So it's still snowing

As I sit here in Werner cafe, which I found out was the hot spot for Estonian intellectuals in the early 20th century (right before they won their independence from the Russian Empire after WWI, kicked the Bolsheviks out of Estonia, and experienced ten years of democracy before their first Prime Minister became a dictator and then the country fell to the USSR), I'm thinking about a lot of things that have slowly come out of the woodwork. For the last two months, it seemed and felt like any assumptions I had about the differences between my culture and this culture were wrong and that twenty years since the USSR's collapse were more than enough for Estonia to become as Western as any other country.

When I brought this up with two Estonians who came out with me to celebrate my appointment to Director of Social Justice for the Unity Coalition at St. Edward's, the immediate response from Indrek was that it was because I hadn't really gotten into Estonian society. The presence of the old Soviet state of mind is palpable in all areas of Estonian society, from the way that teachers view education to the job market. Teachers who learned how to educate while under the USSR expect the students to listen as they lecture and have no emphasis on dialogue or questioning in the classroom. Older citizens of Estonia tend to fall into two groups, according to my Estonian friends. There are those who can think for themselves and are happy in this newly independent and capitalist country, and there are those who relied on the socialist system so heavily for their life goals that the individualism required for success in the laissez-faire economy has pushed them to depression as Estonia progressed. This applies to the job market as well, where, for seventy years, Estonians were guaranteed a job and did not have to think about what their future would hold. In the current economic crisis, I will admit that I can see the attraction to such a system. Then, Indrek said something that really shook me from my fantasy of a job after college: "These things are not always bad, but there was no freedom." As an American, I can certainly understand the importance of freedom to every citizen of a country. This is the trade-off that people had to make for such security, and all subversion had to be communicated through Estonian irony, or, as Christina said, "You had to learn to read - and write - between the lines, because otherwise the censors would find the message. This is why Estonian humor is so ironic. It's something we are known for." When talking about the singing revolution and the pacifistic tone of Estonian nationalism, I commented on the difference between their revolution, focused on the ability for Estonians to gather together and endeavor towards one common goal that had not been dictated by the government, and ours, where we beat our oppressors in bloody combat, IndreK responded, "But we are only one million in Estonia. Russia could find one million soldiers in a minute. There is a saying that Estonia may be weak in numbers, but we are strong in spirit." I was almost brought to tears by this statement, because it seemed so true, and in the two months that I have lived here I have grown to love this city as my own.

It's time to meet my tutor for a group reunion, so I must be off, but expect a blog about American vs. Hungarian nationalism in the near future.

Nagemist,
moi