Happiness is Living in our Land

There were a lot of unfortunate events in the final years of Soviet rule in Estonia. Like… actual s**t. A shortage of (clean) public toilets meant that often defecators had to resort to more primitive pooping locations. Faeces was everywhere, as one of the band members in the Estonian punk rock band Velikije Luki recalls in Happiness Is Living in Our Land, a documentary walking through the final years of Soviet-Estonia with the band’s history. Indrek Spungin’s film jests with visualisations and re-creations of poop-filled public toilets and feces on the floor to say the quiet part out loud: it was a shit time.

Named after the Battle of Velikiye Luki, a WWII skirmish where Estonian soldiers conscripted by both Soviet and Nazi forces preferred to lure comrades to their side instead of killing compatriots, Velikije Luki’s political etymology would prelude their legacy of arrests, KGB intimidation, banned performances, and arguably breaking up the Estonian Communist Party. The punk group released three albums, although only one of which came before the fall of the USSR.

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