You’ve probably read about how Russia is going to send “little green men” into Estonia and pull another Donbas. Well, it’s going to be harder than that. Here’s a very good long read, with interviews of people who live in Narva.
The northeastern part of Estonia was industrial, with a uranium yellow cake (and later rare earths) production plant at Sillamäe and oil-shale mining around Kohtla-Järve. Both functions were felt by the government of the Soviet Union to be essential to the state, so they brought in ethnic Russians and a few others. Sillamäe was a closed town until the end of the Soviet Union.
Many ethnic Russians in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic went back to Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed, but many stayed. Many have become Estonian citizens, but one of the requirements for Estonian citizenship is being able to answer questions about Estonian history in Estonian, so some of the ethnic Russians, particularly older people, decided not to become citizens. They are sometimes referred to as stateless people, but they live in Estonia pretty much as they always have.
Vladimir Putin has posed himself as a protector of Russian people wherever they may be, and Russian rhetoric sometimes includes the Russian speakers in Estonia.
I have found most American reporting on this subject to be inadequate, since the reporters fly in and fly out, and most don’t even do that. So this is a great article if you want to know more.
When people talk about Narva’s “Russian-Estonians,” are they talking about native Russian-speakers? Native bilinguals? Those from mixed families? Bilingual households? Are they talking about those forcibly relocated to Narva from other parts of the Soviet Union during the occupation? Their descendants? Or recent voluntary immigrants who have come to Estonia in search of higher wages, better living conditions and better future prospects for their children? Someone who can be described as Russian-Estonian could easily be a Russian citizen, an Estonian citizen, or a stateless person, known in Estonian as a grey passport-holder, referring to the colour of Estonia’s alien’s passports.
And unsurprisingly, all of the above live in Narva together, and based on conversations I had with representatives of various aforementioned categories, none of them are terribly pressed on a daily basis to fuss over existential questions of who they are or what label fits them best. Many echoed similar sentiments that the desire to label them tends to come from the outside, whether from politicians in Tallinn or the media.
The photo is of Narva Castle, with Ivangorod Fortress in the background, across the Narva River in Russia. From the article.
Open thread!
Sebastian
Putin’s Russia is where Russians live was live tested by Milosevic in former Yugoslavia. Recent examples are of course Moldavia and Ukraine.
We can expect the same playbook.
jl
Thanks for link. I hope the situation is as good as the article indicates. I haven’t been there in a while, but when I last visited, relations improved greatly since when I first spent an extended time there in 2001 and 2002. Even then, there was a lot of very friendly social, business, recreational, and other mixing between Estonia and Russia around St Petersburg, and very especially among people under age 45 or so. Of course, the Russian Estonians I met tended to travel in Estonian circles, but there were a lot of them. But, in trips to St Petersburg, with that mixed group, we met and did things with a lot of random younger Russians we met. The whole Cold War, USSR, USSR dissolution, commie versus capitalist issues seemed absurd to them.
Older people had some attitude issues, both Estonian and Russian.
There was not the stark dividing line and alienation I sensed in Latvia.
Among Estonians, there has been some stereotyping towards less assimilated Russians. Fear and contempt of the ‘bad’ Estonian Russians versus ‘good’ ones. But Estonians tend to be a practical calm ‘eff it, let’s make it work somehow’ type of people, and I think they have made very competent and good faith efforts to provide good social services to the more heavily Russian areas. But I admit I am four or five years from on the ground observation there.
jl
Can’t edit my comment, but one thing that now comes to mind, is the success of the Estonian economy. You know damn well as soon as you go from Estonian areas on the eastern border, that are heavily Russian, into Russia. The living standards in what you see in structures and stores and what you see on the street change dramatically within a few miles. You are in strip mall that looks like the US, except their post office blows the US away in terms of prompt friendly service and things they can do for you, to weird out of date weird kind of effed up just a few miles to the east.
I saw small pockets of bad poverty and deprivation in Russian Estonia, but sadly, I saw those in every part of Estonia.
Cheryl Rofer
@jl: @jl: I can’t disagree with anything you say. I think that much of it is an age issue, and people are aging out of it. Except for Putin, but if he doesn’t have the support there, he can’t do much.
Mike in NC
We visited Tallinn on a cruise in 2014. Had a delightful lunch at a little sidewalk cafe. Were told by the tour guide that Estonians aren’t very religious because the Germans, Russians, and Swedes were busy trying to force theirs on them at various times.
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: I hope what you say is true.
I don’t know why, but immediately east of the Estonian border, Russian towns and houses look kind of cute and colorful, and rustic. It looks quaint and countrified. But on closer inspection much poorer and much much more old fashioned. Estonians told me that was due to Estonian and western tourism, kind of like going to Pennsylvania Dutch country, and some shopping and quaint countryside experience stuff, B&Bs, etc.
But as you go further east, things look more distressed rapidly. And soon you are in a really weird country that looks decades out of date. I mentioned on this blog before, that on my first trip I met people living on old Soviet apartment blocks that looked OK, though very bare bones and plain in the front, and decayed into ruins towards the back. I hope things have changed since then. Haven’t had to have a up close and personal tour with a native for over a decade now.
sm*t cl*de
I did meet a Russian woman with an anti-Estonia chip on her shoulder the size of a small tree. But even as she ranted about how much worse the weather is on the Estonian side of the border, and how she wasn’t Estonian and Estonia is a sh1tfeck country, she was getting sh1t-faced on a bottle of Vana Tallinn.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
I think I’ve seen this movie before and so has Putin. He knew enough to try to neutralize the US, though, unlike a certain historical someone.
Quiltingfool
I enjoy Balloon Juice because of articles like this! I read the linked article, and then sashayed over to Google to look at maps of Estonia and Eastern Europe, well, because I like maps, I guess! Thanks, Miss Cheryl, for sharing this!
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@jl:
I wonder if they still feel that way in 2019? Or has the Putin regime’s propaganda worn them down? Then again, these same people grew up under the USSR so who knows?
Dmbeaster
This Putin nonsense about “protecting Russians” sounds just like so much Hitler crap and the Sudeten Germans – an excuse for aggression. Time to start talking about Trump as the modern Chamberlain appeaser of Russian aggression, and short out some right wing fuses.
sm*t cl*de
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
If you’re thinking of the Godwin Analogy, you have to remember that Hitler’s insistence on defending the rights of Sudetenland Germans was motivated by the industrial resources of the Czech Lands. Estonia has no industrial resources to seize… just software, good WiFi, and folk-music.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@sm*t cl*de:
I noticed the superficial similarities. You’re correct.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Turkish president was shocked that Trump went along with demand for Syrian withdrawal.
Old news, but this is absolutely precious:
Christ, even Sultan Erdogan wasn’t expecting that cave, nor did he want it. Trump not only fucked himself and the US, he even fucked over Erdogan in the process. They don’t have the forces mobilized on the border to occupy northeastern Syria!
Sebastian
@sm*t cl*de:
And an ice free port in the Atlantic.
sm*t cl*de
@Sebastian:
Thanks to Russian dependence on extraction industries, Murmansk will be ice-free soon enough.
Mike in DC
From what I’ve read about Estonian attitudes about potential Russian aggression, even without NATO involvement, any occupation could quickly resemble the First Chechen War.
Sebastian
@sm*t cl*de:
Yeah, no kidding. Just look at the new theater in the Arctic circle. Good times! Instead of bullshitting about a Space Force we should allocate funds for a Polar Fleet.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mike in DC: The Estonians are ready to mount a resistance, if need be.
laura
It has a lively art scene. Sacramento artist Steve Vanoni has been living in Tallin for almost a decade teaching, and creating performance art spaces, and reports back every couple of years. There’s a good handfull of YouTube videos of his work. If Vanoni’s moved to Eastonia, it’s because it is cheap, there’s opportunities and a culture that is open for exploring expression.
https://stevevanoniperformanceartandart.weebly.com/updated-cv.html
That and a horrific ferry disaster is about all I know on the subject.
Yutsano
@Sebastian: Eh. We still got more boats than the rest of the world combined. What we should be doing is taking care of the sailors we have better. 14 hour shifts on ships are not a good.
sm*t cl*de
@Mike in DC:
But with fewer explosions and more folk-singing.
jl
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Good question. A lot of business partnerships, business relations, employment relationships, cross-border family relations between St Petersburg and Tallinn from what I have seen. A lot of social influence: nighclub, art music scene kind of blends between the two cities, among younger people. Almost all of which developed since end of Cold War.
Also, last time I was there, nearly everyone I met was functionally at least bilingual. You meet a lot of multiple language speakers there. Younger people, Russian, Estonian and English. Older people (from what smattering I could understand) Russian, Estonian, and some mix of German, Swedish, Finnish.
I did health services research there, and nearly every health professional in Eastern part of the country is bilingual in Estonian and Russian.
But, you are correct, propaganda can stir up a lot of unexpected trouble. I am hopeful but still quite concerned.
Edit: I got sort of functional in Estonian, tried to remember German from HS. Others I could tell by sound. I tried to learn basic Russian, but was such a disaster my Estonian and Russian friends told me to forget it, caused too much trouble, especially among older Russians who tended to panic. Tried to ask a woman where the bathroom was some place and it came out like was going to do bathroom right there. My attempt at Russian was a real disaster.
Mary G
Why do these states keep voting for Republicans?
Mary G
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G:
Habit.
@Mary G: This is my shocked face.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hayes has Christie on. Gotta admit I’m kind of fascinated watching Chris Christie shit all over the trump administration and inner circle while still flattering trump. Gotta preserve the rubes for that future run at the White House.
Baud
Why is Chris Hayes interviewing Chris Christie?
Betsy
TRying to find Cheryl’s thread on toxic masculinity. Has anyone got access to a link to it they could post?
ETA Found it nemmind
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Did you catch the “don’t worry about getting fired, Chris, I’ll talk to Phil”? Christie to Hayes
ETA: Also, I think Hayes blew it when Christie was bragging about recommending Wray to replace Comey by not asking “Would you have advised him to fire Comey?”
Yarrow
@Mary G:
In Utah? Because the LDS church tells them to. Also, habit, abortion, racism, family pressure.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes. Also caught “not all the information Trump gets is bad”.
waratah
@Mary G: I hope that the women in Utah run against them next election and win, turn and repass the healthcare. They get by doing this because they don’t think anyone will run against them and win. I say women because it looks the men don’t have backbone to change anything.
Yarrow
@Baud: Because Hayes is not a trustworthy person.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: and I was waiting for the rather obvious rejoinder, “no, but the only information he’ll listen to is bad”. I’ve seen a few of Christie’s rehab tour appearances and I’m kind of surprised at how much he’s been able to tone down the boorishness. If I didn’t know him from the last picture I might fall for it. Never-trumpy Kasich, Christie’s match in any self-righteous bully pissing match, couldn’t pull that off.
ETA: here’s another opinion I offer as a random nobody of the internet: Andrew Gillum for official DNC Talking Head while Tom Perez goes back to being a good, behind-the-scenes bureaucrat.
Martin
@Mary G: Because Democrats run child slavery rings out of pizza joints.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s just proof that even their best people are horrible.
jl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: ” he’s been able to tone down the boorishness. ”
I think Christie is in his mid fifties, young enough for a future run for office or appointed position. He might be an astute enough politician to know that Trump crashed the mid-Atlantic boorish schtick in flames and blew it up. He might know he needs to get a new act. We’ll see.
Trump might such a wreck in 2020 that people will challenge him. Though very hard to see how that anyone would be successful with a GOP primary base that is reduced to racist crazy white people who are bitter about everything. But if Trump is a true disaster and still on office, or its Pence, ambitious people like Christie might give it a try.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mary G:
It takes a great deal of arrogance to say, “Yes, we know better than the majority of the people that voted overwhelmingly for Medicaid expansion and we’re going to kill it. Isn’t American democracy the greatest?”. But then they wouldn’t be Republicans if they didn’t. It’s the same sad tune with the power grabs in Wisconsin and Michigan or their reaction to being defeated in the midterms (though it appears that the power grab bill in Michigan stalled when Snyder vetoed it). When faced with electoral defeat, the modern GOP doesn’t reflect, it reacts by breaking norms and destroying liberal democracy for their own gain, and even questioning the legitimacy of their opponents, casting them as enemies to be annihilated. They refuse to learn or change and it’s absolutely disgusting.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. I hate him as much as he loves the sound of his own hectoring voice.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
#MAGA
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Didn’t he do that to the Chuck and Nancy response to Trump’s shutdown address from the oval office? It was on YouTube and by the next day the views were still minimal.
He’s over. Done. No one cares.
jl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You need to take some deep breaths and calm down. You can make a reply to the SOTU and put it up on youtube too. Will any outlet give him time? I seriously doubt it.
Amir Khalid
@Mary G:
It’s sad, isn’t it, the cognitive dissonance that makes these people put Republicans in office to give them Democratic governance.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Yarrow:
I hope so. Warren, while she still has her flaws, is a far better standard barer for progressive/democratic socialist issues. She’s probably sucked a lot of his potential support away. She’s also actually a Democrat. I wonder if this was part of the reason she ran? To neutralize Sanders in ways the DNC could not?
How long do you think his candidacy will last, out of curiosity?
Aleta
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He can’t be hoping to run in the Democratic primary then. Can he? Cause he’ll be speaking as an independent?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@jl:
LOL!
Cheryl Rofer
@jl: It’s not as noticeable now as it was in the 1990s, but most Estonians were bilingual in Estonian and Russian but would seldom admit to Russian unless it was the only mutual language available. Now all the young folks speak English and instantly recognize my American accent when I try to speak Estonian, and they go to English. As for Russian, my go-to is “Я не говорю по русски,” although I can do a bit more than that.
boatboy_srq
I can’t imagine Estonians would be all that susceptible to this kind of manipulation. They separated from Russia in 1917, held back the Bolshevik armies for three years and kept the Soviets out for twenty more, and were among the first SSRs to break with the USSR in the late 80s. They’re EU and NATO members.
Amir Khalid
@Aleta:
I think he’s expecting the best of both worlds: running for the Democratic nomination to get credibility for being of the party, while signalling his independence from it to the Wilmeristas.
jl
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I wanted Warren to run in 2016. We’ll find out if Sanders is just an old New Deal style lefty crank when he runs this time, or he can adapt to changing times and understand what thinking is behind his policies, as Warren absolutely does.
Unlike some other commenters, I don’t think it’s useful to get overly pro or con towards any potential Democratic candidate, and I think a big field initially is good. There will be several extremely good presidential candidates in the mix, and I hope they all survive to final three or four.
And, we need to remember that some of them are not really running for president, but auditioning for a lower spot as their next step up the ladder. I don’t think Biden planned it, and HRC obviously did not, but that set an example, and produced a historically significant and super excellent executive branch team.
Edit: a big field will mean that potential trouble makers like Sanders and Gabbard will get a smaller slice of support and less able to make trouble. But, disclosure that I supported Sanders in 2016 primary, since I thought was best chance out of a group I did not like much, to be honest.
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: Yeah, I was instructed to just say that.
I got there around ten years after you did. When I got there, among people under 40 or 45, I sensed no bitterness about what language people spoke. That generation, they told me, were forced to learn Russian, and had option for a third language. Several told me that picked things like French or Spanish or something else, since given the limits at the time, they saw little use for English. I’ve read and was told that, Estonia was a high tech military and intelligence top secret enclave for the USSR, and travel was extremely restricted for the whole population. Maybe you know more about that than I do. They wanted news, they could decipher Finnish TV and radio.
But, when Cold War ended, USSR fell apart, younger people rushed to learn English, and it was interesting to watch my friends starting out with very poor English in early 2000s, and asking me to put up with their practice, to being very good and nearly fluent ten or so years later. By the time I got there nearly every younger person could speak at least a little English.
I heard younger people, under 40 or 45, speaking a mish mash of Estonian, Russian and English as most convenient, with little attitude. Russians around St Petersburg went to Tallin nightclubs, or had a family or Boy or girl friend in Tallin or Tartu and could speak some Estonian.
but some of the older people had serious attitude problems. I didn’t have to speak Estonian or Russian to see the anger and disrespect and resentment going both ways.
Edit: but Latvians… hoo boy… totally different situation. I don’t know why people are not worried about Latvia. If attitudes haven’t changed, seems like that place should be a powder keg. Much more separation between the groups, and much more mutual resentment at all ages, from what I saw. Didn’t spend as much time there, and I hope things have changed. No connections, so I don’t keep up.
jl
Remember now that what people were sensitive about when I was first there and over next few years was the issue of leaving Estonia, due to concerns about Estonia’s population decline. Those with good foreign language and employment skills leaving for other Nordic countries, US or Canada or Europe, etc., some younger people got touchy about that, and there was resentment. But not over language. I think population has stabilized so less an issue lately.
JR
That’s pretty much what Hitler claimed about, lets see:
Austria
Sudetenland
Bohemia
Danzig
etc. etc.
Terry Calhoun
Estonia is rapidly growing the sport of disc golf.