Выучившись на советские деньги, вы теперь услужливо поливаете грязью тех “оккупантов”, благодаря которым стали (?) человеком.

It actually is a fact, most of today’s Estonians are educated in Soviet built schools. Most of today’s schools were built during the Soviet time.

An interesting fact: It is safe to say that Soviet Union has been teaching most of today’s Estonians how to write in their own language.

A question to Mr. Laar: Why haven’t Estonia bothered to legally proof Soviet occupation till this day?

Уверен – настанет тот день, когда вам придётся держать ответ за всё. В тесном кабинете перед усталым следователем НКВД
И не делайте вид, что вы русского не понимаете.

Бывайте!

it was very interesting for me to find and explore your site, while searching for information about resistance in Estonia after 1945. I found many facts i didn’t know before and it seems that history is not what we used to know about it.
Anyway, i’ll keep reading your articles and any information about Estonia and its brave fight against the communists.
Mr Laar, i am from Bulgaria and my country has also suffered a lot during the communist period. But the situation here is quite different than in Estonia – we are still sleeping in our red dream, we sigh before the portrets of communist leaders and some people are trying to assure us how good was in this period. Sad, but i hope that Bulgaria will follow Estonia on its way to break the chains of lies and propaganda in history.

Good luck with your site!

Sincerely,

Georgi Grancharov

Very interesting to read. I also read your articel in the Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter today. It is good with someone with a little different perpective.

Hope you could write more often here in english. I write a lot about Estonia in my own blog. But in swedish.

I have made many visits to Estonia over the past 19 years, the first time with a group of Finnish tourists. My wife is Finnish and her sister in law is Estonian, so we fully understand what your people have lived through. I even walked into a human rights demonstration in Tallinn during my first visit.

It’s really sad to see what has transpired in Estonia over the past few weeks. I have written to some of the blogs, and in one of them, a nasty Russian had some very vulgar words about your views. I have dealt with Russians all of my professional life, ever since my student days visiting the “Soiuz” in 1965 (I have a Ph.D. in political science).

One thing I did want to ask you, though. I have been in touch with Dr. Zuroff of the Wiesenthal Center, who said he would not have issued his condemnation of the decision to move the statue had the Estonian government been more forthcoming on the issue of bringing war criminals to justice and confronting Estonian complicity in Nazi war crimes. I know this issue of the “victim also being the perpetrator” comes up in many other contexts, whether the Palestinians raise it in relation to the Israelis, or the Jews in relation to Polish complicity in German crimes against their compatriots (see Jan Grosz, “Fear,” 2006). But he is highly frustrated at having had no cooperation with the Estonian government in tracking down and prosecuting its citizens who may have been guilty of war crimes during the German occupation.

It is a matter of Estonian national security to be sure that the issue of accusations of being less than forthcoming on this issue can be used against your county. Russians will leave nothing undone to blacken Estonia’s reputation, and I was wondering whether it is time to reconsider whether you can do something more to show that your country deserves more than the “F” grade it gets from the Wiesenthal Center.

I know it is highly insensitive of the Russians to propagate the “Estonians=Fascists” line, but wondered whether there is a way to disarm these propagandists.

I have learned over a dozen foreign languages in my time, so I recognize the importance of being able to communicate with people in their own language. It is a matter of pride that, when I visit Estonia, I can say at least a few words in your own language; significantly, n 1988, I purchased an Estonian grammar written for Russian speakers which I understand was the first such book made available in your country. I hope that, with good will on both sides, the language issue will also find a solution. I realize that it is simpler for Russian speakers to go along the way they always have. (When I taught a course on transition, I believe it was the work of Marju Laurisin I found that referred to a phenomenon we don’t hear about today — the deliberate desire of Russian parents in Estonia to make sure their children are given a solid grounding in the state language so they can get all the benefits of citizenship). I also remember the strong feelings in Slovakia in the 1990′s raised over the lack of interest of the Hungarian minority to use Slovak (in southern Slovakia, many of them never even come in contact with ethnic Slovaks).

Unfortunately, too many Russians have blind spots about many things. One with whom I have been corresponding seems to feel that democracy is something that people in the FSU or Eastern Europe will adopt only so long as bribes (e.g. grants) keep coming in from Western sources. They don’t recognize that democracy is valuable in its own right as a way of life. They think that the reactions to years of communism are nothing more than a new form of Bolshevism.

Anyway, I know you have a great deal to do with your country’s successes over the past decade and a half, and wish you and your people many more in the future.