Speech by H.E. Lennart Meri, President of the Republic of Estonia to the Royal Institute of International relations Palais D'Egmont Brussels 26 November 1992
26.11.1992

Dear Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,


Ten years ago the Estonians were the only people living behind th eiron curtain who knew that Lech Walensa wore a mustache. In the Soviet Union this fact was a state secret, just as the fact that the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe were fighting for their human and civil rights, and dared to interpret their fundamental rights in a manner differently than these had been interpreted by Himmler and Beria, Rosenberg and Voshinski, Hitler and Stalin, Krushchev, Molotov, Brezhnev, Andropov and the whole seventh ring of furnace from Dante's hell.

The world between the Elbe and the Kuriles was closed off behind the iron curtain. One-sixth of the world, one twentieth of the world's population was constantly subjected to the same message, from cradle to grave, from kindergarten class to funeral service - in the din of the wedding party, in the silence of the library; the same message was endlessly repeated: Soviet man is happy, because he is freed from the responsibility of thinking for himself, because he is given the mission spreading this joy through battle or quiet underground work and with the help of tanks, rockets and Communist Party agents to western europe, Africa, Asia and the three Americas.

A society in which critical thinking is a crime against the state has lost its ability to create and is slated to survive only by spending the intellectual and technological capital created by previous generations. Once this capital reserve is drained, the only possibility for such a society to preserve itself, or to renew and modernize itself, is by spending the capital of its neighbours. This dictated the agressive foreign policy of the Soviet Union, whose central feature was the inevitability of the Second World War and subsequently, of the Third world war. This was connected with a sense of mission, which in itself always sounds noble, and with the dark side of the Russian national tradition, according to which God, fate or Karl Marx chose Moscow as the third Rome. The more this sense of mission was developed, the more important it was to isolate society behind the iron curtain, to isolate it from reality of the world.

There were, o fcourse, exceptions. There were the diddidents, the majority of whom died anonymously in prison camps, and by so doing prevented the emergence of a Russian Willy Brandt or a Russian Konrad Adenauer. There was Solzenitsyn, who wanted to purge Russia of "Jewish marxism" and restore the shine of the golden cupolas of the third Rome, whose brilliance would be clearly evident around the globe.

There was, and still is, the academician Sakharov, who understood too late that the price of his creation, the hydrogen bomb, was the impoverishment of Russia to level of upper-Volta, and thus the Politburo's heightened sense of urgency to initiate the Third World War before the economic collapse of the empire.

There was yet another exception, perhaps unknown to you, since she was carefully hidden behind the iron curtain - and this was an exception even from the exceptions, because she was not an individual dissident., but a whole nation of people: small, perhaps, but still a nation - the Estonians. We lived in the broadcast range of Finnish television and so were able to recognize Lech Walensa by his moustache. We spoke a language similar to the Finnish, which during the past thirty years became even closer to the language of Finnish television and for this reason, we recognized not only Lech Walense and his moustache but also other state secrets dangerous to the Soviet Union. For example, we knew that the Soviet Union was collapsing, we knew that the Hitler-Stalin pact was the last-gasp attempt of two colonial empires to divide the world as if it were a birthday cake. And, of course, we knew that the western democracies never recognized the occupation or incorporation fo Poland, Holland, Belgium, France, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and other states by either of the last two colonial empires, that is nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

True, we have not forgiven you Munich or Yalta, or for the sacrifice of Chechoslovakia or the Baltic States. We kept our principles, but we disabused ourselves of illusions, especially after Hungary and the lives of Hungarian people were sacrificed during the Suez crisis. This ingrained skeptitsism of the Estonian people was not directed against Europe, but was directed against those politicians, who failed to understand that the world had changed. It was directed against those who constantly re-designed their politics from election to election, all the while refusing.

I hope you didn't mind if I remind you once again: Estonia was occupied by the red army on the basis of the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1940, but this is only half of the crime. After the occupation began the colonization, the deportation of Estonians to siberia and the settlement of Russian colonists to Estonia for whom the huge Soviet armaments factories were built needing their thousands of workers. The liberation of Estonia, the restoration of parliamentary democracy, means the restoration of the state ruled by law. Five years ago all of our work, creativity and inventiveness was tied by an umbilical string to Moscow. 96 % of Estonian exports went on command to Russia. Today, over 50 % of our exports goes to the west, in the first place to the Nordic countries - in small part also here, to Belgium. Don't underestimate this change. This is the economic foundation of independence. Our national currency, whose emission was the object of so many ironical remarks by your television philosophers, has become the symbol for our decolonization and our most effective tool, our strongest weapon.

The umbilical cord which bound us to the Soviet past was cut through by our elections. The umbilical cord which tethered us to the economic slavery of the world's last colonial empire was cut through by the emission of our national currency. It is backed by gold and foreign currency reserves, it is called the kroon - though we are republicans and honest protestants - and its value has remained unchanged since the first day of its introduction: eight kroons are worth one Deutsche mark.

To understand that today's world had shrunk to the proportions of Macluhan's big village not only in terms of space, but also in terms of time: the future of Europe is decided in Moscow and the future of Russia is decided in Europe. For the wrong decisions we make today, our children must pay tomorrow. In brief, global stability cannot be built on the quotes of televison philosophers and bestsellers. As Schliemann once did, we are now compelled to go out into the world, shovels over our shoulders, and find the original sources.

Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

What has Estonia achieved today, but 15 short months since we restored our independence? If you had not visited Estonia during this period, you would have difficulty recognizing the streets of Tallinn today. True, our apartments are cold and our street lamps are glowing dimly in the dark fo winter, because we must conserve energy. But in the shops of Tallinn you can buy IBM computers, Danish beer, Renault cars and, as you see, "Sabena" air tickets, and all this for Estonian kroons, which you may exchange in Nordic banks according to an exchange rate which has, during the past half year of its existence, been an unchangeable, as the Greenwich meridian.