Uncle Joe's Ghost

Upon reading a propagandist article in yesterday's Grauniad http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2027393,00.html I was compelled to write a clarification:

As an ex-pat living and working in Estonia for over a decade, and indeed as someone who drives past the Soviet era memorial twice every day, I feel quite qualified to add some clarification to the debate.

The memorial has long been the focus of ethnic tension in Tallinn with pro-Russian groups using it as a rallying point. There has been a great deal of debate in Estonia on the subject of the removal and the decision was taken as a pragmatic one - move the focus to a less sensitive area. After all the memorial is located directly opposite the front door of the National Library and only a very short walk from Parliament on a main thoroughfare. Can you imagine if the German army had built a memorial to their war dead on the Champs-Élysées? This is how sensitive the Estonians are to the statue.

Comments earlier in this forum about Estonians glorifying the SS are a red herring. All foreigners conscripted into the German army in WWII were placed in some form of the SS. There are veterans groups who meet but they are strictly regulated. Memorials which exhibit SS paraphernalia are absolutely banned and there have been several public cases of the authorities forcefully removing such items including a memorial in the city of Pärnu. No such sanction has been applied or conducted against any military symbols of the Soviet occupiers.

The war memorial is a convenient stick that the Russian media has been using to beat Estonia with and to inflame popular opinion against this country in the broader Russian mindset. Estonia held its latest General Election on Sunday and the result looks like being a centre-right coalition. On the TV news yesterday evening passers-by were quizzed by a journalist on their opinions. One elderly Russian lady expressed her "deep regret" that the Estonians had elected "the Nazis" back into power.

You see, this is directly derived from the type of drivel that is broadcast into thousands of homes by satellite and cable TV from the various Russian broadcasters - people are fed misinformation by the Russian media and take it as gospel. And it is the election campaign which has been the focus of this Russian interference.

The Russian media is in a feeding frenzy over Estonia. Recently the Estonian Consulate building in St Petersburg was defaced with black paint. Remarkably the very same crime was attempted in Minsk but the miscreants in this case were not overly clever and targetted the wrong building - the Latvian Embassy! A Russian colleague of mine who lives and works in Russia describes Estonians as "Ethno-Nazis". I asked why he used this reference and he replied that this was what he had been taught and is the current thinking in Russia of their little neighbour.

Who committed what atrocity, where and against whom? These matters still resonate and all sides claim the moral high ground. Let us suffice to say that all parties are guilty to some extent and move on. However the insistence that Russians do not share the sins of their Soviet forebears does not wash. Stalin was a Georgian but his policies were gleefully carried out by legions of Russian troops and policemen who believed that they were refinding their self-respect - these lands on the Baltic fringe were Russia's historical right and destiny even if there is hardly a shred of evidence to back this up!

Estonians have long realised that you can choose your friends but you can't choose your neighbours. Russia is a constant that will not be disappearing any time soon so the best attitude is to engage. There was a massive decline
in the desire to learn Russian language immediately after independence in 1991. Today it is difficult to find good quality Russian speakers among the ethnic Estonian population demographic of school-leavers and university students. I know this to be true as I am actively trying to recruit individuals with such skills to fill jobs in the Luxembourg banking sector. However the principle of engagement is beginning to show results and Russian is back on the curriculum again for all. Family friends of ours are so worried about their 14-year old son's marks in Russian that they have hired a private tutor. The coming generation will be able to communicate over the border with few problems.

Neighbours argue and that is a fact of life. But the election is over and the Russian media has singularly failed in its agenda to cause the Estonian population to vote for the Centre Party which had been part of the previous coalition and was ostensibly a pro-Russian fop. Maybe now the Russians will turn their attention somewhere else.

What most amazes me is that the Guardian has given Mr. Kosachev the forum by which to misinform the UK now!