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Estonia

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Estonians don't do "in a cold panic". Phlegmatic, slow, non-reactive, yes. Panic, no. ~ Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in the Baltic region of the northern European Union. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia. Estonia is a democratic parliamentary republic divided into fifteen counties, with its capital and largest city being Tallinn. With a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of the European Union, Eurozone, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the OECD and the Schengen Area.

Quotes

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We'll be here for Estonia... You lost your independence once before. With NATO, you will never lose it again. ~ Barack Obama
Putin has every incentive to stir up trouble in Estonia... Putin could ask for no better battlefield. ~ Daniel Berman
  • Putin has every incentive to stir up trouble in Estonia, because it is the point of maximum contradiction between the geopolitical idealism of NATO expansion, and the realpolitik factors by which world affairs are actually driven. As such, it is the point of maximum weakness for the alliance. NATO is obligated to fight for Narva or admit that Article Five is a lie, but NATO has no strategic or moral justification for doing so, and would be intervening to prevent a genuinely oppressed local population from exercising self-determination. In effect, then, NATO would become complicit in that oppression through its actions. Putin could ask for no better battlefield.
  • In the course of centuries never have the Estonian people lost their desire for independence. From generation to generation have they kept alive the hidden hope that in spite of enslavement and oppression by hostile invaders the time will come to Estonia "when all splints, at both end, will burst forth into flames" and when "Kalev will come home to bring his children happiness."
  • Ants Laaneots, Estonian general and member of the Parliament’s Defense Committee, has his own explanation for the blatant acts of racism on Tallinn’s streets. He does not exclude the conspiracy that the massive attacks on African-American NATO soldiers in Tallinn were ordered by private individuals from Russia as the provocation to compromise his country in the eyes of the United States. Police must carefully investigate every case of such attack to determine Russia’s involvement, he believes.
  • More than twenty years after the restoration of Estonia’s independence, the opinion that time would automatically resolve the integration issue of non-ethnic Estonians, and that the younger generation born here would blend into Estonian society, has not been confirmed in practice.
  • We value our independence, clearly and dearly, and I’m sure that we will put up resistance, come hell or high water.
  • Around the same time, communism in Central and Eastern Europe finally fell, but its economic rivalry with capitalism had, of course, long since been decided. It’s easy to think that these countries were never close to the market economies, but in 1950 countries such as the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary had a GDP per capita about a quarter higher than poor Western countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece. In 1989, the eastern states were nowhere close. The eastern part of Germany was richer than West Germany before World War II. When the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, East Germany’s GDP per capita was not even half that of West Germany’s. Of these countries, those that liberalized the most have on average developed the fastest and established the strongest democracies. An analysis of twenty-six post-communist countries showed that a 10 per cent increase in economic freedom was associated with a 2.7 per cent faster annual growth. Political and economic institutions have improved the most in the Central and Eastern European countries that are now members of the EU, not least the Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Today, they are some of the freest countries in the world and have more than tripled average incomes since independence. But one can also observe a recent reformer like Georgia. It was seen as an economic basket case, but after the Rose Revolution in 2003 it increased per capita incomes almost threefold and cut extreme poverty rates by almost two-thirds.
    • Johan Norberg, The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World (2023)
  • Even if Estonia spent everything it had on defense, it would be hard pressed to fend off Russia, which has a million men under arms and another 2 million in reserve...
  • We'll be here for Estonia. We will be here for Latvia. We will be here for Lithuania. You lost your independence once before. With NATO, you will never lose it again.
  • There was a hierarchy of material conditions in the communist world. The Yugoslavs, with the closest commercial links with the West, did best in the range and quality of goods available. Next came the East Germans, followed by the Hungarians and the Poles. Citizens of the USSR trailed in after them; and, still more galling to Russian national pride, the Georgians and Estonians in the Soviet Union enjoyed better conditions than those available to the Russians. The stereotypical Georgian, in the Russian popular imagination, was a swarthy ‘Oriental’ who smuggled oranges in large suitcases from his collective farm to the large cities of the RSFSR. That fruit could be an item of internal contraband speaks volumes about communism’s economic inefficiency.
    • Robert Service, Comrades: A History of World Communism (2009)
  • Our soldiers and embassy will continue to stand with the vast majority of the Estonian population who do not support or condone intolerance. However, businesspeople, tourists and students who experience similar treatment may take away a very different view, which over time will erode Estonia’s positive international reputation.
  • In the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—the return of the Red Army also provoked lasting resistance. Having become independent from Russia in 1918, the three countries were occupied by the Soviets in 1940, after Stalin’s pact with Hitler. The occupation was vicious, and the German invasion in 1941 had been greeted with relief by many Balts, who now turned their wrath on Russians and other local minorities, including Jews. The German defeat meant the return of the Red Army and the start of another round of bloodletting. In all three Baltic countries resistance coalesced around former officers, most of whom had collaborated with the Nazis; they were known collectively as the “Forest Brothers.” The fighting lasted for almost a decade and cost up to fifty thousand lives, mostly in Lithuania. Around 10 percent of the entire adult population of Balts was deported or sent to Soviet labor camps between 1940 and 1953.
    • Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (2017)
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  • Media related to Estonia on Wikimedia Commons
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