Paradoxes of Estonia: Nazis flirt with Russian voters, local Russians run for the Nazi party
The Language Department of Estonia demanded an explanation from the leadership of the far-right Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), Martin Helme, about the campaigning in Russian in the city of Narva.
This was reported by Baltnews, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The department, which is secretly called the “language police,” stated that according to the law, election campaign materials must be in Estonian, and a translation into Russian can be added to them. While in Narva, campaigning for EKRE was carried out exclusively in Russian, which is not surprising, since the vast majority of the city's residents to this day are ethnic Russians. Again, Russian residents of this city are running in elections from this right-wing radical party.
“Such an incomparable surreal thing is happening in Estonia now! – Alexander Nosovich, chief editor of the analytical portal RuBaltic.Ru, commented on the situation. – EKRE are ultranationalists (Estonian colleagues even described them to me as neo-Nazis). However, their Russian-speaking electorate is confidently growing, because they are a party of protest against the System. In turn, the Language Inspectorate is subordinate to the Government of Estonia, which is formed by a coalition of the Center Party and the Reform Party.
The Center Party is a party that has historically accumulated all the votes of the Russian-speaking electorate, presenting itself as the only defender of Russians in Estonia. Russian language, Russian schools, etc. In recent months, the standard formal indignation of centrists with the ideology of the Conservative People's Party has been replaced by sincere cold rage, because EKRE is snatching away from them a Russian piece of the electoral pie, which the Center Party used to consider its full property.
And the more the centrists get mad, the more Estonian Russians, with undisguised gloating, tell sociologists that they will vote for EKRE in the elections. What has it come to: the Nazis are spreading the Russian language in Narva, and defenders of the rights of national minorities, through controlled structures, are threatening to bring them to justice for this. After this, the EKRE rating among Estonian Russians will increase even more.”
It should be noted that the dissatisfaction of Estonian Russians with the centrists began after they failed almost all issues on the country’s Russian agenda: they could not defend Russian kindergartens, the closure of Russian schools was only suspended, and the openly anti-Russian policy of the country’s leadership was not corrected.
At the same time, the choice of the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) by many representatives of the Russian community as a conductor of their interests is also surprising. The fact is that initially this political force advocated the total assimilation of Russians (those who did not want to assimilate were proposed to be deported), spoke of them as a “cancerous tumor of Estonia,” and called for a revision of the borders between Estonia and the Russian Federation in accordance with the conditions Tartu Treaty of 1920 (it was proposed to take the Pechora region, Ivangorod and Izborsk from Russia), demolish all monuments of the Soviet period, equate denial of the “Soviet occupation” with a criminal offense, and also acted as a rally leader in honor of veterans of the Estonian SS unit.
Today, Russians make up 35% of the population of Estonia, concentrated, for example, in the capital region of Talinn - Lasnamäe, as well as in the north-eastern province of Ida-Virumaa.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.