What's (been) happening in Estonia?

Disclaimer: the following piece of writing may contain subjective statements on history and politics. All specifications and counter-arguments are welcome.

Ma che cos'é successo in Estonia? - This is the sentence I hear so often in the last days that I have even developed a fast-talk-version of the happenings from my point of view:

"OK, so there's this monument that for the Russians is for those who fought against fascism in WW II, but for Estonians is for the Red Army who occupied Estonia in the end of the war; so now the monument was moved from the city centre to a military cemetery and some young people got drunk and went to the streets to riot and Russia is using the chance to develop its own interests from the affair."

Seems simple, does it? Maybe not. This is what a friend of mine emailed to me a week ago:
"Did you here about the riots in Tallinn? For my own luck I haven’t been here when it started, but my colleague and friends said that they felt like in a war. There were 60 injured and 1 dead and they destroyed a lot of shop windows and houses and cars were burning… And now we have a prohibition for alcohol… already the 2nd week… And now everybody waits for 8th and 9th of may to start all over again as it is the end of the war for Russia. So I don’t really feel comfortable at the moment…"

The riots themselves took place in the end of April. The story around the Bronze Soldier has been going on for a year now, after some Estonians talked up against having it in the city centre (or after having the Russian population waving Russian flags around the monument? Which came first?). From then on "patriots", or, more specifically, bored young people from both sides have been going around the monument to pick fights and the police set up a watch for avoiding any further problems. In any case it seemed to be something that young people spent their time with in the lack of better things to do. The riot agitators used this available energy to create thousands of euros worth of damage - cars, windows, shops, bus pavillions, anything one could find to break in a city centre. The police is certain that the riots were organised at least to some extent by individuals supported from Russia. Oh well. There is no love between the states, none at all.

Obviously the affair has brought up the issues between the Estonian and Russian population and the history of the past 100 years. They didn't have to have anything to do with the monument. Initially. But people have been fast to create the connections. As the history of the Baltic states is rarely a strong spot for people who didn't study there, here are some ideas for those who think that they know what's happening in / around Estonia:

- sometimes the Kremlin comes up with statements that suggest natural right of Russia over the Baltic states (I'll add a reference as soon as I find some of them), as the area has been theirs for such a long time. This sounds completely unreasonable to Estonians.

- some Estonian history: pagan and ununited until the early 14th century; then occupied by Germans and Danish during the Northern Crusades; from then on dominated by Baltic Germans as landlords up to WW I, as the country was occupied in turn by Germans, Polish (partly), Swedish and Russians. Russian domination lasted from 1710 - 1918, though the cultural life always belonged to Baltic Germans (apart from the Estonian cultural awakening of the 19th century and 15-20 years of russification from 1890 onwards). The Russian influences on the Estonian culture were neither strong nor deep-rooted before the birth of the Soviet Union.

- Russian politicians (and their young sidekicks, the Nashists), have repeatedly accused Estonia of being neofascist in the last months (no reference, read any public statement). In WW II, Estonians were fighting on both sides because hardly anyone could choose the army to which they were conscripted. At the present point, Estonians are anti-Communist more than anything else. Fascist ideology, insignia and literature is internationally forbidden. There is no reason why the Soviet ideology, insignia and flag shouldn't be as well.

- the Russians make up about 25% (other minorities 5%) of the Estonian population of 1,4 mln. That's a lot of people, but most of them were immigrated as a part of the Soviet demographic politics after WW II. Most of the Russians living in Estonia today are first- or second-generation residents. See also the BBC article from Narva, northeast Estonia.

- (The other side of the same policies was the deportation of 30 000 people from Estonia to Siberia by the Soviet authorities in 1941 and 1949.)

- the Russian Federation has refused responsibility for this and other human rights violations, as the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union. This is understandable. At the same time they claim credit for the victory over fascism with the end of WW II, though the credit should go to the Red Army - the Soviet Union. Double standards?

- to date, the Kremlin denies the Soviet occupation of Estonia and claims that the state joined the USSR voluntarily.

- a large part of the Russians living in Estonia have no citizenship, neither Russian nor Estonian. This is because in 1991 the Estonian citizenship passed directly to the descendants of the Estonian citizens before WW II (or at least before the Soviet occupation) and everyone else had to apply for citizenship. A part of the process was a language, culture and history exam that is said to be unreasonably difficult. This is the main reason why Estonia has been accused of discrimination of the Russian minority.

- the discrimination that the Nashists refer to exists on gossip level only. The European Commission DG Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities and the Council of Europe conducts research on the matter: link 1: EC and link 2: CoE. The main problems have to do with the lack of sufficient legislation for preventing discrimination and the lack of effective governmental integration policies. At the same time, no serious issues are reported. Some discrimination has to do with language skills - Estonian is not an easy language and the Russian population has little motivation to learn it, but no knowledge of Estonian can still hinder a person from finding a job. I know that something needs to be done to solve this, but - honestly - in which country don't you need to know the official language in order to work?

- the Russians were the majority nationality of the Soviet Union. This granted them a number of advantages over other nationalities, starting from Russian-language schools and other facilities in each member state, guaranteed jobs, right up to shorter queues for applying for accommodation (because one couldn't just buy a flat at that time, one was given when it was free - but it could take any amount of time). At least this is what my mother tells me. These rights have been cancelled after 1991 and the contrast will at least to some extent look like discrimination.


Now, all this is politics and history. It gets me angry easily, as the historic memory is strong in me too and I can't stand hearing Kremlin asking for the Estonian government to step down. But it's only politics. I don't care if a friend of mine is Russian. I have great respect for the Russian literature and I'm sorry for my poor command of the language.

I'm already used to having to explain to well-meaning foreigners that Estonians don't speak Russian as a first language and consider themselves very different from Russians both in language and character. Their innocent question "so do you speak Russian in Estonia?", even though it intends to show nothing but interest, and is probably emerged from the only bit of information they have (that Estonia is next to Russia), will hardly make any Estonian shine with appreciation. Usually the reasons for it are too long and complex to analyse right there on the spot, so I merely give the impression of picking on details too much. Seeing from outside it's all the same anyway, I guess.

La Quaresima - the veggie story

Religion is not very big in Estonia. Compared to Italy or Poland, that is. The country is predominantly Protestant, but apart from going to church on Easter Sunday there aren't too many people who would be both devoted and open about their religion (it's not socially encouraged - believing is something deep and personal). I did go to Sunday school as a child, but I don't remember much apart from colourful pictures about Moses. Thus I don't really know much about Catholicism either, apart from what I learned in history about the Reformation and all that.

The Lent is a big part of the Estonian religious tradition (in fact, the word for Easter, "lihavõttepühad", literally means "time for taking meat"). But nowadays it's hardly followed anymore. The religious Bulgarians turn vegan for the whole 40-day period. Italians merely avoid eating meat on Fridays. But I couldn't even start to imagine the Estonian way of fasting. I guess one could just make their own rules. Last year Riccardo and I challenged each other to stay away from alcohol during Lent. We did it, but it proved very difficult in societies where aperitives and beers are a social custom. This year we decided to be easy on ourselves: keep the wine, drop the meat.

I've always regarded vegetarians with a kind of reverence for being able to live without meat. Since returning from 3 weeks in Turkey last year with the only wish of never seeing another kebap again, I've started to understand that not eating meat doesn't have to be a mental effort, but could just be a matter of taste. So I welcomed the challenge.

In Italy it isn't very difficult to avoid meat, as every mealtime is divided into two courses: "the first" (generally pasta or rice) and "the second" (meat or fish). Apart from a few exceptions, the pasta is usually vegetarian and it's very easy to be too full to have anything else afterwards. Usually, that is.

The main difficulties occurred in relation to Damiana's (my Italian mom's) wonderful ragù that I had to decline so many times; the tramezzini (soft triangular sandwiches), usually made with various kinds of prosciutto or seafood that are quite irresistible; and canteen-keepers that don't understand the meaning of "vegetarian". Halfway through the Lent I visited a country restaurant with a group of 14 or so. We had ordered ahead - both vegetarian and meat pasticci (the Veneto version of lasagne) that looked tantalising indeed. The food was excellent and everyone quite content until the owner, lured into a gastronomic discussion by one of our companions, revealed his secret: of course I always put sausage in my pasticcio, otherwise it wouldn't taste like anything! I didn't know which was worse - the insult or the feeling of utter stupidity at not having recognised pork in my food. I thought of my dear friend Elina and what a scene she might make in righteous rage if someone set her up like this. And then I thought that I didn't really have a reason to lament, as I'm not really a vegetarian anyway, far from it, and even farther from being a devoted Christian. This, obviously, didn't make me feel any better.

Then there is the occasional unease at having a potluck dinner or shopping for a picnic together with a group. Shopping is exceptionally uncomfortable, as meat products always cost more than everything else and while dividing the bill it doesn't end up fair to the few people who don't even intend to touch the ham. So the choice is between paying (preferred, as it's friends after all) or coming across as overly scrupulous and/or stingy (often the only way for the coin-counting volunteer). I still haven't managed to find a satisfactory way out of these kinds of situations.

Basically any setting where I can't decide on my food is a potential problem. Flying, for example. KLM has solved the issue simply by serving two small sandwiches, of which one is ham and the other cheese. Malev, Hungarian airlines, allows meal-selection on booking and aboard I got a nice special box with my name on it, including a cheese-paprika sandwich and a muesli-snack. On the flights to Istanbul Malev's meals are equipped with a visible 'no-pork' sign, which is nice, but I do wonder about Muslims taking any other flights. Turkish airlines is very nice - they just serve salads.

It's already some time since Lent. In the meantime I've spent a week in Turkey and my meat consumption has probably made up for the whole 40 days of staying without. But there wasn't much to do - some countries are simply not habitable by vegetarians. Last year's 3 meat-packed weeks taught me that unless one wants to survive on peynir pide (cheese pie) or soups (made with meat stock in any case), there is hardly any way (at least for a foreigner) to remain true to one's convictions about meat. Though, of course, no pork is ever served. This is one thing in which I agree with the Turks completely. Pigs, being able to digest anything in a surprisingly short time, seem to be rather nature's clean-up crew (such as wolves) than animals made for eating. Though Italians have turned ham-production to an art with all their prosciutto crudo, salame and mortadella, my first culinary goal will be to avoid pork. Then, maybe, I could start thinking of any other vegetarian distances.

So here I am, a wannabe-ovo-lacto-vegetarian. I don't need meat in food and the Lent did make me feel exceptionally good, but the difficulties of being vegetarian are simply too troublesome for me just yet. I would probaby be able to put up with most issues, if I could install the label of "vegetarian" as a firm part of my identity, such as: Hello, I'm Maris, I'm vegetarian. But until then I'll toddle along with one foot on each road.

fora febraro

It's since noon that my windows rattle every two minutes from an explosion somewhere to the north. There is a low thud in the glass and I hear the sound rolling around the valley, bouncing off the mountains on each side. As the evening progresses, the explosions become more frequent. February is ending.

Fuori febbraio (out February) is an obscure mountain-people North-Veneto-and-Trentino festivity, hardly heard of down in the cities. It is said to originate from ancient Greeks who celebrated the birth of Aphrodite at this time. In Roman and Venetian calendars March was the first month of the year. This particular custom, "throwing out" February and "calling in" March, probably originates from the Germanic people colonising the Dolomite mountains area since medieval times. The songs and traditions differ from one village to the other. In some the custom is to burn the figure of an old lady (old year) as a part of the festivity (Befana!).

In Valdagno people go out on the streets with pots and pans, bang them together and sing:

fóra febraro
che márso l'è qua
se non l'è márso
mar-si-rá

[fuori febbraio / che marzo è qua / se non'è marcio / marcirá]
[February get out / 'cos March is here / if it isn't rotten yet / it will be soon]

This way of making mayhem will apparently wake up the nature and remind the year to get a move on.

Every other year a "chiamata di marzo" (March-call) is organised in nearby Recoaro where, instead of banging pots, people are dressing up like a hundred years ago and march through the town, accompanied by wagons of model old-style smithies, bakeries, pasta- and laundrymaking, and such. And some drinks, too, considering the cold. Well, this historical workday demonstration doesn't seem to have much to do with the coming spring, but at least everyone has fun and the children will learn that the pasta didn't always use to come in blue Barilla packages.

Vicenza: baxi si

The time for carnivals and other general mayhem when "everything goes" was almost over when Italy came to show open signs of a party-mood and finally threw a sizeable manifestation on the Dal Molin issue. For the past weeks, "Vicenza" has become the synonym of the leftist-pacifist event that took place on the 17th of February.

So what's the deal? Well, it's been going on for a bit of time already. Very simply said, the mayor sold the city's airport to the Americans who were planning to double the already existing military base in Vicenza. At first, noone knew about it. When the government changed, the issue came up along with the first doubting voices - the airport is remarkably close to the city centre and having F16-s depart from behind their houses didn't go down too well with people who don't approve of the US foreign policy. People started to manifest - there was one public protest after another in December, but the information didn't reach many. Vicenza voted yes on the political level, but few of your usual people-on-the-street would admit to approving the base-enlargement. The potential economical benefit and good relations to the US weighed up other arguments and the government, though carefully, said yes too. This simplified version is what I've gathered from the scattered opinions around here. Valdagno is situated 32 km north of Vicenza.

It wasn't until all the big newspapers had gone on about it for a while when Vicenza started to get real attention from all over Italy. Thus, coaches and reservation trains from Milano, Rome and Torino were organised; information blasted around the streets and websites; and the media did their bit of confusion. Three completely unconnected events taking place within a week of each other were all mixed into one: 1) the pacifist manifestation in Vicenza; 2) the arrest of 15 extreme-left terrorists; 3) the death of a police officer in the hands of Sicilian football-hooligans. The simple conclusion from all this would be that pacifism is almost as bad as terrorism, or that there will certainly be someone of this opinion ruining the whole thing. This scared a considerable amount of people off attending.

This was the reason why our small company arrived as late as 5 o'clock. We had spent the day relaxing, checking on the news and hesitating whether the whole din was worth it or not. Well, all in all it was much like your usual student day party where all kinds of leftsy* people come out to the fresh air - hippies, woollies (est: kampsikud), tree-huggers, punks, students, young political/ pacifist/ intellectual idealists and all others. (I do believe that only this kind of societal labelling will pass on the impression of it.) It was as peaceful an event as anyone could hope for and we saw nor heard of anything violent. That said, in my humble opinion the manifestation was rather an assurance of emotion than a political voice - coming out on the streets only after all the decisions had been made was never going to make a practical difference, though obviously it was worth something to show how 150 000 people feel about the base at Dal Molin.

But it was fun. In addition to providing a good picture of all kinds of political activists in the area, the event demonstrated some true playfulness. For example, in the photo on the left the sign reads: "BAXI SI ma co la lèngoa. no militari!" It's a play on words: baxi [read: ba:zi] in venetian dialect sounds similar to basi, (military) bases; but means baci, kisses. So - "OK to the bases/kisses, but only with the tongue! no soldiers!" My flatmates are illustrating how it goes.


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*leftsy - anyone not voting to the political right. In generalised stereotyped terms anyone who: doesn't devote their lives to earning money, and/or thinks about third countries, and/or wears colourful scarves, and/or relaxes, and/or doesn't mind reading Marx, and/or gives out communist leaflets, and/or is pro-choice, etc etc etc. This division is something new to me, as my life in Estonia has been blissfully apolitical (being certain that politics will corrupt any good ideas in no time and that in the end they're all the same and so on). By these Italian standards I'd categorise to the left -- all the more strange as I usually don't even know who to vote for, and regard the blue-eyed Italian communists as people who should reform their offensive flag and take a field trip to the nearest Eastern-European country.

m'illumino di meno

16 February was the all-Italian (international?) day of risparmio energetico - energy saving. A popular radio show, Caterpillar (pronunced Cat-eR-pi:ll-aR) on Radio Due, has done a good job talking of hybrid cars and simple everyday energy saving techniques; come up with a beaty little song; and created a strong slogan that is likely to come up every now and again. The name of the campaign, M'illumino di meno, literally means "I light up of less" and refers to Giuseppe Ungaretti's famous poem Morning (1933):

M'illumino
d'immenso.

In translation it says: "I flood myself with light of the immense". Caterpillar's adaption of it is witty, easy to remember and utter, and most importantly of all - strikes some note in any Italian that ever went to school.

From 6 pm to 6:05 pm, ENEL - the Italian electricity network - registered the decrease of energy use by the amount of 300 megawatt (approx. 5 million light-bulbs) as cities switched off the lighting on their main squares, people shut down their computers and our own humble flat was cooking in the light of a tiny IKEA saving-bulb.

We organised a candle-light dinner for our closest friends for the occasion. It had to be Friday, though the usual party-night is Saturday. (Due to long lunch-breaks, people leave work no earlier than 6 or 7 and bearing in mind to visit someone after a week of these evenings might not be easy.) We sent out the invitations and sat down waiting. By Friday afternoon only one person had excused himself, as his way home would be half the length of Italy. Another left the country in a flurry of fresh love and he was excused too. The others made no sign because:
a) they didn't check emails;
b) they did, but thought our invitation was a Caterpillar announcement;
c) knew there was something, but preferred to have their usual Friday-evening relaxation instead.
It often happens here in Veneto, but it still baffles me: it is the exact opposite of my first stereotype of the Italians. I was delighted to think that they value their friends and the time spent together much more than the Estonians do (not that the Estonians don't love their friends - they do - but the habitual everyday goings-on, studying, and work generally tend to take the first seat). In fact, I might have been mistaken due to the holiday-like nature of my first encounters. Or then again, I might have mistaken the Italians for the Portuguese.

Regardless of our company being the usual 4 instead of a merry 12, we enjoyed ourselves immensely over the food and the ceremonial feeling of candle-light, three courses of dinner and two kinds of wine. It was so good that it took us two days to do all the dishes.

What comes to saving energy, I don't think that 5 minutes of darkness on Piazza San Marco will change much; but if there were people who spent all the evening being fussy about turning on the TV, I guess it will have at least some kind of an impact for the next weeks. Then, of course, we'll go on using the tumble-dry, the lift and leaving lights on in the interest of atmosphere.