Mom, Dad, and the exam to be an Estonian
While Sasha was looking for TNT, I was having another cup of tea with Asya Mikhalichenko. We were sitting in a bar in Jõhvi, thirty miles from Narva.
The bar’s customers are divided in two. Half of them have distinctly Estonian features. The other half have puffy Slavonic faces. Half are dressed modestly. The other half are in expensive brand-name tracksuits, with gold teeth and jewelry.
Asya speaks in Russian with her mom and her friends from Jõhvi, and in Estonian with the people she meets at college in Tartu.
What bothers her the most is that many Estonians judge her by her family name. Because it’s a Russian one, they don’t want to be friends with her. “One time a boy came up to me. I’d never seen him in my life before. All he said was that he hated Russians, and then he just walked off.”
Asya would prefer not to go to modern history classes. According to the students and lecturers, the USSR was responsible for all the evil in the world, and now it’s Russia that’s to blame. They stare at Asya as if she personally had invaded Estonia. And then she wishes the ground would open and swallow her up. “I’m not even 100 percent Russian,” she complains.
Her mom is a Tatar, who moved to Estonia from Rostov-on-Don, immediately after graduating. She came out of love—her fiancé had been sent here to take up a job at a mine. In those days more than half the residents here made their living from oil shale extraction. The slag heaps start a few dozen yards from the city center.
Asya’s mom was an inspector, checking the state of grocery stores. They had a great life. Estonia was the richest of all the Soviet republics. Anyone who could live here wanted to. In his book entitled Estonia, Jan Lewandowski cites an anecdote: upon arrival in Tallinn, the fencing team from the Karakalpak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic thought they were already in the West and asked for political asylum.
At Asya’s home they wanted for nothing. The store managers used to bombard them with baskets of foodstuffs. Her father was a miner—the most prestigious job in the district. They didn’t know a word of Estonian. But how could they, when all their neighbors were Russians?
When Asya reached the age of five, her father became a foreman. That was the first and only time her grandparents came to visit them—from Rostov it was a three-day journey by train.
A year later the Soviet Union collapsed, and everything began to go wrong. The new government refused to give her parents citizenship. They had to pass an “exam to be an Estonian.” Her mom made six attempts at it. An Estonian neighbor saw a set of example questions. She didn’t know half the answers, although she had spoken Estonian from birth.
So Asya’s mom took some courses. She paid several hundred euros and studied into the small hours, but it was no use. Meanwhile the law changed, and without knowing Estonian she could no longer be a store inspector. She was fired. The store managers pretended not to know her. Finally, one of them took pity and gave her a job as a cleaner.
Her father had a tough time of it too. In the past all the shale oil had been sold to the USSR, but after 1991 there was nobody to buy it. One fine day her father lost his job. He couldn’t find a new one and spent part of his time drinking and part of it watching TV. More and more often he just stared mindlessly out of the window.
About a year later, he went away to Russia. He said he’d be back once he’d pulled himself together. He hasn’t been in touch for the past twelve years.
The lady president and the helpless prisoners
“Here the Russians are associated with nothing but loud music, fur coats, and dreadful makeup. But we Estonian Russians are nothing like the ones in Russia,” says Vladislava Vashkina, a therapist and president of the Estonian Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Russian integration has been Estonia’s biggest problem from the start. In 2005 a team of researchers based in Tallinn summarized its effects. The results were shocking. Well over half the Estonians do not approve of the way Russians behave. One in three does not wish to work with them. Eighty-five percent of Estonians have no Russians among their closest friends. All these indicators are rising.
Other research tells us that from 1991 the number of suicides among Estonian Russians rose by 40 percent. And in Kohtla-Järve, by more than 50 percent.
I’m having my cup of tea with Mrs. Vashkina at the house of an Estonian woman called Ruth Tera, who runs a center for former prisoners and homeless people. The center is in a Stalinovka—a building dating from the 1950s. They’re longer lasting than the later Khrushchovka buildings made of prefabricated concrete slabs. Even so, the plaster is crumbling off the center’s building, and it could well collapse—the mining area starts two hundred yards from here.
“Kohtla-Järve is an extraordinary place,” says Vladislava. “Twenty thousand people have Estonian citizenship, five thousand have Russian. And twenty thousand have no citizenship at all!”
“What do you mean, no citizenship?”
“They either haven’t passed the exam to be an Estonian, or they haven’t taken it. But they didn’t want to become Russians.”
“So how do they get by?”
“Normally. But they can’t vote. And they need a visa to go to any other country, even Russia. Worse is what’s happening in the minds of these stateless people. A few years ago we did some research on their sense of identity. The results were horrifying: they don’t know where they belong. Estonia, where they were born, doesn’t want them. And they’re not at home in Russia either. It’s a shock!”
“Why?”
“In the Soviet era, the Russians were privileged here. Suddenly, that was all over. They lost their prestige, their jobs, and their citizenship. Too much in just a few months. Many of them couldn’t cope.”
“On top of that, five of the mines were closed down in a short period of time—Kohtla, Sompa, Tammiku, Ahtme, and Kiviõli,” adds Ruth. “People weren’t ready for that. They had to be helped.”
Her center was designed to be a place for former prisoners with nowhere to go following their release.
“In the mid-1990s a large number of people who had gone behind bars in the Soviet era were released,” says Ruth. “Their families had left for Russia, and they had no one here. They were in a state of shock—a different country, different money, stores, goods, and rights. Russia wouldn’t give them citizenship because they were criminals. Nor would Estonia, because they didn’t know the language. And for anyone over fifty it’s really hard to learn a language. Estonian is in the Finno-Ugric group of languages. It has fourteen tenses.”
In the mid-1990s unemployment reached its peak too.
“Luckily, that has changed now,” says Vladislava. “There are courses for former miners, to teach them to become construction workers, welders, or pastry chefs. Lots of them have found work.”
The expensive chandeliers and the professor’s birthday
“If the Russians think they’ve got it bad here, let them go to Russia,” says Mart Pechter, who is 100 percent Estonian.
We’re sitting at the Moskva bar, a favorite venue for Tallinn’s social elite. There are expensive chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, waitresses in short skirts, and cut-glass mirrors on the walls. Lots of glitter and pizzazz.
Mart is a student of political sciences. Like 85 percent of Estonians, he hasn’t a single Russian in his circle of friends. And he doesn’t want any, even though half the residents of his city are Russians. “I have a Russian neighbor. Sometimes I say hello to him in Estonian—it’s tere. But he pretends he can’t understand me. Goddammit, we’re living in independent Estonia. Let’s talk in Estonian!”
The Bronze Soldier? Mart used to pass it every day on his way to the university. Once a year he saw a handful of gold-toothed old boys jangling their medals and some women with bunches of daisies. They used to meet there on May 9, their Victory Day. It would never have occurred to Mart to ba
n these defenseless representatives of the past from celebrating their anniversaries. He regarded their traditions as folklore.
Everything changed a year ago. “Some right-wing troublemakers tried to protest against the veterans. The police nabbed them. No big deal, but the message that went out in the media was: Estonian cops arrest Estonian youth so that the invaders can lay some flowers.”
“And, so what?”
“I agree that it shouldn’t be like that. My own memory of the USSR is very faint. Just the May Day parades—I loved them. Tallinn was sad and gray, but the parades were bright and colorful. I also remember the Baltic chain. Two million people from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia stood in line and held hands. It was a peace demonstration over a distance of 370 miles. They sang songs, and it was fabulous. Great fun for the kids. Even the Russians joined in with us. They knew the USSR was total shit too. And I remember my father cursing his Russian boss. He worked at an academic institute. From the associate professors up, almost all of them were Russian. They had an easy life here. My father once went to see the boss, Professor Antonov, to ask about his prospects for promotion. And the professor said: ‘Comrade, I never see you at the club. You weren’t at my birthday party. I hardly know you! How can I know if you deserve promotion?’ My friend says it might be a difference in temperaments. Because the Russians like to party, to fraternize, and clap each other on the back. That’s what matters to them.
“Estonians are cold. Even after a lot of vodka, we don’t open up. Telling someone about your problems isn’t part of our mind-set.
“But now my father says he would have left the Bronze Soldier there. Because it’s an idealized soldier, not an invader. The invaders and the upstarts came after it.”
“What about you? What do you think?”
“I think the Russians need to be taken down a peg. One in four of them doesn’t speak Estonian. Not a word. That’s no good! Anyone can learn a few sentences. They behave as if they’re a great superpower. Learning Estonian is beneath their dignity. Sometimes they need to be reminded that this isn’t Russia anymore.”
“They haven’t forgotten—half of them haven’t got passports.”
“Why should they have them? They haven’t learned the language, because they thought Russia would be coming back here. They didn’t believe the USSR really had collapsed. And now they know that Russia will always support them. If it weren’t for Big Brother across the border, we’d have come to terms with them long ago.”
The two miners and the drunken brothers
The young people in Kohtla-Järve have a choice in the evenings between the Alex bar or a park surrounded by Stalinovkas. They prefer the park—here, they don’t have to pay for anything. They like to sit on the benches behind the statue of two miners proudly wielding heavy pickaxes. The residents call these figures “the teetotalers.” From one year to the next, from the height of their abstinence they watched every May Day parade go by. On each national holiday since 1991, the Estonian flag has fluttered next to them. I open my conversation with the local high school students by asking them about this flag.
“I associate it with my parents’ persecution,” says Julia. “My dad was a brilliant surgeon. He graduated from the medical academy in Leningrad. He never learned the Estonian language, so they fired him. They disregarded the fact that all his patients were Russians. These days he’s a driving instructor.”
“It’s my country’s flag,” says Sasha. “The fact that this country doesn’t always treat me fairly is another matter.”
“The Estonians are fascists,” says Ivan. “But it’s our country too. We should civilize them.”
“Fascists?” I ask, trying to understand.
“Yes,” says Ivan. “They never fought against fascism. They didn’t support the Red Army.”
“Because they didn’t want to be annexed by the land of Soviets.”
“Because they’re fascists. Each year they hold an SS veterans’ rally here.”
Ivan is the most radical. He was the only one who attended the riots in Tallinn. The rest had other problems besides the Bronze Soldier.
“A month ago I got my Estonian passport,” says Misha. “Lately, the exams have become easier. During the holidays, I’m going to see my cousin in London. I’ll earn a bit of money.”
“I don’t have a passport,” says Nastya. “I haven’t yet decided which sort to get. I have lots of family in Russia. But I’m drawn to the West too. Though I think I’ll apply for the Russian one. I want to be an actor, and the best drama school is in Moscow.”
“I don’t have a passport either,” says Veronika. “I’m waiting for my mom to get one. I don’t want to have different citizenship from her. I was born in independent Estonia, and I could have had a passport at once. But I’m waiting. It’s a sort of civic protest.”
I ask the students if they feel more Russian or European. Only Sasha feels more of a Russian.
“My aunts, uncles, grandma, and grandpa are all Russians,” he says. “The fact that my parents are here has to do with where their work happened to send them, rather than choice. When they retire, they want to go back to Russia.”
Barely 10 percent of the Russians here give the same sort of answer as Sasha. According to research done in 2005, almost 70 percent identify with independent Estonia, even though only half of them have Estonian citizenship.
“Even if I get a Russian passport, I’ll feel like a European,” says Nastya. “We’re very different from our relatives in Russia. They’re not terribly fond of us. They envy us our Estonian prosperity. My grandma calls me ‘my little Estonian.’”
“When I visited my cousins outside Moscow, I realized I was nothing like them,” says Misha. “For me, the Internet, chat rooms and Skype are obvious. They’re the same age as me, but they don’t even know what all that is, whether you carry it in a bucket or a spoon.”
“My father’s brothers came to see him from the other side of the Urals,” says Julia. “They had a few drinks; then the vodka ran out, so they picked up the keys and headed for the car. My father lay down in the doorway and said, ‘Over my dead body! You’ll kill someone!’ In Estonia drunk driving is a very serious offense. My uncles looked at my dad and said, ‘You’re not a Russki anymore. You’re not our brother anymore.’”
TNT and Hugo Boss clothing
Asya Mikhalichenko’s mom signed up for yet another Estonian course. The seventh time, she managed to pass the exam. If it all goes well, six months from now she’ll be an Estonian.
The government in Tallinn is giving serious thought to starting up a Russian-language TV channel.
There are some Estonian Internet sites where you can still find Hugo Boss clothing at bargain prices.
My friend Jaan has calmed down now. He thinks the outburst of emotion did everyone some good. It will have made the Russians aware that, in spite of all, it’s better to live in Estonia than on the Neva. And the Estonians will have realized they do too little to make the Russians feel at home in Estonia, and that it’s only badly treated Russians who might form a fifth column.
Before finding the TNT, Sasha called Vladislava Vashkina. He used to go to her for therapy, and for him she’s an authority. He asked her what to do. “Keep well away from it,” said Vladislava. It worked. For now, both the station and the airport in Tallinn are intact.
VI. Hibernation
And the fact that they’re hibernating means our bears are making progress on the road to freedom. They’re no longer living from one day to the next. They’ve learned to prepare for tougher times.
Poland: Hobbits at the State Farm
“It’s poverty and unemployment that have brought us out of our houses,” says Gandalf. “Otherwise no one would make such a fool of himself.” I met him in person at a former PGR—or State Agricultural Farm—near Koszalin in Poland.
I’m in the Lublin area with a small
group of people—each of whom occupies the post of sołtys, or local community leader—on a tour of villages that have found their feet in the twenty-first century. We’ve already been to places known as World’s End, Labyrinths, Fairy Tales, Bicycles, and the Healthy Living Hamlet. The community leaders are looking to see if something similar could be set up in their own villages.
The next stop is Sierakowo Sławieńskie—otherwise known as the Hobbits’ Village. “As long as none of them bites me,” jokes one of the community leaders.
We park the bus by some wooden cottages inhabited by characters out of Tolkien. The main attraction is a game in the woods, where you can meet them in person. In June alone, three thousand visitors showed up at the Hobbits’ Village.
We buy tickets for fifteen zlotys each (under five dollars), including a bowl of soup and a sausage. Gandalf himself supplies us with maps. We set off for the woods.
Gandalf hasn’t time to watch TV
“Eight years ago Wacław Idziak, the expert from Koszalin, came here. ‘I can see a Hobbits’ Village here,’ he said. ‘What are hobbits?’ we asked.
“Getting started was tough. The old crones outside the store would say, ‘They paint their silly faces and traipse about the village. Shame on them!’ To which I’d reply, ‘Once a month the mailman knocks on your door and hands you your pension. But he only brings me bills. Why should I feel ashamed of wanting to earn a living?’”
The woman who plays Gandalf has fair hair and is in her late thirties. She’s the one in charge in the village square when groups of children go into the woods.
“The children sometimes say Gandalf wasn’t a woman. I reply curtly, ‘How do you know? Have you ever examined him?’ That does the trick. Of course, I only say that to the older ones. I tell the younger ones to pull on my beard. Or else I scare them.
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