This article explores informal collective documents created by students living in the dormitories of Tartu State University in the late 1940s-early 1950s, providing an insight into the daily life of Stalin-era youth. The study also draws on oral and written memoirs and correspondence of former students, archival documents of the students’ trade union committee, media, and interviews.
In the post-war decade, the living and studying conditions of students were spartan. Food was rationed, fuel and electricity shortages were permanent, and basic goods were difficult to obtain. The Party and security organs subjected students to constant control, and many were persecuted and repressed by the Soviet authorities.
The daily comments by young men living in a dorm room called Katanga (1947–1951) were written on the pages of a printed calendar full of Soviet anniversaries, images, and slogans. The students’ satirical remarks and cartoonish drawings strikingly contrast sharply with this ideologically ‘laden’ backdrop. The room diaries of five female students from 1951–1955 reflect their social life and strategies for coping day to day. The residents combined their resources for practical purposes while distancing themselves from Soviet reality by playful imitations of official rhetoric and performing the roles of ‘collective farmers’. Both groups of students also decorated their rooms with slogans and pictures as foreseen by the official ideology which carried alternative meanings that the inhabitants gave them.
The members of Katanga and the Five Piglets collective farm were enterprising, sociable students with a broad, diverse circle of friends. Both desk calendars and room diaries largely focus on everyday issues, especially coping with shortages. They describe the procurement of food and joint cooking, help provided by families and friends, but also frequent parties and celebrations. Considering the general atmosphere during Stalin’s rule, some of the terms used by the students in their comments and descriptions were quite bold. For example, they made fun of Stalin’s title ‘generalissimus’, imitated the Soviet processions and slogans in an ironic and performative manner, etc. Yet mutual trust was strong and all the students involved managed to study and graduate despite these risky jokes.
During their student years, they learned how to manoeuvre in a contradictory world of official norms, values acquired at home, and youthful audacity, to be flexible and resourceful. Collective ways of coping were rational, but dorm subcultures also provided a social and emotional safety net for young people in an atmosphere of uncertainty. In response to suspicion and mistrust in the public sphere, they created a more secure and trust-based microcosm with optimism and a carefree attitude.