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Artikkel uurib Tartu rahuga kaasnenud majanduslike muutuste üht tahku, nn etnilise äri tähtsust ebakindlatel aegadel usalduse loomisel panga Georg Scheel & Co näitel. Enamik Scheeli panga kliente kuulus baltisaksa eliidi hulka, mistõttu mängis pank Eesti Vabariigis tegutsenud sakslaste kultuuri- ja sotsiaalelus keskset rolli. Artiklis aga näidatakse, et panga direktor Klaus Scheel oli aktiivne ka nn rahvuslikult ükskõiksete ning eestlaste ringkondades. Eesti Vabariigi panganduselu pöördepunktiks võib lugeda 1920. aastat, mil nii Scheeli pank kui ka eestlastele kuulunud pangad rikastusid, kaubeldes Nõukogude Venemaalt tulnud kullaga, mis aitas luua uusi kontakte ja võimalusi nii isiklikul kui ka ärilisel tasandil. Kuigi saksa ühendused moodustasid Scheeli jaoks olulise usaldusvõrgustiku, ei olnud tema eesmärk vana korra taastamine. Koos eestlastest kolleegidega kuulus Scheel uute ärimeeste ja poliitikute ringkonda, kes kasutasid ära uues olukorras tekkinud võimalusi. Nad vaatasid tulevikku ja nende tegevuspiirkond oli vastloodud Eesti Vabariik.

In her influential article, Tara Zahra works to develop a new style of historical analysis that functions without presupposed national or other identities. However, it is difficult to integrate her concept of ‘national indifference’ into a practical program of research. The present article argues that this can be achieved by a broader usage of the term. First, instead of excluding national and ethnic affiliations from research altogether, it stresses what functions they fulfill in individual lives. Second, it argues that nationality has a meaning in some contexts, while it is unimportant in others. Therefore, the concept ‘spaces of national indifference’ is developed. This concept is exemplified by discussing the biography of the Baltic German banker Klaus Scheel in interwar Estonia.

After World War II, the Soviet leadership returned to the comparatively nationality-friendly rhetoric of the mid-1920s with regard to Estonia and the other Baltic Soviet republics. This rhetoric was taken at face value by many party workers in the republic, who believed that their national rights were supported by Moscow. In reality, however, if the Soviet leadership’s faith in the loyalty of non-Russian nationalities had been low throughout much of the 1920s and 1930s already, it was even lower with regard to the republics that had been forcefully incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. This is also true for Estonia. Estonians, especially those who had remained in the country during the German occupation, were distrusted from the beginning. Problems that resulted from Soviet policy were soon “nationalized” and interpreted by the new regime as a consequence of “bourgeois nationalism.” Also, resistance against the Soviet system supported a consolidation of Estonia’s national self-consciousness. Meanwhile, the regime offered a Soviet version of Estonian national identity that was diametrically opposed to the one promoted by the resistance. When the Soviet state crushed active and passive resistance by using mass terror to force the Estonian peasants onto kolkhozes in 1949, it not only presented techniques of mass terror as “class struggle in the countryside, it interpreted them as part of a conflict between bourgeois and Soviet understandings of nationality.

Soviet state farms (sovkhozes) have not attracted much attention in historical literature. While the history of forcing farmsteads into collective farms (kolkhozes) is nothing less than the history of subordinating the peasants and changing the lives of millions, the history of sovkhozes seems rather peripheral. They were purely state farms, their contacts with rural society were marginal and their economic weight was insignificant due to their small number. It might seem that sovkhozes do not contribute much to understanding Soviet agriculture. And yet, due to their exceptional position, sovkhozes give evidence of the ideals and desires of the Soviet elites in their purest form. As opposed to collective farms, there were no local rural traditions that could interfere with the aims of the Communist leadership. Since the work was done by wageworkers, they represented an agriculture without peasants. Soviet ideals were virtually implemented under laboratory conditions. Furthermore, until the Krushchev years, sovkhozes were exclusively and generously financed from the state budget. They were very well supplied with manpower, draft cattle and towing vehicles, machines, fertilizer and animals. In the Baltic Soviet republics before mass collectivization the main function of the state farms was to propagandize Soviet large scale agricultural production. The Estonian case study shows that they failed. The oversupply of machines and fertilizer led to their unproductive use. Likewise, while the number of animals in state farms was increased at the expense of private farmsteads, the sovkhozes lacked the conditions for large scale animal husbandry and food had to be bought from the private sector. And while the sovkhozes had more manpower than they could productively use, turnover among workers was very high. Many came from the old Soviet republics, had problems coping with the Estonian language and saw their job merely as an intermediate stop. The discontinuous character of the workforce was one reason for inadequate and incompetent work. The strict forms of Soviet work organization proved unrealistic in a number of state farms and were replaced by local modes of labour. The line between self-help, corruption and self-enrichment of the sovkhoz leadership is often hard to draw. Due to these defects the sovkhozes never served as an advertising vehicle for large scale Soviet agriculture. The Communist Party leadership knew this perfectly well, yet they could not admit that the main reason for the problems was the Soviet agricultural policy itself. Keywords: Stalinism, Soviet countryside, state farms (sovkhozes), Estonia, agriculture.