Estonia is a feel good story. It’s like a kid who grows up to be successful even though his Mom conspicuously scratches her ass in public and his Dad swerves to hit squirrels on the highway with his pickup truck.
The 20th century was especially tumultuous for the citizens of this Baltic country. First occupied by the Soviets, then the Nazis, then the Soviets again, eventually becoming a full-fledged Soviet Republic in some mockery of a referendum. Estonia withdrew from the Soviet Union in 1991 in a glorious “singing revolution” where thousands gathered to sing banned national songs. The Baltic countries joined the European Union and today, Estonia’s economy is growing like a tumor (in a good way). I heard the second half of the 20th century in Estonia described as “schizophrenic.” The current president, Thoomas Hendrik Ilves, grew up in America, the son of Estonian expatriates. He was involved in anti-Soviet radio broadcasts into the country via Radio Free Europe. Cool stuff. Today, about a quarter of Estonia’s population are ethnic Russians. This makes for plenty of Russian speakers, which was really great for me!
We took a short ferry ride from Helsinki to Tallinn, the capital and largest city in Estonia. The center of the city is a medieval old town with cobbled streets and stone walls. Church steeples dominate the skyline in old town, with modern buildings a good ways away. I climbed to the top of the tallest church steeple- St. Olaf’s- and stood on the narrow wooden planks at the base of the copper spire. Twas neat.
Our apartment was on the fifth floor of an old building. It was replete with Soviet era elevator (small, dingy, liable to get stuck) and industrial-metal doors the likes of which are found in old Moscow grocery stores. However, the apartments were completely renovated and modern.
Our building was right on a square with lots of bars and strip clubs around. Not only was it difficult to fall asleep because the sun was up all night, but also because drunken revelers were singing and shouting at three in the morning.
I rode my bike to the residential part of Tallinn one day. Outside of the upper-middle-class neighborhoods there were big apartment blocks like you find all over Russia. I was surprised to see that most of the blockhouses had been or were being completely renovated. The grey utilitarian mass-production that characterizes post-Stalin architecture in the former USSR was being erased. Concrete and exposed mortar was being covered with brightly colored stucco; rusted steel and rotting window frames were being replaced with modern materials.
A dreadlocked guy was walking by and I stopped to ask him about the renovation. Was it being paid for by the city, the national government, the EU? He said that the housing unions (equivalent to neighborhood associations) were paying for the remodeling and that he had lived in one of the housing blocks his entire life. They were a lot nicer than their Russian counterparts and gave me an idea of what Russian housing could be.
Biking, by the way, is the absolute best way to see a new city. The fam and I all rented bikes and spent hours going around old town seeing what would have taken days on foot.
It is really amazing what Tallinn is doing with its hated Soviet legacy. Run-down factories are being converted into upscale shopping malls in that sort of industrial-chic style. Some 1960’s Soviet eyesore has been converted into the Museum of the Occupation, which details Soviet and Nazi occupation of the country. Some of the stories in that museum were nauseatingly horrible. Thousands of Estonians were deported to Siberia on fabricated charges of counter-revolution (article 58). Thousands were falsely imprisoned, tortured and murdered at the hands of the NKVD/KGB. The Estonian government is actively trying to prosecute former Soviet agents who committed crimes against humanity, but unfortunately many of the perpetrators live in Russia. The Russian government is uncooperative. Go figure.
