whistleblower

Wouldn't it be an interesting plot twist if Edward Snowden wasn't in Moscow, but instead was already safely in Havana, or Reykjavik, or some other city that disregards the wishes of the US State Department? What I find interesting here in the US, where I am at the moment, is the deep ambivalence most average people seem to feel about Snowden's actions. It's not that they really see Snowden as a champion of transparency {I think most of us thought that the government was collecting such information}. It's that they can't find it within themselves to cheer on the same institutions that are spying on them. No way. At least today, you won't hear a mouth say, 'Go NSA!'

dual

We have eight passports in our kitchen drawer -- one for me, one for Epp, and two for Marta, two for Anna, and two for Mannu Leenu. Uncle Sam doesn't mind how many passports we have, but according to a 1995 Estonian law, M, A, and ML have to give up their Estonian or American passports upon turning 18. All of us with multinational children in Estonia hope that the government will at last come to its good senses and repeal this law, or at least amend it to allow children born with two nationalities to maintain them. Foreign Minister Paet is in favor of that. So are the Social Democrats and the Centrists. But the conservatives see things differently. When it comes to loving one's country, Interior Minister "Kõva Käe" (Heavy Handed) Ken-Martti Vaher is an ardent monogamist."A quality bond between a person and the state is only possible with one country," says Kõva Käe Ken. "Loyalty conflicts, especially concerning public service and military service, could arise."

satw

I just happened across an ongoing online cartoon strip - Scandinavia and the World - that peddles in the same cheesy jokes about Scandinavians that one can hear on any night of the week in the student clubs in Denmark - "We're like this, they're like that," etc. - Sweden is prudish and Denmark is more laid back and Norway, he just loves nature - Finland is brooding and has a knife, and Iceland is very silly - Estonia has featured in four comic strips since SATW debuted in '09 - in each one, she is portrayed as wanting to get into the club, but being denied - "Oh, no, left out again!" - She has social aspirations, that one - The truth is that most of the Scandinavians are toffs, Dansk, Norsk, Svensk - they think the sun shines from their buttocks - the Light of Lego, the Illumination of Ikea, the Radiance of Rimi ...

party 'til you puke

When President Ilves called the heads of Estonia's four major parties to Kadriorg for a chat about how their vote rigging and assorted antics were having a deleterious affect on the health of the nation's democracy, one had a glimpse at a stagnant political system dominated by the same revolving cast of musical chairs personalities: Ansip, Savisaar, Reinsalu, Mikser ... The latter two are "newcomers," or at least fresher faces, but those are relative terms when Savikas has been playing the game since the game began, and Unzip's been prime minister since Juhan Parts' government bit the dust eight years ago (it seems like forever ago). Now Ojuland's been booted from Reform, and Reform has recruited Vilja Savisaar (the better looking, more sympathetic Savisaar) to run against her ex-husband for Tallinn mayor, and Laar is flirting with leaving the coalition (but not really, for what could the other government constellation be?) You have to ask, what do any of these people stand for (and did they ever stand for anything other than themselves?) Yes, Ilves is right to counsel the party leaders, but he cannot change the party leaders, or their other candidates, or the parties themselves.

rapprochement

Remember the woeful tale of the border treaty with Russia? FM Paet flew out to Moscow in '05, came back waving the magic paper to fix the line between the two lands, told newspapers it was a "done deal," but then pesky parliamentarians added a preamble that made reference to another law that referenced the 1920 treaty that established Estonian statehood. Then Putin got wind of it in the Kremlin and he had FM Lavrov bring him the treaty on a platter so that he could retract Russia's signature, using liquid paper I presume (that was before he crumpled it, stomped on it, blew his nose on it, judo chopped it, and threw it in the fireplace). Now the signing of the new treaty is set to occur again (this time, they say, in Tallinn in July), and it seems like there will be no troubling preambles, and Putin can keep his trusty bottle of liquid paper in his desk's top drawer. Lavrov, meantime, can fly in and ride past the inspiring supermarkets that line the road from the airport to the city center and look out on the glorious Hanseatic skyline from the precipice of the Foreign Ministry on Iceland Square and feel deep and bone-aching sorrow for not getting to be the FM of such an awesome country.

multikulti

Has it occurred to any of the hijackers or knifers or hackers or exploding backpackers that the number one killing entity of Muslims worldwide is probably other Muslims? Or do they think it's their exclusive job to kill themselves? How many car bombs have been set off in Iraq's sectarian civil war, hundreds of dead, the perpetrators -- OTHER MUSLIMS. And yet the fists are shaken at drones and stray bullets and Americans and Britons and French, because these legacy colonial administrators have obviously not taken their mandates seriously! There is this tendency among the Left to feel, deep down in the inner lining of their entrails, that while "terrorism" is abhorrent, it is somehow justified (or at least explainable) because of our neocolonial policies. Yet the unenlightened child minds of these exotic lands continue to murder one another, to even eat each other's hearts. Perhaps the schism is not religious or political, therefore, but merely human stupidity, the cancer of all existence, period.

I honestly don't know where I sit in all of this, other than being a bemused nihilistic rambler man. No, Mr. Cameron, your little task force isn't going to solve a thing. Task forces, roundtables. I've got an idea, boys, let's tie it all up in red tape. Stick the failure of multikulti in committee and kill it. As if it was a law! That's what you get when you let lawyers run countries. O, Britain, incubator of sectarian violence. Norsemen and Anglo-Saxons, Romans and Celts, Catholics and Protestants. Everyone's got his own justifying almighty. Here I recall an Estonian newspaperman lamenting EU accession many years ago. "If they let the Muslims in, we're done for," said sad-eyed he. But, Estonian newspaper man, don't you see ... we're already done for.

von trapp

"All the people from this country should be removed and replaced with Brazilians." This was my Latin American friend's response to the question, "So how are you getting along in Estonia?"

Sometimes it feels that way. As much as we care about Estonia and it's people, they can get annoying. We are equally as annoying for them, or at least amusing. Example. I am a father, and yet am not an Estonian father. I yell at my naughty children in shops, WHAT THE HECK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING? They tend to ignore my spontaneous outbursts. An Estonian father though is austere and firm. All he has to do is mutter a few lines under his breath, and his children fall back in line. Good Estonian fathers are like The Sound of Music's Captain von Trapp before he started sleeping with Fraulein Maria.

That severity in character, respect for discipline, order, silence ... it can drive a non-Estonian to the edge. It builds up over time. My little daughter Maria, aged 20 months, greeted every passerby in Haapsalu over the weekend with, "Tere!" I would estimate that 20 percent of those greeted bothered to look at her or respond. The others winced and scurried by, as if they felt as if they had been found out by the friendly toddler. Why so reticent? I wondered. Did they think they were invisible?

statistical condom

Interesting to see the Russian question pop up from time to time, along with statistics ... "X percent THIS, therefore THIS ..." Statistics are important because they are used in the transmission of halftruths, lies, propaganda, so always wear a statistical condom! One discussion that caught my ear revolved around the translation of Estonian law into the Russian language, a suggestion made by a Social Democrat named Ossinovski. Society comes unglued at the very mention of such ideas, with statistics tossed around like rice at a wedding, "X percent THIS, therefore THIS!" I scratch my own itchy head ... Yeah, why not translate the laws?

I have always been opposed to making Russian a second-state language, not just because I like Estonian so much because I think it's so cute with all of that ä ü õ ö, but also because I feel it is unnecessary. I am of the opinion that forced legal inclusiveness is, in two words, complete bullshit. "Oh, look, the official languages of Kosovo are Kosovar Albanian AND Serbian." That'll get them to stop hating each other, sure ... Or, "Just look at Finland, just look at Canada!" -- the linguistic minorities there are bitching round the clock. The Quebecois complain about not having their own state, the Anglophones in Quebec complain about living in the Francosphere. And so, as you already knew, NOBODY IS EVER HAPPY.

Then I start thinking about the multilingual origins of the Estonian state with its Danish and German merchants and border Russians and deposed Polish counts, and I recall that during the 1920s and '30s, Estonian politicians used to go to Narva or Petseri and give addresses ... in Russian. So what exactly are we restoring the state to, if that's how it was in the earlier period of independence? What is the default for which we yearn? Are we going back in time, or involved in a completely new state-building project? Stuff to consider.

But, back to the question: Estonian laws in Russian? ... Why not? Why not in English, too? Hell, let's add Swedish. The Swedes are still a tiny minority, but, unlike the Russian minority, they are actually growing. If you model it out over the next 500,000 years, at current growth rates, the Swedish minority will surpass the Russian minority in 253,000 years. So, that's my advice. Think ahead. Be the future.

zooropa

The Estonians do it, too, but the British are the worst ... £69 to Europe!" says the airline advertisement in Victoria Station ... Terrific, but aren't we in Europe, already? Is this some kind of scam? £69 to remain standing in place? ... How can the British look at themselves in the mirror and believe that they are somehow less European than the Swedes or the Danes or the Dutch, or any other Northern European kingdom ruled by inbred monarchies from dank castles? And this at a time when PM Cameron's eurosceptic tory backbenchers are in revolt ... I've heard the Estonians tell odd tales of travels to "Europe," which in the local imagination combines the canals of Venice with the banking streets of Switzerland and other assorted landmarks (La Tour Eiffel, British Houses of Parliament, Spanish Bullfighting) ... too bad that they don't realize that Estonia is a lot like East Anglia... EUROPE ... Look at the map, it starts over here and runs to over here, you're it, and there's no escaping it ...

matsid

Yesterday watched three local citizens parade down the street -- a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter -- all of them smoking. Then the word came to me, "matsid." I am not sure who the poor, ill-mannered country bumpkin was that gave the Estonians this term, but his name was Mats ... To be called Mats (or even worse, Mats Hobusega ("Mats with Horse")) is to have one's poor, dirty, country roots put on display for all to see ... Drinking, smoking, TV game shows, the habits of the lower classes (yes, string me up now, oh would-be French Revolutionaries, elitist second estate snob that I am) ... I've seen locals drinking and smoking in the morning on the streets in town ... cigarettes, beer, breakfast cereals ... these are the things that go together in their mindset [but hush, do not criticize the matsid's habits, nor even suggest {aloud} that they are matsid, or that matsid even exist!] ... And yet, when they walk by on parade, even the Estonian who is but one rung above this bottom-rung untouchable class is known to look over his/her monied, educated shoulder and sneer and spit ... 

"Once a mats, {ptui!} always a mats ..."

little wooden town

Tartu, that's a Little Wooden Town! From the lips of a Tallinner, the words are derisive, little and wooden meaning small and inadequate, not metropolitan, cosmopolitan, urbane ... Yet people in a little wooden town are also quite little {as small as they are anywhere} and in this context, this Little Wooden Town impresses. Like John and Paul and George and Ringo sang, Tartu is getting better all the time, blocks of postwar wooden shanties cleaned up and made new, yellow and orange and other creamy mild colors, so that when you are walking along at night under all of those Big Wooden Windows and Wooden Gingerbread and Architectural Curiosity, the Warm Electric Lamp Glows, under the Eaves of the Big Wooden Houses and the Eavesdropping on Goodlooking Young People's Conversations, well ... you DO feel like you are in the middle of something, even if it is just a puny, pathetic, backwater, upstream, remote joke of a Little Wooden Town ...

high and holy

It's always a big come down being back, I don't mean an emotional come down though Estonia can be pretty boring and lonely, but, you know everywhere with me is boring and lonely at least some of the time ... I once sat on the steps of the New York Public Library on a Saturday afternoon watching the automobiles fling by, my God, never been lonelier, but wait! The come down, yes ... I love the way the Finnish air bathes me on the bus from the airport to the plane, it's cool, mild, relaxing, like peppermint astringent, that refreshing, you know, a nice, cool, longdrink of a refreshment, spiced with clarity, purity, holiness, saintliness ...

... Lots of religious thoughts these days (not me, no, no conversion for me, never) They asked me what my faith was in Bali, I told them Catholic, not that I am one, but I once was one, and to-date, it's been my most enduring exposure to faith, which is why I feel I must tell SOMEBODY about EVERY bad deed I've ever done, because Confession is in my nature, though I still cannot figure Christianity out {HE LOVES US, but WE MUST FEAR HIM???} I'm sure I just got it all wrong the first time and it all makes sense. Maybe Pope Emeritus Benedict 16's book contains some clues, helpful hints ...

... The Balinese are Hindus with a tiny Muslim minority and though everybody's good pals, officially, you can tell that they don't take the Muslims very seriously, or that they see them as ridiculous, with their evening prayers and non-pork eating [this in a land of daily flower and incense and fruit offerings to the many Hindu Gods, where cows roam free, swinging their tails at flies] Can't say "on sul hästi hästi" to the Muslims, they must be addressed with Selamat Tinggal. I kept thinking of Cat Stevens/Yusef Islam and Kätlin Mrabte, author of Minu Maroko, Gentile converts to Muhammedism and the thought that I was thinking was, "What, the hell were they thinking?" But here I am purchasing my copy of the Ramayana, so who am I to speak? Our taxi driver had what appeared to be large grains of salt pasted to his forehead. Must have been another high holy Hindu day ...

The Estonians claim to not be religious ... pure bunk, bullshit, jama. Explain to me all of your holy days then, my post-Soviet atheist friends ... Where were we? Oh, yes ...

• Vastlapäev (Shrove Tuesday, celebrated by sledding, eating rolls filled with whipped cream)
• Jüripäev (Saint George's Day, April 23, celebrated by burning manor houses, killing landlords)
• Jaanipäev (the big one, Saint John's Day, June 24, celebrating by eating grilled meats, leaping over bonfires)
• Hingedepäev (All Souls' Day, Nov. 2, celebrated by lighting candles)
• Mardipäev (Saint Martin's Day, Nov. 11, celebrated by cross dressing)
• Kadripäev (Saint Catherine's Day, Nov. 25, also celebrated by cross dressing)
• Luutsipäev (Saint Lucy's Day, Dec. 13, also celebrated by lighting candles)

... about the cross dressing, each year our house is stormed by Kadrisantid (boys dressed up like Saint Catherine) and Mardisantid (girls dressed up like Saint Martin) and they come inside our house with their raggedy old dresses or ashy mustaches and do a little dance called the kaerajaan - "Kaerajaan, Kaerajaan!" -- they fold their arms and put one foot in front of the other while remaining in place ...  If we are feeling particularly magnanimous, we reward our visitors with a little piece of fruit or a candy. And these people claim to have no affinity with religion?

So, next time an Estonian tries to tell you he's not religious, don't question his lack of faith. Simply cross your arms and put one foot in front of the other and sing, "Kaerajaan, kaerajaan." See if he doesn't join you.

on sul hästi hästi?

On sul hästi hästi, or, as the Balinese say it, om-su-hasti-hasti. This is how they greet one another on this Indonesian island. It reminds me of our old friend Vello Vedelik and his various theories on the origins of nations, putting the Estonians at the center of it all, the chosen people, the first Europeans, the fathers and mothers of the Guanche people of the Canary Islands, and now, as my ears suspect, the distant cousins of the Balinese, who greet each other with a broad smile, "On sul hästi hästi?" ("Is everything okay?") Hästi hästi! is the islander's response.

"Bush was right." This is what a guide told me a day ago at Goa Lawah, the Hindu Bat Cave. I thought about asking him, "Right about what?" but said nothing because I have no stomach for conflict. The conservative/liberal think tankers who see Estonian economic policy as a lighthouse to the world's astray darkened lands, certainly miss GWB, because "those were the days," the days when they were more important, when people listened to them, when they had the ears of an administration led by a man who cartoonists portrayed as having very large ears.

Obama meanwhile is a weakling. Why doesn't he just take out Iran? And North Korea? And Russia? And, while he's at it, go back in time and defeat the Viet Cong? Show them we're not to be trifled with! These are the kinds of fantasies that filled the Bush years with Lewis Carroll logic and opaque purple haze. After America crawled out of its post-Vietnam doldrums with some handy invasions of islands and isthmuses and peninsulas,segments of its elite became so lovedrunk on their invincibility and childhood postwar mythos, that they thought they could raze vast and complicated post-colonial territories and rebuild them in their divine image. And the clean-up man Obama isn't resolute enough to see that they were right! I mean, after Boston, isn't it obvious?

On sul hästi hästi, they ask me on Bali, om-su-hasti-hasti. I'd like to say, "Ei ole." But the Balinese don't say that. They are good Hindus. They say, Om-santi-santi.

look homeward, angel

Copley Square, a familiar place. A familiar place for beer drinking and hamburger consumption and overhearing hipsters badmouthing Red State America on a snoozy Sunday afternoon. Named after John Singleton Copley, portraitist to the Boston Brahmin. "But the people in this town ... the people in this town make me feel like Sean Hannity," my Obama-voting friend Eamon once told me there on leafy, liberal Copley Square. I nearly followed Eamon up to B-town after college, was planning on setting up above a cannoli shop in the North End and affecting one of those accents that drops the r and overdoes it on the äääää. I could have been there on the finish line that fated day, had my legs blown off by bolts and other metal bits.

I keep pulling lucky numbers, but I know that sooner or later an unlucky one will come up.

... on the Baltic Queen between Stockholm and Tallinn in late winter waters, March, with the broken window glass ice crumpling and scraping the hull of this un-Titanic, playing video games in the ship's arcade, one has real-looking guns, aiming at real-looking people, my daughter starts to play it. "Aim this way, now squeeze the trigger," instructs adolescent freckly finnic face (an Estonian though). And at the end of this "game," after we've both been wasted by adversaries, he confides in me in the arcade dark, "I love guns." He loves guns?

 ... Violence here and violence, ultraviolence, sex and violence. New York, Bali, Madrid, London, Boston, more unlucky numbers pulled. And who to blame? It's not the pretty Malaysian Muslim girls with their peacock-like headscarves and round faces and scooters and ivorywhite smiles. It's Timothy and Tamerlan and Dzokhar. The social cancer of those who kill and maim and ruin innocents to satisfy a vague political goal and succeed by seeing it never addressed because it is associated with their rotten blood-stained selves.

Some call these murderers "terrorists." You and I know them better as "idiots."

margaret and nelson and jaak

SDE party member Jaak Allik has stepped in some Esto political doo doo by saying that Russia has never attacked Estonia (actually, it was in the context of Russia attacking only Estonia -- he {correctly, I think} points out that most Russian conquests of the windy peninsula took place as part of larger continental wars involving many countries) But it's a great opportunity to ramble on about history because this is an election year [Estonian municipal elections will be held in autumn] and Allik's party SDE is doing well in the polls, and what better way to drag them down, then to Question Their Patriotism? Allik is the son of Olga Lauristin and Hendrik Allik, both of whom were Estonian Communists, so, of course, there are quips about his traitorous genes.

Which brings us to the recently deceased Margaret Thatcher, who is being celebrated and villainized. Thatcher famously called {the now universally beloved} Nelson Mandela a "terrorist" -- one of the charges against her from those who do not remember her leadership fondly. But in the early 1960s, Mandela did co-found a militant organization and led a bombing campaign against government targets. So these are our choices? British conservatism or the South African Communist Party?

Nobody is a hundred-percent pure, nobody is a hundred-percent good, nobody is a hundred-percent honest. As human beings we all bear the sins of our ancestors on our souls. Fingers may be pointed, spin round like weathercocks, but the British people elected Thatcher, and the South African people backed Mandela and later made him their president, and Jaak Allik may be the son of Communists, but there are plenty of people who are the sons and daughters of even less savory elements. We are all Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela and Jaak Allik. They are just individual manifestations of our conflicted and often irrational psyche, the varying consciences of a giant that so desperately wants things in the world to be well and in order, but somehow always manages to screw things up.

of gays and matrimony

Years ago, my well-meaning, liberal arts college-educated friends started taking me aside. I apparently had missed practice, and didn't know all of the new plays by heart, so they decided to enlighten me as to what the new progressive playbook contained, and on page one was the right of men to marry men, and women to marry women. "Really?" I asked without prejudice. "Come on, man, you should be able to marry whoever you want!" I got the opposite play from the campus Republicans, who were taking me aside and putting their [strictly platonic] hands on my shoulders and saying, "But if They get the right to marry, then They can adopt." Jaws drop, horror. Not normal, said they, no way!

These were the Al Gore "civil union" days, and I supported the former vice president, not out of any belief in any virtue or universal truth [oh, hell no], but simply because I grasped the problems that faced same-sex couples [taxes! hospital visitation rights!], and I thought that the civil union Trojan Horse had a better chance of making it past the gates of traditional Christian America than some extended sojourn into the dank depths of rabbit-hole questions like, "But are you born with it?" Well, if [formerly straight] Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon is our poster lesbian, then obviously not! [Which is also why the arguments about gay marriage are so ridiculous: straight woman decides she's actually lesbian, leaves husband for woman, takes kids and - voila! - kids suddenly have two moms]

I am of the two-camps camp, actually, the "born this way" camp and the "chose this way" camp, some born with, some chose, which actually makes me part of the "just don't give a shit" camp. That's right, I don't care how gays got gay, or what makes gay people gay, or, really about gays at all, well, as little as I care about straights. They're just people, all of them, not one more fascinating than the other, at least when sexual orientation is concerned. Which is why I really wish that each one of the United States, and Estonia, too, would legalize same-sex partnerships, so I can stop hearing about it and having my well-meaning, liberal arts college-educated friends go over the playbook with me, again and again and again, and watch people trade Biblical quotes on the Internets and see legally minded pals advocate civil unions for opposite-sex couples, with liberal use of exclamation marks ...

In Estonia, I even signed a petition in support of it, just to keep it moving toward that final relieving destination, where it's SO normal that nobody talks about it anymore. I have been grateful to see the public opinion shift in the last few years toward support for same-sex marriages, because it means that, at last, Praise Be to You, Lord Christ, Western society can move on with its life. Same-sex marriage, your fifteen minutes/years are almost up ...

a little of that, a little of this

Is Estonia a very conservative country or a very liberal country? I cannot tell. Conservative, yes, conservative about language and about eating habits and about not whistling in houses (or else they'll burn!), but also liberal, yes, liberal as in having three children with three different men, none of whom have ever lived with you, none of whom have ever seen their offspring {and may not even be aware they exist, and you may not even know their last names} BUT ... Hush! Do not speak of such things! Because Estonia is a conservative place, where such things are not spoken of. Estonian gender roles are fixed and rigid and permeable and porous, even gaseous ... Consider: Härra Giustino's critique of Estonian men and their "golden hands" is actually a shrouded criticism of bimboland's wannabe Marilyn Monroe wimmin who are just {sigh} so dainty and {sigh} ladylike that they {sigh} can't be bothered with turning a screw three times clockwise ... That's MAN'S work, and besides, I just got my nails done!!! And yet there they are, the Estonian wimmin, stooping down in the dirt with all of those potatoes ... "Hey, pass the, uh, Sovetskoye Shampanskoye ... That's what's so great about talgud, you know ... *hiccup* you get to work in the outdoors [wipes sweat from face with dirty dirt-soiled hand] and get sun on your face and ...gluglugglug ... Hey, give me another sip of that wouldya?" Oh, Estonia, land of contrasts, land of flat taxation and state-run healthcare system, a little of this, a little of that, a little of that, a little of this ...

étienne

Étienne is one of my oldest friends, not that I have known him for so long, but because, literally, at age 74, he is among my oldest friends. I had known this French geneticist for years before I had the courage to ask him the question, "So, if you're about 40 years older than me, does that mean that you remember the war?"

"I do have a few recollections from WWII, not tragic ones, my family and myself didn't go through particularly tragic moments, especially, of course, as seen through a child's eyes..." said  Étienne. "I do remember German soldiers playing with my little sister's pram, sitting in it and launching themselves down an incline," he said. "And I remember, really remember, not because people told me about it, the liberation of Paris, the noise of tanks driving through our street, the hurried cutting of a few flowers in our garden and the rough, unshaven cheek of a solider I was kissing on the tank on which I had been hoisted -- these were French tanks from the "Division Leclerc", as the Allies had gracefully allowed them to come in first. Of course I wasn't aware of all the awful things that were taking place."

I share these stories of Étienne's because they remind me of my wife's grandmother's story about the March 1949 deportations. The Laanemaa (nee Landmann) family was on Stalin's shit list for a number of reasons. One: Martin, the father, had served in the Estonian War of Independence. Two: Martin, the father, had been a member of Omakaitse, the Estonian national guard, both before the war and during the German occupation. Three: the Laanemaa family was wealthier than average. Because of this, Martin had already been deported in 1948. In 1949, they came for his wife and two daughters. The eldest, Salme, was arrested and sent to Siberia. The mother, Anna, and her younger daughter, Laine, hid in the forest and managed to escape deportation. They made an attempt to return to the village (on the west coast of Estonia), but decided against it when they saw other villagers walking around wearing their clothes. Their house had apparently been looted.

That is the kind of detail you can only get from talking to your older relatives. We know so much about what happened in occupied Paris, but who can now forget the image of two young German soldiers stealing a little girl's carriage and taking turns riding it down a hill? Likewise, who can now forget -- for I surely can't -- the image of a woman and her teenage daughter, who had been living in the forests in March, peeking out from behind some bushes only to see a neighbor walk by wearing one of their coats? So, if you get a chance, talk to your older friends and relatives about their memories of certain events. You may be surprised by what you hear.

trotsky berezovsky

winners/losers

One aspect of the Yana Toom affair that I brought out in my talk in Stockholm was a generational dimension, and it's one that's been on my mind in recent weeks. I was thinking about my friends (roughly my age) who travel around the world, and then I thought about two very famous Estonians, Marko Matvere and Jaan Tätte, who also travel around the world. Except when our friends travel around the world, it's just traveling around the world. But when Matvere and Tätte travel around the world, it's a Big Fucking Deal. Oh, look, Tätte sent home a postcard from Hawaii. Let's put it in a museum! Why are they so important? Sure, they write songs. But my friends also write songs. Sure, they appear on TV and in film. But ... so do some of my friends. And yet, whatever Matvere and Tätte do seems to be more imbued with meaning, more relevant. They are, ühesõnaga, culturally significant.

The only real difference between the Tätte and Matveres of Estonia and people my age, is that they are a little older. They are of the so-called "Winner's Generation." (They are both pushing 50). This is pretty hilarious construct for Americans, because in America, the generation born in the 1960s was pretty much seen as getting screwed at every stage of their life [See Reality Bites]. But in Estonia, people born in the 1960s are number one. Think of the first Laar government from 1992. Much has been made of their youth at the time. Laar was 32. Foreign minister Jüri Luik was 27. Defense minister Indrek Kannik was 28 (just checked these by the way, though I recall Laar boasting at a conference about the young members of his first government). Two decades on, not much has changed. The big boys are still running the show. There are younger ministers, some even my age, but they are usually somebody's protege. Who makes the big decisions about Estonia's future? The Winners.

But who is a Winner? I usually think of Savisaar as the first Winner, not because he wins so many elections, but because he thinks he's so important. He may count on some pensioners' votes, but the painstaking/philosophical/academic approaches of say Paul-Eerik Rummo or Jaan Kaplinski are absent. People wonder what Savisaar stands for. That's easy. Savisaar stands for whatever Savisaar happens to think at the time, naturally. End of story. It was this combative nature that earned him the nickname, "Piggy." And what you see down the line after him is a long list of Piggies. They are significant just because ... they are significant.

And, to draw Yana Toom in here a little, all of the issues that molested their psyches during the Brezhnev stagnation continue to plague Estonian politics. Russification is one of those issues. It's not unlike Vietnam in the United States. Remember the 2004 election and the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"? Somehow, what happened in Southeast Asia at the tail-end of the 1960s became more important than what was happening in Afghanistan and Iraq in the middle of the 00s. And for younger, less diverse generations of Estonians, these questions about language and history are not as important as being able to find a good job. But for the Winners they were, and will continue to be, among the most significant issues we face. A discussion about minority issues in Estonia today does not occur in the context of 2013 but, too often, in the context of 1980. But, as Kaplinski alluded to in his essay (see discussion in previous post) Estonian-Russian interpersonal relations before the war, before the Winners came onto the scene, and in the tsarist era, were actually pretty okay. Not that it matters much what he says. It's got to be frustrating for the Kaplinskis of Estonia. He's now an elder in society, and yet all this wise old man can do is write essays and hope that somebody reads them.

The thing about Yana Toom is that she is a Winner, at least technically. She's the same age as Juhan Pärts, Jüri Luik, a year younger than Matvere, two years younger than Tätte. Except Yana Toom is not a winner. She's a loser. I would not like to see the conditions under which she becomes the foreign minister of the Republic of Estonia. But Estonian Russians of her age have to deal with that. While their EstoEsto peers climbed quickly to hold the top positions in the land, meet with presidents and kings and queens, and generally can count on having things named after them when they are dead, the Yana Tooms of Estonia cannot point to a similar amount of success. These are people who were completely socialized in the Soviet system, who became adults before it fell apart, who looked forward to one future and yet were handed a very different one. That's bound to generate some bitterness.