“Promised paradise, landed in hell!” – lecture at Narva Museum

The Narva Museum invites everyone to the next free MeediaRadar lecture. After the lecture you can continue the discussion over coffee and light snacks.

Fake news and the lack of reliable information are not modern problems. Estonia and the rest of Europe faced them a hundred years ago, in the 1920s and 1930s. The Soviet Union tried to persuade Europeans and Americans of the superiority of its social order through newspapers and radio.

People who believed the “Soviet paradise” travelled to the USSR hoping to find work on large construction projects, earn good wages and share in a fairer society. For many, reality turned out to be very different: they lost everything they owned and fell victim to repression.

Newspapers and magazines in both Estonian and Russian tried to warn people who had believed stories of record harvests in collective farms, a just Stalin and enormous wages. The stories published in those papers form an exciting narrative, no less gripping than any crime novel. Its characters include peasants seeking a better life, Finnish workers, Estonian politicians and journalists, but also people who secretly crossed the border, defectors and intelligence agents.

What was propaganda and what was reality? Who was right, and how did the truth come to light? The lecture is given by Jevgeni Zavadski, doctoral student in Slavic studies at the University of Tartu and editor of ETV+ programmes.

Duration: 90 minutes. The event is held in Russian.

Admission is free, but registration is required. Places are limited.

The event is supported by the MeediaRadar project (2024–2028) under the Swiss–Estonian cooperation programme, carried out with the National Library of Estonia and the Ministry of Culture. The project is co-funded by Switzerland to reduce economic and social disparities in the European Union.

Time and place: 21 November 2026, 12:00, Narva Museum, Narva.