[I]n the Baltics, which suffered German and Soviet occupations, the historical concepts generally accepted throughout Europe and the rest of the world are turned topsy turvy, with the Nazis being regarded as the by-far lesser of the two evils and the Soviets considered the arch-villains.

"[D]uring the first Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1941, Estonia lost about 48,000 people. The three years of German occupation resulted in the death of about 32,000 citizens of various nationalities, including 929 Jews and 243 Gypsies who were either killed in concentration camps or in battle. During the second Soviet occupation, which lasted from 1944 to 1994, Estonia lost nearly 121,000 people. In all, the country lost about 180,000 people, or nearly 18 percent of the population." To break the statistics down: In the space of a year and a half, the Soviet Union--in the 1940-1941 occupation--managed to kill half again as many Estonians as in three years of Nazi occupation. In the second occupation, more than four times as many Estonians died under Soviet rule--mainly in the Stalinist era, when the Soviet Union was concerned with eliminating all possible opposition to its rule in its newly annexed territories.

The annual SS veterans reunion is only the tip of the iceberg of sympathy for these men who are considered fighters for Estonian independence even though the victory they sought to achieve was for Nazi Germany, which had no intention of granting them sovereignty. Thus all sorts of souvenirs of the unit are widely available for purchase, its outstanding soldiers are lauded as local heroes and their exploits are memorialized in an impressive album readily available which emphasizes "their selfless courage against communism and for the restoration of Estonian independence," but which begrudgingly admits only in passing that they "had to wear a German uniform to do so" (The Estonian Legion in Words and Pictures, Tallinn, 2008, coedited by none other than former [twice] Estonian prime minister Mart Laar).

DURING MY visit, I encountered several additional examples of the Estonians' reversal of conventional historical wisdom about World War II. The most famous, and the incident which sparked violent riots in Tallinn in the spring of 2007, was the removal of a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers who liberated the country from the yoke of the Nazi occupation, from its central location in the capital to a military cemetery on the outskirts of the city.

Besides grievously insulting the large Russian minority which views the Soviet troops as heroes who achieved a vital victory in the fight against Nazism, the removal of the statue was also a painful blow to the Estonian Jewish community, whose annihilation in 1941 was orchestrated by the Nazis and their Estonian collaborators. Having visited both the monument's original location opposite the national library and its new site, it is clear that Estonians prefer not be reminded that their current narrative is a distortion of the historical events of World War II.

Today [the 22nd of August] will be marked in Estonia as a day of remembrance for the victims of totalitarian regimes. This ostensibly innocuous initiative to commemorate Nazi and communist victims together is actually just a first step towards obtaining official recognition that communism and Nazism were equally evil, a major step toward undermining the current status of the Shoah as a unique tragedy and one which will help deflect attention and criticism from the Estonians' distortion of history and failure to face their Holocaust past. (They have since independence, failed to prosecute a single Estonian Holocaust perpetrator, while bringing to trial numerous communist criminals.)

The two nations share a similar culture, history, heritage and language. As The Economist has noted, "Tallinn is probably the only foreign city in the world where a poetry reading in Finnish can attract a crowd." The 85-kilometre distance between Tallinn and Helsinki served as another link, as tourism between the two kindred peoples continue to grow. For example, the first international flight by Finnair in the 1920s was made to Estonia. These days, millions of Finns visit Estonia annually; albeit, most are "alcohol" tourists.

[. . .]

Even in strife, however, relations were strong. Many Finns fought with the Estonian resistance, and Estonians fought with the Finns against the Soviets. But the Cold War years reaped financial rewards for Finland as an economic conduit between the two spheres, and the economic difference between the two cousins widened drastically. By 1991 and Estonia's restoration of independence, Estonia was dramatically poorer than Finland -- many Estonians remember that, in 1939, Estonia was richer than Finland and on par with other Scandinavian states.

A plan for the development of Tallinn until 2025, approved by the city authorities last week, provides for the merger of the two capitals into an entity dubbed Talsinki. Such entities already exist and one of them is a merger between Danish Copenhagen and Swedish Malme.

A more efficient transport system is expected to facilitate the implementation of this plan. Estonian experts have proposing linking the two cities, located 80 kilometers from one another, with an underwater tunnel instead of the current ferry line.

Helsinki and Tallinn, or Helsinki/Tallinn, could be described as a twin-city in a verge of becoming a bipolarcity. Starting from the fact that Helsinki was founded to become a rival to Tallinn, their development could be imagined to have happened in a bipolar manner, in opposition to the counter part’s development. This would be, however, contrary to the current interpretation of the history, according to which the fate of these cities has been moved along with the kingdoms, empires and power regimes to which they belonged to from time to time. That is to say: polarity was not between the two cities but between larger entities.

We are about to enter new phase in the history: Helsinki and Tallinn are becoming part of the common European integration. They will both parts of the union, sharing a large amount of common laws, common parliament, partly common foreign affairs etc. Unlike the previous times the two cities belonged to the same ruling systems, there is no remote capital to which all the roads end and all the money is collected. At least in principle we live in a de- or
multi-centralised world consisting of complex networks between hubs of different size.

From the 1990s onwards the relations between and within urban regions of Helsinki and Tallinn have enormously intensified. The integration of Estonia in the EU facilitates the networking. However, the gradual adjustment of cost differences between Tallinn and Helsinki reduce the current bazaar-economy and relocation of enterprises. In the future, the extreme possibilities for common urban region are progressive Talsinki or regressive Hellinn. These have substantially different impacts on the spatial development of urban regions and on the inhabitants living in-between spaces of flows and space of places. Nevertheless, transparent governance is an urgent necessity to create a common vision for the urban region(s).

Talsinki 2020 is a setting for mutual respect of differences between and within the urban region of Tallinn and Helsinki. The conceptual idea of this common progressive urban region is continuous learning, collective open participation with equal voice and transparent governance. Mistakes of the past in built environment are corrected through careful dismantling and recycling of unwanted infrastructure. Tacit knowledge and social capital are enhanced in cross-border and trans-national grass-root projects voluntarily subsidised by 10% enterprise tax in the urban region. Quality time, work, consumption and environment are valued when people work on average three days per week. A particular institution is the International Talsinki Open University (INTO) with computer-aided synchronous translation of activities into Finnish, Estonian, Swedish, Russian, English and Chinese. The university is well-known by the development and design of intelligent dis/connectable mobile devices and the “fourth way” capitalist economy based on regional production-consumption chains, identity and empowerment.

Hellinn 2020 is a setting for hard-core competitive global capitalism in which citizens are individual clients responsible themselves of their own well-being. The roll-out phase of neoliberalisation converted Hellinn into a market-led commodity consisted of purified consumptory space. The uncontrollable supra-local transformations creatively destruct political-economic space in multiple geographical scales. The political-economic elites of Hellinn promote aggressively economic restructuring and rejuvenation of the urban region based on marketisation, commodification and hyperexploitation of workers. The utopia of unlimited exploitation has led into geographically uneven, socially regressive and politically volatile trajectories that strangulate the urban region.

• Centauri Dreams speculates about the implications for SETI if most civilizations don't experience breakneck growth indefinitely but instead collapse, and highlights the discovery of a planet orbiting a star in the Andromeda Galaxy. (Yes, "!" to that second item.)


• Crooked Timber's John Quiggin argues that the growing prominence of pro-piracy groups, in Europe and elsewhere, might trigger new clashes over the topic of strong intellectual property rights.


• Over at Demography Matters, Aslak examines the demographics behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with fertility rates and migration rates and their implications and all.


• Edward Lucas examines some of the main differences between Western and Soviet views of the Second World War.


• Itching in Eestimaa examines Lithuania from the standpoint of an Estonian traveller.


• Language Hat links to a report in Le monde diplomatique on the strength of the reading public of the Malayalam language, spoken in Kerala.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money links to an argument suggesting that perhaps North Korea doesn't have all of Seoul within easy range of its artillery.


• At the Pagan Prattle, feorag links to a surprising number of religious-themed crochet projects.


• Noel Maurer points out that members of American ethnic minority groups who excel need not have assimilated.


• Strange Maps reproduces a Salazar-era map showing that Portugal was not a small country in the European context by superimposing its empire over a map of the European continent.


• Window on Eurasia reports on the growing discontent of Crimean Tatars with a Ukrainian government that hasn't been of much help in restoring their property rights and giving them secure tenure.

• First comes Itching for Eestimaa, a blog by an American living in Estonia, the world's only post-Communist Nordic country.


• Next comes the group blog Making Light, a broadly libertarian and science fiction-oriented blog still shepherded by Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, among other posters.


• Finally, Space and Culture, a blog examining social spaces that's associated with the academic journal of the same name.

• Amused Cynicism's Phil Hunt links to more examples of anti-Obama craziness.


• Matthew Hayles drops by some Tornoto's participants in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to see why a representative sample are doing it.


• Edward Hugh raises the question of where, exactly, all the money necessary for bailouts of companies and countries is going to come from.


• Back in July, Centauri Dreams reported that, in the very close binary star system of Alpha Centauri, gravitational processes made it very unlikely for an Earth-type world to form at a proper, Earth-like distance from the large Sun-like A component. Now the same has been confirmed to be true about Alpha Centauri B. Sigh.


• Daniel Drezner suggests that conserative voters for Obama vote for Obama because he's prudent.


• Edward Lucas writes about an ongoing Estonian spy scandal.


• Far Outliers blogs about the Indian diasporas of the 19th century and afterwards.


• Gideon Rachman suggests that Medvedev runs a risk of challenging the Obama administration in the ongoing dispute over the deployment of anti-missile systems to Poland.


• Responding to the disappointing news on Proposition 8 on same-sex marriage in California, Joe. My. God quotes one major community leader who says, correctly, that this only delays things, that it doesn't alter the trajectory towards marriage equality.


• Thie rather implausible map of an alternate-historical Italy that--so the author says--remains fascist and breaks from Nazi Germany and manages to keep its various European conquests (!) is worth viewing nonetheless. How would you create an Italy with those borders?

• Daniel Drezner reports that Sarah Palin seems to know nothing about economics.


• Edward Lucas writes about how, post-Georgia, the Baltic States should avoid panicking quite so much--they aren't going to be abandoned.


• Over at Far Outliers, one blogger's reaction to the Finnish president's recent suggestion that the Estonians were hypersensitive to Russia is to talk about the self-Finlandization and unwillingness to challenge Russia that he detected among many Finns in the latter half of the Cold.


• A Fistful of Euros lets us know that Montenegro's new top-level domain is .me. Expect a .tv- or .to-style influx of funds to coming into that Balkan republic, I suppose.


• Junk mail, Tim Harford the Underground Economist lets us know, actually may not just be junk but actually can play a major role in political campaigns.

• Muddling Down sees continued government chaos and economic decline, as the government proves itself incapable of either promoting economic growth or providing things like a social safety net or a non-degraded physical environment. In this environment, political radicals become popular, private businesses gradually emancipate themselves from a weak government, and relative freedom prevails.


• The Two Headed Eagle sees a growing consolidation of state on law-and-order principles, using the excuse that crime among with ethnic minorities poses a serious threat. A new centralized and centrist government develops, with an awkward and half-hearted transition to a modern capitalist eocnomy with balance. During this period, confrontations are avoided with Russia's neighbours, and the foundations for a more liberal social order are laid down


• The Time of Troubles scenario witnesses a radical weakening of the central goverment, with different republics and regional federations gaining power. Eventually, nationalist reaction prompts a reconsolidation of Russia.


• The Russian Bear scenario sees a military coup and constitution of a militantly nationalist and authoritarian government that prompts international severance of economic relations with West. The regime eventually transforms into someething like the Two Headed Eagle, but at the expense of Russia's trajectories.


• The Chudo scenarios sees a Russian economic miracle, as by 2000 the fear of mass unemployment and collapse of in the old economy is happily overcome by the investment of private capital--under friendlier regulations--in the economy and the growth of an export economy. Towards the end of thie book's period, the Russian economy starts to grow at 9% per annum, thanks to strength of high-tech industry and applied science along with growing consumer demand.

• In one of their wildcard scenarios, the authors are correct in estimating the scope of Russia's HIV/AIDS epidemic orrectly estimates the general scope of the disease (a million HIV-positives by 2010 and three hundred thousand dead) but substantially overestimate the impact of the virus on Russi society. There are, so far as I can tell, no panics, no masssacres of ethnic minorities or gastarbeiter, nothing equivalent to (say) the stigmatization of Haitians in the 1980s.


• Similarly, the authors predict both problems in bilateral Russian-Ukrainian tensions and within Ukraine between Ukrainophone and Russophone
  areas. Orange revolution, anyone? The authors also seem to underestimate the extent to which a common Ukrainian identity exists among both language groups. Again, this is a fair misjudgement of the situation given the appearance of Ukraine's fragility.

• The decision of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to use German in her upcoming address to the Israeli Knesset has angered many Israelis who don't want the language of the Nazis used in their natinal parliament.


• A letter-writer to the Jamaica Gleaner is critical of the idea of identifying Jamaican Patois as a language separate from English on the grounds that Jamaican speech is defined by its intimate relationship to the English language.


• Variety reports that the Ukrainian government is excluding the import of films with Russian dubbing and Ukrainian subtitles, perhaps partly as an effort to promote the use of Ukrainian in movies and create a Ukrainian dubbing industry. This creates obvious conflicts for the half of the Ukrainian population that uses Russian as its main language.


• AFP reports that English is by far the most popular foreign language selected by students in Estonia, far outpacing Russian and German never mind the distant fourth of French. Many Estonians are worried that without more knowledge of other foreign languages, Estonia could be marginalized in Europe.

Activists of pro-Kremlin Nashi movement of youth are picketing the Moscow office of European Commission, Echo Moskvy reported. The activists protest against refusal to grant Schengen visas to some of them “with no reasons given.”

The pro-Kremlin activists blame the refusal on Estonia that joined the Schengen zone early in 2008 and provided its lists of persona non grata to other member states. Some Nashis are in those lists, of course. They were added there for protesting against moving the Monument to Soviet Soldier from downtown Tallinn.

Mariana Skvortsova was refused Finnish visa January 8. Another activist, Konstantin Goloskokov is in a prison in Lithuania, facing the sentence of up to two years. Unable to get a visa to Estonia, Goloskokov attempted to reach Tallinn illegally, via the neighboring states, but was detained en route.

In the next move, Nashi said, they would launch “a campaign to restore the rights of dozens of young Russians,” who could fall victims to “the legal outrage” of united Europe.

This year’s festival of national cultures of the Finnish-Ugric peoples promises to be one of the largest in the event’s history. For the first time in the history of this annual event organized by the Finno-Ugric world the Russian President Vladimir Putin will be taking part. At previous events he sent representatives who read words of greeting from the head of the Russian state.

Now, however, Putin intends not only to hold a three-way Russian-Hungarian-Finnish meeting with the participation of Finnish president Tarja Halonen and the Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany. He also intends to attend one of the cultural exhibitions being held in Saransk as part of the event.

Putin’s interest in the festival in Mordovia is no coincidence. Over half the Finno-Ugric peoples live in Russia, with a total world population of this ethnic group of around 20 million. The group includes Hungarians, Veps, Votes, Izhorians, Karelians, Kvens, Komi, Komi-Permyaks, Livonians, Mansi, Mari, Moksha, Nenets, Sammi, Selkups, Udmurts, Finns, Finno-Ingermanlands, Khanty, Erzyas and Estonians.

In Russia, the Finno-Ugrics are the third major component of the Russian people, along with ethnic Russians and Tartars. According to some estimates, half of the Russians are related to Finno-Ugrics. Members of this ethnic group reside in 12 regions in Russia and are the native inhabitants of the Volga and the Urals, Karelia and the Kola Peninsula.

Finno-Ugric_languages
Uploaded by rfmcdpei, copied from Wikipedia

Regarding the type of culture, Estonians, Finns and Hungarians are typical Europeans, while the culture of Volga-Finnic, Permian and minor Balto-Finnic peoples is agrarian, since due to several historic, political and cultural reasons they have had no opportunity to create their own urban culture. Throughout the centuries the culture of the Khants, Mansis and Samoyeds, which has based on hunting, fishing and reindeer raising, has adapted itself to the life under extreme Siberian conditions, nevertheless, it is most vulnerable to the European industrial culture.

As to their religion, Estonians, Finns and Western Lapps are Lutheran, whereas Hungarians are mostly Catholic (Calvinists and Lutherans can also be found). Finno-Ugrians living in the European part of Russia are mostly Orthodox, but the Udmurt and Mari people have preserved the ancient nature religion (i.e. animism). The Finno-Ugrians in Siberia as well as the Samoyeds are shamanists.

The Uralic peoples differ in their political fate and status. Hungarians have a thousand-year-long independent state. Finland with its own Parliament and currency was autonomous in the czarist Russia already. Estonians gained their independence only in 1918. After World War II, Estonians and Hungarians were part of the so-called socialist sphere, whereas Finland succeeded in maintaining its market economy and democracy.

• At Alpha Sources, Claus Vistesen examines immigration trends in Spain, Italy, and Germany. Noting that Spain's heavy immigration levels coincides with strong growth, he wonders what will happen to an Italy with falling levels of immigration and a Germany on the verge of becoming a country of net emigration.


• Bonoboland's Edward Hugh's points out that Brazil's relatively high rate of population growth has cancelled out recent employment growth.


• Centauri Dreams responds to Stross' critique of space expansionism (1, 2).


• Joel at Far Outliers quotes at length from the book Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class, describing the general success of African-Americans in Atlanta.


• Peter at GNXP speculates about the biological origins of homosexuality.


• Joe.My.God mentions how, at Jerusalem's recent Pride march., hundreds of Haredi Jews were waiting to ambush the marchers with a variety of materials including eggs, human excrement, and at least one bomb.


• Peteris Cedrins at Marginalia marks the anniversary of the Battle of Cesis, a joint Estonian-Latvian victory over Baltic-German forces in 1919 that set the stage for the emergence of those two countries. History, as Cedrins notes, is rarely mononational.


• Normblog's Norman Geras critiques David Rieff's criticism of liberal interventionism as a mask for imperialism. Me, while I think that the right to intervene is a good idea, I also think the right can be used as an excuse for permitting mayhem and massacre in the guise of liberation, for which, see Iraq.


• Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty tackles the gay panic defense.


• J. Otto Pohl wonders whether Georgia will let the Meskhetian Turks, deported by Stalin, returns to their homeland. I suspect not: The deportation happened too long ago and not enough people in Georgia support it.

• Otto Spijkers at 1948 explores the way in which the candidates in the recent Fnench election used the terms "globalisation" and "mondialisation" in ways that suggested that these two words weren't synonyms of the same phenomenon.


• Alpha Sources' Claus Vistesen links to a contrarian analysis of his about the French economy, arguing that compared to many of its Eurozone neighbours France has what is in fact a relatively strong economy with good fundamentals.


• Aziz Poonwalla at City of Brass links to and comments upon an interesting article regarding conversions to Shi'ite Islam in Sunni-majority Syria.


• Joe.My.God touches upon the fallout of the failed relationship of Lord Browne (formerly of British Petroleum) and Canadian Jeff Chevalier, the whole sad story demonstrating that adequate amounts of palimony and a clean breakup are good things to have in a failing relationship regardless of sexual orientation.


• Bert Archer wonders why the press has such an adversarial relationship with authorities, arguably more so than in the not-too-distant past.
  
• Diane Duane reviews one of her favourite cafe/restaurants, Le Cirio in Brussels.


• Otto Pohl commemorates the 63rd anniversary of the beginning of the Soviet ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Tatars from their homeland.


• Edward Lucas' blog and Peteris Cedrins' Marginalia both have extensive, accurate coverage of the recent controversy surrounding Estonia's removal of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn from its former position of prominence in the Estonian capital.


• feorag at the Pagan Prattle links to news reports of a Satanic-conspiracy mania in an Italian kindergarten, twenty years after the North American wave.