An Estonian Movement Puts Perestroika to a Test

“Estonia can be compared to a space rocket rushing to a dark opening in the skies. If the rocket does not pick up speed and does not make a maneuver, it will perish in that opening,” says Albert Danilson, a 50-year-old lathe operator from the Estonian city of Tartu.

Indeed, this Baltic republic of the Soviet Union illustrates most of the serious problems that we have to face today. In the past 40 years, Estonia’s industrial production has increased by 60 times. But only 10% of the plants and factories are controlled by local authority; the rest have been imposed on the republic by central ministries.

Estonia has to pay a high price for such extensive industrialization. A number of rural regions appear socially less developed, with the area under crops reduced by 400,000 hectares. Yet, because of insufficient local labor resources, the republic had to invite workers from other regions of the Soviet Union. As a result, the number of Estonians in the republic’s population has dropped to slightly more than 60%.

Small wonder, then, that the average Estonian connected the Russian people with all the hardships that befell him under Josef Stalin’s rule and in the period of stagnation. It was easy for Estonian nationalists to sell the people the image of the “internal enemy.” The social and economic crisis has been aggravated because of the tension of inter-ethnic relations.

It should be said that, in the hour of trial, Estonian rank-and-file communists took the initiative. “The party’s prestige has dropped completely in the eyes of the people,” Jaak Allik, who recently became one of the ministers in the Estonian Cabinet, told me. “We saw two ways of getting out of the impasse--either convening an emergency party congress or creating a massive popular movement.” This is how the Popular Front of Estonia, the citizen initiative in support of perestroika , and the Green Movement of Estonia, a movement to protect nature from “departmental cosmopolitism,” came into being.

Popular Front leaders resolved to consolidate all public forces. So from its inception the movement represented a motley picture. Some of its supporters entertain the idea of creating an alternative party; others pursue overtly extremist views. But the front’s first acts, including the collective work for drafting its program and charter, became above all a school of political culture. The front’s institutional congress, which rejected a number of maximalist demands, showed that the lessons of democracy were not lost and that collective intellect prevailed in the clash of ideas. The main thing is that people realized that their collective efforts could make an appreciable contribution to perestroika .

The Popular Front enjoys the support of 90% of Estonians, and it and the Green Movement will represent a strong force at the elections scheduled for February. Is this a threat to Estonia’s Communist Party? I don’t think that the real threat should be exaggerated. According to Vaino Valjas, the current first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia, “In the conditions of a one-party system, when the Communist Party is the ruling party, it is essential to have movements which would balance and enrich political life.” The results of the September plenum of the Estonian party’s Central Committee were supported throughout the republic, and the leaderships of the party and the Popular Front contend that, in spite of the natural differences in their views and positions, they are unanimous on matters of principle. Nevertheless, only 40% of the front’s grass-roots organizations have so far agreed to cooperate with local party organs.

Estonia’s 600,000-strong Russian community, accounting for about 80% of the republic’s industrial workers, is alarmed by some of the front’s demands. Proposals to make Estonian the only official language in the republic, to introduce Estonian citizenship and to develop cost-accounting methods on the basis of Estonia’s political and economic sovereignty--plans supported by the Estonian party’s Central Committee--are disturbing factors to the Russians. True, officials pledge that Russian will remain the language of inter-ethnic communication, that bilingualism will be a must in all spheres in which the two ethnic communities interact and that Estonian citizenship will be granted to all people living in the republic on a permanent basis. But will the Popular Front be able to prove the sincerity of its intentions and convince other people who, too, were victims of the command-style system of administration that their rights will not be impaired? So far, only 10% of the Russian community has supported the front’s slogans.

The initiative of cultural autonomy, which the front has come up with, is to prevent potential “Estonification.” Representatives of 115 ethnic groups live in Estonia. They speak 39 languages. Societies that would maintain ties with the centers of the various ethnic cultures should be encouraged. Already Russian, Jewish, Armenian and Swedish cultural societies have started functioning. I personally was present at the constituent meeting of a Ukrainian cultural society.

The situation in Estonia is complex. Perestroika has not yet brought any results in the social and economic spheres. But I think that the main shift, a shift in mentality, has occurred in the republic. People at different levels have realized their responsibility for the progress of change. The citizen initiative in support of perestroika has become a major factor of political life and has led to its certain improvement by unveiling the creative potentialities of the population. The developments in Estonia can be assessed differently, and the present situation may entail certain danger. Will the rocket gain speed to avoid the dark opening? To help it do this, Albert Danilson has joined the Popular Front. I think Danilson is right when he says that only Estonia’s entire population can save the rocket by pulling together their efforts.