JÜRI REINVERE ⟩ Estonians are experts at living in difficult circumstances

Composer Jüri Reinvere. Photo: Mihkel Maripuu

• It's characteristic of the West to mistakenly believe that history always repeats itself.
• Much has been written about the deceptive hollowness of Western democracy.
• In addition to their own experience, Estonians also have the experience of their parents.

I don't have any great concern that the Estonian people won't be able to cope with difficulties ahead, on the contrary, I consider Estonians to be experts at living in difficult circumstances, composer Jüri Reinvere writes.

I lately saw yet another documentary on Swedish television about the Estonia disaster. A psychologist there said that according to their information, it was Estonians that were the quickest among the survivors to regain their life satisfaction. Next after them came the Finns, while survivors from Sweden were said to have taken the longest to recover from the trauma. The psychologist ascribed this to historical experience – Estonians have been historically the best at overcoming difficulties and losses. The Finns less so, but the legacy of the Winter War inherited from their parents lives on in them too. It's most difficult for Swedes, who have extremely little in terms of material in their legacy on how to cope with severe traumas.

I have already written about a Swedish acquaintance of mine, a very intelligent person, who met the news of the war in Ukraine with the calm conviction that «the West will win anyway». You can find a lot of similar self-assurance in Western Germany, but almost none in Eastern Germany. The belief in one's own power, fostered by the experiences of past decades and the accompanying constant military presence of the United States, which secures Western interests in conflicts with its massive presence, has made societies self-assured.

The inability to believe that there will be change is compounded by a couple of other dangerous tendencies – the mistaken belief that history always repeats itself in the same patterns. That America, together with Western Europe, will beat back Russian aggression, that we are in for continuous economic growth, with occasional but short-lived crises. Or that the whole world wants to be like the West anyway, and that deep down it shares Western ideals – a delusion that is exposed every time a conflict breaks out in the Arab world.

That Russia is full of people who have no desire to live like in the West, or that the Arab world and many people in the Western world do not share this ideal, is incomprehensible to political decision-makers.

When it was recently announced that a party of local Muslims is about to be formed in Germany, whose strength could quickly rise to the level of the major German parties, a large part of the country's intelligentsia flinched.

«Putin is trembling in the Kremlin over new sanctions,» one influential newspaper here in Germany writes. And right next to it: «The past two years have shown that Putin no longer holds Russia in his grip.» Really? In my opinion, nothing has yet emerged that would justify such an assumption.

There haven't been the three things that, in the end, led to the disintegration of Gorbachev's Russia: there has been no new Chernobyl or anything similar to it (Gorbachev himself considered it the main catalyst for the collapse of the USSR); there is no such powerful tandem in international politics as Reagan-Thatcher, who would bring the already rotten Russian economy to its knees – on the contrary, as we know, Russia's business continues strong enough, either through shadow states or through direct dealings with the West. And there hasn't been that third, most impactful one: a ban on alcohol. The USSR probably would have been able to continue to exist for a long time if the people had not had a hunger for vodka. It wasn't the mothers of soldiers, it wasn't the dissidents, it was the vodka ban that drove people mad and eventually also made them take to the streets several times.

Something is happening, though. When it was recently announced that a party of local Muslims is about to be formed in Germany, whose strength could quickly rise to the level of the major German parties, a large part of the country's intelligentsia flinched. Especially given the current situation, where the advance of the right-wing populist AfD is feared like wildfire, and radical leftists – of whom there are not few – constantly seek loopholes in the country's constitution to legally ban the AfD. It goes without saying that all this is largely part and parcel of what has taken root everywhere in the West: «If you don't share my opinion, then means must be found to prohibit you.»

Much has been written about the deceptive hollowness of Western democracy, but the psychology of states has often been sidelined – what are the skills of one or another nation to cope with upcoming challenges. And from this perspective, Estonians are by no means far behind others, but, as the experiences related to the Estonia also show, quite at the top.

I am more concerned about the self-assured blindness of Swedes, Germans, the French, which has not mentally updated itself from the status of the 1980s.

Once, while still living in Berlin, I spoke with a social worker whose work district was in the suburban prefab housing estates, predominantly inhabited by people with migration backgrounds. That person said that they are getting a lot of calls to Germans. They're getting calls to Turks as well, though significantly fewer. However, there are never any calls from the Russians living in Germany. And there are lots of them too, by the way.

But why are there never any calls to them – the reason they say is simple. Families solve all crisis situations among themselves and outside help is not particularly trusted or it it is not even anticipated that any help could be obtained from the state. Everything that is needed is solved with the strength and advice of the family, and the need for social counseling, shelters, aid organizations and so on is close to zero.

Therefore, I don't have any great concern that the Estonian people won't be able to cope with difficulties ahead; on the contrary, I consider Estonians to be experts in living in difficult circumstances. I am more concerned about the self-assured blindness of Swedes, Germans, and the French, which has not mentally updated itself from the status of the 1980s.

It is still believed that Russia can be easily made to falter and that the Russian population thirsts for American-style democracy, that only people who do good live in Ukraine and that no black arms business is done on the front lines, corruption has disappeared from that country as if by magic, and the global situation is a little complicated, but «we will win anyway.»

It's because of this that threatening voices of politicians have also risen in Europe, saying that war is inevitable in order to somehow prepare the people for large military expenditures required by the work to rapidly build up the army and police systems, which used to be reduced to date.

Over the past year, Finland's outgoing President Sauli Niinistö has repeated several times the idea that Europe is very pressed for time to build up defense systems. In the economic euphoria of the past decades, not only national defense, but also the police and border guard have been let to lose their strength. In Germany, scenes of police officers fleeing from criminals have become commonplace, both on the streets and in the newspapers. Only ten years ago, the picture was very different.

For the time being, this is the main obstacle why Kaja Kallas does not rise to the ranks of the giant stars of the Western political stage.

However, building up now needs to be done as a matter of urgency, and urgent times require the support of the people. There's little of it, and public discussion is mainly in the hands of radicalized factions. These factions, in turn, passively connect large groups of people. In Finland, we see every day how a couple of well-known influencers can bring a significant portion of society to its knees with just a couple of social media posts. Only three angry posts are enough for the powerful authorities to bar events or cancel scheduled ones out of fear of media posts by just a single person.

I have repeatedly written that unfortunately, Estonia's international politics does not have a major role in the world as an expert and interpreter of the current global situation. It is precisely expertise that Estonians would have, because what lives in us is not only our own experience, but also that of our parents and grandparents.

From my own family, I know that the direct field of information and experience often reaches back to Tsarist Russia. The same information field that was useful to Mannerheim and important to Churchill, so that the latter bought analytical services from Heinrich Laretei [Estonian diplomat, politician and military officer, 1892-1973 – ed.] from Sweden during the war. As I travel around Europe, I see very few nations and politicians whose wealth of experience is so extensive and wide-ranging.

The West's deaf-muteness also has its part to play in this, but there is still no one on the big stage at the moment, apart from Kaja Kallas, who can find at least some listeners in the gigantic political machine. And her narrative, too, remains a little confusing to Germans, for example.

How to present to Western listeners in such a way that how a Swede and an official from Brussels will get it is not that it's not just the usual clatter of political jargon that Europe is full of, but an idea that, when it gets through to the listener, will advance the search for necessary new solutions. For the time being, this is the main obstacle why Kaja Kallas does not rise to the ranks of the giant stars of the Western political stage.

The thing is that Estonians, as always, have too many problems with their own identity: who or what we really are. The picture is too messy about our own true nature and about our agreed-upon nature. And in such confusion, it's also difficult to offer others something that they would specifically need at this moment.