EU membership has also encouraged a boost in tourism from Sweden and Finland. Located only an hour’s ferry ride from Helsinki, Tallinn is a favorite of cruise-ship passengers, with its medieval architecture, sidewalk cafés, broad plazas and antique shops. “Estonia in a way is very similar to Scandinavia, and we consider ourselves part of the Nordic countries,” says Luik. “It has been a long-term aim of Estonia to become a politically and economically stable Nordic country.” Like its prosperous neighbors to the north, Estonia’s people enjoy one of the planet’s highest mobile telephone penetration rates, with 118 cellular phone lines per 100 inhabitants. The country is also considered a leader in e-government and is one of the world’s most Internet-friendly countries. “I can participate in the elections from my desktop because we have a special identity-card reader,” touts Luik. “You can use it to mark your identity and then vote electronically. We tried that in the local elections, and now for the first time in general elections. Desktop voting is useful to bring in young people.” One of the biggest issues in the upcoming elections will be whether to maintain Estonia’s flat-tax system—a system critics say favors the rich while penalizing the poor. “We chose a proportional, not a progressive, tax system, meaning that whatever you earn, you pay the same flat tax, which encourages people to earn more,” Luik explains. “We don’t have many loopholes, and it’s a very easy system. So far, this system has been very favorable. The center-left says we should use the progressive tax system, while the center-right says what we have now is the best vehicle for social justice.” Another contentious issue at the moment is Estonia’s rocky relationship with its former occupier. “Our relationship with Russia is calm and stable, but there are ups and downs,” Luik admits. “There are people in Russia who haven’t yet accepted that Estonia is a sovereign country. One of the issues where we have clear disagreements is what actually happened in 1939 to ’40, when Estonia was occupied, and in the last months of World War II, when the Soviets moved in again. “The Soviet government called it a liberation, and the present Russian government continues this line. The sad truth is that Estonia was occupied by Russians, then by Hitler, and then again by Stalin. Unfortunately, there was no liberation for Estonia until 1991, when we really became an independent country,” Luik says. Tallinn’s uneasy relationship with Moscow often triggers strong emotions, especially when it comes to issues such as Estonia’s controversial Citizenship Law and the requirement that only the Estonian language be used in schools. “While Estonia has very few restrictions on academic freedom, both officials in Moscow and ethnic Russians living in Estonia have opposed legislation that mandates the use of Estonian as the language of instruction in what are currently Russian-language schools,” notes Freedom in the World 2005. According to the report, approximately 170,000 people in Estonia are not citizens, most of them ethnic Russians. “Estonia’s Citizenship Law has been criticized for effectively disenfranchising many Russian speakers through an excessively difficult naturalization process,” it says. Luik doesn’t pull any punches here. “If Russia wants to criticize us, it’s their business, but we are members of the EU, and you cannot bluff. If you want to become a citizen of Estonia, you must pass a language exam,” he says. “But you can live and work in Estonia without being a citizen, like here in the United States if you have a green card.” The ambassador adds: “Since we didn’t have any control over our borders during Soviet times, our immigration policy is fairly careful. We are not opening our doors wide, but obviously specialists are always welcome.” Controversy is also currently raging over the possibility that the Estonian government might remove a large bronze statue dedicated to Soviet troops that for years has dominated one of Tallinn’s main plazas. “The debate is not whether to destroy the statue, but whether to remove it to the Soviet military cemetery, which is also in Tallinn. That statue would be there, together with the Soviet graves, to remind people of the events that happened,” Luik says. On Feb. 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that if Estonia goes ahead with its plan, the remains of fallen Soviet fighters should be returned to Russian soil. “I find that this is an absolutely short-sighted, extremist nationalist policy which does not take into consideration the history connected with the fight against Nazism or today’s reality,” Putin charged, continuing Moscow’s oft-repeated claim that the Bronze Soldier Monument is a symbol against fascism rather than of Soviet occupation. Luik counters that the Bronze Soldier debate “is a minor issue” and that the government has made no decision yet. Surprisingly, one issue that’s not making too many headlines at home is the presence of 40 Estonian soldiers in the middle of Baghdad and another 150 troops in southern Afghanistan. In addition, since 1999, more than 300 Estonian peacekeeping troops have served in Kosovo. “The operation in Afghanistan is more popular than the one in Iraq, which is more controversial. But there haven’t been serious demands from the people or the parliament to withdraw them,” says the ambassador. “Since Estonia lived under a very nasty dictatorship for a long time, we support the idea that brutal dictators should be removed. Estonia is trying as much as it can to support democracy all around the world.” Larry Luxner is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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