Ülase12: The Home of DIY Punk & Autonomy in Tallinn

Ülase12 is a community social center in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn. The place has been running since 2010 and remains strictly non-hierarchical, antifascist, and DIY.

Besides hardcore punk shows, they co-host an anarchist bookfair and Ladyfest events, and organize movie screenings, debates, and community activities.

Can you start by introducing the social center and how it came to be?

At some point in 2010, it became clear to us that both the local anti-authoritarian movement and the local hardcore scene needed a home for their activities. This doesn’t mean we limit ourselves to this one physical space, however. We’re always open if anyone needs help putting on a show, crashing on our couch, and so on. None of us had any experience running a place like this, and we had nobody to ask for advice either, as we were the first place like this in Estonia. So we basically gathered people from different groups, decided to give it a go, put in money from our own pockets, and jumped in. Six years later, we have hosted over 100 bands from across the world.

We have had movie screenings, discussions, dinners, workshops, self-defense sessions, and free shops, and provided people with a chance to meet or just crash on our couches. The space is run by a horizontally organized collective. Consensus-based decision-making can be slow at times, but we think we benefit from practicing it.

Unlike many social centers in Europe, you rent the place. Was that a choice, and how do you manage to keep the space open?

Before we decided to find the cheapest possible place to rent, we did try to squat several buildings. What makes us different from Western Europe is that we have no tradition of autonomist protest movements. Squatting was legally a very gray area ten years ago, meaning some squats lasted a few days and others longer, but it was impossible to hold public events in them. It was also difficult to organize resistance during evictions, as the movement itself was very small. We’re talking about fewer than ten people. So we decided we needed to focus on building a movement, writing, translating, very basic things. This is easier when you don’t have to worry about losing everything you’ve built in an hour.

Our aim is not to make money or earn our living by organizing this space. We’re all students and workers, mostly on minimum wage or in precarious employment. We’re not financed by the state or the city council, and we have no sponsorship deals or anything. We wouldn’t have made it past the first year if it weren’t for our community of supporters, guests, friends, and comrades, who have been very helpful.

When entering the main room, you’re greeted by antifascist flags. Can you explain the importance of antifascism to the space and its relation to the presence of nationalists and Nazis in the broader punk scene?

Our space was opened by anarchists. Many members are still anarchists, and others sympathize with anarchist ideas, so politically we are antifascists by default. What we aimed for was a space where everyone but fascists could feel safe. This means we don’t want to see any discriminatory behavior at Ülase12.

When punk rock first hit Estonia in the ’70s, the country was occupied by the Soviet Union. Naturally, the punk scene rebelled against the system, and the system hit back with some nasty repression. It wasn’t so much about nationalism as national liberation. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed, it was understandable that the movement got kind of confused. We’re talking about a massive shift from one system to another. One might argue we’re still in transition. So a fair share of punks and skins went from supporting national liberation to being actual far-right nationalists.

Then you had younger people coming into the scene in the ’90s and 2000s. Remember, at that point, you had the independent, capitalist nation-state of Estonia instead of the Soviet regime. If you were a young person searching for punk music, you mostly found stuff from the ’80s. Without understanding the context and the huge shift between these two generations, a lot of that content could be ripped out of context. For example, lyrics opposing the Soviet regime were now used by the far right as anti-Russian songs.

A huge change came in the mid-2000s when hardcore punk started getting more exposure in Tallinn, especially within the Russian-speaking community. Nazis tried to walk into DIY hardcore shows as they could walk into any other punk show, so we had to deal with this issue. Since then, keeping shows free of Nazis has been a tradition of our local hardcore scene, and we want to keep it that way.

It seems like most DIY bands touring through Estonia stop at Ülase12, halfway between Riga, Helsinki, and St. Petersburg. What does the DIY punk scene look like from where you are?

We’ve been fortunate with our geographical location in this sense, yes. We have a few other promoters, such as the guys from Damn.Loud, who put on shows as well. Local bands like Nailbite have put out records recently. It seems like things are going a bit better now after a few years of regression in the scene.

The DIY punk scene can be as fantastic as it is frustrating at times. You get people from New York organizing a solidarity show for a small place in Estonia like ours. Fantastic bands touring and giving their all, sharing the floor with the crowd. But at other times, you have a bunch of struggles to get through, and you wonder if you can do it.

But the fact is, we’re going into our seventh year soon. We’ve outlived some actual professional venues. This wouldn’t have been possible if what they tell you about punk being dead were true. It’s not. It’s dead for those who have conformed already.

The last time I was in Tallinn, around the anarchist bookfair, the Estonian parliament building was lit up in the colors of the French flag in response to the latest “Paris attacks.” Elsewhere, such signs of “solidarity” have been followed by a crackdown on dissent and the places where it happens. Have you felt the effects of this recent wave of repression? Can you tell us about the general social and political situation in Tallinn and Estonia?

Our biggest political problem is the far-right nationalists. Or, to be precise, their growth. The neo-Nazi movement is one thing, but the so-called refugee crisis brought a whole new dimension into the game. Previously apolitical family guys started getting radicalized by the far right, and protests against refugee quotas were almost weekly at one point.

As described earlier, part of the Estonian punk scene has, and always had, a sense of patriotism because we had been occupied for decades. Now, if even parts of rebellious punk rock are conservative, you can only imagine how it is elsewhere in Estonian society.

A few years ago, we tried to keep a couple of Nazis out of our space. A well-known politician who used to be a punk in the ’80s tried to come in with them. We thought that was bad, but now we’ve got actual Hitler sympathizers in our parliament, gaining more and more support. The government itself has been in the hands of liberals of different shades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Economic inequality, the far right outnumbering the antifascist movement, and no leftist alternative to the liberals make a perfect mix for the far right to organize and gain ground.

What the far right is trying to do here at the moment is act as if they are the rebels, rather than, say, the anarchists, squatters, or whoever. This is not true. You can’t be a rebel if your kind is represented in the government, if you’re beating down on people from a position of power, or if your ideas are widespread in society.

It is especially sad to see people from the punk scene buying into far-right ideas. In punk, you accept the choices your friends make, whether we’re talking about the color of a mohawk, a jacket, or a choice of music genre. We want to slam into each other while listening to fast and loud music. We feel as if this is our passage to freedom, even for just one night. But then we go and start judging other people for things they never got to choose. There’s nothing rebellious about being a neo-Nazi, as what they stand for is the opposite of freedom.

The Ülase12 social center can be contacted through Facebook, Instagram, or VKontakte, or by writing to [email protected].