|
|
|
Map of Europe |
Email this citation
The Historical Roots of Environmental Conflict in Estonia
International Security Studies at Yale University
Historical Roots of International and Regional Issues
January,1995
"Estonia's environment and nature are special," the Estonian scholar observed, as we sipped coffee in a dingy cafe in Tallinn. 1 "But to them," he said, lowering his voice, and nodding slightly toward a table of Russian-speakers, "it means nothing. To a Russian, the environment is a 100-meter square area around him and his home. He does not care...no, it's more simple—he is not aware of my country's environment."
The academician's comments reminded me of questions I formulated at the outset of my research on the historical roots of environmental conflict in Estonia. What is the origin of Estonian and Russian-speakers' differing attitudes toward the environment? How do these different attitudes fuel conflict?
Environmental devastation in the former Soviet Union and the nations of Eastern and Central Europe have been described in American and European newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals and books. 2 However, the vast majority of written material glosses over the historical roots of contemporary environmental conflict. This manuscript considers the foundation of recent discord over environmental problems in Estonia. Historical evidence reveals that such conflict is older, more perplexing, and more enduring than recent popular accounts suggest.
Two forms of environmental conflict exist in Estonia—cultural and political. The first form of environmental conflict in Estonia is rooted in Estonian and Russian-speaking peoples' traditions, customs and behavior. Cultural conflict over the environment in Estonia has not been widely discussed on television, nor in newspapers nor academic journals. It is largely unidirectional—manifested as an anger that smolders inside ethnic Estonians and is closely linked to other social grievances and prejudices against the Russian-speakers in their midst. Cultural environmental conflict is at once more subtle and more enduring than the temporary (but incendiary) political disputes that have emerged over environmental issues in Estonia. Political conflict in Estonia has received more attention by the news media and academicians. It is characterized by formal, open disputes between citizens and the state over the abuse of natural resources and despoliation of nature. Political disputes over environmental issues are a relatively recent phenomenon in Estonia. They are spontaneous, flashy, and in the late 1980s, were linked to general disenchantment with the Soviet political and economic system.
Cultural and political conflict are not mutually exclusive. They inform one another, feed on one another. Estonian opinion polls on the importance of an unpolluted environment are shaped by cultural perceptions of nature, including its symbolic importance in ancestral agrarian life, and also influenced by political changes in society (with "environment" serving as a rallying cry). However, this paper argues that contemporary political manifestations of conflict over the environment are a product of relatively recent economic and social events in Estonia. Cultural conflict over the environment is an older phenomenon. Cultural discord is a by-product of the social interactions of two ethnic groups. Different attitudes toward nature and different ways of using natural resources are the stuff of Russian and Estonian culture rather than Soviet and Estonian politics.
THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICT
Estonia is a Baltic Sea nation of 1.6 million people (Figure 1). Slightly more than sixty percent of the population is ethnic Estonian, speaking a language of Finno-Ugric origin. One-third of the remaining population is ethnic Russian with the balance composed of small numbers of Ukranians, Belorussians, Finns, Germans, Poles, Tartars, other Central Asian minorities and Jews. 3
Figure 1: Estonia and Its Neighbors
Virtually all ethnic Estonians interviewed for this project insisted that "Russians (or Russian-speakers) and Estonians have different attitudes toward nature and the Estonian environment." Most striking, however, were confirmations of this notion by Russian-speakers: almost all affirmed that at once, Russian-speakers are generally less concerned about the condition of natural resources in Estonia and that the two peoples generally do not share the same attitudes toward nature.
So many interviewees mentioned culture and tradition as the bases for environmental conflict in Estonia that this author is convinced that the phenomenon exists. However, the roots of this conflict are only partly evidenced in the historical literature. This author studied Estonian history beginning with the period of Swedish hegemony in the northern and central Baltic regions (circa 1629). Three aspects of post-feudal agrarian history are germane to a discussion of cultural differences between ethnic Estonians and Russophones: 1) the social impact of the German manorial system in Estonia versus the Russian manorial system in Russia; 2) traditional religious and educational differences between Estonians and Russians; and 3) Estonian vs. Russian traditional cultural connections to the environment. In addition to these three factors, some interviewees for this project suggested that different cultural attitudes toward the environment are rooted in the two nations' different experiences with post-serfdom property ownership in the nineteenth century. However, and as discussed below, this researcher found little historical evidence to support this claim.
On the great (Russian) estates...the great proprietors seldom live. In the winter they are to be found in St. Petersburg, as members of the Council of State or the Duma, or merely as members of the fashionable society of the capital, in Moscow in society there, at their villas at Yalta, Alupka, or Gurzśf, in the Crimea - on the Riviera or in Italy - cultivated, intelligent, and benevolent, or ignorant, dull, and cynical, according to their temperament. 6
The author notes that these large Russian estates were "...in the hands of German managers, skilled in the technique of agriculture and in the management of labourers..." 7 While dedicated to the farm, German managers could not regulate the profligate behavior of their Russian employers.
Quoting an early 20th century visitor to southern Russia, Parker writes:
Absentee landlordism is the curse of this country, as it was in Ireland, and the profits of the crops are wasted in St. Petersburg and Paris, in gambling and high living, and in all possible forms of extravagance. 8
Whereas Russian estate owners were often absentee landlords, German nobleman in Estonian and Latvia were more often genuine (albeit, elite) agrarians whose income was largely based on the size of their harvests and the prices that could be fetched for grain in central European markets. German landlords often trained the peasants who tilled their fields. Data from Bideleux 9 , gleaned from nineteenth century Russian sources, indicates that the small plots worked by Baltic peasant farmers in the 1880s were remarkably productive vis-a-vis larger parcels found in other parts of European Russia (Table 1).
| Table 1: Value of Grain Output on Peasant Farms, by Region, European Russia, 1880s | |||
| Region | Plot Size (Destina) | Value of Grain Output, 1883-87 rubles (per annum) | Value of Grain/Plot Size |
| Southern Steppes | 1.53 | 24.49 | 16.00 |
| Southwest | 0.74 | 13.59 | 18.36 |
| Central Chernozem | 1.00 | 17.26 | 17.26 |
| Southeast | 1.74 | 20.44 | 11.75 |
| West | 0.87 | 16.04 | 18.44 |
| Semi-Industrial | 0.89 | 17.02 | 19.12 |
| East | 1.29 | 17.48 | 13.55 |
| Baltic | 0.54 | 18.64 | 34.52 |
| Industrial | 0.92 | 19.86 | 21.59 |
| Capital guberniia | 0.70 | 19.01 | 27.16 |
| North | 0.70 | 16.33 | 23.33 |
| Average | 1.10 | 18.12 | 16.47 |
| Source: based on Bideleux, 1990: 214. | |||
However, other Baltic farm commodities, such as fruits and vegetables and livestock (not shown in table 1) were less competitive with harvests from central and southern Russia. Bideleux also finds that between 1880-87 and 1909-1913, grain yields in Estonia increased by 30 percent per hectare; however, yields in that same period were higher in parts of central, west and southern Russia and Ukraine. 10 Bideleux's findings of high grain production in the Baltic region are supported by Gregory. 11
..literacy was much more advanced in the Protestant Baltic provinces, where a religion that emphasized reading prevailed, than in the Orthodox and Russian areas of the empire. 14
Opportunities for Estonian peasants to obtain reading and writing skills originated in the late-sixteenth century and especially late-seventeenth century when Polish, and later Swedish conquerors permitted religious leaders to establish schools. 15 Lutheranism, introduced in Estonia shortly after the religion's birth in Germany, urged the faithful to learn the Written Word. The New Testament and Bible, published in the North Estonian dialect in 1715 and 1739 respectively, became the basis of Estonia's modern language. 16 The Moravian Brethren, an off-shoot of the established Lutheran Church strongly encouraged reading and writing among the Estonian peasantry throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 17 Rosenberg suggests that in contrast to Russian peasants whose ignorance was compelled by the state and orthodox church, Estonian peasants were permitted to exercise "inquisitiveness." Learning extended beyond questions of faith to the secular realms of knowledge, including farming, composition of poetry and prose, and other vocational and intellectual pursuits. 18
Serfdom was abolished in northern Estonia in 1816 and in southern Estonia in 1819 whereas peasants were freed from the land in Russia in 1861. 20 Rubulis claims that though newly-freed Estonian serfs were relatively mobile vis-a-vis emancipated serfs in Russia, many remained without land or were forced to provide compensation for rented land through their labor—a condition differing little from the pre-emancipation period. Only in the middle of nineteenth century, and following several peasant revolts, were peasants able to purchase land outright or lease it through long-term contracts. Raun admits that despite the end of serfdom in Estonia in the first decades of the nineteenth century "truly fundamental changes" in the status of Estonian peasants did not emerge until after the neighboring Russian serfs' emancipation in 1861; at that time in Estonia and Latvia, "German estate owners...(became) amenable to some concessions in order to avoid more far-reaching reform." 21 Nodel concurs with Raun and Rubulis, asserting that until 1858, acquisition of land by Estonian peasants was impossible because the Russian government imposed a labyrinth of legal obstacles. Nodel contends that Russia's 1828 law permitting peasants to purchase land was not intended to improve conditions for landless Estonians. Rather, Russia sought to increase the leverage of the German middle class and landless nobility at the expense of the few, rich German nobleman who owned great estates. 22
At least one author suggests that Estonian peasants had substantially improved their lot by the early twentieth century compared to their Russian neighbors. 23 After Russia's serfs were freed, markets for land were tight and peasants struggled to acquire property. Indeed, European Russian peasants' failure to gain land continued through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, becoming an increasingly nettlesome political problem for the Czar and the rentier class based in St. Petersburg and Moscow. In contrast, Pullat reports that by 1912 almost 70 percent of Estonian land owners were ethnic Estonians. 24 However, this statistic is deceiving. On the eve of World War I, the large German Baltic estates contained almost 60 percent of total rural land and some two-thirds of Estonian peasants remained landless or "had a minimal amount of land..." 25
Some Russian authors find little improvement in Russian peasants' standard of living following their emancipation in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The writer/social commentator Alexander Solzhenitsyn asserts that Russian peasants' attachment to the land was severed during this period. As mentioned above, though Russian peasants achieved freedom from serfdom in the early 1860s, their subsequent efforts to acquire property were continually thwarted by the landed aristocracy and the latter's official patrons in the big cities. The ordinary Russian man and woman's ancestral dislocation from the soil, Solzhenitsyn argues, affects prospects for the rehabilitation of Russia's respect for land and for nature. Indeed, the author is pessimistic about the likelihood of a "reincarnation" of the common Russian's concern for the land. 26 Solzhenitsyn's remarks are supported by historians like Robinson who describe the post-emancipation period in Russia as one of misery and oppression for the nation's rural people. Robinson finds the pre-revolutionary village commune system rigid and inefficient; most importantly, he blames it for failing to increase agricultural production in tandem with population growth, leading to famines in the late nineteenth century. 27
Worobec paints a less gloomy portrait of post-emancipation peasant life in central Russia. 28 She reveals that new village commune authority structures, consisting of members of the community (rather than off-site gentry landowners), maintained control over the fate of arable land. Nevertheless, tenants and new landowners "had no security in the possession of such land, which every few years had to be exchanged for allotments located in different areas" of the commune. 29 Worobec is decidedly more cautious in her view of the shortcomings of emancipation, asserting that Russian peasants perceived that,
...emancipation had not restored to them all the land they believed to be rightfully theirs. Nevertheless, they readily clung to the notion of a future...repartition when all lands, both private and communal, would be redistributed equally among peasants. In the meantime, they had to cope as best they could with what they had. 30
Worobec's findings are corroborated by Bideleux, who asserts that the village commune system actually promoted wider distribution of land and wealth than would have been possible under a private property scheme. 31
Other historical evidence supports Worobec's less dismal portrait of the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century Russian peasant. By the outset of World War I, Russian peasants were catching-up to their Estonian neighbors in the realm of land ownership. Peasant acquisition of land was dramatically accelerated under the reforms of P.A. Stolypin, Nicholas II's Minister of Interior who pursued ambitious agrarian reform policies in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1905, some 2.8 million peasant heads of households (one-fifth of the total) possessed hereditary rights of ownership to the land they tilled. By the outset of the World War I, 7 million peasant family heads (over half of the total) retained rights to their land. 32
In sum, there is little evidence that Russian's and Estonian's respective post-serfdom property ownership experiences have greatly influenced the two peoples' respective attitudes toward nature. The two experiences are simply not very different, and the differences that do exist do not clearly support the idea that Estonians are "closer to the land" whereas Russians are "alienated from the land."
By St. Michael's Day (September 29th) "the rape had to be in the cave and the womenfolk in the chamber", i.e. the field labor had to be done and the women's housework started...on St. John's Night (June 24th) all trees and animals talk with each other and some clever people can also understand their talk and can guess, with its help, all the secrets of the future. 34
The phenomenon of animals and trees speaking to one another, and rural peoples' capacity to understand or communicate with animals and trees is described elsewhere. 35 Eilart declares that for most of Estonia's history, functional and esthetic dimensions of domestic life revolved around nature. He writes,
Especially the forest seemed to be something that was kind to them. Trees have always stood near our dwellings: be it a birch in the courtyard, or some fir-trees behind the cottage, bird-cherries in the home-paddock, a linden or a maple at the gate, or an oak superb in solitude. 36
Rural peoples, he writes, were knowledgeable of the uses of plants and animals, beyond their use as foodstuffs: "they knew which plants could be applied as remedies for certain diseases. Plants were the indicators of suitable places where wells could be dug." 37 Eilart and others also describe "signal phenomenon" whereby agrarians initiated certain activities based on natural cycles and seasonal events:
The proper time to catch crayfish was when oats were earing...the carapace of crayfish was sufficiently developed by that time....The flowering of marsh marigold indicated that the spawning of pike was at an end. When bird-cherries burst into blossom, it was time to finish the sowing of grain and start flax sowing. The time to start land cultivation work was when the soil "flowered" (i.e., when the earthworms had covered the surface with their castings). When in the spring the snow melted from the roads earlier than from the fields, the sowing had to be more shallow. 38
Some of the rituals described above are uniquely Estonian, while others were common to peasant cultures in other Baltic regions, central Europe and Russia. 39 Because certain customs is this region are borrowed or shared among Germanic, Baltic and Slavic neighbors, it is no simple task to tease out traditions that are singularly Estonian.
However, whereas Estonian traditional culture is essentially agrarian, Russian culture is heterogeneous with much of its art, literature and music removed from the pastoral experience. Estonian poetry, folklore and fairy tales have mostly rustic origins; thousands of sayings, proverbs and riddles compiled in the nineteenth century were rooted in peasant culture. In Russia, nineteenth century poets who wrote about nature and peasant life were frequently well-educated urbanites. The verse of Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), perhaps Russia's greatest poet, did not spring directly from a peasant's perspective (his father was a "penniless nobleman").
40
Rather, his poetry incorporated agrarian vocabulary and Russian folk images into a more popular European writing style. France writes that "as in the literature of France, England and Germany, (Pushkin's poetry) involves a degree of stylization, some adaptation to polite taste and a shifting blend of commitment and irony."
41
Nikolay Nekrasov, a realist, city-dwelling poet of the mid-nineteenth century often wrote about the daily life and natural condition of Russian peasants. Like other Russian poets, his prose is filled with somber images of the countryside. "The Homeland" reads, Another famous Russian poet who wrote about country people and country life was Sergej Esenin, who, "...except for the accident of his birth...was never a tiller of the soil."
43
Both Nekrasov and Esenin wrote accurately and sympathetically about peasant life. But their poetry contained a strong dose of social protest, and, in the case of Esenin, a socialist bent that was absent from Estonian poets of their generation. In sum, there is a temptation to describe Estonian peasant poetry as simple and gay, in contrast to the gloomy verse of Russia's poets, the latter who were often urban observers of rural life. Still, generalizations about the intellectual inclinations of Russian versus Estonian poets are bound to produce exceptions. Not all Russian poets were Žlite urbanites, one or more generations removed from the soil. Aleksej Kol'tsov's (1809-1842) poetry speaks to his agrarian upbringing as "the self-taught son of a cattle dealer" whose writing does not suggest "an artificial imitation of the forms of popular poetry...."
44
Furthermore, not all Estonian poets were peasants, and many Estonian bards of the nineteenth and twentieth century wrote about non-agrarian themes, including the patriotic works of Lydia Koidula (1843-1886) and Karl Eduard Sööt (1862-1950).
45
Eerik Leibak of Estonia's main nature conservation society, Eesti Looduse Fund (Estonian Fund for Nature), suggested that Russia's arm's length relationship to nature could be generalized to include not only Russian intellectuals and literati of decades past, but also contemporary common folk.
46
Eesti Looduse Fund lists very few Russian-speaking members. But unlike the Green Movement (described below), Eesti Looduse Fund, never attracted a Slavic minority. Even within the Green Movement, Russian and Estonian-speakers had different agendas for environmental protection. Russophones generally supported efforts to preserve the "cultural environment"—for example, historically-significant buildings and monuments. Estonians lobbied for the preservation of Estonia's green capital: trees, water and other natural resources. Leibak contends that differences in Russian and Estonian attitudes to nature conservation are partly explained by the influence of religion.
47
The Lutheran Church, with its emphasis on practical education, encouraged a kind of utilitarian relationship between humans and nature where the environment was "dominated by men for the good of men" but never to the point of excess nor overexploitation. In Lutheran society, he suggests, men and women were expected to understand and appreciate nature. Eastern Orthodox cultures separated people from nature. As one Russian-speaker suggested: "In Russia, the masses are little people. Our superiors are in charge of nature; the environment is none of our business."
48
Fedotov, a Russian theological scholar, blames the Russian language rather than church authoritarianism for Russia's paltry accomplishments in the sciences: Freeze's entertaining biography of a nineteenth century Russian provincial priest named Ioann Sepanovich Belliustin (1819-90) provides an enlightening corroboration of Fedotov's remarks.
50
Belliustin was one of the most outspoken critics of the church, particularly its system for promoting priests and its neglect of the parish clergy. He scoffed at the "learned clergy" and wrote scornfully about their scholarship. Rather than true academicians, parish priests were more often sycophants and hypocrites: However, efforts to paint contemporary Russian attitudes toward nature with the brush of a morally and intellectually bankrupt Eastern Orthodox Church are problematic, perhaps even inappropriate. Nineteenth century Russian farmers, however downtrodden and impoverished, were probably no less devoted to their land than other European peasants. Worobec writes, "Despite the odds against them, Russian peasants concentrated their attention on the land, maintaining a sacred, devotional attachment to it."
53
Hubbs describes Russian peasants' unshakable trust in "Mother Earth."
54
The mythical phenomenon of "Mother Earth" is described elsewhere.
56
Fedotov mentions the traditional Russian belief in water and tree fairies and half-human lords and kings who inhabit the forest. However, he notes, most of the fairies and cult figures were regarded as potentially dangerous or wanton entities. Fedotov generalizes about the misgivings of Russian peasants toward nature: Russian peasants were knowledgeable about the medicinal qualities of rural plants, especially roots and grasses.
58
Ramer notes, however, that herbal healers were "more the exception than the rule" among peasantry.
59
As Eerik Leibak, the official from Eesti Looduse Fund points out, Russian-speakers in Estonia do value nature if for no other reason than Russophones spend a good deal of time outdoors engaged in seasonal rituals. The outdoor activities enjoyed most by Russophones in Estonia are berry and mushroom-picking. Leibak reports that in the summer, on many country roads in Estonia, one will see cars parked by the woods. The automobile owners are almost always Russian-speakers who have set off to forage for berries and fungi. "Berry-picking and especially mushroom-picking are not popular activities among Estonians," he adds. Estonians grow their berries along with other fruits and vegetables in gardens. Names for mushrooms in Estonian are almost all loan words from Russian. Leibak offers another interesting insight that discounts the notion that "Estonians care about the environment, while Russians do not." Some 70 percent of Estonians live in towns and cities where their interaction with nature is limited. Estonians commune with nature mostly during the summer months when they spend weekends at cottages belonging to family and friends. The vast majority of Russophones in Estonia are urbanized too, but originally, many were immigrants from rural areas. They enjoy exploring forests and caves even if it requires a trip into central Estonia, relatively far from towns in the Russian-dominated northeast or Tallinn. Russian-speaking peoples' disaffection from nature would not appear as absolute as Solzhenitsyn or many ethnic Estonians argue. However, every Estonian and Russian-speaker interviewed by this author agreed that Russophones do not regard Estonia's natural resources as unique nor worthy of special attention nor protection. Almost all respondents alluded to the notion that "Russia is a big country" with abundant natural resources and great natural diversity. Estonia in contrast is small and relatively species-poor in both flora and fauna. Four ethnic Estonians (who provided interviews on the condition that their identities remain secret) asserted that because Russians are from a vast, resource-rich country, they are accustomed to devouring and spoiling natural resources, moving-on when resources are depleted or destroyed.
60
THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICT
Culture clash over environmental issues in Estonia may be as quiet as a homeowner wagging a disapproving finger at the disorderly state of a neighbor's yard. Political environmental conflict in Estonia tends to be more noisy. Contemporary Estonian ecopolitics is the product of over four decades of rapid economic transformation, particularly in the nation's mineral-rich northeast region near Russia. Estonia's most precious natural resource, both in the past and today, is oil shale. Oil shale is also responsible for many of Estonia's environmental problems. Foreign and national interest and commercial exploitation of oil shale in Estonia is older than most popular press accounts suggest. The first mines were opened around the time of the American Civil War. At least one account demonstrates that local residents were concerned about pollution from oil shale mining and processing as early as 1940.
61
However, the conflicts over environmental destruction that emerged in the 1980s were the result of growing, but heretofore largely unspoken opposition to Moscow's intensive program of industrialization. In the forty years preceding the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the pace of environmental destruction exceeded all previous periods, fueling animosity between Estonians and the Soviet state. The conflict, however, was political rather than cultural: it pitted environmentalists versus central planners in Moscow and later, between nationalist Estonians and conservatives seeking to preserve the Soviet administrative system. Ethnic Estonian authors describe pre-Soviet Estonia as an agrarian society.
62
These same authors outline the period of Soviet domination as one of rapid and intensive industrialization.
63
When this researcher asked a Finnish historian for a list of book titles on Soviet industrialization in Estonia, he was instructed that "Sovietization and industrialization are one and the same."
64
Statistics indicate that preceding Soviet hegemony in Estonia, most working households were dedicated to farming and livestock production. Agricultural production represented over half of all economic output in Estonia before 1940 and two-thirds of the working population were classified as farmers. By 1960, 25 percent of the working population was engaged in agriculture, falling to less than 13 percent by 1980.
65
Within forty years, industrial production in Estonia mushroomed from less than a quarter of economic production in 1940 to over two-thirds of all economic output by 1980. Media accounts and some scholarly articles describing industrialization and environmental transformation in Estonia leave the impression that the northeast region's oil shale deposits were undisturbed until the late 1940s.
66
Only in the post-war period, it seems, does Moscow express genuine interest in oil shale ore. In fact, active exploitation of oil shale in the northeast region by the Russian government, other European governments and private investors, and later, Estonian authorities predate the Soviet period by several decades. Eilart et al. claim that oil shale was first discovered in Estonia in 1876.
67
However, Roose reveals that folk knowledge of the special combustible properties of this mineral is much older. Estonian scientists from the early eighteenth century, he writes, Kukruse, a small town in the northeast region is associated with oil shale again in 1876: Roose finds Kukruse Oil Shale Mine on a list of properties owned by the Russian Baron Toll. Production of the mine was "3000 poods
69
per year."
70
From the earliest time of its extraction, oil shale was recognized as a relatively energy-poor hydrocarbon resource. Compared to black and even brown coal, oil shale has a low caloric value and when burned, produces relatively large quantities of ash. According to Roose, demand for oil shale as a heating fuel remained modest throughout the nineteenth century: northwestern Russian towns, including big cities like St. Petersburg obtained sufficient quantities of coal from England until World War I. But with the onset of hostilities, Russia sought closer and more secure supplies of energy. Oil shale became an attractive, local alternative to British coal. Between 1916 and the October Revolution in 1917, almost 500 million tons of oil shale were transported from the Kukruse mine to Petrograd (St. Petersburg). With the end of the war, commercial interest in oil shale grew. In the interwar period, German, Danish, Swedish and English investors opened new mines.
71
Estonia gained independence in 1918. The nation's first generation of politicians and bureaucrats recognized oil shale as Estonia's greatest natural asset. In 1923, Mart Laud, Director of the State Oil Shale Industry issued a public statement heralding the strategic importance of the mineral to Estonia's new economy: Around the time of Maud's statement, technological innovations in the oil shale industry greatly increased the value of the mineral to Estonia's economy. Liquid petrol products from oil shale resemble certain unrefined crude oils in terms of energy value. German scientists were able to synthesize oil from oil shale by the early 1920s and exports from Estonia began shortly thereafter. In the 1930s, over 80 percent of all oil shale exports were destined for Germany.
73
By 1938, oil shale-based oil exports to Germany topped 60,000 tons
74
Meanwhile, overall oil shale extraction amounted to over 1.5 million tons by 1939.
75
Moscow's plans for an expansion of oil shale production in the early 1940s far outstripped the designs of earlier German and European investors. After the invasion and occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union in June, 1940 the Soviet government announced plans to increase Estonia's production of oil shale to 11 million tons by 1945
76
—a remarkable 10-fold increase over actual production in 1939. These plans were dashed with the onset of Germany's war with the Soviet Union in 1941. Following the defeat of Germany in the spring of 1945, Moscow rehabilitated its bold plan for the overhaul of the oil shale sector in Estonia. The paragraphs above reveal that industrialization in Estonia commenced earlier than some contemporary authors and commentators have indicated. However, in fairness to these same authors, the rate of change and the profound social and economic transformations wrought by post-war Soviet industrial policies were unprecedented. Following World War II, immediate attention was directed by Moscow to the reconstruction of the Estonian oil shale industry. Most of the mines were flooded or set on fire by retreating German troops. Oil shale processing facilities were bombed by German aircraft. The first two years of industrial reconstruction in Estonia focused on the rehabilitation of old, badly damaged mining and industrial sites. Construction of new industrial facilities commenced shortly thereafter. One Soviet era account boasts that between 1947 and 1949, six new mines were opened in the northeast region.
77
Reinsalu reports that between 1946 and 1956, output from all subsectors of the oil shale industry grew by an annual rate of 15 percent.
78
In the first five-year plan, Moscow's central ministries broke ground for an oil shale gas conversion plant in Kohtla Jarva (northeast region). A gas pipeline was connected between the northeast region and Leningrad, and by 1947, Leningrad received the first supplies of fuel. Kahk, in a post-Soviet era publication, remarks laconically that Tallinn did not receive oil shale gas from the northeast region until 1953.
79
Strong growth in oil shale production continued into the second and third five-year plans. Moscow's transformation of the economy was rapid and profound. Estonia's leading pre-war economic sector in terms of output was agriculture. Five years after World War II, and with the end of the first five-year plan, oil shale was the top income earner with machine building and metal industry leading agriculture.
80
Rapid growth in the oil shale sector characterized the intense pace of industrialization generally: industry grew 36 percent annually between 1946 and 1950 and 14.4 percent per year between 1951 and 1955; in 1950, the Estonian SSR experienced the highest industrial growth rate of all Soviet republics at a remarkable, almost certainly impossible 342 percent.
81
From the outset of the post-war reconstruction period in Estonia, Soviet historians claim that the new socialist leaders of Estonia experienced difficulty recruiting industrial laborers from the indigenous population. Pullat et al.'s History of the Working Class of Soviet Estonia (in Russian) provides a detailed chronicle of this dilemma. In many towns, the authors note, there were "unemployed" people who refused to work in new factories. Generally, these "unemployed" were farmers with small land holdings who sold their produce in local markets. The authors state unapologetically that these farmers' land and sometimes even their homes were expropriated by the new Soviet state. Meanwhile, Soviet authorities "encouraged" all able-bodied adults to join work teams in industry.
82
Thousands of Estonians were probably forced to labor in factories against their will. However, Pullat et al. and other authors writing during the Soviet period insist that the reluctance of ethnic Estonians to participate in the industrial labor force compelled Moscow to import workers from other Soviet republics. As a rule, contemporary ethnic Estonian journalists or writers regard the massive post-war influx of Russian-speaking laborers as a deliberate attempt by Moscow to subdue and russify the Estonian-speaking population, gain control of Estonia's valuable oil shale resources, and fully integrate Estonia's economy into the Soviet system. Estonian authors (many of whom wrote in exile) and Soviet Russian authors agree on at least one matter: the post-war changes in Estonia's demographic profile were a product of immigration. Pullat et al. note that between 1945 and 1950, the population of Estonia grew from 854,000 to 1.1 million "mostly due to immigration." The two groups of authors diverge, however, on the matter of who these immigrants were. Almost all commentators assert that large numbers of Russians or Russian-speakers arrived to work in new or rehabilitated factories. Soviet-era writers insist that tens of thousands of Estonians who had been "evacuated" during the war and Estonians serving in the Soviet army were repatriated between 1945 and 1950.
83
There is evidence that these claims are false, and that many of the Estonian men who were exiled to Siberia during the war were killed or perished in forced labor camps. Sakkeus estimates that over 200 thousand Estonians either emigrated to the West, were deported or were killed between 1940 and 1945. Furthermore, while over 30 thousand men and women may have returned to Estonia after the war, some 50 thousand Estonians were relocated to other parts of the Soviet Union in a second wave of deportations that took place in 1949.
84
The loss of ethnic Estonians was more than replaced by an influx of Russian-speakers. In 1945, 94 percent of Estonia's population was ethnic Estonian. Fifteen years later, Estonians constituted around three-quarters of the population. The 1989 census indicates that Estonians represent 61.5 percent of the population. Today, one in three people in Estonia is a Russophone and 85 percent of the latter are ethnic Russians.
85
Probably over half of all Russian-speakers arriving to Estonia from Russia during the years 1945 to 1980 were engaged in industrial production and "energetics", or energy production. By virtue of their occupations, the Russophones were associated with the most environmentally destructive activities in the country. Russian-speaking labor and management dominated, and indeed continue to dominate the oil shale energy sector, the oil shale chemical products industry and the phosphorite ore mining industry. The Estonian government claims that the nation's two main oil shale power utilities are among Europe's top ten largest point source emitters of criteria air pollutants, such as dust, SO2, and NOx.
86
One hundred-meter high waste heaps of highly alkaline oil shale ash dominate the landscape at Estonia's two thermal power stations and at two other sites.
87
The Purtse, one of Estonia's main rivers, discharges over 2 million cubic meters of oily, phenol-rich water to the Gulf of Finland each year.
88
Phosphorite ore mining has damaged terrestrial and aquatic habitats in several areas in the northeast region. Taagepera quotes a 1977 memorandum from the Union of Concerned Soviet Scientists that reads, "A considerable part of northeastern Estonia has been turned into a moonscape..."
89
Taagepera catalogues a host of environmental problems that have ensued from open-pit mining methods in Maardu in northeast Estonia, including the spontaneous combustion of low quality oil shale that overlays commercial ore. In 1989, she estimated that over 50 million tons of this ignitable overburden resided in open dumps, "catching fire and polluting air and ground water."
90
Both Taagepera and others claim that heavy metals and radioactive substances in oil shale ash are polluting freshwater and brackish water habitats near and in the Gulf of Finland.
91
Local concern about the environmental consequences of phosphorite ore mining in the northeast region came to a head in 1987. Some ethnic Estonian environmentalists consider this occasion the birth of environmental activism in Estonia. Angry citizens derailed Moscow's plans to open a new mining site in Kabala in the Rakvere region. Ethnic Estonians protested against plans for the mine and held open demonstrations of resistance. Public protests in the region were stimulated by peoples' awareness of the environmental damages perpetrated by ore mining in nearby areas. This concern was mingled with a fear that new mining required an influx of Russian-speaking workers.
92
Environmental grievances were present even before 1987. But the Kabala protests marked a critical moment in the rise of a Green Movement in Estonia. The Green Movement emerged as the spearhead for political environmental conflict between concerned Estonian citizens and apathetic central planners in Moscow. The vigorous protests in the Rakvere region gave immense confidence to an unlikely coalescence of Estonian intellectuals, students, and workers. Opposition to the mine had been carried out in 1987 without retribution from the Soviet regime. Furthermore, the protests succeeded in halting construction of a new mine. Ethnic Estonians and many Russophones realized that environmental concerns could be safely aired without subsequent crack-down by authorities. Valdur Lahtvee, Director of the Estonian Green Movement (Eesti Roheline Liikumine) notes that it was impossible for the Soviets to deny the connection, say between a factory discharging noxious chemicals into Lake X and concomitant water pollution and damage to aquatic life in that same lake.
93
Glasnost greatly facilitated the incipient Green Movement's efforts to inform the public about Moscow's "crimes" against nature. However, within a year, environmental grievances became a proxy for other manifestations of political opposition that Estonians could not otherwise express. Estonian-speaking citizens could not openly protest against the one-party system nor the special privileges enjoyed by Russian-speakers in Estonia. Pent-up frustration with the Soviet system was channeled into forms of opposition that were informally sanctioned by the Soviet regime. The broad appeal of the environmental agenda and its importance as a legitimate form of political resistance was not unique to Estonia. Environmental movements offered an early and important platform for political protests in Poland (Polish Ecological Club), Bulgaria (Ecoglasnost), and former Czechoslovakia (Brontosaurus and Czech and Slovak Union of Nature Protectors) to name a few.
94
Through early 1988, and even with the increasingly permissive social policies of Moscow, formal political opposition to the Soviet system remained confined to popular movements opposing environmental destruction or promoting preservation of the cultural heritage of Estonia. The Estonian Green Movement was founded in May of 1988 after months of organization and planning forums. Meetings of the Estonian Green Movement attracted thousands of participants throughout 1990; the organization hosted eagerly attended demons
95
The activities of the Green Movement was very much the stuff of political conflict. The Green Movement had emerged as a raw, untutored, loosely organized, but immensely incendiary and popular vehicle of protest against Moscow. Indeed, its precipitous rise temporarily bridged cultural chasms between Estonians and Russian-speakers: both groups took advantage of a unique opportunity to unleash frustration against an unpopular political and economic system. The Estonian Green Movement's wide appeal and the umbrella it formed for many opponents of Moscow proved short-lived. With the creation of other, legitimate opposition parties in 1990, a May 1990 plebiscite for Estonian independence, and bloody clashes between Soviet military forces and civilians in Lithuania and Latvia in January 1991, the Green Movement lost control of its pluralistic following. By late 1990, Estonians engaged in full-fledged, open opposition to Soviet autocracy; the safe platform for protest offered by the Green Movement became irrelevant. The Green Movement also endured an internal political dispute leading to the formation of a splinter party of environmental activists.
96
The Russian-speaking minorities' participation in Green Movement activities diminished quickly during the early 1990s and their membership remains low today. A rift between Russophones and ethnic Estonians emerged not only in the Green Movement but throughout society as Russian-speakers grew increasingly uneasy about a formal split between Tallinn and Moscow. Russophones were disquieted by ethnic Estonian opposition leaders' increasingly strident anti-Soviet dogma. Reassertion of Estonian nationalism, pride and culture was alien to Russian-speakers, including those who were active in early opposition activities. The protest movement lost its appeal to Russophones when the message changed from "Moscow—improve our environment and preserve our cultural heritage!" to "Moscow—GET OUT OF ESTONIA!!" By the fall of 1992, once easily combustible political environmental differences between Estonia and Russia and between the Estonian government in Tallinn and disgruntled ethnic Russians in the northeast had all but disappeared. As the Estonian Green Movement laments, Estonians and Russian-speakers became preoccupied with new concerns. New rules on eligibility for citizenship, debates on property rights, and rising prices took precedence over the environment
97
1991 and 1992 rekindled only brief reminders of the politically-charged environmental conflicts that raged only months before. By late 1993, Russian-speaking factory managers in the Narva power stations ceased threatening to use natural resources as weapons against Tallinn. Earlier in the decade, plant directors promised to cut off power deliveries to Tallinn if the newly elected government refused to give Narva's predominantly Russian-speaking population (95%) greater political and economic autonomy. The Tallinn government also temporarily desisted from its efforts to find a solution to SillimŠe's open, radioactive thorium/uranium waste tailing which lies less than 200 meters from the shoreline of the Gulf of Finland. Talk of closing-down the formerly top-secret uranium ore processing facility was halted. The government realized that shutting down the factory would produce economic difficulties for this mostly Russian-speaking, "one-factory" town. Today, Estonia's Ministry of Environment is weighing new, "unprovocative" alternatives to clean-up the polluted site and improve the commercial prospects of the factory.
98
Politically-charged conflicts over the environment are currently quiescent in Estonia. The country is preoccupied with building a new nation, including defining rights and privileges for its Russian-speaking minority. The new economy, while stronger than its Baltic neighbors', struggles with relatively high unemployment and low rates of consumption. Disputes with Russia about environmental damages remaining in the wake of over forty years of heavy industrialization have given way to greater and more immediate concerns about Russian neo-imperialism. Assertions by the Russian demagogue Vladimir Zhironovsky and Foreign Minister Andre Kozyrev
99
that Estonia remains in Russia's sphere of influence raises more ire than the legacy of environmental destruction left in industrial towns like Narva and former Soviet military bases like Paldiski. Environmental issues have momentarily tumbled down the list of key political priorities. But, contemporary environmental conflict is manifested below the surface of political life in Estonia. It is lodged in the minds of citizens, particularly Estonian-speakers. The latter harbor antipathy toward the Russophones who neighbor their streets, use their water, turn their soil, and burn their wood. Conflict is manifested in the culture of Estonia, and it is the kind of antagonism that does not swell and subside with changing political and economic circumstances. As described above, this brand of environmental conflict is culturally-derived, and its historical roots predate the origin of political environmental conflict in Estonia.
Based on some popular press accounts and remarks of Estonia's current political leadership, the reader might conclude that Estonia's environmental problems began with the dictatorial transformation of Estonian society and economy under Josef Stalin. However, historical evidence reveals that oil shale extraction and processing in Estonia was a messy affair from the outset and that public discontent with the spoiling of nature by the oil shale industry predates the period of Soviet occupation. There is little question, however, that the rate and magnitude of destruction was greatly augmented during the Soviet period. Moscow's development and expansion of dirty industries like oil shale and phosphorite ore mining angered both ethnic Estonians and Russophones, fueling political conflict in the 1980s and early 1990s. Industrialization is a bridge between political and cultural environmental conflict in Estonia. Soviet industrialization in Estonia concentrated on the exploitation of oil shale resources. Rapid development of this resource damaged the environment; environmental protection became a rallying cry for thousands of concerned citizens, and served as a proxy for other grievances that could not be safely expressed. Mining and heavy industry in post-war Estonia provoked cultural conflicts, too. The Soviets' rapid industrialization scheme demanded the migration of tens of thousands of Slavs to work in the oil shale industries of northeast Estonia. In a matter of twenty years following World War II, the demographic face of Estonia changed dramatically, with Estonians and Russians living side-by-side in numbers unprecedented. Mutual ambivalence pervades the current relationship between Russian and Estonian-speakers in Estonia, though there are hopeful signs that the two cultures may carry on in peace and some measure of prosperity. Many Russian-speakers are cooperating with the citizenship rules established by Tallinn, including competence in the Estonian language and a minimum residency requirement.
100
Based on historical and contemporary evidence, this student predicts that environmental conflict will never color the political agenda of Estonia as vigorously as it did in the late 1980s. "Environment" provided a vehicle for expressing deep-seated anger and antipathy toward the Soviet system. Glasnost gave dissidents their first voice in Estonia. But ultimately, increasing openness permitted broader aspirations, including genuine nationalism to eclipse environmental concerns. Cultural environmental conflict will diminish less quickly. A political decision by Moscow to restore a polluted military base in Estonia will not erase age-old differences between Russian and Estonian-speakers about matters such as the uniqueness of the Estonian environment. However, the historical evidence indicates that the two cultures, their experience with nature, and their connection to the land are not worlds apart. In both countries, peasants' capacity to own the land they tilled only effectively emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, though Estonian peasants were freed from serfdom decades earlier. Not all Russian poets who wrote about folk culture were distant urban observers, nor were all Estonian poets simple peasants. Both peoples appreciate nature's bounty. And both groups suffered for decades under a totalitarian system that deeply discounted the value of nature. Yet, ethnic Estonians and Russophones insist that differences in Estonian and Russian tradition, religion, and education are fundamental in defining conflict over environmental issues. Estonian-speakers and Russophones are forging ahead in the early days of a new era. One popular publication heralds Estonia as the brightest light among the post-Soviet republics with slow but steady economic growth, low inflation and new, stable currency.
101
Estonia is also demonstrating leadership in the arena of environmental protection. A study issued by the German Institute of Economic Research claims that Estonia is managing its environment more capably than any other former Soviet republic. Among other improvements, the study asserts that air pollution in Estonia has decreased by almost forty percent from 1990 levels, while untreated wastewater has been reduced by one-third.
102
If these indicators are only fifty-percent accurate, they demonstrate remarkable progress in a short time. Assuming Estonians remain committed to environmental protection, their experience could assist environmental clean-up efforts in other transitional economies, including Russia. Transfer of ideas and practices may be facilitated by former Soviet President Gorbachev's Green Cross International which opened a new office in Estonia in the fall of 1994. Gorbachev's environmental organization is examining alternatives for the remediation of toxic hazards at abandoned military bases in the former Soviet Union.
103
Tallinn would like nothing more than to identify affordable and creative solutions to the many environmental hazards persisting at military sites near Tapa, Parnu, Tartu, Paldiski, SillimŠe and other locations. Yet another sign that environmentalism remains on the political landscape in Estonia is the recent election of Anders Tarand, a former Green Movement activist and Minister of Environment to the office of Prime Minister. Tarand faces the challenge of nurturing cooperative ties between ethnic Estonians and Russophones. In the late 1980s, unity between Estonians of all language groups was forged in battle against Moscow. Today, Estonia seeks better relations with Russia. Again, environmentalism could play an important role, but in the form of political environmental leadership, rather than political environmental conflict. This sanguine scenario is dependent on stable economic and political conditions in neighboring Russia. In addition, Moscow is monitoring how Tallinn treats its Russian-speaking minority. Secure citizenship, fair rights and privileges, and steady economic development—issues that eclipsed environmental concerns in the early 1990s—are the same issues that will determine whether the Estonian environment will improve in the twenty-first century.
Notes
Note 1:
Interview, Rein Rutsoo, Senior Political Scientist, Estonian Academy of Sciences, February 21, 1994. Back.
Note 2:
See, for example, Marlise Simons, "East Europe Sniffs Freedom's Air, and Gasps," New York Times, November 3, 1994, A1; Mike Edwards, "Lethal Legacy: Pollution in the Former U.S.S.R.," National Geographic, 186 (2) (August, 1994), 70-98; Margaret Shapiro, "Capitalism Compounds Moscow's Ecological Mess," Washington Post, May 21, 1993, A1; Anonymous, "Much of Russia Despoiled," Wall Street Journal, January 3, 1994, A8; Marion Schroeder, "Industrial Pollution Making Many 'Weak and Headachy'," Detroit News and Free Press, September 26,1993,B4;Julian Borger,"Pollution Still Chokes Poland,"Guardian, March 6, 1993, 2, 39; Celstine Bohlen, "On a Clear Day, You Can Glimpse the Tow Trucks, New York Times, January 12, 1991, A2; David Rocks, "Czechs Stuck with Soviet Pollution, San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 1994, A11; J. W—dz, "Effect of the Degradation of the Biophysical Environment on the Mortality in Upper Silesia, Poland," Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly,Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature under Siege, (NY: Basic Books, 1992). Feshbach and Friendly's book is the most comprehensive discussion of environmental problems in the former Soviet republics. Back.
Note 3:
Luule Sakkeus,Post-War Migration Trends in the Baltic States, (Tallinn: Rahvastiku-Uuringud Population Studies, Estonian Interuniversity Population Research Centre, 1993), 10; J. Kahk, World War II and the Soviet Occupation of Estonia: a Damages Report, (Tallinn: Perioodika Publishers, 1991), 44.Back.
Note 4:
Toivo U. Raun, Estonia and Estonians, (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), 69-70. Back.
Note 5:
Interview, Tiit Rosenberg, Professor of Agrarian History, Tartu University, Tartu, Estonia, February 23, 1994. Back.
Note 6:
James Mavor, An Economic History of Russia, (New York: Russell and Russell, Inc., 1965), 276. This manuscript was originally published in 1925. Back.
Note 7:
Ibid, 1965, 269. Back.
Note 8:
W.H. Parker, An Historical Geography of Russia, (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968), 284. Parker quotes W.E. Curtis, Around the Black Sea, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911). Back.
Note 9:
Robert Bideleux, "Agricultural Advance under the Russian Village Commune System," in Roger Bartlett, (ed.), Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), 214. Back.
Note 11:
Paul Gregory, "Grain Marketings and Peasant Consumption in Russia 1885-1913," Explorations in Economic History, 17 (2) (1980), 135-164 (serial). Back.
Note 12:
Interview, Tiit Rosenberg, Professor of Agrarian History, Tartu University, Tartu, Estonia, February 23, 1994. Back.
Note 13:
Raun, Estonia and Estonians, 55. Back.
Note 15:
Ibid, 32-33. Polish Jesuits founded the first secondary school in Estonia in 1583 and a college in Tartu in 1595. In the 1680s and 1690s, the Swedish provincial government oversaw the construction of public schools in parishes throughout Estonia. Back.
Note 18:
Rosenberg, Interview, 1994. Back.
Note 20:
Aleksis Rubulis, Baltic Literature, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970), 68. Back.
Note 21:
Raun, Estonia and Estonians, 43; 45-46; 68. Back.
Note 22:
manuel Nodel, Estonia: Nation on the Anvil, (New York: Bookman Associates, 1963), 73. Back.
Note 23:
P. Pullat, Gorodskoe Naselenie Astonii s Koncha XIII Veka Do 1940 Goda (Urban Population of Estonia from the End of the Nineteenth Century to 1940), (Tallinn: Estonia Book, 1976), 74. Back.
Note 25
Raun, Estonia and Estonians, 69. Back.
Note 26:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Kak Nam Ovustroit Rossiyu (How We Can Refurbish Russia), (Moscow: Novinka Goda, 1990), 18. Back.
Note 27:
G.T. Robinson, Rural Russia under the Old Regime, (London: Macmillan, 1932), chapters 5-7, 9. Back.
Note 28:
Christine D. Worobec, Peasant Russian Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). Back.
Note 31:
Bideleux, Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia, 200-201. Back.
Note 32:
Richard Charques, The Twilight of Imperial Russia, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 178-179. Back.
Note 33:
Mall HiiemŠe in †lo Tedre, Vanadest Eesti Rahvakommetest (Estonian Customs and Traditions), (Tallinn: Perioodika Publishers,1985), 8-9. Back.
Note 35:
See, for example, E. Mi/i> Augsburg, (Germany: Buchdruckerei J.P. Himmer, 1947), 7. Back.
Note 36:
J. Eilart,Man, Ecosystems and Culture,/i> (Tallinn: Perioodika Publishers, 1976),12. Back.
Note 38:
Ibid, 13. See also, †lo Tedre in his /i> (Tallinn: Perioodika Publishers, 1985), 7-8. Back.
Note 39:
TedreVanadest eesti rahvakometest, 3-4. Back.
Note 40:
Renato Poggioli, The Poets of Russia: 1890-1930, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 14. Back.
Note 41:
Peter France, Poets of Modern Russia, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 10. Back.
Note 42:
Reprinted in France, Poets of Modern Russia, 21. Back.
Note 43:
Poggioli, Poets of Russia, 270. Back.
Note 45:
Rubulis, Baltic Literature 67-68. Back.
Note 46:
Interview, Eerik Leibak, Senior Scientist, Eesti Looduse Fund, (Estonian Fund for Nature), Tartu, Estonia, February 24, 1994. Back.
Note 48:
The subject asked that his identity remain secret. Back.
Note 49:
George Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946), Back.
Note 50:
Gregory L. Freeze, "Revolt from Below: a Priest's Manifesto on the Crisis in Russian Orthodoxy (1858-59)," in Robert L Nichols and Theofanis George Stavrou, (eds.), Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978), 90-124. Back.
Note 53:
Worobec, Peasant Russian Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period, 19. Back.
Note 54:
Joanna Hubbs, Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture, Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1988), 57. Back.
Note 56:
Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, 11-15. Back.
Note 58:
Samuel C. Ramer, "Traditional Healers and Peasant Culture in Russia, 1861-1917," in Esther Kingston-Mann and Timothy Mixter, (eds.), Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800-1921, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 207-232. Back.
Note 60:
One ethnic Estonian respondent compared Russophones to termites—"eating everything in their way, then moving on." Another respondent described his experience in building a summer cottage with the assistance of Russian-speaking carpenters. In addition to their sloppy workmanship, he complained about his helpers' wasteful cutting and shaping of lumber and the mess that remained at the end of the job. "Carelessness is a Russian trait," he brooded. A Russian-speaking woman living in Estonia related how her ethnic Estonian neighbor berated her for the unkempt condition of her small stack of fuel wood. "In Estonia," the neighbor declared, "we keep our property in order!" Back.
Note 61:
Antti Roose, Estonia Built on Oil Shale, (Rakvere, Estonia: Virumaa Foundation, 1991), 13. Back.
Note 62:
Raun, Estonia and Estonians, 1987. See also, Olev Lugus and Pentti Vartia, Estonia and Finland: a Retrospective Socioeconomic Comparison, (Helsinki: the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy), 1993. Back.
Note 63:
Lugus and Vartia (Estonia and Finland: a Retrospective Socioeconomic Comparison, 10) claim that between 1939 and 1989, agricultural land in Estonia decreased by 47 percent. Back.
Note 64:
Interview, Tapani Hietaniemi, Lecturer, Department of History, Helsinki, Finland, February 10, 1994. Back.
Note 65:
Raun, Estonia and Estonians, 197. Back.
Note 66:
See, for example, Kahk, World War II and the Soviet Occupation of Estonia: a Damages Report.
Back.
Note 67:
J. Eilart, R. Kippar, E. Laul, E. Maaring, R. Mammar, M. Norvik, and E. Pajusalu, Kohtla JŠrve Rajoonis (In the Region Kohtla JŠrve), (Tallinn: Estonia NSV Teaduste Academia, 1983), 147. Back.
Note 68:
Roose, Estonia Built on Oil Shale, 11. Back.
Note 69:
A pood is a Russian unit of weight equal to approximately 36.11 pounds (16.38 kilograms) (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1983). Back.
Note 70:
Roose,Estonia, Built on Oil Shale,11.
Note 71:
Ibid, 11. Roose's findings concerning both Russia's import of oil shale during World War I and the growth of foreign investment in mine development are corroborated by Askel Partel,Estonspanech Vuera i Sevodnya (Estonian Oil Shale,Yesterday and Today) (Tallinn: Estonia Book, 1986), 22-23. Back.
Note 72:
PŠevaleht, November 25, 1923, reprinted in Roose, Estonia Built on Oil Shale, 12. Back.
Note 73:
Eilart et al., Kohtla JŠrve Rajoonis, 151. Back.
Note 74:
Roose, Estonia and Estonians,13. Back.
Note 75:
Eilart et al., Kohtla JŠrve Rajoonis, 151. Back.
Note 77:
J. Kahk and K. Siilivask, History of the Estonian SSR, 160. Back.
Note 78:
E. Reinsalu, "Economical Development of Estonian Oil Shale Industry," Oil Shale, 8 (3) (1991), 276. Back.
Note 79:
Kahk, World War II and the Soviet Occupation of Estonia: a Damages Report, 53. Back.
Note 80:
Kahk and Siilivask, History of the Estonian SSR, 162. Back.
Note 81:
Raun, Estonia and Estonians, 175-176. Back.
Note 82:
P. Pullat, B. A. Ejov, A. Yu Truuvyali, K. Siylivask, A. Keerna, K. Kala, and P. Yuursoo, Istori Rabouego Klassa Covetskoi Astonii (History of the Working Class of Soviet Estonia), (Tallinn: Estonia Book, 1985), 49-51. Back.
Note 83:
See, for example, Ibid,162-164. Back.
Note 84:
Sakkeus, Post-War Migration Trends in the Baltic States, 7. Back.
Note 85:
Ibid, 10; Kahk (citing census data) in World War II and the Soviet Occupation of Estonia: a Damages Report, 44. Back.
Note 86:
Ministry of Environment, Republic of Estonia, National Report of Estonia to UNCED 1992, (Tallinn: Ministry of Environment, 1992), 26. Back.
Note 87:
Ibid, 28. See also, Clyde Hertzman, World Environment Center Trip Report on Environment and Health in the Baltic Countries, January 11-February 12, 1992,(New York: World Environment Center, 1992), 10. Back.
Note 88:
Kalev Sepp and Antti Roose, "Water Consumption and Pollution in North-east Estonia and Its Impact on the Gulf of Finland," in Kalev Sepp, (ed.), European Workshop on Human Impact on Environment, (Tallinn: Institute of Ecology and Marine Research, Estonian Academy of Sciences, 1991), 55. Back. 89
Note 89:
Mare Taagepera, "The Ecological and Political Problems of Phosphorite Mining in Estonia," Journal of Baltic Studies, 20 (2), (1989), 167; Gerner and Lundgren note that this letter, signed by eighteen Soviet Estonian scientists, was submitted to colleagues in the Nordic countries and former West Germany but never published in the Soviet Union {(Kristian Gerner and Lars J. Lundgren, "Nature's Revenge: the Soviet Debate over Nature and Society, 1960-1979 in Kendall E. Bailes, (ed.), Environmental History: Critical Issues in Comparative Persepctive, (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1985), 426)}. Back.
Note 90:
Taagepera, Journal of Baltic Studies, 168. Back.
Note 93:
Interview, Valdur Lahtvee, Director, Eesti Roheline Liikumine (Estonian Green Movement), Tallinn, Estonia, February 22, 1994. Back.
Note 94:
Hilary French, "Restoring the East European and Soviet Environments," in Lester Brown, (ed.), State of the World 1991, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991), 93-112. Back.
Note 95:
Eesti Roheline Liikumine (untitled document: newsletter of the Estonian Green Movement), Tallinn, Estonia, 1993, 1. Back.
Note 98:
Interview, Tonis Kaasik, Former Minister of Environment, Stockholm Environment Institute, February 22, 1994. Back.
Note 99:
Anonymous, "Caging Russia's Monsters," Newsweek, 73 (7), (February 14, 1994), 56. Back.
Note 100:
Steven Erlanger, "Estonia Savors Economic Success, but the Reformers May Be in Trouble," New York Times, June 13, 1994, A8. Back.
Note 101:
Daniel Sneider, "Estonia Leads Baltic States into New Era," Christian Science Monitor,January 25, 1993, 8. Back.
Note 102:
Anonymous, "Institute: Estonia Making Strong Progress in Environment," Deutsche Press-Agentur, December 7, 1994. Back.
Note 103:
Anonymous, "Oil Spill in Russia Was Preventable, Former Soviet President Gorbachev Says," BNA Chemical Regulation Daily, November 7, 1994. Back.
I am indebted to many colleagues and friends who shaped this project. Gulnara Ishkuzina and Margus Roll served as advisers, critics, meeting coordinators, and translators. Ume Kelam provided additional translation services. Tapani Hietaniemi helped compile source materials and gave vital counsel. Marika Tomberg was most helpful in arranging interviews. Paul Kennedy provided valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Support for this project was provided by the Smith Richardson Foundation.
And gazing with repulsion all around me,
I see with joy that the dark wood is felled-
The meadow all burnt up where cattle doze,
Hanging their heads over the dried-up stream,
And the dark empty house leans crazily,
Where once the clash of cups and festive voices
Met the dull endless moan of oppressed suffering....
42
..Russian cultural aspirations, however open and sincere, found a drawback in their Slavonic language, narrowly limiting the circle of available translated literature. This fact, be it by contingency or destiny, explains a tragic lack in ancient Russian culture, a complete absence of rational scientific thought, even in the theological field. Apart from practical matters, Russian thought was not awakened before the eventual Europeanization of the country. A real full-fledged scientific investigation in Russia started only in the nineteenth century.
49
Those who became monks, as a result of their academic sagacity, view with the greatest indignation the attempts of any nonacademy priest to take up serious work and to publish his writings, and with the most merciless cruelty they revile the published work and its author.
51
Belliustin also accuses church officials for engaging in systematic corruption whereby an "impoverished clergy" was" obliged to dole out bribes to diocesan officials, clerks, and district superintendents" and even some bishops.
52
The question of land ownership was disputed in her "court." When conflicts over land occurred, the judge who was appointed the "voice" of Mother Earth was required to eat some soil before pronouncing his verdict. Each party was obliged to walk around the border of the disputed lot with a clod of earth on his or her head so that Mother Earth herself might determine who was in the right (and though the church tried, it failed to substitute the icon for the soil).
55
Forest and water were always objects of apprehension and distrust for the Russian. The immense forests of the North are indeed a very inhospitable and sometimes dangerous element for the agricultural settler. The beginning of history, however, finds the northern Russians as hunters and honey-seekers in their virgin forests. Perhaps they were at that time more familiar and more intimate with the forest lords. Yet we must not forget that the Slavs were chiefly agricultural people, since the times of the Indo-European unity, and this period of Russian hunting was not an experience which left an indelible mark on the national soul. In this respect, the difference between Slavs and Finns must have been immense.
57
(my italics).
...were interested in the story that people near Kukruse told about a stone that caught fire when thrown into the fire. People even talk that one sauna burnt down because it was built of brown stone.
68
More than the progress of any other field of industry, the progress of the oil shale industry is connected with the independence of Estonia....There is great wealth for the Republic of Estonia hidden in oil shale.
72
