Estonia opted not to wait

Photo: ITAR-TASS / Scanpix

Border treaty signed by foreign ministers of Estonian and Russia, yesterday, leaves Japan the sole state with borderline issues unsettled with Moscow.

As one starts stepping southwards, from Patriarch’s Ponds in Moscow, in a minute one’s there – almost at once. At the foreign ministry. The Gothic style mansion on the quiet Spiridonovka Street, ordered by the legendary Russian industrialist and Bolsheviks’ financier Savva Morozov, isn’t the ministry’s everyday workplace. Rather, here they do their receptions, press conferences, and international treaty signings.

Should one get the idea to walk from here to the Estonian embassy, curiously one would walk the path the poet Ivan Bezdomny followed the mysterious Prof Woland and his buddies in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Down from the Patriarch’s Ponds, then taking the arch along the Spiridonovka, passing thru Nikitskaja – here the criminals spread out –, Mr Bezdomny was confused for a moment, then following the professor to Bolshaya Nikitskaja St, then on down ant to the right – here stands Estonian embassy – and then towards Arbat.

By the way, the very same Gothic villa serves as a prototype in the Bulgakov novel – here, probably, dwelt Margarita, before moving in with the Master.

Talks wall to wall

Enough of Bulgakov. Yesterday, Satan held no ball in Moscow. Rather, it was foreign ministers Urmas Paet and Sergei Lavrov, signing the Estonian-Russian border treaty.

In reality, a whopping four documents got signatures. The weightiest, yet physically the smallest folder was the border treaty itself. The largest folder contained the border line maps, with Estonian language ones twice the size of those in Russian.

Before signatures, a meeting was held by the two delegations with talks wall to wall: Estonian-Russian cooperation, economic relations, double taxation, Mr Lavrov’s visit to Estonia, Russia-EU relations, state of Narva bridge, documentation issues of trucks crossing the border. In a word: lots and lots of stuff. Including the «more difficult issues» as Mr Lavrov put is like citizenship, Russian language education in Estonia, and WW2 history and its lessons.

True: with summits, when somebody says «we discussed» don’t assume they did. It’s not like Mr Paet says something and the Mr Lavrov argues back and then someone specifies something and then they go on discussing the issue, seeking a solution; and then someone gets an idea and then they come at the thing from yet another angle and then they all exit the room, carrying the solution.

In state summits, rather, they list the talking points, give each other signals, what’s important to me and what’s important to you. With luck, should some stuff coincide in what both sides say, they may utter some more-or-less indefinite promise: that the agencies will be working at the topic. No different, we presume, at the Estonian-Russian summit.

Russian bureaucracy is obviously there; at least with the border treaty, however, all went smooth. Stuff was settled, no problems arose. That the ministers were late, is rather a good sign – maybe they had things to talk about.

No glitches, either, with the journalists on location to report on the meeting. Some Estonian journalists, with basis to compare, found the Russian foreign ministry’s security guards more polite that those of President of Estonia. Not forbidding and obstructing, they are civil and accommodating.

And, while we’re in the praising mood, let’s add that the Moscow city centre is cleaner than that of Tallinn; to say nothing about the fact that it’s lighter that Estonia’s darkened capital. An Estonian municipal politician in the habit of visiting Moscow for exchange of experiences, might grab that experience along from his next trip.

Interestingly, there was an interest towards the Estonian-Russian border treaty in the Russian media. 19 cameras were there, about 40 journalists – mostly from Estonia and Russia, but three from elsewhere: one from Finland, one from Japan and one from China.

Mr Paet looked a bit tired and worn out. His colleague, Mr Lavrov, as always – like straight from a solarium. In reality, his somewhat darker complexion is due to Armenian roots, rather, from his Armenian father’s side.

War-given reality

Both the signing and the ministers’ press conference were orderly. Not a merry event, not too serious. Just the usual, the correct kind.

It got the merriest right at the end of the press conference. Estonian and Russian reporters having asked their questions (pursuant to Russian protocol, only a couple of these were allowed at all – M. S.), there arose journalist from Japan.

Before the question was ever asked, just as the guy introduced himself as being from Japan, Mr Lavrov broke into a broad smile. Estonia’s ambassador to Russia, Jüri Luik turned around in his chair, visibly fighting laughter; even the corners of Mr Paet mouth rose somewhat – for the first time during the press conference. The Japanese journalist did a quiet giggle himself. Well, everybody knew what he would ask: «For seventy years we have been waiting etc,» – the journalist enquired the South Kuril Islands ownership issue and the options for Japanese-Russian peace treaty.

Mr Lavrov, having thoroughly and at length answered the previous questions, was now curt. Into his short reply, however, twice he managed to weave the words «reality coming from war» and once «the reality created by World War II».

But then there’s the other reality. Like: in the Japanese embassy, in Tallinn, there sits a diplomat whose sole task it has been, through the years, to monitor the course of Estonian-Russian border negotiations; basically, meaning that he has not had much to do, and what he’s had to do hasn’t been too exciting. And the reality admitted, to Mr Lavrov, by the question-posing Japanese journalist: «For seventy years we have waited and, if needed, we will wait the next seventy years, and if needed, we will wait for the next ...»

The Japanese will keep on waiting. Estonia opted not to.