On March 25-28, 1949, occupying Soviet forces deported more than 90,000 Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians from the Baltics, including more than 20,000 people from Estonia alone, to Siberia under Operation Priboi. Some managed to return, however many ended up remaining there.

"I think we need to get to know this Soviet system, which is in fact constantly ongoing today," Paju said. "The same pattern is playing out in Ukraine – the same human rights violations, and crimes against nature, humanity and peace."

Russian philosopher and culture critic Andrei Arkhangelsky, a good friend of Paju's who is currently in exile in Berlin and whose analyses Paju has always read, pointed out a very important fact.

"In Russia, [kids] were not taught in school that there is good and evil within everyone; rather, in the Soviet Union, we were taught that evil always comes from outside, that someone is always to blame," she explained. "We teach that we all have these feelings inside of us, and we learn how to recognize and control them."

According to Paju, Estonia's history has been described as very power-driven, but that is no help; the information war is likewise fueled by envy, egoism and nihilism.

"It's a heavy burden to bear," she said regarding the March deportation of 1949 as well as what's currently happening in Ukraine. "But my experience was that when I went to study in Helsinki, I could see for myself from behind the Iron Curtain how strong the Kremlin's propaganda is in shaping the lives of Estonians and life in Estonia, or even calling into question the continuity of the Estonian state."

Dealing with the past is therapy, the Estonian writer said. "But how you phrase that you're going to give that past love and understanding – empathy is such a volatile feeling – that you have to deal with constantly," she explained. "It's not just 'I'm rehashing all the horrible things that happened in the past,' but that you are making sense of them too."

During the Soviet era, essayism, or the culture of meaning, was forbidden as well – there was opinion journalism and ideology, Paju recalled.

"In Western culture, what has been important is an individual, such as Anne Frank," she explained. "A story is told through their suffering; through their story unfolds the entire tragedy. But this takes courage; it's taken courage from me too."

According to Paju, who first released the documentary "Memories denied" in 2005, people have been gaining more of this courage, and want to tell their stories.

"If we are afraid and think, 'I'm not going to say anything, I'll spare myself that way' – actually, courage breeds freedom," she said. "But you have to work on that courage and your vocabulary – how you express something. These stories will create a future. Behind the tragic stories, there are also stories of courage – where someone else, an Estonian, a neighbor protects another. This is a collective trauma; we just need to talk to each other more."

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