Entries from October 2009
I blogged recently about Estonia’s achievement at being included, for the fourth consecutive year, among the global top ten in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) annual press freedom index. Unfortunately this news seems to have escaped the notice of the editors of The Economist Newspaper (sic). Or perhaps they preferred simply to ignore it, since Estonia’s standing on the list would have diluted their argument, set out in this week’s issue (October 24th 2009), that “media freedom is under threat across eastern Europe.”
The article does cite deplorable examples of press freedom infringements in several countries, including Poland (ranked #37), Slovakia (#44), and Bulgaria (#68). But The Economist–one of the finest English-language news publications in the world–goes a step too far in attempting to paint the entire region with the same broad brush.
No mention is made of Estonia, and Estonia is flatly omitted from the list of countries and rankings that accompanies the article. Most egregiously, after briefly bemoaning media restrictions in Britain and Italy, the article warns that “the climate farther east, in the former Soviet Union, is far chillier.”
For the record, RSF’s Press Freedom Barometer for Estonia shows:
- Journalists killed: 0
- Media assistants killed: 0
- Journalists imprisoned: 0
- Media assistants imprisoned: 0
- Cyberdissidents imprisoned: 0
So I offer this friendly reminder to The Economist: media freedom is actually in pretty good shape in some countries in eastern Europe, and indeed in the former Soviet Union. They are called Estonia (#6), Lithuania (#10), and Latvia (#13).
Categories: News
Tagged: baltic news sources, estonia, former soviet union, press freedom
Estonia is often depicted as a place of quirky and tech-savvy coolness and the country has, for the most part, earned its hip reputation. But as fun as it may be to write or blog about the country’s cheap booze, pretty women, ever-expanding wireless hotspots, wife-carrying domination, etc., we shouldn’t forget that Estonia’s experience for much of the 20th century was pretty rotten.
The first modern era of independence (1918 – 1940) is usually remembered as a rose-tinted idyll, but it was darkened by the global economic depression and tragically cut short by the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which opened the door to Soviet occupation the following year. But then Nazi Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, and before long they had driven the Soviets out of Estonia, replacing the Communist occupation with a fascist occupation that lasted three years. Then the Soviets drove out the Nazis, won the war, and kept Estonia for themselves.
As I write in chapters 6 and 15 of my book, the Estonians caught up in this nightmare faced deportation, execution, or, if they were lucky, some very unpalatable choices. These choices were articulated starkly by Baltic scholar Anu Mai Köll in a recent talk at Stanford University:
[T]he procedure of deporting Estonians was similar in nature to deportations in other Soviet-occupied countries. What differentiated Estonia and the Baltic states was the legacy of the German occupation during the war …. Anyone thought to be a Nazi sympathizer was automatically subject to interrogations and arrests …. The Nazis became “the enemy of my enemy,” to borrow the old proverb. Brutalized by the Soviets, and caught between the voracious appetites of Hitler and Stalin, it would seem that the Estonians viewed Germans as the lesser of two evils.
You can read more about Professor Köll’s presentation here, and read about her research here. And this is a good place to begin a more thorough exploration of Estonian history.
Categories: History
Tagged: back on the map, baltic studies, estonia, estonian russian relations
Readers of this blog are well aware of Estonia’s cybersophistication. Unfortunately, its innovations and leadership in state-of-the-art online voting, tax filing, and money transfer has made the country a target for malicious cyberattacks. Exhibit A: the denial-of-service attacks of April and May 2007, which closed down critical Estonian government and business websites and froze the country’s automated teller machine and mobile phone networks.
Vaino Reinart, Estonia’s ambassador to Canada, Mexico, and the United States (yes, all three; a busy man!), addresses the issue of cyber-security in a thoughtful piece in today’s National Post. He discusses many of the steps Estonia has taken to strengthen its cyber defenses in anticipation of the next attack. What caught our eye was the disclosure that cyber-defense training begins in childhood for all of the country’s citizens (emphasis added):
We have increased IT education in our universities as well as included computer safety classes in primary and secondary school curricula.
Thus the modern face of civil defense. In the old days, pre-Internet, we had duck-and-cover drills; now, children learn to build firewalls.
Categories: Government · News · Science & technology · social
Tagged: cyber security, e-estonia, e-stonia, estonia
Estonia was today named as one of the world’s ten best countries for freedom of the press by the international press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (known by its French acronym RSF). The annual ranking looks at violations of press freedoms in 175 countries and covers print, broadcast, and online journalism.
Estonia retained the top-10 ranking it has held for four consecutive years. It placed 6th, immediately behind a five-way tie for first place among Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. Estonia’s rankings over the last four years have been impressive:
- 2006: 6th (tie)
- 2007: 3rd (tie)
- 2008: 4th (tie)
- 2009: 6th
According to the RSF website, “Reporters Without Borders compiles the index every year on the basis of questionnaires that are completed by hundreds of journalists and media experts around the world.”
See the complete list here, and some good analysis of the rankings here and here.
Categories: News
Tagged: baltic news sources, estonia, estonian democracy, press freedom, RSF
This web log was conceived to serve two complementary purposes: to promote across the English-language blogosphere an awareness of and appreciation for developments in contemporary Estonia, and to serve as a real-time supplement to my book, Back on the Map: Adventures in Newly Independent Estonia.
With a focus on the second purpose I’m preparing to roll out, in the “back pages” of this blog, a series of supplementary Back on the Map “bonus features”. Here are a few of the items on their way:
- The playlist: a list of the songs that were popular in Estonia in 1992 and that served as the soundtrack to my adventures
- The album: photographs and mementos from my stay in Tallinn and travels around the former Soviet Union
- The lost chapters: adventures in Russia and Lithuania that didn’t quite make it into the book
Stay tuned; details will be posted soon!
Categories: back on the map
Tagged: back on the map, lithuania, russia
In Estonia, you would be.
Estonia was the world’s first country to enable online voting in national elections. But how exactly does it work? Thad Hall posted a nice overview of Estonia’s e-voting system today over on Election Updates. Here is the key passage:
In Estonia, when you turn 18, you are automatically registered to vote at your address at that time. In addition, the person obtains a national identification card that has both a photo identification component and a digital signature. The identification card can be used for a variety of reasons, including making banking transactions …. Then, every time a person moves, they notify the local government of their move and their registration is automatically updated.
Tying in voter registration with one’s official identity card that also facilitates banking transactions is a neat little package that certainly affirms Estonia’s “E-stonia” reputation (read more here and here). But adding in automatic voter registration at age 18 is an inspired stroke that can’t help but boost voter participation and strengthen democracy. Other countries could learn something useful here.
Categories: Government · Science & technology
Tagged: e-estonia, e-stonia, e-voting, estonia, Estonian elections
Solaris, Estonia’s brand new state-of-the-art shopping mall/conference center/entertainment complex, suffered a blow yesterday, just a week after its grand opening, when the ceiling of one of its movie theatres collapsed.
Fortunately nobody was inside at the time, and there were no injuries, but there was a lot of excitement — and a lot of questions about why the ceiling of a brand new facility should suddenly collapse. Shoddy workmanship? Unrealistically tight construction deadlines? Poor design? We hope that answers to these questions will be forthcoming.
Õhtuleht has a dramatic photo of the damage inside the auditorium here, and the Baltic Times has a detailed account of incident here.
The surviving tower of Sakala Center
Solaris occupies a prominent location in the center of Tallinn–the site once occupied by Sakala Center, the former home of the Estonian Business School (EBS) and the setting for much of the action in my book, Back on the Map. Sakala was only 7 years old when I first mounted its steps in 1992. It was in Sakala Center that I taught all of my EBS classes and lived many of the experiences that I relate in the book.
At the ripe old age of 21, alas, Sakala was torn down to make room for Solaris. More precisely, most of Sakala was torn down. The architects seemed to retain a soft spot for the former Communist Party Training Center: they preserved Sakala’s corner tower (pictured here) and incorporated it into the design of Solaris.
I provide a detailed description of Sakala Center on pp. 36-37 of my book, and there’s another good photo of the surviving Sakala tower here.
Categories: Events · News
Tagged: back on the map, estonia, sakala center, solaris, tallinn
Estonia scored highly in a recent survey of linguistic skills across the European Union. Among the 29 countries surveyed (the EU 27 plus Croatia and Norway), Estonia placed 6th in the percentage of the population speaking two or more foreign languages, and 7th in the proportion of secondary students who study two or more foreign languages.
The percentage of Estonian adults speaking two or more foreign languages was 55.9%, which positioned Estonia above other acknowledged polyglot nations Latvia (54.9%), Belgium (51.5%), and Sweden (50.4%), and far above such linguistic laggards as Spain (17.9%), Greece (11.9%), and Hungary (7.7%). The European leader on this measure was non-EU member Norway (74.7%), followed by Slovenia (71.8%), Slovakia (68.0%), Finland (67.9%), and Lithuania (66.1%). The EU average was 28.1%.
The survey was published last month by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Commission. Details are here.
The survey also revealed each country’s best known foreign language. Unsurprisingly, for most countries, and for the EU as a whole, the most popular foreign language was English. The only exceptions were the UK (French), Slovakia (Czech), and five countries, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, where the best known foreign language is Russian. But the survey also found that Estonia’s most studied foreign language is English, so at some point soon, English is likely to become Estonia’s best known foreign language as well.
Categories: News · social
Tagged: estonia, estonian foreign languages, estonian language
Amazon.com has just activated their “Look Inside” and “Search Inside” services on my book. This means that you can read the entire first chapter using amazon’s popup book reader, and also that you can enter search terms and find any references to these terms inside the book.
Say, for example, you wanted to find a description of Bistro, my favorite Tallinn restaurant in 1992. Simply go to this page, click on the book cover, enter “Bistro” in the “Search Inside This Book” box, click Go, and you’re taken to page 74 where Bistro is described as “a well-lighted cafeteria with tall round tables, no chairs, and decent pasta that cost less than ten kroons a plate.”
But don’t add Bistro to your itinerary on your next trip to Tallinn. It no longer exists.
You can search for any term you like. But please don’t search for “champanskoye,” the notorious Latvian-bottled sparkling wine. The results are slightly embarrassing.
Categories: back on the map
Tagged: 1992, back on the map, estonia
Estonian bad boys
An article in today’s Helsingin Sanomat, Helsinki’s largest-circulation daily newspaper, raises the spectre of bad-boy Estonians launching a massive crime spree in Helsinki. The accompanying image, reproduced here, offers chilling photographic “proof”. Close your windows and bolt your doors, Helsinki-ites; the Estonians are coming!
According to the article, unemployed young Estonians are being recruited to venture north to the Helsinki region to steal clothing from Finnish department stores, or drive burglary getaway cars, or carry stolen property. But the report offers scant evidence to support the theory that Estonian criminality in Finland is a growing menace.
The article asserts that “the number of crimes committed in Finland by Estonian citizens has … grown,” but the only solid statistical data offered in support is that four Estonians were convicted last year of burglaries in the Helsinki region. And a Helsinki Police Department spokesperson quoted in the story seems to refute the article’s premise: “Crimes that Estonian citizens typically commit in Finland are crimes of larceny, and traffic violations,” says Juha Laaksonen. Traffic violations? Well now, perhaps those boys in the photo are not quite so fearsome as we thought.
Now let’s be clear: Finland and Estonia are both enduring severe recessions. And history teaches us that two likely consequences of economic downturns are (1) higher crime rates, and (2) the tendency to fear and blame “foreigners” for a country’s problems. The first outcome may be unavoidable, but the second is not, and Helsingin Sanomat does its readers no favor by feeding these fears.
Categories: News
Tagged: crime, estonia, helsinki, xenophobia
