The cultural roots of Estonia's successful transition: How historical legacies shaped the 1990s

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 316-347

  Bennich Bjrkman, Li ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Cultural legacy; Estonia; Interwar period; Post communism; Transition

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247626296     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: 15338371     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325407299785     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. See Elster, Offe, and Preuss (1998) and slund (2002) for scholarly examples where historic legacies are downplayed. An early exception is Lagerspetz (1996), who points both to the heterogeneity within the large group of formerly Communist states and to the importance that these heterogeneous histories will have for future development: The impact of their cultural background on the economies and policies of the former socialist countries is probably going to become increasingly apparent in the future, as they are now free from Russian domination and must develop their own specific ways of adjusting to their new role as Western economic peripheries (pp. 46-47).
2. However, within the Soviet Union, Estonia held a position of being forward and innovative, an experimental republic. Reforms aimed at increasing the Estonian economic autonomy within the realm of the Union started as a matter of fact already in 1987, according to a plan called IME.
3. In a forthcoming joint article with Branka Livic, I compare the trajectories of the Estonian and Slovenian transitions.
4. Putnam (1993) did something similar in tracing the roots of Northern Italy's high-level civic-ness back in time to developments in the thirteenth century. However farfetched that may seem, the core of historical institutionalist explanations lies in the way that new institutional settings are believed to be highly dependent on and influenced by the one(s) preceding them (Pierson 2005; cf. Eckstein 1988). In addition, it can turn out to be quite hard to empirically prove such long chains of influences. Furthermore, the borderlines between change and continuity are harder to draw, since what appears to be an institutional change in practice often is a pattern-maintaining change, as Eckstein (1988) would have described it.
5. This article is part of a larger comparative study covering the processes of informal elite formation and democratic transition in all of the Baltic states and Ukraine.
6. Needless to say, a similar amount of interviews have also been conducted in Latvia and Lithuania.
7. In the cited article (Bennich-Bjrkman 2005b), I present a more fully developed analysis of the Laar government of 1992 to 1994 and the reasons behind considering it crucial to later developments.
8. The definition of dissidence and dissidents in the Soviet setting is a topic in itself that I will not go into here. Suffice it to say that a commonly used way of identifying dissidents is to refer to persons who have been imprisoned one or several times on political grounds, or who overtly protested the system through clear political actions (cf. Misiunas and Taagepera 1993, 251). Dissident activities in the Baltic states were most intensive in Lithuania, where dissidence was regarded as heroism. Baltic dissidents started to join forces in the end of the 1970s, among other things signing the letter of the 40 (Ruutsoo 2002, 116).
9. Until the beginning of the 1950s, forest brothers still operated in the woods, resisting the Soviet army with weapons in hand (cf. Laar 1992).
10. Interviews with Mart Laar (2 May 2001 and 30 September 2004), Lauri Vahtre, Heiki Valk, and Indrek Tarand. Also interviews with Jonas Trinkunas, Vaclovas Bagdonavicius, and Arvydas Sliogeris, all of whom were participants of the Romuva movement. For all interview information, see the appendix.
11. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this information.
12. It is of course risky and difficult to state with complete certainty that something as nebulous and informal as networks did not exist, since traces of them are mostly undocumented and need to be reconstructed through personal information. However, although I have conducted interviews with a large part of the Latvian political elite, often explicitly asking for eventual information about such activities, the result has so far stayed very meagre in comparison to, in particular, Estonia.
13. The situation is described by Ruutsoo (2002, 95) in the following words: Experiencing an occupied homeland without any practical perspective for the re-achievement of national independence in the near future, every member of the national community faced a situation which could be defined as 'a complex choice.'
14. Earlier literature has acknowledged the presence of a civil society in Estonia starting somewhere around 1980 (Gerner 2003, 160; Ruutsoo 2002), but the important (though admittedly not strictly in the civil society realm) activities of Club Tru seems to have gone unnoticed.
15. The connection to Britain was not random. Trivimi Velliste, one of three founders, was an English linguist.
16. Information about Club Tru emanates from one of the three founders, Trivimi Velliste, interviewed in Tallinn on 20 February 2004. Trivimi Velliste is today a member of the Estonian Parliament, Riigikogu, and was also one of the initiators of the Estonian Heritage Society.
17. Another of the founders, Toivo Palm, is eager to emphasize that the purpose of Club Tru was never oppositional but that it served the purpose of being a meeting place for those with intellectual interests who wanted to meet for discussions. However, as is often the case, the ideas regarding the club and its aims probably varied between the persons participating, something that need not be a problem as long as it is not explicitly discussed.
18. Interview with Trivimi Velliste.
19. Interview with Tiina Mgi.
20. Interviews with Heiki Valk and Lauri Vahtre.
21. University studies were organized as programmes where the students followed a curricula that spanned over five years. Freedom of choice and individual deviances were minimal. This programme structure meant that the group of students became closely knit. They also all lived in special dormitories. While such a close social interaction greatly facilitated social control and surveillance, at the same time it also created preconditions for the formation of tight friendship circles and networks that the authorities had reason to fear in the long run, as they could prove to be the basis for organised opposition.
22. Interviews with Mart Laar (2 May 2001 and 30 September 2004), Heiki Valk, and Lauri Vahtre. See also Laar (2002, 20-22). Mart Laar has played a crucial political role in independent Estonia, as its first prime minister from 1992 to 1994, as prime minister between 2000 and 2002, and as a member of Parliament. Lauri Vahtre has been a member of Parliament for ten years while Heiki Valk never aspired to a political career but became professor of archeology at Tartu University.
23. Noor Tartu deliberately alluded to the Estonian nationalistic movement in the late nineteenth century, Noor Eesti. How symbols were used was, as I pointed out earlier, an important part of the network's identity. For more about Noor Tartu, see also Laar (2002) and Ruutsoo (2002).
24. Interviews have been conducted with the three leading figures and with several ordinary participants to deepen and nuance the picture of Noor Tartu. Interviews with Madis Kanabik, Krt Jenes-Kapp, Mart Kalm, Rnno Vissak, and Eero Medijainen.
25. Interviews with Mart Laar (2 May 2001), Rnno Vissak, and Indrek Tarand.
26. Interviews with former participants of the Noor Tartu movement: Krt Jenes-Kapp, Eero Medijainen, and Madis Kanabik.
27. Laar (2002, 28) writes in his memoires that the movement rief zu einem neuen nationalen Erwachen auf.
28. Interview with Indrek Kannik.
29. What is today Estonian territory was for many centuries ruled by the Baltic-Germans. German influences still continued to exercise a certain power during the inter-war years.
30. Interview with Mart Laar (2 May 2001).
31. Also see interview with Viktoras Petkus.
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