I was very lucky to connect with Elina and her friends for a night with young people. They are all 24 and have pretty good jobs or are studying. Elina herself goes to school in England and is studying Forensic Archeology. They gave me some great insight into life in Estonia.
Her Mom is a gynecologist and her Dad is a surgeon but since the medical care is free they are comfortable but not as rich as they would be in the USA. I asked if they had “socialized” medicine in Estonia and she didn’t know what that was. She lives in a medical care-free country but they would not label the provision of health care as Socialistic, it simply is the right of all citizens.
Her Mom runs a sexual health clinic and the patients pay $5. HIV is very prevalent here because they are just now providing sex education. During “Soviet Times” which you hear all the time here. Sex education was not something that was taught so as the Aids epidemic hit the world it ran rampant through the Soviet States just because of lack of knowledge. It is starting to level off now as the population learns about prevention.
It’s a bit of a moot point however because there are hardly any men. Most of the marriageable men have left to work in other EU countries where the pay is better (and I guess the weather too although a lot of them go to Finland). None of the three women I had dinner with had boyfriends. I experienced this phenomenon in reverse in the Genting Highlands of Malaysia one New Year’s Eve. Those of us staying at the cabins in the forest were enjoying a party and after midnight the owners of the place opened up the dance floor to the young men of the area. I was about 40 at the time and was swamped with invitations to dance from 18-26 year olds. It turns out there were just no young women. The Genting Highlands are very rural only reachable up a narrow, and scary, winding mountain. The young guys stay there and work in the resorts or the eco-cabins or in the forest collecting butterflies. The young women however move to Penang or Kuala Lumpur and get jobs as maids or secretaries leaving the men alone. It was pretty sad.
I asked the Estonian women about the huge houses and they explained that homes are big but the fact that there are 20 windows in all the wood houses doens’t mean there are 20 rooms, In a country that only has daylight four hours a day for the six winter months it is paramount to have a lot of windows. Makes sense.
The young people have a great life here because the state offers a lot. There are beautiful beaches and nice parks and concerts nearly 5 or 6 times a week all summer long. The whole city of Tallinn is connected by wifi so everyone is constantly searching for whatever they want. The population of the whole country is only 1.5 million so things get handled easily and efficiently. The President only needed 81 votes from his fellow congressman to be President and he just said OK no long and painful campaigns,
Everyone in the country has an ID card with a personal chip. On the chip is all of your medical information so any doctor gets access to your total medical history. All dealings with the government are conducted online including voting, opening a business, paying taxes etc. The anti-hacking system is the best in the world, in fact, Estonia exports its computer expertise.
Elina took me over to her house (she didn’t give me a medal though). I expected something very posh but it was just a square concrete block with a lot of windows and stuffed with things. But no clean line Scandanavian design.
The “Soviet Times’ looms large in the collective consciousness. When Mom and I went to Prague and Hungary it was only about a month from the Velvet Revolution as I’ve said. The people didn’t really even believe that they were free of Soviet power. They still expected the Soviets to return with their tanks as they had before. So they hadnt processed any possibility of a “Soviet Time” that was actually over.
Here and in Mongolia and in Latvia and in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania when I visited those places there is a definite feeling about and descriptions of the “Soviet Times.” Often the Soviets left behind the horrible cement high rise apartment buildings which were exactly alike. There is a Soviet film that makes fun of that because the hero gets drunk and gets on a train and gets off at the wrong place. He finds ‘his” apartment in a maze of high rises and his key even fits. He knows the layout because they never deviated. It’s only when he finds someone else in “his” bed that he realizes he isn’t even in his own city.
The older generation, like Elina’s parents who are just 50 remember only too well the total lack of choice and the total denial of individualism in any form, I was at a great museum to day and the docent told us that during “Soviet Times” two painters–at least–worked on each painting. First one would put a brush stroke and then the other–nothing could be unique to a single individual.
The interplay of the Russians in current societies is still fraught with controversy. There was a bronze Red army statue here but it was erected to commemerate a Soviet victory over the buried remains of Soviet and Estonian soldiers. At the end of the “Soviet Times” the Estonians wanted it removed and the remaining Soviet citizens of which there are thousands scattered throughout the former USSR, reacted violently to having their symbol removed. Does this remind anyone of the removal of Confederate flags in the Southern USA?
I saw this exhibit in the museum of art during the “Soviet Times.” Because nothing could glorify anyone but “the worker” and everyone lived in the same types of apartment blocks the artists could only express their creativity inside their spaces. Some wild art ensued especially Soviet Pop art which would’ve put Warhol to shame.
Since all of those horrible concrete buildings are still here some artists have used the 7 story blocks as canvasses and some really good murals have popped up all over the city. Other blocks have been turned into trendy spaces for crafts or design.
The last thing about those young women is that they are travellers and questioners. They are all fluent in English and they don’t speak Russian. So they are connected through technology and language to the outside world denied their parent’s generation.
