28.5.2025 | Culture

A Descent into the Tartu of 1985

Text Stewart Johnson 
Photos Henry Griin

Everyone who visits Estonia, and especially Tartu, is enchanted with the architecture, the landscape, the streets, and especially the people and their language. The year 2025 hasn’t existed forever, however. Neither has an independent Estonia. Tartu’s Uus Teater, or New Theatre, invites audiences to accompany them back to the past, specifically 1985, to see and hear what life was like during the Occupation.

TAPTY 1985 is the title of the production, the Cyrrilic spelling of Tartu. Even the description on the theatre’s homepage has been written in the style of the time: “Collaborators, bohemians, trouble-makers, KGB agents, intellectuals, women and normal people, or a collage of life in a provincial town a few years before the Singing Revolution.” Notice how “women” and “normal people” are both listed together.

This was a time marked by a general feeling of hopelessness in Tartu. No one was coming to save them, and there wasn’t even any mention of the city or country in the foreign media. Yet it was also a time when the faint rumblings of revolution were beginning to stir as a result. The Estonian people began to realise that if they were going to be free, they would have to do it themselves. Three years before the Singing Revolution, four years before the Baltic Way, and six years before independence itself, TAPTY 1985 explores the reality of this time between times.

Historical fiction as well as real history, dance, song, and classical theatre are terms to mark this production. The first three performances in Tartu’s Central Park will be in May, and will return in August and September. Tickets are available here. The production will be in Estonian, but you won’t need to understand the language to understand what is being said about the time TAPTY 1985 is set in.