A think tank to unite Estonia's Russians

While the Russian parties in Estonia continue to reel from their defeat in the last local and municipal elections, the recently established Russian Institute has added some spark into the fragmented life of the minority community. To be sure, the think tank, founded by Mikhail Petrov and Sergei Seredenko, is not involved in partisan politics and does not intend to become a political organization. However, it does pose itself as a catalyst for solving the problems related to the country's ethnic Russian minority.

Though its financial sources are murky (the founders refuse to comment on the matter, saying only that they have many potential sponsors), so far the institute has attained certain success by organizing a forum of ethnic Russian cultural and political organizations. The forum essentially resulted in choosing Georgi Bystrov, mayor of Maardu, a town near Tallinn, as the single minority candidate for the European Parliament election, a unique accomplishment.
Still, it is unclear how the institute will reach its ambitious goals without a lobby in Parliament and on the backdrop of widespread doubt about its longevity. However, it is evident that, with the creation of the Russian Institute, Estonia's minority community may get a new, more rational voice. Interview by Aleksei Gunter.

What is the Russian Institute?
Mikhail Petrov: One day we simply discovered that we were going in one direction and decided to join forces. So the institute is a society of people moving in one direction. It is a purely civil initiative that allows us to realize together the ideas we would find difficult to realize alone. We do not have a strict structure, so from the very beginning we decided to cooperate - with everybody willing to cooperate with us. People who want to do so can consider themselves members of the Russian Institute.

What were the goals of establishing this organization?
M.P.: I think our main task is to raise the issues that can be solved today in our society. There's quite a few of those, and some either seem, or are declared by somebody, to be impossible to solve. If we see a solution we will work on it.
The idea of making Estonia bilingual is totally unreal, and it is useless, stupid and harmful to raise this issue. The issue of stateless people can be solved, and let's start working on it. The problem of the acknowledgement of Russian university diplomas can be solved too.

Could you name a few of the main problems of that kind?
Sergei Seredenko: Of course. First, the problem of stateless individuals. From my point of view today everybody who had the right to participate in the 1991 referendum [on leaving the Soviet Union] must now be a citizen of Estonia.
Another major issue, in our opinion, is freedom of press and freedom of speech. There is no law on mass media and no law on freedom of expression. There is no legal definition of censorship in Estonia, no law on the rights of an editorial team. The neverending change of editors and the extreme authority of media owners is what we are experiencing as a result of that. All the relations between an owner and a journalist are regulated by the law on employment contract, without taking into account the specifics of a journalist's work.
We also think that the government's integration program does not have the right to exist because it is unconstitutional. After all, what is a government's program? An internal action plan. For whom is it obligatory? For the government only. What we do have is legal force, laws and government decrees. Parliament should have issued a law making the integration program a must for everybody. The legal meaning of the current integration program is equal to that of a political essay.
M.P.: I'd like to emphasize that those are the problems that at first approach seem to have no solution, but actually they can be solved. Nobody has tried to solve them though.

Can you solve them? Do you want to?
S.S. Yes, we want to, and we can, but we are short of resources. Our action plan for this year has been somewhat foiled because our unpredictable participation in the European Parliament elections. It turned out we are the only political technology experts who can come up with something serious. We have led the situation to the "one candidate" scenario and are now dealing with what has come out.

Why did you decide to participate in the European Parliament campaign?
S.S.: Because we were asked to.
M.P.: Our interest is to guide the process into the right direction.
S.S.: The Russian parties have lost the last two elections. This is the lack of a habit to vote for Russian parties. There is no new [Russian] party that could be seriously taken, so the assortment of politicians remains the same. It would have been political death for the Russian parties to participate in the upcoming elections, especially when both parties [United People's Party of Estonia and the Russian Party of Estonia] could theoretically win just one seat.
There is enough electoral potential - votes - for one seat. Having two competing parties would demolish the very dream of getting the mandate. That is why the idea of having one candidate. The law [on European Parliament elections] does not allow an individual candidate to be a member of any party and also restricts electoral lists [that consist of candidates of mixed affiliations]. We have created a very flexible situation for both Russian parties: On the one hand, they do not participate in the campaign and would not be connected to a possible failure, and on the other, indirectly, they do participate in the campaign and could consider themselves contributors to the possible victory.
Our role was to persuade [the Russian parties] to abstain from the official campaign, and we have almost succeeded at that.

Are you satisfied with the candidate, Georgi Bystrov?
M.P.: The personality of the candidate does not have principal importance. What is important is that there was an attempt to march in step and in one direction. The forum also agreed that whoever will be elected will enjoy full support of the forum participants. That is quite a progression.

Do you think Bystrov will actually gather enough votes to get a seat?
S.S.: I made a personal commitment either to give a positive forecast or no forecast at all before June 13.
M.P.: It will depend upon the electoral activity, and second, upon the effectiveness of the final part of the campaign. The personality of our single candidate is complex, contradictory and difficult to educate as a candidate for the European Parliament. But one must understand and accept that. [Bystrov] is a grown-up person with a certain philosophy and attitude. It would be stupid to expect him to change in two or three weeks.
S.S.: As to the forecasts, I only can try to imagine the possible success of Bystrov taking into account that he himself is the head of his campaign team.

Do you think that Bystrov is indeed a person who could be supported by the various groups in the Russian community?
M.P.: This person is Russian, he has a Russian name, he has achieved a certain position in life, and he was supported by some 200 organizations [at the forum]. All of this is very positive. What matters is that he is our single candidate.

What about the image of Bystrov in the media - the case of somebody reportedly trying to pass the Estonian language test using his ID, or the fact that Bystrov does not speak foreign languages?
M.P.: So what? That does not matter at all for a Russian-speaking voter, because every one of them could have been in the same situation. I am not saying that case [the exam incident] did take place.
S.S.: The language exam for the Russians is a rule they do not accept and do not care about.

What do you think of the Russian parties in Estonia? Where are they going in your opinion?
M.P.: Today they are all walking different ways, but all of those lead to nowhere. This is sad but natural.
S.S.: In order to be a party one must do politics. One must set political questions and look for political answers. What these parties do now is very specific party business - raising money for an electoral campaign and getting money from the people who will be put into the electoral list. However it is unreasonable to ruin those political parties without offering an alternative. They at least occupy a certain niche.
M.P.: For example, the United People's Party of Estonia does not have an ideology but a structure. The Russian Party of Estonia used to have some idea but now has neither ideology nor structure. Only if we combine a reliable party apparatus with an ideology will we get an effective Russian party.
I see the future not in the creation of a strong Russian party, which is unrealistic now, but in stimulating an initiative inside the Russian community. When the Russian community finally comprehends itself as a community, when the organizations of this community realize they can speak on behalf of the whole Russian community and give its statements a legal status, then we will need a strong Russian party.
I think Russian youth in Estonia are still very far away from politics, but eventually they will come to that. As for Russian politicians in Estonia, only a handful of them are real politicians who do politics, the rest are difficult to classify.

What do you think of the role of Russian business people living in Estonia?
M.P.: We do not have national Russian business in Estonia. The role of the Russian business people in Estonia must be in trying to preserve national-based entrepreneurship. For example, Russian businesspeople say, "All the Russian newspapers [in Estonia] are shit!" A question then - what have you done in order to improve those newspapers? Some say there is no decent Russian high school to send your child to. Again, what have you done to change that?
Creation and support of the Russian infrastructure - societies, schools and so on - is important. Business people should not merely give money to these places, they must also invest and demand certain return on their investments. One must think about the future of his children in Estonia. Take Narva, for example. It is a border region. Who else could trade with Russia better? Russians to Russians - this way it's easier, right? Russians in Narva can effectively realize the national business concept, make money and create jobs for Russians. This is being done there to a lesser extent than it could have been done.

Could the northeast become the place where the Russian community in Estonia would attain the goals you are talking about?
M.P.: The idea to create a regional party has been mulled over in the northeast, including Narva, for quite a long time. They realize that a regional party has little chance of being represented in Parliament, but such a party would be capable of taking the power at the municipal level in the northeast. This could form a serious political force that will count.