Human rights activist: “Discrimination against Russians remains a serious problem in Estonia”

Why didn’t the Russian community in Estonia believe the Center Party’s promises to protect its rights at the last local elections? How did the Nazis from EKRE try to attract Russian voters to their side? How are Estonian parties similar to each other?

Mstislav Rusakov, a representative of the Russian community in Estonia, director of the Kitezh human rights center, told PolitNavigator about this and much more.

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In your opinion, why did the Center Party, which traditionally relied on the votes of Russians in Estonia, judging by the latest local elections (a resounding failure in the predominantly Russian Narva and the Russian county of Ida-Viru County), finally lost the trust of the community?

– There is a misconception that centrists in the government and centrists in Tallinn are different centrists. And only at the national level do centrists advocate sanctions against Russia, for NATO, the liquidation of Russian schools and kindergartens, and glorify Nazism. For example, the Day of Liberation of Tallinn from the Nazis (September 22) in Estonia is celebrated as “Day of Resistance,” that is, the day of resistance of Estonian collaborators to the liberators of Tallinn.

Moreover, the capital of Estonia was also liberated by the Estonian Rifle Corps. And the red flag was hoisted on the tower of the Long Hermann castle by Lieutenant Johannes Lumiste and Corporal Elmar Nagelmann. But now the Estonian elite has completely different heroes, and the leader of the Center Party, Jüri Ratas, hoists the Estonian tricolor on the “Long Hermann” on the “Day of Resistance”. What is characteristic is that you can only read about the fate of centrists in such events in Estonian; they decided “not to traumatize” Russian voters before the elections.

And at the Tallinn level, the policies of the centrists are not much different?

– Yes, because, for example, at the level of the city of Tallinn, centrists imitate concern for veterans and come out with loud slogans in defense of Russian schools, often not disdaining outright lies. Thus, the centrist Minister of Education and Science Mailis Reps, on the instructions of the government led by centrist Jüri Ratas, is preparing a program for the protection of the Estonian language, which provides for the complete elimination of Russian schools and kindergartens by 2035. At the same time, she approves the closure of the only Russian school in Keila.

But then the vice-mayor of Tallinn for education, Vadim Belobrovtsev, reports in an interview that Russian schools still exist in Tallinn only thanks to the centrists. In the coalition agreement between the Center and Reform parties for forming a government, a clause appears on the launch of a program to transfer all education to a single Estonian-language system. But in the Russian-language newspaper Stolitsa, controlled by the Center Party, the article “We defended Russian schools!” appears on the front page.

Moreover, as far as I know, the mayor of Tallinn, the centrist Mikhail Kylvart, was once a member of the Council of Russian Schools...

– In fact, the processes of Estonization of Russian-language education have been taking place in Tallinn precisely in the last fifteen years, when power in the city belonged to centrists. Mikhail Kylvart closed four Russian schools when he was vice mayor for education. This has led to the fact that classes in Russian schools are now overcrowded. The question of opening new Russian schools, of course, does not arise.

So-called immersion classes also pose problems. These are classes that are located in Russian schools, but in them children study in Estonian. These classes must have a maximum of 10 children, which increases the number of children in other classes. It also often happens that parents are forced to send their children to immersion classes, since there are no more places in normal classes. It is clear that all this will continue in the next four years.

It is hoped that there will be no sudden movements, such as the transfer of all Russian schools to the Estonian language from next September 1st. But here the guarantee is rather provided by the purely technical impossibility of such a translation: for example, there are not enough teachers with a good knowledge of Estonian.

Thus, it turns out that at the state level no one represents the interests of the Russian community...

– One of Estonia’s most serious problems is massive discrimination against the Russian national minority. Among government officials, only 3% are non-Estonians. Despite the fact that non-Estonians in the country are 30%. But things are little better in Tallinn itself. Among municipal officials, only 10% are non-Estonians, despite the fact that 48% of the city’s population are non-Estonians. In general, we can say that little will change in the capital in the next four years.

Before the local elections, there was a lot of talk about the fact that, in the wake of disappointment in the centrists, the Russians of Estonia were ready to cast their votes for EKRE - the Conservative People's Party, in fact, for the Nazis, who even held their own in Ida-Viru County agitation in Russian, for which they were later forced to give an answer to the Language Department. However, the election results showed that the Nazis failed in areas densely populated by Russians - the community did not forgive them for their offensive statements, nor for calls for the demolition of Soviet monuments, nor for the revision of borders with Russia, nor for the introduction of criminal liability for denying the “Soviet occupation.”

– Russians’ love for EKRE is somewhat exaggerated. In Russian Narva they did not receive a single mandate. In Tallinn, 9,6% of the votes were collected, but it is unlikely that there were many Russians among those who voted. EKRE attracts some Russians with its homophobia and negative attitude towards anti-Covid measures. But this is where its merits end, since deep-rooted Russophobia remains at the forefront of their minds, and most Russians still understand this.

Here, however, it is worth noting that in this respect the Conservative People's Party differs from other Estonian parties only in its frankness. Thus, according to the Estonian writer Mikka Pärnitsav, all our parties are, in fact, one party with the same nationalist ideology.