Jaak Kilmi

Born :

October 23, 1973

The Soviet Union wasn't so closed - it wasn't North Korea. It was a practical system. People were creative and industrious, so if they wanted to see Western TV programs, they would invent a way to do so. It's strange in a way. There was an official truth, and there was daily life.

korea creative people

It was life under the Soviet system - we were struggling with every big problem. Publicly, my parents had to queue up to buy food, but were able to live secret lives in their private rooms. With the TV set in the living room, we were able to see Western pop culture -a different reality from what we were living. For me, it was like two different universes existed at the same time, and we got used to being in these parallel universes.

different-universes struggle reality

In Northern Estonia, the Soviet authorities didn't have a recipe on how to fight against the popularity of Finnish TV. Audiences didn't want to watch hardcore Soviet propaganda.

estonia fighting watches

In the mid-1980s, however, the Estonian TV programmers came up with a clever idea: they asked Moscow for millions of rubles to make propaganda in Estonia to fight the Finnish programs' popularity. They got millions from the government, but what they made was not propaganda at all! They simply made good, entertaining programs - no one in Estonia recognized them as propaganda, only Russia thought it was, so they got away with it. Of course, Russia provided their own propaganda programs, but Estonians knew to avoid them.

fighting clever ideas

My childhood in the Soviet Union was not terrible, it was very joyful.

joyful unions childhood

Life under the Soviet system was often funny, absurd really, especially for children.

soviet absurd children

Working under the Soviet system made you very paranoid - people were afraid of everything - and this paranoia is still in people's minds.

paranoia mind people