva as an artist in residence at NART. She writes that a residency involves not only working but also absorbing the surrounding context and creating opportunities to meet people. In Narva, she says, people approached her quickly, perhaps because it was clear from her “foreign” appearance that she was either part of Narva’s football team or, more likely, a NART resident. She stresses that she was a guest, and that her reflections should be read from that perspective.

When I say Narva, you say Estonian Republic

To explore how people in the capital see Narva, Tilk organised a decolonial, class-conscious and feminist body-mapping workshop in Tallinn. Participants created a timeline of Ida-Virumaa and Narva, adding social and environmental problems as well as sources of joy.

The account of Narva she heard in Tallinn began with the successful Kreenholm manufactory, established in the 19th century. Before the Soviet occupation, many Estonian-speaking people lived in the city, the narrative went, but Narva was bombed to the ground. After the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Estonians were not allowed to return, and many Russian-speaking workers were settled in the city. Today, the account continued, Narva residents are segregated and poorly educated. Estonian speakers bear some responsibility, but have also tried to bring culture to the region through initiatives such as Station Narva and Vaba Lava. It was unclear whether this had worked. Narva’s other offering, someone added, was the Kiviõli ski centre.

Tilk was struck by how this story framed cultural initiatives as bringing culture to Narva. She also objected to the implication that historical ties made the land more the property of people who do not live there than of current residents and their ancestors, who have lived there for eight decades. To her, this carried a colonial undertone: Narva was presented as an incomplete, almost empty place that Tallinn had a “duty” to fill.

She describes the situation as painful. People who moved to Narva as a result of settler colonialism and Russification directed by an occupying state are now sometimes viewed in a colonial manner by those who feel connected to people driven from their homes by settlement. Tilk says colonial attitudes are not the same as colonial actions. Her aim, she writes, is not to diminish the intergenerational trauma of Estonian speakers, but to encourage empathy for people brought to Narva as Soviet political prisoners and for those who moved there in search of a better everyday life economically.

Tilk also reflects on her own responsibility for the workshop’s discussion, saying that creating the space meant she was responsible for guiding the conversation. Announcing a decolonial perspective, she writes, can mean something different to Estonians raised to see themselves as colonised rather than as people who may hold a colonial gaze. She adds that it is natural for people to be less familiar with current issues in a city that feels distant and unfamiliar, and says Estonian-language media do not often highlight Narva’s joys and difficulties.