Mr President Mark Edwards Jr,
Dear Professors, Ladies and Gentlemen!

Thank you for the honour bestowed upon me.

You have elected me an Honorary Doctor of Law of your College. This is a great joy, but also a responsibility. First, I try to see your decision in the right historical perspective. After World War II, St. Olaf has opened its doors to many who managed to escape the totalitarian regime and start their academic life in the United States. In this connection, I would especially like to thank you for the fact that Ivar Ivask, the scholar of literature, has worked here for seventeen years, and Olaf Millert, Professor Emeritus of psychology, for forty-three years - both these men are my fellow countrymen and friends.

Second, it is a special joy for me that your college is a bearer of the name of the Norwegian King St. Olaf, and of Scandinavian traditions. When you approach the capital of the Republic of Estonia from the sea, you will see a silhouette of a medieval Hanseatic town with many church spires and turrets, the highest being the Church of St. Olaf's - the highest building of Europe in the early Middle Ages. It is a powerful symbol of our common past. The first Estonian learned monk brought Christianity to Estonia from Trondheim, Norway. Thus, in Estonia, the Christian Mission was inseparable from seafaring. And the legend about Olaf has lasted in Estonia throughout centuries, with it the worship of St. Olaf. Tallinn's reason for erecting so high a spire lies not in the haughtiness of our city, but in our common sense: the spire of St. Olaf's was a navigational reference point that guided seafarers, goods, ideas, and science to Tallinn also without the assistance of compass and exact maps. From these faraway times, we have maintained in the small coat of arms of Tallinn also the white cross on red background, from which the Danish national flag, the Dannebrog was born. And vice versa: on the national coat of arms of the Republic of Estonia you see the three lions known to you from the coats of arms of Denmark and of the United Kingdom.

And third, it is my duty to assure you that the distinguished title of Honorary Doctor of Law makes me think with gratitude of my Alma Mater, Tartu University, that was founded by the Swedish King Gustav Adolf in 1632. At Tartu University, I studied history and finished my studies three months after Stalin's death. I have often asked myself whether I have any right to claim I have a university degree. Statistically, two terms of the ten I spent at the university were spent on military training, two on the studies of Russian and approximately three to four to the so-called non-science of Marxism-Leninism. Attendance of the lectures was about as compulsory as fulfilling orders is in the army. This left me no choice but to take all the exams in these so-called non-sciences on my first university term, which provided me for five years with the freedom to study in the university library and to attend the lectures that I valued. I am not convinced that I indeed studied history. I studied and learned something more valuable, something that has a lasting value also in the free world - I learned to choose. I learned to learn.

In this solitary process of self-discovery I was, despite the Soviet censorship, guided by the whispering voices of my professors at Tartu University. Totalitarianism has many faces and a talent for disguises. Freedom and free thinking only have one face. You only need to recognise it once, and it will never disappear. My presence here, and your recognition, is the best proof of this.

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