Dear fellow countrymen in Estonia and in the outer world!


Christmas is gone. In a few minutes church bells will be chiming in the New Year. The one bearing the number 1995.

Tonight I have, more poignantly than ever before, felt the ceaseless flow of time. Indeed, it was five years ago that Edgar Savisaar offered me the job of foreign minister in the first postwar government that was formed democratically. And in another five years Estonia and the whole world will step into the twenty-first century.

We all have our own clocks, and the years we all live are of different duration. First-formers look upon a five-year period as a frighteningly long while: it is almost equal to their lifetime. University graduates or young newlyweds regard it as long enough to lodge both their plans for the future and their anticipation that in five years they will have implemented all their plans. At my age five years is a short period of time, and in the presence of our history of fifty centuries five years is but an instant.

Why am I talking about this today? The reason is simple. People have begun to talk about the conflict of generations. It is my sincere and honest conviction that no such conflict exists. The goals, expectations and beliefs of the young are in equal measure the goals, expectations and beliefs of your president. I also take the liberty to speak in the name of all who are my age.

The discrepancy lies in our different internal clocks rather than in our goals. The discrepancy also lies in that the young are confident that Estonia shall open before their eyes exactly as we have cherished her in our hearts and tried to mold her with our united wisdom: that she shall be just, democratic, prosperous, free of malice, and free of the scum of crime. The young are harbouring confidence; the elder generations are retaining hope.

The end of a year is a time of summing up.

Tonight, I should not like to speak about politics.

Tonight I should like to thank you, dear people of Estonia, for all you have done for the Republic of Estonia through your daily hard work, outfacing the difficulties. There is an incredible lot of what you have accomplished, much more than you might think.

I want to say this with gratitude, respect and love especially to our old age pensioners and country people, who have lived in poverty, suffered privations, and perceived it as injustice and unconcern. This is why my thanks are above all due to you, our mothers and fathers and our tillers: the main burden in the restoration of the Republic of Estonia fell on your shoulders, and never will your children forget this indebtedness.

I wonder if you noticed that I used the past tense. I am far from trying to give anyone vain hopes on New Year's Eve, but there is something I can tell you for sure: thanks to you, our major difficulties are over. It is not meant as consolation. It is a conviction backed by facts and figures. The Republic of Estonia has risen from the sickbed of Russian occupation, she can walk as an equal in the company of other nations. Our voice carries far, and our voice is taken heed of. We are no longer alone and forsaken as we were a mere eight or six years ago.

Let us invoke, for a moment, memories of Russian rule and its Politbureau, which could take instant decisions on deporting whole peoples to the forests of Siberia or the deserts of Central Asia, or order suddenly that Estonia should be transformed into an all-Union phosphorite mine or a pig factory. Those times will not return any more, they are gone for ever, and for this we owe thanks to your work and your Estonian grit.

Estonia is no longer alone.

I could experience that during the most tragic days of the past year, in the wake of the biggest ever ship disaster in the Baltic Sea: fifty-eight heads of state offered their condolences to Estonia, as well as did international organizations, parliaments, governments, capitals from all the continents of the world. At that time it was little comfort, for before me I saw faces that were in tears, even faces of my own defunct friends and acquaintances; today, however, may we also derive courage from the pain of bereavement to say that Estonia is no longer alone, Estonia has come to stay, and the world

knows it.

About ten or fifteen years ago, in the days of Russian rule, when our speech was muzzled, I put to you the question: Where do we come from? Where are we going? It was a question to rouse you, since there was nowhere one could go down the blind alley of communism. Now this evergreen question is filled with new substance, since the smallest nation of Europe once again has the scope to choose its own way, such as would insure our children, our language, our culture and our lifestyles the right to live -- a right which only European democratic traditions are capable of granting.

In end-of-the-year papers you may have happened to read reviews by foreign economists which give proof of the remarkable progress the Republic of Estonia has made in the restructuring of its economy. Yet I also understand the exasperation of the newspaper reader who says, "Yes, according to the figures we have covered the longest distance, but I am hungry!" That is also true. Figuratively speaking, the crop has come up and shows green, but the reaping day is still way off. A wise master will also keep an eye on his neighbour so he does not wade into the tender crop with his scythe. A free market economy does not imply ruthlessness, callousness or egotism, and most certainly not disregard for social problems.
A couple of years ago, all we could redistribute was poverty, which we had inherited from the days of Russian rule. Now the time has come to apply social mechanisms of a free market economy. The time of learning in the Republic of Estonia is about to be over. We have acquainted ourselves with our Constitution, the ABC of the market economy, the world, and, first and foremost, ourselves.

I wish you saw this simple truth: your joys have been the president's joys, your frustrations have been the president's frustrations. Early in 1993 I arranged three conferences on national security, where the central issue was the guaranteeing of interior security and, as prerequisite for it, the establishment of absolute control over our frontiers. I am deeply disappointed that those matters, focal to our state, were underestimated, and that the same matters still linger on our dragging curriculum today, twenty months since.

Next year the world will see disappointments in the efficacy of international organizations, new hotbeds of peril, momentous changes in the current flux lines. Stable development of Estonia can only be secured by our united brains, by the bitter historical experience that many other nations lack, and by our allegiance to Estonia's constitutional order. Each state looks like its people. I

wish some faces displayed less callousness and more sympathy, sense of duty, and love. Love gives birth to children, who will continue the construction of our state; love gives birth to the Republic of Estonia that we can take pride in.

To this end, dear fellow countrymen, let me extend to you from Kadriorg my best wishes of faith, love, and a happy New Year!

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