Thoughts on reaching 20

I was here in Estonia 20 years ago, but not for what is now considered the main event. I spent two peaceful, very cold weeks here in July 1991, the lilac was still blooming probably thanks to Mt. Pinatubo, a mountain impossibly far removed from either of my two countries). I saw the barricades on Toompea erected January in anticipation of trouble, but by summer they were mute blocks and passersby did not even take notice of them. I was back in the US by August. I missed the "action" during the putsch and what Estonia commemorated this year as perhaps the most beloved anniversary (more than the 90th anniversary of the original Independence Day, anyway).

Then I was in Estonia again in December 1993, more or less for good. In the interim, I missed the Savisaar economic crisis (which was a real crisis, incidentally), the Pullapää revolt. I've only known increasing stability with occasional tragedy (ferry disaster, Kurkse). That's why the riots of 2007 were so frightening at first for me, but that turned out to be just civil unrest rather than a Dec. 1924 type event.

From that summer of 1991, I remember only snippets from the cities, like the aforementioned barricades, and the smell of cabbage, buckwheat and cat piss smell in the entrance halls of Mustamäe apartment blocks. It wasn't squalid, but it was characteristically musty. But for a whole week in July 1991, I was on a farm with my cousin in Sürgavere. What was interesting there is that although the sovkhoz somewhere within arm's length was often mentioned, here was these people living in a farmhouse that looked like a normal smallholding. I had grown up in the States told about forced collectivization, deportations and massacres, and here we were making hay and feeding the chickens just as they probably had every year through the 1980s.

When I came back in December 1993, Mart Laar had been in office for a while and the crises were over, and it's been an upward trend. Even when people like Vähi and Rüütel ran the country, there was no real change, far less than even when the Democrats "take over" in the US. Taxes still get cut even further for the rich and teachers still don't get paid enough.

Today there's much less of the post-Soviet overlay, it's gone from most places -- street signs in Russian, certain foods that have disappeared from menus -- but I guess there are areas you could go to to find it, and I don't think we've seen the last of official bilingualism on Estonian soil.

Giustino asked about what the country might look like in 20 years. It's a great theme for an imaginative blog post, imagine the satirical possibilities. And I don't know if we'll still be sane as a species anymore, even with today's still-primitive virtual technology, some of us are already getting atomized with a short attention span. But the fundamentals will be the same. Even visually, the country will still be very recognizable. Sure, if you were blindfolded and driven to the Põhjaväil, you might be at a loss for a while, just like today if you took someone who grew up on Tartu mnt to the Tallinn financial district, but you would eventually get your bearings and figure out, hey, this must be Tallinn's new waterfront. And very quickly get used to it. And if you were here all along wouldn't even notice the changes they would take place so slowly.

I do miss some aspects of the post-Soviet overlay that lingered through the 1990s. Hard to put my finger on it. The idea of being able to go down to the corner store and buy a tsheburek. No, see, that's not it. Going back to Giustino's post, I don't long for the musty cracker wedged between the seats of the old car that is the Soviet Union, I would definitely not eat it but you long for the coins that might also be there, not even the coins but the fact that the car HASN'T yet been cleaned out, there's still something to find there.

Some things you might find in the old car are pleasurable in a shabby way. It's not too different from the nostalgia someone in New York might have when Bagels & Bialys closed down for good. A working-class sort of bakery that represents an old, not particularly efficient way of doing things. We hate change instinctively. Or the Internet has conditioned us to want everything to be available to us at all times in real form. Looking at recent news, I don't smoke pot, but the idea that it will not be available to people who want to go to the Netherlands to try it is just unbearable for some reason.

Part of the Soviet nostalgia is probably just a reaction to the alienation that the new system creates -- all the chrome and glass. The way Eurorenovation has less character than some flats that still need "san.remont". Windows that don't open.

Of course, people in the States have mainly gone to a new level and are pining Borders. The new big-box, chrome and glass trend that drove out working-class, sometimes shabby mom and pop, is starting to show signs of strain, and even though it is evil and represents Babylon, I miss it.

In Estonia, despite all the boutique cafes and small businesses, we're still going the big-box, chrome and glass way. We'll see if it even survives five, much less 20. In the countryside as well, there's plenty of lovely, well-maintained small farms, proudly signposted. But would anyone seriously say that that kind of agriculture is not an endangered species?

Still, I suspect that farmhouse in Sürgavere where my cousin's grandmother lived is still standing, I'm not sure what it is used for, but relatives are still in the area. I don't think my cousin's brother is planting Monsanto seed or GMO potatoes -- yet. Even if he is, I'm not even sure that would represents a huge cataclysmic break that will make life utterly different down the road.

Getting royaled up

The presidential candidates debated today, incumbent Ilves talking into the studio air, "dark horse" challenger Tarand keeping the president company in the dark and providing him with a foil, occasionally making wisecracks and dropping the phrase "Estonian SSR" several times as if to suggest that we might be returning there were it not for him, Tarand the one-man democracy-generator.

Sometimes the two argued, rather peevishly, about who had done what for the country (both have a track record as members of European Parliament).

When Tarand was asked at the end of the debate why he thought he would make the best president, his answer was a) he did not think he would make the best president; b) he was in fact there to keep the incumbent president company and serve as a conversation partner. Yes, he said that.

After that, the same question was put to Ilves. Covering the debate for a news organization, I poised my pencil in suspense, ready for him to knock it out of the park and walk off. Ilves' answer: He, too, did not feel like he would necessarily make the best president and he thought he had done "well enough that people might support him."

D'oh'p!

And the answers to that last question were going to be my lead, because let's be honest, during the foregoing proceedings my attention had wandered. A lot. It seemed they kept coming back to the issue of the role of the president and how he (or, next century, "she") should be elected -- by the parliament or the people. Ilves repeated the argument several times that if the president were popularly elected, such a president might be so arrogant as to decline to debate in the first place. At least a parliamentary president could have a radio interview and a shadow candidate could sit in the studio adding spice.

In all fairness, occasionally Ilves sparkled and was on message, with a number of good ideas, some familiar from his speeches -- so he may have squeaked out a narrow decision -- but sometimes he talked right through the moderator, which annoyed me.

While I think Ilves has done a very good job in a largely "unfurnished" position (meaning that he doesn't have a hell of a lot of constitutional powers) and wish him the best for his next term, I vowed today that I would do everything in my power as a citizen to make sure Estonia has a king or queen in my lifetime.

You know the people want it. They may not know it yet, because monarchy is a foreign concept. They're still stuck on the populist argument that they want popular presidential elections, not a vote by the "elitists" in parliament; that that is what it is all about. But is it? Isn't it the campaigning and voting -- and the debating -- that's demeaning, that reduces everything to banal, circular talk, even if the candidates are witty and intelligent?

So monarchy is the Alexandrian solution to all this flapdoodle that diminishes the potential presidentiality of both candidates.

The Estonian monarch should be chosen by some arcane and weird pseudo-ancient procedure befitting the mumbo-jumbo of the largely ceremonial head of state post.

Perhaps a viktoriin (Jeopardy-like quiz) to test the future king's knowledge, a strength test of some sort (sword-pull etc, but make it Estonian), then an official (the Chancellor of Justice perhaps?) asks the candidates some trick questions. Or Zen questions, or morality conundrums (premise: both Chinese officials and the Dalai Lama are in town and need to be entertained).

It has to be hard, but it also has to be fun. And enjoyable for the audience. The Setos in their kingdom down southeast have it figured out better, like a lot of stuff.