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President of the Republic on the Conference of the German Union of Deportees in Stuttgart, on September 5, 1999
05.09.1999

Dear Mrs. President
Dear Mr. Minister of Internal Affairs
Dear Mr. Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
dear compatriots from the Baltics!

Behind the walls of this hall and also within these walls, some people may wonder why the Union of Deportees (Bund der Vertriebenen) has decided to extend its highest award to a foreigner, and moreover, to a Head of State.

The President of Estonia does not wonder. I am not among those who wonder, because I am one of you. In the years 1939-1991, every fourth Estonian lost his home - temporarily or forever - and I was among them. The Estonians know what the right to a homeland means.

In this address of gratitude, I will speak of three things.

First, I will describe, on the basis of my very intimate childhood memories, how the Soviet totalitarian power organised the deportation (Vertreibung), which in Estonian is called ''küüditamine'' (Verschleppen), and in English ''deportation'' or ''population transfer'', and in Russian выceлeниe, (Aussiedlung).

Secondly, I will borrow the pen of Werner Bergengruen and Paul Johansen - our Mommsen - and try to paint you a picture of the versatility of Estonia. This would be the actual answer to the question why Stalin's and his successors' attempt to create ''in the name of peace and stability'' in my home country a homogenous zone inhabited solely by the Russian-speaking ''homo soveticus'' led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Thirdly, I will try to bring you from history to present, from the times of Alta and Potsdam to the times of Kosovo and Pristina, and ask why on the festive threshold of the new century, the new millennium, we have fallen back into the year 1945 and are once again dealing with the deportees, why do we once again have to prove that Albanians, too, have the right to a homeland?

I start from childhood.

Our family was deported on June 14, 1941. I woke very early in our small apartment that we shared with another family and of which two rooms were ours. Some strangers were speaking in a loud voice. First, I noticed a soldier bearing a gun with a bayonet standing at the window. In the other room, there was another Red Army soldier watching. A Soviet officer was in charge of the operation. Our early morning guests also included two Estonian-speaking youngsters in civilian clothes. My parents had dressed hastily, it was about four o'clock in the morning. The lady from next door was also in our apartment and wept aloud. We had to pack our things, and were given twenty minutes to do so. We were allowed to take as much as we could carry. Both Estonians were standing at the table and looking at the albums of photographs with great interest. Everything they found was thrown into a huge sack where they already had documents and family photos, as well as my father's decorations. Even in this situation, Father remained calm. Mother, who tried to pack up as much as possible, got sudden orders from the officer. The man sounded a bit self-conscious, or at least seemed so to me: ''Pack your husband's things in another suitcase.'' Mother straightened herself with a start - she had been bowing over the packing - and asked: ''In God's name, why?'' The officer was just as self-conscious as before: ''You will first be taken to sauna'' It was the most absurd reply ever, but my father understood at once that we were going to be separated.

Another soldier with a bayonet was standing behind our door, and outside there was a truck waiting. At half-past four the truck left, taking us with it. It was an early summer morning in mid-June, the brief northern night was over. People were already queuing at the food store next door. With the arrival of the Soviet power, queues had suddenly become common on our streets. I still remember the looks of the people waiting for the opening of the store following us, and I remember a sudden feeling that this must not have been the first truckful of the deported those people had seen that night.

The army had surrounded the port. On the track there was a goods train, whose cars only had two small, barred windows near the roof. Behind the bars, there were people. We were rudely ordered off the truck. When we had stepped down, Mother got a new order: ''This way!'' She was following the order already, when Father said aloud: ''Do not hurry. We have to say good-bye.'' He embraced my mother, my little brother, and then me, patted my shoulder with kindness, and said: ''Now you are the eldest man of the family, so take care of your mother.''

Then we went to the right, and Father to the left. I managed to spot him among the crowd two times, and saw his tall shape disappearing between two Russian soldiers. He never looked back.

So much of my childhood memories, as I dictated them to Andreas Oplatka, the journalist of ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'', who published them in a book. On that night, June 14, 1941, every hundredth citizen of the Republic of Estonia lost his or her right to homeland. The other day, ''Financial Times'' called me a Head of State who has learned to know the former Soviet Union better than others. Notwithstanding the correctness of this opinion, I add that my university studies started at the age of twelve in that cattle car in the Port of Tallinn. As a contrast, I would like to enclose the description of the Tallinn Port by Paul Johansen, first and foremost for the benefit of those listeners who know less of the Baltic Sea region.

A stranger visiting Tallinn in the Middle Ages, Paul Johansen writes, who approached this Hanseatic city from the sea, and saw on the horizon the impressive silhouette of the city - the high spires of the churches, the huge towers and gates and the unconquerable-looking castle of Toompea - would probably imagine being met by a cosily German city, as there are so many on the Baltic coast. Also the conversation with voyage companions from Tallinn seemed to contribute to this opinion, as these were people from Lower Saxony and their relatives and business partners lived in Lubeck, Danzig, Stralsund, and other Baltic Sea cities or then far away in Westphalia.

And yet, when the newcomer had reached the port, the impression was quite a different one, and caused even estrangement. The ships that could not berth at the light quay anchored farther off, and small barges, with sullen men speaking an unknown language as captains, took the passengers and goods ashore. Of course, the Low German was not totally unknown to them, but from their lips it came rough and barely understandable. On the quay, though, there were German friends, waving and shouting their welcome in a much more familiar Low German accent. But all this crowd, all the cabbies and cartsmen bargaining over the prices, all the loaders, sledgers, porters, forestallers, brokers, fishermen and other workers, were very unlike to those familiar from home: it was not only the language that was different, but also the dress, even the movements and behaviour. In order to reach the towers and gates that had caught the eye from the sea, one had to walk narrow, almost unpaved streets between the houses, sheds, cookhouses, flax brakers and seemingly endless wooden fences. Here and there, even within the city borders, one could see wooden draw wells unknown in Germany.

If not before, then on the market place a stranger was bound to meet the first ''non-Germans'', men and women dressed in gaily colourful or dull-grey national costumes. The provision of foodstuffs and simpler goods to the city was fully in their hands. Even the lower policemen, the tipstaff, and the market supervisors were Estonians or at least the Finnish Swedes. The town gates were guarded by non-Germans as well as by Germans. Tradesmen, saddlers, lead casters, coppersmiths and carpenters all seemed to be Estonians, the market place seemed to live its life in that language. A stranger wishing to settle in Tallinn had to admit: the knowledge of that ''non-German'' language would be important, even inevitable. The farmers were standing there blank-faced, as if the market-life did not matter to them.

These lines, published in 1973, open to us a landscape unknown to both the Alta and the Potsdam conferences, and namely: that Europe has never been homogenous. Europe's strength, her admirable creativity stems from the variety of different colours, landscapes, languages, cultures, and therefore also attitudes. The attempts to create artificial homogenous zones ''in the name of peace and stability'', as the subject was addressed by the political rhetoric of the time, has sacrificed and will sacrifice today both peace and stability: think of Kosovo. The history of the Estonian state, of the fate shared for centuries by the Estonians and the Baltic Germans, is worthwhile as it proves the opposite. It is true that like any other country in the Middle Ages or modern times, also the Estonian society had its adversities, which the populist politicians tried to depict as national antagonism between the German-speaking gentry who owned most of the arable land, and the Estonian-speaking farmers who were eager to become landowners. Paul Johansen was the first to point out that language does not determine class, but class determines language. For Estonians, a raise on the social ladder meant stepping into the German-language environment, just like social degradation meant dropping into the Estonian-speaking environment for a German. The building up of the Continental-European legal space in Northern Europe is and shall be the common creation of the Estonians and the Germans. This also gave Estonia a remarkably strong identity. The outsiders could see it with more clarity than we did ourselves. The Frenchman Léouzon le Duc already wrote in his book ''L'Estonie'', published in the middle of the past century, that the birth of an independent Estonian state is only a question of time. Reverend Jakob Hurt, who was famous for collecting Estonian folklore, addressed his Baltic colleagues in his article ''Einige Worte zum Frieden in der Baltischen Heimat'' with the following words:''Die Verfassung des Landes ist veraltet und entspricht gar nicht mehr der Kulturstufe, die erreicht worden ist; sie muss umgearbeitet und reorganisiert werden.'' (The country's Constitution is outdated, does no longer fulfil the needs of the achieved cultural level, it must be altered and reorganised). Estonians and Germans must have been equally attracted by the word Verfassung, meaning Constitution. Jakob Hurt meant the Landesstaat, which in terms of state law made a clear difference between Estonia and the governiyas of the Romanov Empire. At different times, Estonia has been part of the German Holy Roman Empire, and under the Danish and Swedish crown and, for a little less than two hundred years, also under the crown of the Romanov dynasty, but has always maintained her political and local government structure and the rule of European law. This was the precondition of our right to self-determination and of the successful defence of that right against the totalitarianism approaching from the East in the long and exhausting War of Liberty, which brought 110,000 men of the one million Estonians under the Estonian flag, including the Baltic battalion. Thirteen Baltic Germans have been decorated with the Orders of the War of Liberty. How to explain this strong morale in the struggle against the superior forces of the enemy?

The answer is simple: In their self-determination, the idea of establishing a homogenous nation was completely alien to Estonians. The exact heading of our declaration of independence was ''Manifest to all the nations of Estonia'', and its first article guaranteed equal rights to the citizens of all national groups. The rule of law and the defence of human rights was the strong motive that united Estonians with the Baltic Germans, the Estonian Swedes, Russians and Jews for a common struggle, and after the peace treaty with Soviet Russia, also for a common work of building up the state. Let me in this connection point to Axel de Vries who was a member of both the Estonian Riigikogu and the German Bundestag. This, too, must be known to you, but I lay the emphasis elsewhere: the Republic of Estonia is the common creation of all its citizens. In the present as well as in the past. Thus, the Constitution of the of the Republic of Estonia also considers all those who managed to escape after Estonia was occupied on June 17, 1940, to be Estonian citizens and have all the respective rights and obligations to their home country. The right to self-determination can only be enacted once, and forever.

Finally, I would like to return to the past, but also to the present.

What we saw recently in Kosovo and sixty years ago in Europe is alien to Europe but was not alien to the empire of the Romanovs and to the Soviet Union. It had, for a long time, been one of the ways of colonisation used in Russia. Professor Bakhrushin from St. Petersburg has described how the Russian Government had the villages of Northern Russia ravaged in 1630 and 1637 in order to find women for the Cossack garrisons in East Siberia. On foot, the journey lasted for three years so the children were grown up when they reached their destination. Also, the Emperor Alexander I who was highly admired in Europe issued a decree arranging the purchase of women and their sale to the Cossack garrisons. Such methods were taken over by the Soviet Union and helped to establish the GULAG system. On the eve of the great terror, Zhdanov introduced the term ''hostile nations''. The term covered Estonians, Germans and Poles alike.

Why must we, at the end of this century and this millennium, again and again underline man's right to a home country, why must we speak of the victims of the Hitler-Stalin pact?

Violence can create violence as long as we have not broken out of the vicious circle of bitterness and revenge. I do not mean to invite anyone to strew ashes on their head. Or on history. I invite everybody to speak of the future of Europe, and therefore also of what is and what is not Europe.

The bipolarity of clerical and secular powers is Europe. Montesqieu's separation of powers is Europe. The Declaration of Human Rights, born more than two hundred years ago, is Europe. Exile, deportations, and hard labour camps as the foundations of power have always been alien to Europe - except of course during the twelve bloody years of Hitler's dictatorship. But these phenomena have centuries-long roots in Russia. In the Livonian war - this war went on for 25 years in Estonia in the 16th century - Tartu, the city of my university and also Boris Meissner's university, was conquered. The citizens of that city were deported to Russia. Catherine II wrote to Voltaire from Kazan: What a diversity of national costumes and languages in the capital of my Asian domain! How much trouble it will take me to have them all dressing and speaking alike! I know that Catherine II was German, but also Lenin's mother was of German origin. I am not speaking of different nationalities, I am speaking of the different value given to human beings we can see looking west and east from the Estonian border. We are discussing this today and shall do so on the century to come. In brief, I would like to point to a problem, which in Germany has a regretfully artificial nature: the crimes against humanity of the Bolsheviks and the Nazis have the same roots, and these roots are not in Europe. They are the roots of the Romanov Empire. Alain Besançon has addressed this issue already in 1974, in his article ''Russian Past and Soviet Present'', where he states that Soviet politics is a reflection of the imperatives of the Russian history as well as those of the Soviet leaders. Besançon should first and foremost be commended for the conclusion that the Soviet leaders, either cosnciously or not, concealed their resolutions based on the traditions of the Russian administration in the drapery of Marxist rhetoric, leaving both their allies, the gullible leftist intellectuals of the West, and their opponents to ponder why they were behaving the way they were. Also Axel de Vries, a Tallinner by birth, came close to this conclusion in his ''Russland nach Lenins Tod'' (Russia after Lenin's death), written half a century earlier in Tallinn. In brief, both the deported Estonians and the deported Germans are the victims of both Stalin and Hitler, Hitler and Stalin, and I consider it immoral to relativise the burden of guilt. What I do consider important to the future of Europe, is to understand much more deeply that both of these criminals caused each other's existence, supported each other and learned from each other, because they were the only ones to understand each other's motives. Sin only attracts sin. Their mutual recognition and affinity was only a question of time. Its architect, Zhdanov, was the man who introduced the term ''hostile nations'' and started the systematic elimination of those nations. Thus, the way was paved to the Hitler-Stalin pact. Of the Poles listed as ''hostile'' in the Soviet Union, 79% were murdered, and among Estonians the percentage was even higher. The use of the Third International for the conclusion of the pact should be looked upon as one of the highlights of the Soviet diplomacy. Hence, we should draw one principal conclusion: we should discard the over-ideologised system of values and defend human rights and democracy against totalitarianism in any shape. Evil is a master of camouflage, and clever enough to call communism democracy and slavery independence. Therefore, let me gratefully quote the letter of Wolfgang Stetten, a member of the Bundestag, which he sent me on August 24, 1994, in connection with the withdrawal of the last of the Soviet troops from Estonia and Germany. I would already beforehand like to apologise for quoting the paragraph of the letter where Wolfgang Stetten in turn quotes me, and namely: ''In diesem Zusammenhang darf ich Sie zitieren - mit Ihren Worten - : ''man sagt, der Kommunismus ist tot, aber wer hat seine Leiche gesehen?'''' (In this context I would like to quote you: They say that communism is dead, but who has seen the body?) Let us think of Kosovo for a moment. A mere week ago, my good friend Richard Holbrooke visited the mass graves of this much-suffered country, and said in front of the CNN cameras: ''This is racism''. We can call evil by different names. This will not bring the dead back to life. The obligation to defend humans, to fortify the moral values of Europe, will always be with us.

Ladies and gentlemen! We have paid a high price to reach these simple truths. Our present experience is part of the European Union's policy towards the East. It is Estonia's sincere hope to see a successful and functioning democracy also behind her eastern border. Just as sincerely, we wish to tie the last of the broken threads, to give our shared Baltic Sea back its historical role, this time as the interior sea of Europe, and to bid all of you, whose roots are in Estonia heartily welcome!

 

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