died. Then
they drafted Siim’s grandfather into the Red Army. A year later Nazi Germany
invaded the Soviet Union, marching through Estonia along the way. More
deportations followed. The neighbours got rounded up because they were Jews,
and they never came back.
Hans
took another swig, and held his breath. He knew his own family history, too. Hans’s
grandfather got grabbed by the Germans, not by the Red Army. They drafted him into
their very own Estonian legion to help them fight the Soviets. So both
grandfathers, Siim’s and Hans’s, without knowing each other, found themselves
fighting on opposing sides. Shooting at each other, presumably. Very likely
even, because when the fighting reached Estonia again, both sides put their
respective Estonians in the front line, telling them to go liberate their beloved
land from the vicious invaders.
Hans
breathed out slowly through his nose. At the end of the war Hans’s grandfather
became a prisoner of war, since he was found wearing a German uniform. The
Soviets put him on a cattle train and shipped him to their deadly labour camps.
They also grabbed Siim’s grandfather, a Soviet lieutenant by then, and put him
on a cattle train to Siberia, too. He was taken there along with many other victorious
Soviet soldiers. These soldiers had been to Western Europe, after all, in the
course of their push for Berlin. They had seen the living standards of workers
in even the poorest capitalist countries, which even in wartime could not possibly
have corresponded to what they’d been told by the Soviet government all their
lives. And Estonians like Siim’s grandfather were deemed unreliable Soviet
citizens anyway. So they went into the Gulag. Both grandfathers survived the
camps, and both returned to Estonia, which was again under firm Soviet control.
A freshly liberated constituent part of the Soviet Union. Estonian partisan
groups called the forest brothers held out in the woods for a few years, but
theirs had been a lost cause from the start. Estonia would remain Soviet for
another forty years.
Siim
and Hans both knew most of their respective stories from aunts or uncles, or
from neighbours. Hans’s grandfather had died before he was born anyway. But
even if he hadn’t, the grandfathers had kept their mouths firmly shut. Old
Estonians were not the most talkative bunch on the best of days, but when it
came to the war, many of them fell even more silent than they already were.
‘We
got into the European Union at a fortunate moment,’ Hans said quietly. ‘And into
NATO as well, which is maybe even more important. When Russia was behaving like
a more or less normal country.’
‘Maybe
that wasn’t normal. Maybe the nineties were abnormal, and now they’re back to
normal again.’ Siim put his glass down. ‘Some normal, though. Do they never
wonder why no normal country wants to be friends with them voluntarily? It’s
all Irans and Syrias and North Koreas.’
In
fact Hans had seen it with several Russians he knew personally. Neighbours, Russian
classmates at school and their parents. His own maternal grandmother, too. She
had married his other grandfather in the fifties and then lived all her life in
Estonia, but she was originally from Russia, making Hans a quarter Russian. The
logic of their reasoning was always more or less the same. The Russian national
spirit seemed to harbour an ambivalent but real desire to be a bit like
America. There was a conviction that securing national borders and creating a
safe geostrategic space was a normal and legitimate thing for a country to do,
just like America did. America bullied everybody, meddled in other countries, toppled
governments, sold weapons to its clients, cited human rights only when it
suited its interests, pushed around its impotent so-called allies in Europe,
and it lied to them and it spied and it hacked into their servers and it read
their e-mails. And in Russia there was a deep frustration about how the
Americans
they drafted Siim’s grandfather into the Red Army. A year later Nazi Germany
invaded the Soviet Union, marching through Estonia along the way. More
deportations followed. The neighbours got rounded up because they were Jews,
and they never came back.
Hans
took another swig, and held his breath. He knew his own family history, too. Hans’s
grandfather got grabbed by the Germans, not by the Red Army. They drafted him into
their very own Estonian legion to help them fight the Soviets. So both
grandfathers, Siim’s and Hans’s, without knowing each other, found themselves
fighting on opposing sides. Shooting at each other, presumably. Very likely
even, because when the fighting reached Estonia again, both sides put their
respective Estonians in the front line, telling them to go liberate their beloved
land from the vicious invaders.
Hans
breathed out slowly through his nose. At the end of the war Hans’s grandfather
became a prisoner of war, since he was found wearing a German uniform. The
Soviets put him on a cattle train and shipped him to their deadly labour camps.
They also grabbed Siim’s grandfather, a Soviet lieutenant by then, and put him
on a cattle train to Siberia, too. He was taken there along with many other victorious
Soviet soldiers. These soldiers had been to Western Europe, after all, in the
course of their push for Berlin. They had seen the living standards of workers
in even the poorest capitalist countries, which even in wartime could not possibly
have corresponded to what they’d been told by the Soviet government all their
lives. And Estonians like Siim’s grandfather were deemed unreliable Soviet
citizens anyway. So they went into the Gulag. Both grandfathers survived the
camps, and both returned to Estonia, which was again under firm Soviet control.
A freshly liberated constituent part of the Soviet Union. Estonian partisan
groups called the forest brothers held out in the woods for a few years, but
theirs had been a lost cause from the start. Estonia would remain Soviet for
another forty years.
Siim
and Hans both knew most of their respective stories from aunts or uncles, or
from neighbours. Hans’s grandfather had died before he was born anyway. But
even if he hadn’t, the grandfathers had kept their mouths firmly shut. Old
Estonians were not the most talkative bunch on the best of days, but when it
came to the war, many of them fell even more silent than they already were.
‘We
got into the European Union at a fortunate moment,’ Hans said quietly. ‘And into
NATO as well, which is maybe even more important. When Russia was behaving like
a more or less normal country.’
‘Maybe
that wasn’t normal. Maybe the nineties were abnormal, and now they’re back to
normal again.’ Siim put his glass down. ‘Some normal, though. Do they never
wonder why no normal country wants to be friends with them voluntarily? It’s
all Irans and Syrias and North Koreas.’
In
fact Hans had seen it with several Russians he knew personally. Neighbours, Russian
classmates at school and their parents. His own maternal grandmother, too. She
had married his other grandfather in the fifties and then lived all her life in
Estonia, but she was originally from Russia, making Hans a quarter Russian. The
logic of their reasoning was always more or less the same. The Russian national
spirit seemed to harbour an ambivalent but real desire to be a bit like
America. There was a conviction that securing national borders and creating a
safe geostrategic space was a normal and legitimate thing for a country to do,
just like America did. America bullied everybody, meddled in other countries, toppled
governments, sold weapons to its clients, cited human rights only when it
suited its interests, pushed around its impotent so-called allies in Europe,
and it lied to them and it spied and it hacked into their servers and it read
their e-mails. And in Russia there was a deep frustration about how the
Americans
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