Ilves returns from Russia

TALLINN - Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves isback home after successfully completing a potentially tricky visit to Russia. While the itinerary included only a brief meeting with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, the tripserved an important role in showing that Estonia intends to normalise relations with itsneighbour, even in the face of continued criticism.

The tensest moment of the trip came when Ilveswalked out of the 5th World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples because of an offensivespeech directed at him.

Ilves left the hall in Khanty-Mansiyskon June 28, along with the rest of the Estonian delegation after beingharangued by Konstantin Kossachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee ofthe Russian State Duma.

Kossachev's inflammatory response accused Ilves of "politicising" Finno-Ugric relations in his own speech and predictably bemoaned the abominabletreatment Estonia supposedly metes out to ethnic Russians. Kossachev said hisspeech dealt with "the need to depoliticize any actions linked to theFinno-Ugric movement," as well as with the fact that "Finno-Ugricpeoples do not have any principal problems compared to other peoples in Russiaunlike Russian-speakers in Estonia."

Ilves had usedhis address to focus on the preservation of languages and theimportance of democracy and European values on the basis of the Estonian,Finnish and Hungarian experience of European Union membership.

Ilves said language and the preservation anddevelopment of languages are truly important. But, in his words, this can onlybe successful "when we are engaged not in a narrow philological activityor garnishing for ethnography, but a socially encompassing, in other wordspolitical, theme."

The three largest Finno-Ugric peoples haveexperience with this, he said. "The European Union umbrella has given theEstonian, Finnish, and Hungarian languages new guarantees they have neverbefore possessed in their history. In no other continent exist such guaranteesand no other international entity takes the health of languages asseriously," Ilves said.

"In what I have said I have already drawna line between those Finno-Ugric peoples who are in the EU and the rest, whoaren't," the president said and added that this distinction raises animportant question: do we draw any distinctions among Finno-Ugric peoples?"Belonging to the EU as countries can be used merely as a formaldistinction without implying judgement," he said.

"Hungarians, Finns and Estonians havechosen so-called European values, which today manifest themselves in the use ofliberal democracy to order society," he said.

In Ilves' words, this choice does notnecessarily presume an independent state. "Back when these societies choseto be European, they had no states of their own and Europe, too, was very different from what it istoday," he said.

"But freedom and democracy also make forgood rules of the game in non-state structures. Freedom and democracy were ourchoice 150 years ago, when not even the poets dreamt of an Estonianstate," the president said and added that many Finno-Ugric peoples haveyet to make this choice.

According to Ilves, through the European Unionthe Finno-Ugric languages have for the first time in their history developed atruly global reach, ringing in the meeting rooms of Brussels and Strasbourg.

"Here, in Khanty-Mansiysk, which borders Europe's eastern geographic boundary, it may seem abit odd to speak of Europe, the European Union, and European values. Butstill -- freedom and democracy are universal values that acknowledge neithernational nor geographic borders," Ilves said and added that Europe'sunderstanding of diversity as a value applies to, and must apply to, everyone.

"The Finno-Ugric peoples may indeed besmall butterflies among all of humanity, but it is a concern for all ofhumanity to ensure that these butterflies not flap their wings in the wrongplace the wrong time, in a way that might be fatal to those much larger thanthe butterflies," Ilves said. "This is why the ecology of culturesand peoples is an issue for all mankind. This is why the European Unioncares."

Later during Ilves' visit to Russia, policedetained 70 activists of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi participating ina rally at the Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow which Ilves was due toattend to donate a bust of semiotician Yuri Lotman.

"The Nashi activists wanted to ask theEstonian head of state if he really regards the Soviet soldiers whose remainswere removed from Tonismagi in Tallinn as drunkards and marauders, and why heurged Finno-Ugric peoples in Khanty-Mansiysk to break away from Russia," aspokeswoman for the organization said.

The text of Ilves speech does mention thevirtues of democracy and self-determination but it does not contain any urgingof breakaways from Russia. However, sections of the Russian media interpreted his words as a call for ethic minorities to press for independence.