Looking at Estonia through the rear-view mirror
COLUMN
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By Erkki Pennanen
Like other ordinary citizens, we journalists are accustomed to living so firmly in the present moment, and in imagining what may happen in the near future, that we hardly ever glance backward. It would often be extremely beneficial and necessary to do so, in order to gain an understanding of what has really happened with the passage of time.
As of the day after tomorrow Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania will be members of both NATO and the European Union. Will we simply shrug off this event with a "so what"? Is it so easy to see into the distance from close up, even when looking back?
How far was Estonia from Finland still in the late 1980s? When the Gulf of Finland was frozen over in the heart of winter, sea transport could be cut off for weeks, and to get from Helsinki to Tallinn it was necessary to travel by air via Leningrad, or perhaps even more conveniently, via Moscow.
Until the 1980s the Baltic States were more distant for Finnish foreign news journalists than Siberia. As a Moscow correspondent, I toured Estonia and Latvia under the watchful eye of a Muscovite guide.
The reforms implemented under Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of perestroika began to move forward more quickly in the Baltic Republics than elsewhere in the Soviet Union. In the winter of 1987 I wrote in a reportage for Helsingin Sanomat about a "nearly private" video cafe set up next to the beach at Pärnu, and about hair salons and watch repair shops in Tallinn which had taken a big step in the direction of privatisation: the employees paid the state a fixed rent and a share of the cost of materials and income, and were allowed to keep the remainder themselves.
Today this seems amusingly quaint. After all, since then Estonia has become a country with a quite extreme liberal economic policy.
The Estonians soon found themselves in a standoff with Gorbachev, when they began demanding both economic autonomy and increasingly extensive sovereignty. People in Finland followed the Estonians’ aspirations with sympathy. On the other hand, it was feared that Estonia might go too far, resulting in an abrupt halt to Estonian hopes and Gorbachev’s perestroika as a whole.
I believe that I reflected views that were quite common in Finland in the autumn of 1988 when I pondered in a "Notes and Queries" piece in Helsingin Sanomat how Estonia should be helped: "It would be a new disaster for Estonia to go too far, but on the other hand, it would be political folly not to use any of the room to manoeuvre that might be there. Each nation and its leaders must be able to evaluate the limitations of their possibilities themselves."
President Mauno Koivisto was rather worried about the future. Koivisto was at least as worried about the possible failure of Gorbachev’s policy of reform as of the failure of the hopes of the Estonians. I remember well how enthusiastic he was about perestroika, and how he identified with Gorbachev’s position. The success of perestroika was undoubtedly also in the interests of Finland.
In retrospect it is quite tempting to quote only those parts of one’s writings that speak on behalf of one’s own far-sightedness. For the sake of truth I must admit that I well understood the concern of the foreign policy leadership, that the determination of the Estonians might end in tears.
A journalist’s position is much easier than that of a president or prime minister. A journalist writing commentary is actually obliged to anticipate coming events. In February 1990, or a year and a half before Estonia’s declaration of independence, one of my columns was headlined "Independent Estonia not a utopia".
I had been on language courses in Estonia a couple of times, and I had begun to believe that the determination of the Estonians could lead to a happy end result. If the Estonians had been more cautious, they might have missed the historical opportunity which opened up in August 1991 in connection with the attempted Moscow coup. At that point the Soviet Union had not yet begun to fall apart.
For Estonia and the other Baltic States, the restoration of independence was certainly not enough. They took joining NATO as their goal. In Finland and Sweden this was seen as further evidence of the Balts’ hot-headedness and lack of political realism. Hopes were expressed here in Finland that the Baltic States would take EU membership alone as their long-term goal, and promises were made to support the idea by all means possible. Assurances were made that EU membership would give sufficient protection for their security as well.
However, under Estonia’s leadership, the Baltic States continued to hold NATO membership as their main aspiration, regardless of attempts by Finland and Sweden to quell their enthusiasm. Gradually politicians in Helsinki and Stockholm had to concede that every country has the right to decide its own security policy solution. It is understandable that today nobody in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs wants to remember that any attempts had ever been made to restrain Estonia’s enthusiasm for NATO membership.
Who would have believed just a few years back that on May 1, 2004 all three Baltic Countries would be members of both the EU and NATO. Just 13 years ago these small states were part of the world’s second superpower, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Such significant upheavals usually take place only in connection with war, and without the small countries ever having the possibility to influence the changes. Most of the great changes that have taken place in Europe in recent times have happened without wars or revolutions.
The unification of Germany and the dissolution of the Soviet Union came as surprises to those making history - that is, to the great power leaders themselves. The leaders of the small Baltic States were among the makers of history who were actively pursuing objectives which seemed utopian quite recently, but which have now been implemented.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 29.4.2004
ERKKI PENNANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
erkki.pennanen@hs.fi
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| 4.5.2004 - THIS WEEK |
 Looking at Estonia through the rear-view mirror |
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