Still in Tartu, relaxing in what has turned into a thaw and deep freeze. Off early tomorrow to Riga; have also discovered the value of long-johns after ending up with extremely wet and cold feet from wading through melting snow. Here in Tartu my Russian is almost worthless as 90% of the population (excluding the other guests at the hotel here) is Estonian, although in Riga it will once again come in handy. I did ask the receptionist in Tallinn whether her was offended by me talking to him in Russian. The Balts are notorious for their rejection of Russification and they prefer to be addressed in English or German first. But...
"No, I am not offended," he said. "After all I am Russian."
Estonian politics have more or less stabilised after the last few turbulent years; there was obviously a strong show of support for Georgia this summer and a change in government in 2006 brought Toomas Hendrik Ilves to power after the former Soviet premier Arnold Rüütel was ousted in the elections in September that year. Estonia now joins the other two Baltic States in having a president who was not privy to the Soviet occupation, which in my opinion is a little sad that none of the three countries has a president that necessarily shares their compatriots' experiences. My friend Jana from TAPDANCE exemplified a tendency within the Baltic metropolitan elite towards suspicion of the conservative, rural majority. Given that this is a 23-year-old woman talking, with éxperience as an ex-pat under her belt and who didn't start school until the end of the Soviet occupation, I think she is justified in feeling that way. In the UK, parties naturally now try and attract the young, which is what David Cameron was designed to do. The problem as I see it is that most of the people in Estonia - and Latvia, and Lithuania, not to mention other countries in the region - are conservative and, Eastern Europe being as it is, mostly still rural. They are not represented by the media, which has brushed the communist past under the rug except for a few kitsch programmes ridiculing the ephemeral side of the propaganda.
Having watched enough Polish TV while I was out there, the impression I got during the 2003 EU accession referendum was that those pro-Europe were young, fresh and happy, while those opposed were staid, ultra-conservative (The Liga Polskich Rodzin, or League of Polish Families, were the main spokespeople for the No vote - think a Catholic Church sponsored UKIP with shades of fascism implied by the media, which I doubt were there in reality), and frankly quite past it. In reality, the family that I lived with - a divorcee and her two university age children - were not what the media would have wanted to put on its screens as a reason for voting Tak (Yes - a more cynical friend recalled the "Trzy razy Tak" campaign at the end of the Second World War where Poles were exhorted to endorse the Stalinist communist regime which ended up overstaying its welcome by about 40 years). Mrs Zawada - an unfortunate name, given that zawada means a disadvantage - worked as a hospital orderly and private cleaner and struggled to make £100 per month, with an extra £50 coming cash-in-hand from my rent, a reason for her to be worried about me applying for a work permit when I left the university course I was on and enrolled as an English language teacher and tutor to local businessmen. She was voting Yes - but only because she believed that future generations would prosper if Poland went into the EU. Even after the referendum - by the time Poland entered the EU, I had returned home to England - groceries started going up in price.
The problem is only more extreme here than in Britain, where the cult of youth is in full swing, but although these presidents - Vara Vike-Freiburga in Latvia, Valdas Adamkus in Lithuania as well - were born as ex-patriates or exiles, and appeal to the young metropolitan elite, how can a government represent their people if the premier has not shared their electorate's recent history? As democratically elected presidents they do actually enjoy support; Estonia and Lithuania have changed hands only recently (Lithuania after President Rolandas Paksas was impeached in 2004 after a cash-for-citizenship scandal) but Vike-Freiburga has now been there in Latvia for a good long time and brought some stability after a rocky first decade of independence. There is also the local shadow of Belarus and Alexander Lukashenka, with a system which is Soviet in all but name, suggesting the flip-side of trusting those who have experience of the system. However, while Belarus was locked in tight to the Soviet system and had no previous experience of independence the Baltic States were independent, albeit quasi-fascist dictatorships, during the inter-war period from 1918-1940, when Stalin got fed up with not having access to the Baltic and sent in the tanks. National elites in the Baltic States developed a shadow government strong enough to resist Gorbachev's retrenchment in 1990-91, while Belarus became independent by default on the break-up of the Soviet Union. But the success of all three presidents suggests a possibility that their different experiences during the 1940-1991 period may be an asset, as Rüütel barely spoke a word of English yet his successor effectively used it as a working language all his life. I just hope that they keep in mind that their societies are still predominantly rural, conservative and grappling with the legacy of Soviet rule.
While we digest this interesting issue, what about political propaganda? This is Edgar Savisaar of the Central Party in 1995, boxing for Estonia. Nice to see a politician who doesn't mind looking a bit foolish. Perhaps at our next election Gordon and Alistair could come out wearing knuckledusters and carrying a chainsaw - how fitting for the demolition job they appeared to do on the Tories on Monday.
"The Centre Party - fighting for your rights..."
