The collector of the material is Juhan Aare, a former television host, journalist and politician. As host of the television programme ‘Panda’, which addressed environmental issues, he initiated a letter campaign against the planned phosphorite mines in northern Estonia in February 1987. The campaign was successful, and besides sending letters, people started mass protest actions, called the Phosphorite War, which are now considered to be the starting point of revolutionary events in Estonia in the late 1980s.
During the late 1980s, Juhan Aare realised that several documents at Estonian Television, including those relating to the television programme ‘Panda’, would be considered unimportant and would be destroyed. Since he had access to these documents, he started to collect them, and founded his own private collection. The fact that the scripts of television programmes and letters from ordinary people were not usually preserved makes them a unique collection about complex environmental and national issues. In addition, Aare collected other material, including letters sent to him in person, or to the newspaper Noorte Hääl (The Voice of Youth), and press cuttings about the Phosphorite War. He continued to collect this material in the 1990s, and to write a book about the events in the 1980s. The book Fosforiidisõda 1971-1989 (The Phosphorite War 1971-1989) was published in 1999.
Until 2007, all these documents were in the possession of Juhan Aare, and were used only by him. By then, 20 years had passed since the Phosphorite War, and the Estonian History Museum put on the exhibition ‘EI FOSFORIIDILE! 20 aastat fosforiidisõjast’ (No to Phosphorite! 20 Years since the Phosphorite War). The curator of the exhibition was Olev Liivik, and the advisor was Juhan Aare. Aare decided to present his collection to the Estonian History Museum. Thus, the collection is now owned by the museum. However, it is still uncatalogued, and apart from Juhan Aare, only Olev Liivik has worked with it and used it in his research. No academic studies about the collection, or for which the collection is a source, have been published. However, Olev Liivik has written an article about the Phosphorite War, focusing particularly on the letter-writing campaign; a volume with the article is due to be published soon. He has also made several presentations based on the collection. In the future, when the collection is catalogued and described, it will probably be used more widely.
