Estonia is not a suburb of St. Petersburg, despite what ex-U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich thinks.
The northernmost Baltic state with 1.3 million people has fought a tough internal battle over the past 25 years to cleanse itself of its Soviet past and join the European community. Estonians reached their goals, joining the European Union and NATO.
But Russian propagandists have focused intently on Estonia’s Russian-speaking minority, claiming discrimination against them. Estonia’s small size could make it even more vulnerable to Russia’s hybrid-war tactics than Ukraine, which has been under invasion from the Kremlin since 2014.
The year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Estonia held three elections in 1992 that signaled political support for integration with the West.
“From very early stages of that government it was taken very firm decision to reunite with Western organizations,” said Marko Mihkelson, chair of the Estonian Parliament’s defense committee. “There was a strong political consensus behind this integration processes to dismantle everything connected with the Russian or the Soviet empire and to establish, first reforms, democratic reforms, social reforms, and that allowed us to be ready for membership.”
Part of the de-Sovietization process includes promoting the Estonian language. The country passed a law in 1992 which mandated that Russians who moved to Estonia after the 1940 Soviet invasion and annexation must pass an Estonian language test in order to gain Estonian citizenship.
Ukraine in background
The country’s Russian minority of 320,000 – nearly 25 percent of the population – coalesced into a separate community after independence. But the Russian minority appear to be poorer than Estonians; at least the unemployment rate is higher — 8.0 percent compared to 5.4 percent.
Russia’s war against Ukraine convinced many in Estonia to be more vigilant in integrating its Russian minority. According to Henrik Praks, a research fellow at the International Center for Defense and Security in Tallinn, the Estonian government is actively pursuing this goal, including by craeting a Russian-language TV channel.
“We know a lot of Russian speakers in Estonia follow Russian state language media, and we know what kind of a world is presented there,” Praks said.
“What happened in Ukraine was a catalyst, and a public TV channel in the Russian language – which had not existed before – is broadcasting.”
But in spite of “growing propaganda from Russia,” Mikhelson argued that “integration in Estonia has been a success story.”
Spartak Ivanov, a St. Petersburg native who lives in Tallinn, told the Kyiv Post that he never encountered any trouble, thanks to his command of the English language.
“I don’t feel discrimination,” Ivanov said. But, all the same, he’s not planning to become an Estonian citizen.
