There is a saying in Russian that roughly translates as: “no matter how often you feed the wolf, it will still look towards the forest”. It can be interpreted in many ways, from “old habits die hard” to “loyalty is forever”. I grew up seeing this old saying in action around me on a daily basis – ironically every time it somehow involved Russian culture, making things go full circle.
In my post about European identity, I mentioned how I myself am a byproduct of Russian colonialism. Though a fourth-gen Russian Estonian, my formative years took place during Estonia’s struggle to re-establish itself as an independent and important participant in the world’s affairs, which was and remains far from easy for a nation of such a small scale.
The tech success story (which I’ll always be proud to have been part of) made the country win this struggle, even if hostile influence from the East never declined. Though the Russian forces packed their stuff and headed back home in 1994, there remains a small but annoyingly loud part of the population that wishes this never happened. I grew up around those people.
I won’t be going too deep into the history of the Russian Empire and its influence in Estonia over the past few centuries here. Wikipedia is a thing (though lately some Estonians have been trying to make it pretend the 50 years of the Soviet Union never happened, it’s quite common in the society in general) so feel free to check the articles and sources there.
What matters to this story, however, is that for the most part of the history of Estonian people, their relationship with the Russians has been similar to the one of a child who can’t escape their abusive parents, no matter how hard they try.
Sure, sometimes you’d get niceties like new infrastructure and housing for the working class, but should you decide to do your own thing, this choice comes at the price of freedom, safety, often your own life. There are really good reasons why everything Russia-related is a zero-sum game for Estonia.
Over 30 000 people were deported to Siberia during the Soviet occupation – today that makes up roughly 2% of the population. Everyone in the country has at least one friend or a relative, whose family has been affected by those deportations. The dates of these terrible events are remembered with annual memorial services to this day.
If you’re German, you would think that the atrocities committed by the Soviets would be reflected on, in a similar fashion that the current German state has done it after the defeat in the WW2 and subsequent Allied occupation. Well, the Soviets were on the winning side.
The only kind of reflection Russians ever had to do was on how many millions of their own died in the war. In fact, today’s Russia has an entire cult over the victory in 1945. The country barely had any achievements after the USSR dissolved in 1991, so its political system and the people serving it desperately cling to that now-ancient victory as the main source of pride.
This pride fuels Russian imperialist ambitions today, at home and abroad.
Perhaps the first time I experienced Russia’s influence in Estonia at full scale was in 2007 during the Bronze Night. I was only 10 at the time, but I do remember the state of crisis surrounding Tallinn. We were getting text messages from the government to stay inside and not fall for the provocations. That did not deter Russians patriotic for their dead empire.
Just the very fact that the Estonian government dared to do some excavation works and research of the remains of the soldiers buried in its own sovereign soil prompted the local Russian speakers to go to the site of the monument, starting riots and looting nearby businesses.
1200 people were arrested, and a year later the government had to pay out 25.7 million EEK (1.6 million euros in 2008) to cover the damages caused by the looters. One student was killed with a knife and his murderer avoided jail due to the court case expiry.
The damage done was not just physical and psychological, however – we also witnessed a large-scale cyber warfare campaign against a state. One of the world’s first and way before this kind of operations became a daily occurrence for all of Europe.
The Estonian government, representing its voters, decided that perhaps a monument in downtown Tallinn that celebrates a Soviet victory in a war that essentially erased independent Estonia from the world map does not quite belong in its current location, especially when ethnic riots of such scale happen. So it was relocated to the city’s Defense Forces Cemetery.
You know, because it’s now history and not the most favourable kind, especially if you ask an average Estonian.
For Estonia and the wider region in general, the Bronze Night was a wake-up call that their eastern neighbour may not be heading towards leaving its past behind and establishing relationships with their former vassals as equals. The imperialist pride wouldn’t let many older Russians adapt to the fact other countries have their grievances towards them anyway.
So why am I bringing up a WW2 victory and this riot as an example of nostalgia? Because those same people who are religious about this victory became so blind in their remembrance of the past, that their sentiments and actions impacted the ones around them and how they move forward with the world. And we’re not talking about the good kind of influence.
When you’re growing up in the ethnic Russian bubble, it is really difficult to get out of it, even if you live in a country that is, well, no longer Russia. I was lucky to have Estonian and international friends in my teens, even though in the earlier years the propaganda coming from Russia on TV, radio and elsewhere left a mark on how I perceived them before.
Just like the older people in the bubble, I was told to hate Andrus Ansip, Estonia’s PM at the time of the Bronze Night. I was convinced that Estonians are slow (an old Soviet stereotype), and that the Estonian military only consists of a thousand cyclists (having served there myself I now know it’s a formidable force that can and will hurt Russia if it ever invades).
It isn’t uncommon for the older generations of the Russian minority to refer to Estonians as fascists for “discriminating against” their language. Apparently, it should be the state language even when there’s a massive country of native speakers right next to it. Pointless to mention the imperialist history since that would fly past them anyway.
“They don’t speak Estonian in space”, I once heard from an old Russian Estonian. “Why should I learn the language that’s only 200 km long?” is what my former classmate (who moved from Russia) said. “Why do I need to be speaking Estonian when this land belonged to us for 200 years?” is another classic.
And the word that I hate the most in my life is великий (great). Russians love to sprinkle this word on everything – the Great Patrotic War (Soviet WW2 theatre in Europe), the great and mighty Russian language, the great Russian people.
Great is often used to remind of now-distant past’s achievements like Dostoyevsky’s work or Gagarin being the first human in space. As we know, neither of the two have anything to do with modern Russia. Today they’re so insecure about their corrupt failed state that they have to commit genocide outside of its borders to feel what they perceive as the old time’s greatness.
Many people who claim to be discriminated also mention that “they never expected the Soviet Union to break apart” so then they’d have to learn Estonian, and that they’d never have moved there if they knew. Well, the Estonians deported to Siberia some years before didn’t expect to be speaking Russian for the rest of their lives either, among other things.
In fact, there still are some Estonians in Siberia and yet Estonian is not a state language in Russia. I recall bringing this example to a person my age who moved from Russia to Estonia 9 years ago and still didn’t bother to learn the language. “It’s different”, they said – a pretty common excuse among people from Russia, by the way. Dismiss and offer no explanation.
Life must be easy when you’re stuck in the past and isolate yourself from the world around. The problem is that often your obsession with nostalgia will impact the wellbeing of your loved ones. Unfortunately, this is something I’ve been dealing for the most of my life which I believe is beyond helping, so all I expect from these people now is to leave me alone.
You can see how this nostalgia fuels stupid decisions around the world. More than half of Brits who voted to leave the EU in 2016 expected a rejuvenated empire – instead they got economic ruin and global irrelevance, slowly becoming an American vassal.
Speaking of the Americans – I think most of us (except for the Estonian government apparently) have finally come to the terms that they’re a handful too. All this making America great (gotta love this word) again led the rest of the world to face the worst energy crisis in history.
The rise of the far right across many countries in the (former) West, fuelled by targeted social media campaigns, often plays on the people’s fears in front of all things foreign to them. Different cultures, new technology, progressive values. Populists bank on the older people’s nostalgia and their desire to “bring the good old times back”. Their good old times, that is.
Against this backdrop, no wonder that the fertility rate across the developed world is going down. Young people see how they’re in the minority when it comes to decision-making, while the people with one foot in the grave are ruining the future for everyone else by making everyone stick to what worked decades ago and is simply no longer relevant.
And we should be paying for their retirement too? All while they’re squeezing young people out of the property market. Anyway, that calls for a separate post since I’ve held my grudges with old people for the entirety of my adult life.
Do I have a solution for the nostalgia problem? Perhaps, but it is not an easy one for many of us:
Own your personal decline with dignity, your false sense of belonging to a movement hostile to change won’t bring the good old days back.
Reinstating a fascist regime in your country won’t make your back pain go away. Getting rid of a migrant family that lives on your street will not make the neighbourhood safer – men who commit crimes against women are still around, regardless of their nationality. And if you don’t want to end up in a nursing home, maybe it’s time to consider what your offsprings fight for.
I’m about to turn 30 and already facing some issues that come with aging. My hairline keeps receding, which I will try to fix with a transplant or two. But if it fails, I’ll just shave everything off. Bringing nazis back to power won’t make me feel better about myself. I’d rather focus on new solutions for my community that will keep life enjoyable for the wider society.
And coming back to the example of the Russian minority in Estonia – some aren’t happy with me moving on and leaving the culture behind. But did I really? I was not born in Russia and only have been there twice. My language skills, though deteriorated, are still good enough to talk to my family and a couple of friends from the bubble who refuse to be this toxic.
I already explained before how I feel about tradition. When it comes to ethnicity, a similar principle applies. I do not share the same feeling of greatness that was being pushed on me while growing up. There’s not much to be proud of there to me, especially today. Others are welcome to enjoy the culture, just don’t ruin the lives of people around you in the process.
My entire life was built around anything but Russian culture, so all I really left behind is not the culture itself, but the people’s projections of it on me. Not gonna lie – some of the stuff is pretty good, but I’m simply not interested. There is no forest I feel like looking back towards, you can go and explore it without me though. I’m already happy where I am – moving forward.