ESTONIA: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn
The following text is the shortest possible review to help inform friends and guests from abroad about Estonia’s experience with foreign occupation and totalitarianism as well as its road to peacefully re-establishing national inde-pendence on the basis of democracy. Tunne Kelam Member of the European Parlament
The following text is the shortest possible review to help inform
friends and guests from abroad about Estonia’s experience with
foreign occupation and totalitarianism as well as its road to
peacefully re-establishing national inde-pendence on the basis
of democracy.
Tunne Kelam
Member of the European Parlament
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<strong>ESTONIA</strong>:<br />
<strong>Almost</strong><br />
<strong>extinguished</strong>,<br />
<strong>successfully</strong><br />
<strong>reborn</strong><br />
Although the remaining Vare family members managed<br />
to return to their home country in 1958, they were not<br />
the same people any more. Rein Vare became embittered,<br />
had difficulties of keeping a permanent job, and fell<br />
prey to the abuse of alcohol. He died in solitude in the<br />
year made famous by George Orwell – 1984 – a broken<br />
man. His diary was discovered only after his death and<br />
was published in independent Estonia. Rein Vare’s diary<br />
can be seen as an Estonian version of the Diary of Anne<br />
Frank.<br />
The first year of the Soviet Communist regime made<br />
a profound impact on the Estonian people. The scope<br />
and cruelty of indiscriminate violence were so shocking<br />
and defying all common sense that the whole nation<br />
instinctively reached one and the same conclusion –<br />
nothing could have been worse. Traditionally public<br />
opinion in Estonia in 1930s tended to be less sympathetic<br />
to Germany than to Russia. After June 14, 1941,<br />
Hitler’s Germany was considered the lesser of two great<br />
evils.<br />
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