SILLAMÄE
Estonie
18 min
2006
N&b
son:
Tatjana Kozlova et Helena Tulve
À l’époque soviétique, de 1944 à 1991, Sillamäe fut une ville close construite à des fins de recherche nucléaire: installer scientifiques et ouvriers travaillant à l’extraction d’uranium.
Sillamäe était une ville fermée, même aux Estoniens, elle avait un nom de code et ne figurait pas sur les cartes géographiques volontairement faussées.
Depuis l’indépendance de l’Estonie, cette ex-ville atomique est confrontée à de nouvelles orientations, elle s’est ouverte à l’économie capitaliste, l’usine fut fermée, la raison d’être-même de la ville disparut.
La population russophone, plus de 95% des habitants de Sillamäe avant citoyens de la vaste Union Soviétique, constitue aujourd’hui une minorité plus ou moins bien intégrée dans la vie du pays.
SILLAMÄE
18 min
2006
sound:
Tatjana Kozlova et Helena Tulve
During the Soviet period, from 1944 until Estonia’s independence in 1991, Sillamäe was a secret and closed town built to house Russians scientists and workers who would extract uranium and do nuclear research. Sillamäe was closed even to the Estonian people, it had only a code name and did not figure in film, photo and map archives in Estonia.
Since 1991, Sillamäe has become an open city with a capitalist organisation replacing the former centralised socialist system. These new circumstances meant the working conditions changed in no time, the factory was closed, and the very reason for this city’s existence vanished.
The Russian people who had settled there became a minority, unable to speak the official language, in an independent Estonia. Some have Estonian citizenship, others have Russian passports, most of them have the grey non-citizen’s passport, and they are not, or but little, integrated in the socio-economic life of Estonia. They don’t speak Estonian, but their home is here, where they were born, here life is easier than in Russia, and Estonia is a door to Europe.