Castaways of Soviet Union, Estonia’s Russians Feel Adrift

It has come to this: A burly Russian soldier with an automatic rifle slung across his back now patrols the “Bridge of Friendship” that links his country with Estonia, searching cars for groceries being smuggled into this grimy industrial city.

The vast majority of people coming into Narva are ethnic Russians, from an elderly man caught with 344 tins of condensed milk hidden under his back seat to a wily teen-ager who smuggles bundles of unlawfully earned rubles here from Russia.

Castaways of the now-vanished Soviet empire, these Russians--and half a million others--have lived in Estonia for decades. But lately, they have begun to feel trapped in their own cities.

Since this small nation on the shores of the Baltic Sea declared independence from Moscow in August, 1991, concrete roadblocks, barking dogs and armed guards have cut off the Russians of Narva from friends and relatives--and sometimes even their country vacation homes--across the river in the Russian city of Ivan Gorod.

Unable to speak Estonian or relate to the culture here, these transplants are uneasy about the powerful wave of nationalism now sweeping their adopted homeland. And Moscow is closely watching their fate; some Russian hotheads even liken what’s going on in Estonia to the first steps of “ethnic cleansing” in Yugoslavia.

Furthermore, these Russian militants say darkly, legalized discrimination in Estonia, where Russians make up a third of the population, could inspire similar action against the 25 million Russians living in other former Soviet republics, from Central Asia to the Caucasus Mountains.

Reflecting the high stakes involved, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin has gotten personally involved. In vigorous terms, he declared recently that “Russian people living outside Russia should be convinced that their country will not leave them helpless. . . . Russia will not stay uninvolved when the human rights and interests of the Russian population outside the republic are violated.”

More recently, Yeltsin upped the stakes, vowing to keep Russian army troops in all three Baltic states--Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania--until he is satisfied that discrimination against Russian minorities there has ceased. Although international outrage forced him to withdraw linkage of the two issues a day later, Yeltsin succeeded in drawing attention to the plight of Baltic Russians, who complain of being treated like second-class citizens.

In Narva, fully 96% of the 87,000 residents are Slavs--mostly ethnic Russians, with a smattering of Ukrainians and Belarussians. Sent here by Kremlin planners to rebuild the shattered city and to staff new industries after the Soviet Union absorbed the Baltic republics during World War II, the Russians and their descendants believe that Estonians should be grateful. They cannot understand the sometimes-rough treatment they receive.

“We feel like we’re caught in a mousetrap,” said Alexander Khodos, 40, who moved here from Siberia seven years ago to edit a Russian-language newspaper. “No one is waiting for us in Russia, and no one wants us here.” This angst exploded into anger in September, when the majority of Narva’s residents--like most of the Russians living in Estonia--found themselves watching the country’s first post-Soviet presidential election from the sidelines.

Ballots were distributed only to citizens, defined as those residents whose families had settled in Estonia before Moscow annexed it under secret protocols to the Hitler-Stalin Nonaggression Pact of 1939. That voting formula disfranchised most Russians, who had been moved to the Baltics en masse during the late 1940s and 1950s.

Even their grandchildren, born in Estonia, do not receive automatic citizenship, although non-Estonian residents are allowed to take part in municipal elections.

The results of the September election--a Parliament packed with Estonians and a president, Lennart Meri, whom Russians regard with suspicion--displeased 94% of the non-voting non-citizens, according to a poll.

Estonian law permits people who have lived in the country for two years to be naturalized if they can show fluency in Estonian and a steady source of income. But passing the language test is tough for many, especially in Russian-dominated cities like Narva.

Whereas virtually all Estonians speak some Russian, few Slavs know Estonian, a complicated tongue related to Finnish and Hungarian.

Without citizenship, the Russians stand to lose more than the right to vote in national elections.

Most dramatically, the government in Tallinn may soon stop paying pensions to non-Estonians. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet-era retirees, some of whom have lived in Estonia for half a century, would lose their only source of income unless cash-strapped Russia steps in to help them.

Furthermore, existing laws stipulate that only citizens can serve on the police force or work as captains of ships. Only citizens are guaranteed comprehensive medical insurance and education.

Fearing even worse discrimination to come, thousands of Russians have emigrated from Estonia. About 29,000 Russian-speakers departed in the first 10 months of this year--three times the emigration rate for a comparable period last year, Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency reported last month. Most others, however, are reluctant to leave their apartments and jobs in relatively prosperous Estonia.

Those who choose to remain in Estonia can easily claim Russian citizenship by signing a one-page document. But so far, fewer than 2% of the Russians in Narva have taken up the offer. Some have held back out of loyalty to Estonia; others fear deportation if they accept the citizenship of what is now an alien country.

As a result, the vast majority of Narva’s population, from Estonian-born infants to septuagenarian transplants from Moscow, are in the bizarre position of having no citizenship at all.

They carry red Soviet passports, granted by a nation that no longer exists.

“I am now a citizen without a state,” said Sergei Nikonov, 30.

Retiree Galina Petrova, 59, echoed his concerns. “We hope we don’t fall into the crack between two states,” she fretted.

Estonian lawmakers have brushed off the fears of Russian residents, but they emphasize that Narva will remain part of Estonia.

Despite the blue-black-and-white Estonian flag that flutters over the stone bastion, however, Narva’s atmosphere feels unmistakably Russian.

Five months after Estonia introduced its own money, the kroon, salesclerks here still call the colorful currency “rubles.” Narva’s streets still bear the names of Communist heroes long since purged even from Moscow, such as Mikhail Kalinin, the nominal Soviet head of state from 1919 to 1946. A statue of V. I. Lenin still dominates the town square.

“The political reality is that Narva is located within Estonia,” said Yuri Mishin, founder of the 2,000-member Russian Citizens Union here. “But it’s a Russian city, and the government in Tallinn should think very carefully about its next steps.”

Such veiled threats do not faze Estonian lawmakers. Nor do they feel menaced by Mishin’s incessant lobbying for a citywide referendum on whether Narva should secede from Estonia. He has collected 9,000 signatures, but the Estonian government insists that such a referendum would be illegal.

“If citizens of other countries, or people with no citizenship at all, meddle in Estonia’s internal affairs, we will deport them,” Tiit Made, a newly elected deputy to Parliament, said flatly. “There will be no compromises.”

Estonia’s attempts to reinforce a sense of nationhood follow 50 harsh years of Soviet rule, during which the Kremlin sought to obliterate Estonian culture and Russify the population.

Some non-citizens now argue that in an effort to right a historical wrong, the Tallinn government has proven itself just as dictatorial as the Soviet commissars.

“They’re practicing Estonianization just like Moscow practiced Russification in the old days,” charged Nina Sepp, an outspoken Russian critic of the government. She is married to an Estonian. “The motto of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ is outdated. . . . It smells of genocide.”

Sepp admittedly holds extreme views. But the city’s mounting economic crisis could nudge more and more residents toward her camp, local politicians warn.

Unemployment in Narva shot up to 50% this fall when a cash shortage shut down the sprawling Krenholm textile plant, which employed almost 10,000 workers. The city’s other major industry, a factory that churns out everything from tourniquets to computers, will run out of money and material within a month, the general director said.

Warning of the potential for “social explosion,” both lawmakers and their constituents say hard times could cause Estonians and Russians to turn on each other.

“A hungry person becomes evil,” said Luise-Marie Sokolova, director of Narva’s only Estonian-language school.