By Anneli Reigas
A conference to mark the 90th anniversary of Estonia´s foreign policy was organized in Tallinn, October 24-25, 2008. It was a nice idea to commemorate it this way with many good speeches.
However, after attending the conference, I completely agree with the remarks made by Matti Klinge, professor of history from Finland who expressed a surprise why the conference touched only pre-WWII and post-1991 August period, but barely touched several other foreign policy efforts made by Estonians during other periods.
As I myself happened to have been involved with some key efforts in foreign policy during the singing revolution in Estonia below are my remarks about this foreign policy conference.
Our late president Lennart Meri with whom we shared the passion for Estonia since we attended the CSCE summit in Copenhagen in June 1990 asked me already in the mid 90s to start writing down my memories. But I thought there would always be time for that later and that recalling these events is not even all that important - it was what we did that was important. However, I have started to change my mind on that in recent years seeing over and over how limited are the views of some current foreign policy officials and experts in Estonia on what we did and on what really needs to be highlighted as an essential part of Estonia´s foreign policy history.
I also note that after June 1990 Lennart Meri and I became a good friends for a decade and he called me hundreds of times even after he was elected President in 1992. He usually asked his secretariat to connect the call to me, mainly at home, sometimes at work, usually calling after the day was done and there was something he wanted to discuss concerning everyday politics which had started to worry him and on which he wished to get my journalist´s view.
I know there were also some other people with whom he tried to keep up this style of friendship for many years. So here it comes.
Three topics should have been included in the program to make conference marking the 90th anniversary of Estonia´s foreign policy more complete:
1) The first major post-WWII victory in foreign policy, gained mainly by a small group of Estonians in 1989, was the forcing of the Soviet parliament to admit that Nazis and Soviets had agreed in 1939 to divide Europe, giving Moscow a free hand to incorporate the Baltic States into the USSR.
2) Efforts made by Estonians in Estonia in 1990-1991 at various international meetings, including several CSCE foreign ministers meetings, aimed at getting the international support for the Baltic nations aspirations to restore independence.
3) The extensive foreign policy lobbying activity during the entire Soviet era by Estonians living abroad, including the vast efforts made in the US (and described well in memoir by Ernst Jaakson, head of the Estonia´s occupation era Consulate in New York for several decades and by many others who did much of the good lobbying work in Washington).
1989: our Baltic battle in Moscow
First, almost nothing was said at the "90 years of Estonia´s Foreign Policy" conference about Estonia´s biggest foreign policy victory achieved by the work of a handful of Estonians in Moscow in 1989 when a commission was set up at the Soviet parliament through the efforts of the Estonian scientist Endel Lippmaa, one of the Estonians elected to the Soviet parliament in 1989.
Officially the aim of to the commission was to "study" whether there really was a secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 to divide Europe. But for us - a very small group of Estonians (six mainly of whom even less were most involved) who got involved for half a year with the work at that commission in Moscow - for us the main task was to force the Soviets finally to admit that the incorporation of the Baltic States into Soviet empire was illegal.
I actually spoke about all this in August 2008 at the opening session of the history conference "Restoration of the Independence of Estonia" at Estonian parliament conference center (the text of my speech can be found at the website of the National Library of Estonia http://www.nlib.ee/92016, at the moment in Estonian only).
I was amazed at Tallinn foreign policy conference when a German speaker who has rather high position noted that "there also was some Estonian" at this MRP commission. It was not "some" - the commission was set up by an Estonian - Endel Lippmaa and the commission had 26 members of whom four were from Estonia plus I had the privilege of being "member number 27".
I attended most of the MRP commission sessions in Moscow in summer and autmn 1989 and wrote a lot of articles on that for which the Estonian Union of Journalists awarded me with annual journalism prize in May 1990 - so I know what I am talking about. (And I was happy of course to read that one of the "26" members wrote in book by the lawyer H. Lindpere (who worked that as assistant to one of commission members and attended some sessions) in 1991 that my work was "not less important than the work of commission members".
As far as I am concerned, the biggest credit for that greatest post-WWII achievement in Estonia´s foreign policy goes to Endel Lippmaa.
We achieved for what we had gone to Moscow that year on one of the most emotional days in my life - on December 24, 1989 when the Soviet parliament voted in the Kremlin on its session and the majority admitted there really was a secret protocol made in Moscow in 1939 between the Nazis and Soviets to divide Europe and to allow USSR to take over the Baltic states.
I simply broke into tears at the big session hall in the Kremlin during that crucial MRP-discussion session that lasted two days (it started on December 23, 1989). On that day (23.12.1989) the head of MRP Commission Aleksandr Yakovlev gave a speech at the Soviet parliament session and up until his speech we were still not fully sure of having gotten him to our side. But we had! I listened his speech very carefully standing in front of the big balcony at the session hall and could not help myself in the Soviet parliament hall that moment - the moment I realized we had Yakovlev at our side first the tears, then full cry came into my eyes.
A huge amount of the documentation - some collected from the archives of the US Congress in summer 1989 but also from other archives - had been presented to the commission by Endel Lippmaa during the months of the work of the commission in Moscow that Yakovlev himself had attended only few times.
Anyway, that was a case with so many aspects to that it will take much more than an one article to recall all of the details of our battle in Moscow which ended in victory. I will only add that in some of his interviews later Yakovlev said that it was the turning point for the Baltic nations in eyes of the leadership of the USSR who realized after the work of the MRP Commission and its outcome that it was now a matter of "when" not "whether" the Baltic States will regain their freedom.
1990-1991 - active lobbying on an international level
The second big part of our foreign policy that was not touched upon at the foreign policy conference in Tallinn includes the work done since the CSCE Copenhagen conference at the Bella Center in June 1990, and later at the CSCE meetings in New York, Vienna, Berlin, Helsinki etc to gain international support for our efforts to restore independence.
I attended all the conferences listed above also plus many others as journalist encouraged by the late Ilmari Sundblad, head of foreign news desk at Finnish News Agency STT who had recruited me in spring 1989 to write articles from Estonia for foreign media via STT, in addition to my work at two Estonian major dailies during the "singing revolution" - Noorte Hääl/Päevaleht and Rahva Hääl.
Some of those international meetings I attended - Copenhagen in June 1990 - delivering lengthy "propaganda materials" in English to the heads of delegations at the CSCE summit. In case of Copenhagen 1990 I was asked to deliver them by Mr. Lippmaa who had compiled them in Tallinn (the documents, which were similar for all delegations, were about legal aspects of the Baltic cause and struggle).
Most of those international meetings we started to attend since June 1990 in Copenhagen were attended by the Baltic Foreign Ministers who had taken office in spring 1990 - Lennart Meri (Estonia), Janis Jurkans (Latvia) and Algirdas Saudargas (Lithuania).
While they were not allowed to take the seat around the table with other foreign ministers during the sessions, I had a chance to act like any other journalist attending these meetings, with liberty to ask Soviet and other delegations whatever questions I wished. (After my first obviously painful questions to the Soviet delegation at their press conference in Copenhagen (they declined to answer and cut the press conference) the head of the Soviet delegation Juri Reshetov later asked his aids to find me and invited me to the coffee at the conference venue in Bella Centre. He was surprisingly polite but seemed really concerned with our walk-in to the summit and among other things he asked whether I think there is "still a chance to find a way to keep the Baltic nations in USSR so that Balts will also accept it").
Our battle of that time at those international meetings - that we sometimes felt like being knocking on your head with a stone over and over again - is also an essential part of Estonia´s foreign policy history.
Since that CSCE Copenhagen meeting in June 1990 I and Lennart Meri (and many others) fell in love with Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson, the foreign minister from tiny Iceland who gave fantastic speech in support of aspirations of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians to restore the independence of the Baltic States.
I personally also experienced some really nice emotions from that Copenhagen meeting as I had a chance to interview the legendary Jiri Hajek, the man who was foreign minister of Czechoslovakia from April to September 1968, thus during the time when Soviets invaded his country. (I know more than what is probably usual about those events in 1968 since during my final year at Tallinn Art High school in spring 1981 as I had submitted an essay about Soviet intervention into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to my history teacher. Amazingly my teacher returned the essay with highest remark which she had also underlined with a red pen and she did not say a word in front of my classmates in spite of making comments to all the others about their essays. The way in which my history teacher dealt with my essay is one of the many examples that shows there was always a choice to try to remain honest to your heart even during the darkest years - the teacher risked quite a lot as I realized only later, not to mention that had she turned me in it could have blocked perhaps my admission to university later that year.
Credit to Boris Yeltsin
There is another "missing point" in Estonia´s current foreign policy history - lack of ability to appreciate sufficiently the role of Boris Yeltsin in restoring independence to the Baltic States.
I give full credit for turning history on the right course during the coup attempt in Moscow in August 1991 to Boris Yeltsin and thousands of the brave Russians who went to defend the Russian White House after the coup started on August 19, 1991.
I heard the news while sitting at the dentist chair in Tallinn near Kaarli Church at 9.00 on August 19, 1991 - and went directly from there to buy my air-ticket, entering the Russian White House in Moscow the next morning, August 20, 1991, and leaving it for the first time again early morning August 21 and being there occasionally by the end of that week. But again, thats another long story.
Those of us who stayed there late August 20, 1991 after we were told via White House internal radio at 17 that an attack on Russian White House will start at 19 became something that one can call brothers-in-arms a lifetime. There was also another Baltic (also female) journalist who decided to stay there after attack warning, Lithuanian journalist Ramune Sakalauskaite. With some of those I met there - like Russian deputy foreign minister Georgi Kunadze who is now a human rights expert I stayed in contact for some time and also spoke to them by phone few times.
I am sad that as a state Estonia later failed to express gratitude to the Boris Yeltsin for what he did to stop the start of a very different history in August 1991.
Yeltsin also deserves full credit for recognizing in the name of Russia the restoration of the independence of Estonia and Latvia on August 24, 1991 (Lithuania had got his decree on that already before).
In addition, on that Saturday day on Aug. 24 1991 in Moscow Yeltsin also agreed to have something else very important to added to the decree he signed - namely a call on other states to recognize the independence of the Baltic States. The document signed by Yeltsin was then delivered to western embassies in Moscow. Despite Iceland having offered its recognition already on August 22, 1991, has been seen in Estonia as some kind of turning point, the support of the brave and tiny Nordic was followed only with silence.
The first major West-European state to recognize the restoration of Baltic states independence was France on Sunday, August 25, 1991. Several other states, including Australia, Belgium, Italy, Norway and Sweden offered their re-recognition on August 27, 1991.
Falling for Estonia
One of the few to express his surprise at the foreign policy conference in Tallinn on October 2008 over why only two short periods were touched upon the conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of Estonia´s foreign policy was professor of history from Finland. My brief comments above hopefully fill a brief part of that missing gap at that otherwise interesting conference.
The professor spoke at the panel attended also by the first ambassador appointed to Estonia after WWII - L. Grundberg. In his speech L. Grundberg who came to Estonia on August 29, 1991 and left late September 1995 and who himself became well appreciated by Estonians highlighted the role of Finnish first post-WWII ambassador to Estonia - Jaakko Kaurinkoski (who, by the way has also worked at the Finnish News Agency and was STT correspondent to China for some years).
I would like to add that in addition to all first Nordic ambassadors to Estonia (Jaakko Kaurinkoski from Finland, L. Grundberg from Sweden, Sven-Erik Nordberg from Denmark and Brit Lovseth from Norway) there were two more first heads of diplomatic missions who did a really lot for Estonia, falling completely for that tiny state with just one million ethnic Estonians and 1.3 million total population, committing themselves to the chilly and at that time still very poor country where the fate had taken them.
One of the two to be added to the list was US ambassador Robert Frasure (who like Kaurinkoski died soon after leaving Estonia) and the other ambassador that must be mentioned was Jan Wahlberg, head of the United Nations office in Estonia since the office of UN Resident Representative in Estonia was established in 1993 (Wahlberg who has now retired and lives in South-West France left Estonia in 1997, the UN mission was closed four years later).
I happened to know all of them and kind of felt they became partly Estonians during these years of the unseen changes and reforms.
While the first ambassador appointed after WWII to Estonia had just turned 47 when he arrived in Tallinn in August 1991 and US Ambassador Robert Frasure was two years older and the others were around same age, some of the ministers in Estonia - in their late 20s, early 30s with whom they had to start dealing soon were in age more like kids to the ambassadors and many other diplomats. The rapid changes, reforms and enthusiasm of the newly free nation that these western ambassadors met touched their hearts deeply and they did their best to help Estonia back to where it had been before it was cut off from the free world when arms not wisdom prevailed on the eve of WWII.
29.10.2008
P.S. I am really thankful to Estonian Foreign Ministry etc. (special thanks to Kärt Juhasoo-Lawrence, Director of 1st Division at Policy planning department) for deciding to arrange an international conference in Tallinn in September 2009 to commemorate our victorious MRP struggle in Moscow in 1989. Details about the conference and book-to-be-released soon. February, 2009.
