Identity has traditionally been understood in terms of ethnicity and cultural traditions that go back for generations to a common indigenous origin. In recent social scientific literature, national identities have more often been perceived primarily as products of conscious nationbuilding led by elite groupings that seek to legitimize power and status. In this chapter, we attempt to elaborate a view which conceives identities neither as adaptation of pre-given traditions nor as products of nationbuilding steered from above. In the context of the breakdown of the Soviet Union we argue that it is important to view identity construction as a political process connected to the constitution of new political arenas and ideological battle for hegemony on these arenas.

Our paper draws from our ongoing study that examines identity construction in late- and post-Soviet Estonia. The first part of the paper studies the relationship of the political and the national in the mobilisation of the opposition movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially in the rise of the Estonian Popular Front. We illustrate the peculiarities of the relationship between ethnic and political mobilisation in Estonia by employing a comparison between the Popular Front movements in Estonia and the Karelian Republic. The second part of the paper studies the identity construction among the Russian speaking population in present-day Estonia. In this context nationality politics of contemporary Estonian State has often been described as "assimilation", "ethnic-cultural violence" and "pressure". This argumentation of radical non-Estonian activists is studied as part of the discursive production of non-Estonian identity and the politics of defining Estonian territory.

In the recent social scientific and geographical literature, the definition of territorial identity has been transformed from fixed or unchanging spaces to changing and dynamic poly-vocal categories (Castells, 1997). In particular, constructivistic theories of society and debates on globalisation have contested the role of the nation-state and its boundaries. It has been argued that we are moving towards a situation in which strict and exclusive boundaries are fading away and becoming more porous and looser frontiers. One major source of inspiration for this line of argument has been the disappearance and de-territorialization of the political dichotomy between East and West. Both "east" and "west" have lost their "others" against which political and territorial identities, as well as images of external threat, were constructed (Paasi, 1999). In the extreme case, it has been argued that the nation state is simply gradually withering away. In "post-modern" context nation states, fixed boundaries and "spaces of places" are symbols of the past which are increasingly replaced by a dynamic global world and "space of flows" (Castells, 1989).

From the point of view of nationality the post-modern interpretation has meant a sharp separation of identity construction from both its "ethic origins" and from the process of "social construction of identity" (Smith, 1986; Paasi, 1996). Especially, in the context of the softening of the old East-West divide it is evident that national definition of boundaries and identities is not disappearing. On the contrary, there is a strong tendency of re-nationalizing boundaries and this process is related with strong internal links to the formation of new political communities (Eskelinen, Liikanen & Oksa, 1999).

The connection between identity construction and the formation of new type of political communities is apparent in the history of the formation of national states in Central and Northern Europe. In the so-called latecomer states the national movements did not act simply as agents of above led nationbuilding and statemaking. In most cases they played a vital role in the constitution of a political arena where "the people" was to be the legitimate holder of sovereign power (Hroch, 1968). The 19^th century national movements fostered the creation of a new political language which was built on the idea of the sovereignty of the people. Simultaneously, by organizing people they participated in the constitution of a new sphere of public politics between civil society and the state. In this sense national identification did not represent simply an ethnic demarcation between "us" and "the other' but was part of new kind of political battle over the right to represent the "will of the people" (Liikanen, 1995; Liikanen 1999). In the following, it is suggested that even in the case of the successor states of the Former Soviet Union, the framing of national identification as part of the breakthrough of modern politics and the constitution of a new type of political community is essential.

First we will explore the peculiar relationship between the construction of ethnic and political identity by employing a comparison between the Popular Front of Estonia and the Popular Front of Karelia. From the present-day perspective, the comparison between the Popular Fronts of the late Soviet period is not simply a question of somewhat similar movements in somewhat similar Northwest Soviet Republics. Even if, both in the Estonian and the Karelian case, the Popular Fronts played a similar role in the construction and definition of late and post-Soviet territories, they have achieved very different places in history.

In Estonia, the Popular Front has become part of the history of the struggle for independence. In Estonian historiography, the rise of the Popular Front is seldom pictured as a social or political phenomenon. Usually, it is depicted in relation to a new "national awakening" and regarded as a cultural movement fighting for the reconstruction of Estonian identity (Taagepera, 1993; Hosking, Aves & Duncan, 1992).

The story of the Popular Front of Karelia is not, to the same extent, a "history of the winners". In Karelia, the history of the Popular Front has not become part of the new civic religion of the state. On the contrary, the standpoint of the examination of the Front in Karelia has primarily been related with the history of the collapse of the Soviet system. On the one hand, the Karelian Front represented the increase in civic activity, which was made possible by Perestroika. On the other hand, it has been viewed as an expression of the failure of both the communist reformers and the new political opposition to rally strong civic activity for the support of their politics. Questions of nationality and self-identification were obviously involved but they have, however, often remained outside the history of the Popular Front (Tsygankov, 1991).

An appropriate starting point for a study of both the Estonian and Karelian Popular Fronts is offered by Andrus Park (1995) who has analysed the turning points of the collapse of the Soviet state system in Estonia. In his analysis, Park distinguishes the main phases in the collapse of the Soviet system as follows: "the revolution from above" in 1985 (through which he hints that the first sparks came from Moscow); the rebellion of the intelligentsia in 1986 (through which he defines the social background of the first initiatives for action); the re-invention of national symbols in 1987 (the Memorial Day demonstrations which for Park mark the onset of popular mobilisation); and, finally Opposition mass movement and the re-orientation of the ruling elite between 1988 and 1990.

Park's notion of the "revolution from above" as the initial phase is easy to accept. Even in the case of the Republic of Karelia it is evident that the first impetus came from Moscow and was a result of general political crises rather than the activities of local opposition forces, political dissidents or nationalists. When the first non-governmental voluntary associations were established in the mid-1980s, the initiative came often from a younger generation of party functionaries who were committed to Gorbachev's reform politics. In many cases, the conscious objective was to create horizontal organisational structures external to the party machinery at the local level. At this stage, the emerging associations sought to strengthen civic organisation and civic identities outside party control but were supposed to accept the "leading position of the party" (Fish, 1995:32-33).

In regard to Andrus Park's notion of the "rebellion of the intelligentsia", it is obvious that we can hardly speak of a similar phenomenon in Karelia in 1986. Where as in Estonia the soviet type organizations of the intelligentsia – unions of writers, scholars, journalists and artists – openly condemned the cultural politics of the Brezhnevian era, in Karelia the intellectual and professional strata remained officially silent. Still, even in Karelia there appeared some new cultural and discussion clubs. These informal clubs of intellectuals did not take an active stand against the dominant system, but, however, they did extend the possibilities of free discussion and expression of opinion. In this sense, these clubs sparked a process of alternative self-identification which departed from the official concept of the Soviet citizen. In particular, youth organisations adopted images of the Western youth culture and openly contradicted the established Soviet identity (Puuronen, 1996).

In Estonia the re-invention of the national symbols during the period of "Memorial Day riots" was the first step to challenge the establishment in the name of the people and to build an alternative hegemonic block. In Estonian the national history, especially the period of Estonian independence from 1920 to 1940, offered a platform for national identification which was employed extensively in the mobilization of the oppositional movement. In Karelia too, the organizations of the ethnic minorities promoted openly alternative cultural and civic identities, and they were in the avant-garde in demanding for a greater freedom for organization and new alternative self-identification (Klementyev, 1996). Still, in "multicultural" Karelia hegemonic blocks could not be built on ethnic based slogans. There simply did not exist glorious dates and celebrated figures from the past which could have been used for constructing a common Karelian history and identity attractive to the Russian majority. From the beginning the oppositional movement had to employ other type of identification as basis for the constitution of alternative political community. In 1988 a number of memorial groups emerged, which in many sense offered parallel notions of counter-hegemonic politics. They activated memories of the Stalinist past, and set a clear opposition to the prevailing Soviet ideology.

The fourth phase of the Estonian mobilisation - Opposition mass movement and the re-orientation of the ruling elite 1988-1990 - did not have a counterpart in Karelia as such. The mere notion of an actual mass mobilisation in Karelia is problematic. Efforts were made to mobilise the masses, especially by the Karelian Popular Front. Still, the Karelian Front achieved only limited success in mass organisation - at its height the Karelian Front had about a thousand members (Tsygankov, 1991). One reason for this was apparently that the opposition movement in Karelia did not possess the kind of cultural and organisational capital, collective self-identification or shared memories of collective action, that made the Estonian popular front successful (Ruutsoo, 1996). In Karelia as in many other parts of the Russian Federation, civil society became the principal concept of indicating opposition against the communist regime. As the concepts of popular movement or popular front the notion of civil society offered a change for alternative identification and a perspective for building of a hegemonic block which would have challenged communist state centred power structures.

In terms of political theory, the Karelian Front did not have very clear ideological profile, and it played its most important role more in challenging the Soviet system. The Front achieved its most visible role during the election campaigns of 1989 and 1990, when it functioned as the alternative force to the official party candidates. Later the Karelian Front was unable to institutionalise itself as a popular political movement. The party elite in Karelia did not fragment and ally itself with the mass movement in the same extend it did in Estonia. This weakened the position of the Front during the quasi-parliamentarian conditions of the late Soviet period. After the collapse of the Soviet Union both the Estonian Popular Front and the Karelian Front split into competing parties and national groups. Their ideological profile and organizational form was developed under the Soviet conditions, and it did not fit without problems to the new political arena they themselves had created.

It can be concluded that the Popular Fronts of both Estonia and Karelia played an important role as the first organised political opposition movements. The Fronts expanded the scope of the political system and implemented the political significance of civil society. Still, in many ways, the movements reflected even more the re-orientation and re-identification of the intelligentsia. The meagre, but active, group of intelligentsia had the possibility and the capability of acting both in the frame of the old political arena and in the frame of the emerging "public sphere". The bulk of the people supported them but had only little to do with the formation of the social images the movements produced. Disregarding the differences in their rhetoric, whether the movements spoke in the name of the people or in the name of the society (civil society), the primary identification that the Popular Fronts offered was a notion of opposition against the power structures of the communist state. In spite of differences in the degree that nationalistic slogans and ethnic demarcations were employed common feature to both movements was that they both fought to create a new type of political community. Both in Estonia and in Karelia a new identification with alternative political community, nation or civil society, took place notwithstanding the ethnic base for the process. This link to the constitution of new type of political community is an important background factor even when the present-day identity politics of the post-Soviet Estonian State are concerned (Berg, 1999).

If we compare post-Soviet non-Estonian counter-hegemonic politics in Estonia with the rise of Popular Fronts in the Soviet Union, many similarities and differences can be seen. In contemporary Estonia, media plays a more important role in the apparently free civil society in forming a public opinion and an opposition to the state. (Cohen & Arato, 1994; Taylor, 1995). Free civil society has often been considered as an important pillar of a democratic society. The actual relation between the state and the civil society is not, however, stable. They both are shaped in the subjective interpretation and mobilisation of individuals. In their interpretations, individuals reflect their history and the contemporary political reality. Individuals do not, however, only interpret but also reproduce their society.

In the Soviet Union, no oppositional politics was allowed, and therefore, much of the oppositional politics took place in other - often underground - spheres of society. As a modern state, the Soviet Union needed specific policies to maintain its strength. These policies were not based only on propaganda and a certain production of knowledge but also on direct use of power, control and management. In the Soviet Union, the role of those "offstage" discourses that took place beyond the direct observation of power holders, became important. Those discourses can be related with the way that James C. Scott (1990:9) refers to hidden transcripts. He stresses "that whatever form the individual assumes - offstage parody, dreams of violent revenge, millennial visions of a world turned upside down - this collective hidden transcript is essential to any dynamic view of power relations". In a way, those assumptions became manifested in the early stages of the above-described rise of Popular Fronts in the late 1980s.

Contemporary Estonian legislation is based on the generally recognised principle of democracy. The Constitution secures equal human and civil rights, as well as constitutes the legal framework of the Estonian political system. Simultaneously, Estonia has entered the post-modern spaces of global economics, World Wide Web and media. People have an access to a wide range of information that promotes possibilities of the counter-hegemonic popular politics. It can, however, be argued that the democratic ideal does not fully reflect the contemporary social and political realities. Estonia has "nationalised" (Brubacker, 1996) its territory and claimed the monopoly of power. This has "othered" one section of the non-Estonian population, as well as transformed the concept of democracy and political system to discussions of inter-ethnic relations, social stability and border construction (Brednikova, 1999).

The question of time and context-dependent knowledge production becomes crucial in the discursive formation of identity. In order to illustrate this, we can analyse the argumentation of Juri Mishin, the leading figure of the "Union of Russian Citizens", and Olga Zhurjari-Osipova, a researcher at the Centre of International and Social Research in Tallinn. In their statements, recently published in Helsingin Sanomat, both Mishin and Zhurjari transform the politics of identity from personal interpretation of society to the political construction of the Estonian State. They struggle for specific social meanings, and participate in the discursive production of both non-Estonian identity and the Estonian-Russian border.

Mishin is one of the most disputed non-Estonian activists in Estonia. He relates the contemporary political situation in Estonia with other conflicting regions in Europe - "If Estonia continues this political route, the war like in Bosnia or Karabach is inevitable". Mishin clearly appeals to Russia for political assistance and transforms the question of counter-hegemonic oppositional identity from the personal and local levels to the national and international. Mishin represents the radical and rather visible, extreme non-Estonian activism. His political rhetoric should, however, not be understood as "the one and only non-Estonian identity". On the contrary, the non-Estonian identity is still under rapid change, and the non-Estonian population has been split up to a number of distinctive political and ethnic fractions.

"Estonian state certainly not has violated the human rights of anyone". This statement of Olga Zhurjari-Osipova reflects the other extreme of the non-Estonian attitude against the Estonian national politics. Zhurjari represents the generation of young educated intellectuals who have socialised with the Estonian society to another extent than the generation of older Russian-born industrial workers. She is concerned with the disadvantages of the Estonian national politics, but fully accepts the course of the contemporary legal framework of Estonia. Unlike many others, Zhurjari and Mishin evidently have a relative power in the discursive production of non-Estonian identity and Estonian territory. They participate in public discourses in which identities - Estonian, Russian, European, Estonian Russian, Soviet Russian and others - are continuously produced. Identities may become radicalised and conflicting as well disappear or reappear in the discursive construction of meaning.

In the present situation there are several interesting possibilities of studying further the construction of identities in the public discussion. The textual representations of Mishin and Zuhjari, as well as the late-Soviet liberalisation of the "discursive landscape" illustrate well the significance of the political construction of identity. The political representations of new identification are found in various forms in a number of sources, it is more hard to study the role of the local and everyday experience in the political construction of identity. In our mind this is the principal challenge for further study of identity construction in post-soviet conditions.

Klementyev, Y. (1996) Formation of a Civil Society and National Movement in the Republic of Karelia. In: Heikkinen K., Zdravomyslova, E. (eds.) Civil Society in the European North. Concept and Context. St. Petersburg: Centre for Independent Social Research, ðð.142–145