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President of the Republic at the 3rd Congress of National Educating, in Tallinn, April 12, 1996
12.04.1996

Honoured members of the Congress!

I will dwell on two questions:
Why did we survive?
How did we survive?

There is something that I would hate to do standing at this rostrum and this is to start to nationally educate you. Or the Estonian people. If there emerge people among you whom the nation recognises as educators then that, of course, is a different matter. But what I would like most - and hopefully you, too - is that our joint discussions here would deal with the needs and possibilities of self-educating rather than national educating.

1.

So, firstly, why did we survive? Baltic Finns, including Estonians, stepped over the threshold of history at the turn of the last millennium. I mean Muromers, Meryans, Vepsians, Izhorians, Votians, Finns and Estonians. And why not include also some more distant language relations. The first to establish their own alphabet were the Zyrian Komis. The first to set up their own urban culture were the Vepsians. Aldieijuborg on the banks of lake Ladoga and the Neva River became a noteworthy international trading centre. Yet most of these populations have disappeared by now. The academician Sjögren found the last Vepsian villages in capital gubernyias in 1821, almost ten centuries after the disappearance of this nation from written history. What could be the reasons that the fate of Estonians has turned out to be different? Why do some populations die, others survive?

The answer does not lie in the mythical Estonian vitality. Much less in their greater numbers. The answer could be the continuity of the Estonian culture, but even this statement is a question in itself, rather than an answer, because: in a situation where Estonians did not have their own national state, indeed, how could the continuation of their culture have been guaranteed?

But here, too, the disposition is not correct because we can talk about nationalities only after Martin Luther's reforms and national states only after World War I. The protecting umbrella - to use the figurative image of the NATO - that protected us was, in fact, the merging of Estonia to the Western European legal system, Estonia's formation into a state of justice or, if you like, a determinate province of righteousness. A few points of junction on this dotted line to illustrate my statement.

The merging of ancient and continental law can be detected already in the first foreign treaties. The seven foreign treaties, signed with the Roman Holy See in the 13th century, are as significant to the history of our civilisation as to the history of our state and law because they recognised Estonia as the subject of public law. The fact that Lübeck law and old Estonian law integrated is documented in the Tallinn Town Hall as Ius Estonicum. When discussing our past we have to keep well in mind that in the class society of the Middle Ages the primary driving force was social, not national: those who reached the top of the social pyramid found themselves in a German- speaking, or rather a Baltic-German community and Germanised, and the other way round: those who sank into lower classes found themselves in the Estonian-speaking community and Estonialised. Here could lie an explanation to Helmi Üprus's empirical truth from 1969: ''There are no historical styles of art, the traces of which are not reflected in the Estonian folklore.'' I do not want to jump from legal continuity to cultural. I only want to point out that the State of Justice, the umbrella that covered Estonian classes just the same as it covered the different classes with different languages in England, Prussia or France, protecting both class privileges and responsibilities, moulded the open society of Estonia, and in doing so also deepened its cultural and political identity. I am not sure whether these two could be differentiated from each other at all. Drawing the dotted line a bit further from this I will point at the two carriers of continuity: cultural and legal. The Frenchman Leóuzon le Duc who visited Estonia in the previous century and wrote a book about it, said in 1855, ''It is only a matter of time that Estonia will become an independent state.'' This was not a romantic phrase. A bystander can notice developments which an insider may not perceive. And to prove this, here is another quotation, now from the Grand Duke Vladimir, visiting Tartu in 1886: ''All measures shall be taken to join the Baltic borderlands with our fatherland.''

This sinister sentence was at the same time the biggest acknowledgement to the Estonian state of justice and the survival of Estonian cultural identity.

I will skip over the development of local authorities based on class privileges to democratically elected local authorities, which played an integral role in the preparation process of Estonia's independence, its declaration and defence. A small nation chooses an identity and a strategy of accomplishing self-determination different from big nations. In 1908 ''Postimees'' printed Jaan Tõnisson's sentence that comprises a programme for the whole 20th century - ''A nation that founds its aspirations on an ethical basis will thrive and grow, no matter how small its number.''

With this sketch I wanted to explain why we have survived, despite the fact that we have not always been attentive enough to notice and appreciate our umbrella.


2.

Secondly, about self-educating.

Self-education is a slightly old-fashioned word and a notion that is perhaps not widely used these days, but it could be.

So let us not divide ourselves into educators and educables. In a family, kindergarten or school this division of roles is certainly inevitable, but within the minutes at my disposal I would like to put these issues on a much larger perspective.

To start with, the prerequisite of self-education is self-control. We are now living in an era where we all have to endeavour to teach ourselves once again the art of self-control. The time allotted for this is short, nobody can fail to get his remove, for if you fail, you drop out. The signs of insufficient progress are in the air and certainly on paper, too, in your reports to the congress.

As President of the Republic of Estonia I am quite well informed about these ill omens. Among other matters my Academic Council has heard and discussed the present demographic situation in Estonia, it has also discussed the problems of the nation's mental and physical health, educational issues, the difficult situation of our rural economy and other problems that directly relate to the surviving of the Estonian nation in this windy corner of the world. We have heard already and will soon hear over and over again about figures that cause concern, and we will be facing the deepening of some very unpleasant tendencies.

I will not attempt at analysing this data here and now for this is the task of the specialists and speakers who will have the floor. I am going to present a few generalisations which are relevant in my point of view.

Four years ago, in a speech held in Stockholm, I tried to describe the situation in re-independent Estonia and I titled my speech ''The painful light of freedom''. Since I could not leave the arduous task of self-praise to others, I will have to admit that this was and still is a rather good title. For we are still living in the increasingly radiant light of freedom and this light is painful to our unaccustomed eyes. It casts sharp black shadows and shows us the world, us and our near ones the way we are. I believe, I know that our people, nevertheless, do not want to return from this hurting light into the red mist where drink was the only soothing refuge. Unless we want to go back to this we have to fearlessly face the present harsh realities.

One of the most obvious of them is that the state tends to detach itself slowly from its people. People have started to think something like: I am the Estonian nation, my family, my friends and my colleagues are the Estonian nation, but the republic is their republic. As if a new breed was developing - they - although not long ago they were one of us and, if the people so wish, could also cease to be them.

Government institutions and our fellow countrymen working in them are partly to be blamed. Indeed, they are concerned with themselves to an inadmissible extent, politicians with other politicians, parties with parties, with their own fractions, ministries and offices with their own inside problems. There are certainly some completely unsuitable workers in government institutions and offices but the harsh light of freedom enables to scorch them out from there in due course as new people keep oozing in. The government apparatus will never be ennobled to an angelic choir but there is always room for improvement.

Neither will the Estonian nation be ennobled to an angelic choir, even if we discount all of them.

However, there is room for improvement there, too, and even very much so, if we really take to self-educating, if we fearlessly analyse ourselves in the painful light of freedom, if we think it over what to do next, and we will. And primarily through the joint activity of free citizens, just like you here intend it to happen. Exerting pressure, if necessary, on government institutions and local authorities. And not only during elections - although the coming elections make it now widely possible. But all the time. Every day.

Some, of course, would prefer not to witness this. And many can not be bothered. But the main trouble is perhaps not so much the laziness and the lack of will but the fact that we still do not know how to do it properly. But we are learning, we are going to learn it together, attending to our common tasks. This is exactly the course that national educating has taken in old stable democracies, and here, too, it went along the very same path only just half a century ago. And it will do so once again. Take a look around. In the harsh light of freedom, apart from all this that is offending to the eye, almost a miraculously great number of forums, movements, societies and unions have come into being, with whom you have largely overlapping aims. The state can not be a teacher to its citizens in terms of showing them which aims to seek - or as a great prophet of democracy has said once upon the time, ''The state should not be my teacher''. Much rather with this kind of joint activity the citizens will educate themselves and the state. In certain points the state is doubtlessly called upon to guide the citizen and, if need be, also force him. But in the things that you have undertaken the initiative must come from the citizens. And if necessary, they, too, have the right to push the state to make it listen to their warnings, conclusions and proposals. Or else what state would that be.

I wish you wisdom and very much stamina in your pursuits.

 

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