"Estonia: Russians - occupators go home!"

By

Julia Sedneva

I don't like it and it is unpleasant to hear Estonian women or men shouting like: "Russians - occupators - get out of our country! Your Russia is waiting for you!"

Why?

Maybe because they consider us only as occupatros on their historical lend? But Russians did so much for their small country, about many people simply do not know?

They prefer to call us "a second-kind nation". But in our country we have people, who made war for their freedom from everyone, who lived in this country whole their life, and after that we do not have an usual human rights in this country??

Estonians often call us - occupators, but, in my opinion, it is wrong. Russian army released Estonia from German army - and Estonians call that days, when German army went out and Russian army did not get in, "independence days". And after that "occupations" began...

So, that a piece of history from that hard years.

Estonia, like any country has it's own history. It is not so long like other countries may have, but it still is.

Estonia is a small country which is situated on the seaside of the Baltic Sea.

The capital of Estonia is Tallinn. It is not so big but beautiful. We are the center for the tourism like all other countries especially during the summer. As I can see, many Finnish tourists prefer to go to our town for shopping because our production is much more cheaper than their own. As I noticed, Finnish tourists like our beer so much that they can not go away without many bottles of our beer.

From the first look foreign people can see only quite piece and solution.

But Estonians call us - " Russian - speaking - nation". It means, that all people, who speak Russian language, belong to this termin.

We can call us - minority, but I want to mention here, this Russian-speaking nations comprises about 40 %. We can see that it is about 1/2 of all population of Estonia (almost).

We can divide our Russian - speaking nation into many different- speaking groups. In our country we have different nations like Belorussians, Ukrains, Hungarians, Armenians and so on.

We have Russian and Estonian schools, each pupil can choose, in which school he (or she) want to study. Also we have Russian groups in the universities. In Russian school pupils begin to learn Estonian from the 5th grade. In my opinion, we have to learn Estonian from the childhood, because we have this possibility. But here I have to say, that we can see a very serious problem - most of our kindergartens do not want to accept Russian-speaking children into their groups.

On our reasonable question "why" they often say, that because of only ONE Russian - speaking child all Estonian - speaking children begin to speak Russian instead of Estonian.

But how can two different nations exist in one country?

I can name a lot of problems, that we have (I mean, non-Estonians) in our daily and public life. For example, citizenship.

Why do people, who's relatives in 2 or 3 generations were born in this country, have to prove their belonging to this nation by passing language and law test? To prove their loyalty to their government?

It is interesting to notice that in Estonia you can choose what citizenship you want to have - Estonian, Russian or maybe you prefer to be an alien? It is very unusual solving problem of citizenship, isn't?

Government tries to change this situation by publishing new laws, but they are mostly about so usual thing which does not matter in changing the situation… They only cause new difficulties and problems to non-Estonians.

For example, we have a law about form Russian army solders and their families. According to law this people cannot get an permanent living permission. They are forced to leave Estonia and move to Russia. Estonian government does not care, will they have profit to live or not... The most popular explanation of this doings are "you may be unloyal to Estonia".

But this times, when Russia was able to start war to Estonia are gone. By the way, Estonia is so small country, no one want to have any conflicts with it.

As another serious problem I can name integration to Estonian society.

Russian people try to keep their national traditions, language and culture as they can. Any pressure on this problem cause only aggression in Russian people. They try to live compactly, speak Russian language and do not think about Estonian. It appeared in our living structure. We have in our town for example, only Russian-speaking districts and the opposite.

Also our education system. As far as I remember, my school teacher of history quite often told us that Estonians are very cruel to those people, who are not loyal enough to Estonian state, they try to force us to disappear in Estonian society...

In my mind that words usually called some kind of aggression to all Estonians - no matter what they do or say. Is it normal a situation? The answer is "NO!" But we are able to change it.

Let's speak in our schools not only bad facts about each other but men mention successes of each other. As a result, I can prognose - we will have a loyal population, which in the same time will have their own culture, language, traditions and respect other nations, who live with them in this country. We are able to do this.

Why we prefer to have a conflict situation instead of solving it?

A Russian in Estonia