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.