DATE=10/23/1999
TYPE=ON THE LINE
TITLE=ON THE LINE: THE BALTIC STATES
NUMBER=1-00789
EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY - 619-0037
CONTENT=
THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Anncr:  On the Line - a discussion of United 
States policy and contemporary issues.  This week, 
"The Baltic States and the Future of Europe." Here 
is your host, Robert Reilly.

Host:   Hello and welcome to On the Line. 
For nearly a decade, the Baltic countries of 
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been struggling 
to overcome the legacy of fifty years of Soviet 
occupation. They have made steady progress in 
developing market economies and democratic 
institutions. This has been especially true of 
Estonia, which was ranked in 1998 as one of the 
freest economies in the world by the Wall Street 
Journal-Heritage Foundation Index of Economic 
Freedom. Last year, the three Baltic nations 
signed a charter with the United States. Its goal 
is the integration of Estonia, Latvia and 
Lithuania into the European and transatlantic 
communities.

Joining me today to discuss the role of the Baltic 
countries and the future of Europe are two 
experts.  Lennart Meri is the president of Estonia 
and has served in that office since 1992. In 1990, 
he became foreign minister in the first non-
Communist government since 1940, when the Soviet 
Union occupied Estonia. And Paul Goble is 
communications director of Radio Free Europe/Radio 
Liberty and a specialist on the former Soviet 
republics and the Baltic countries.

Mr. President, welcome to the program. After fifty 
years of oppression under totalitarian, Soviet 
rule, within a few years, you are listed in this 
publication, which I just mentioned in the 
introduction, as having achieved one of the freest 
economies in the world. You tied with countries 
like Chile and Austria. The only other former 
Communist country that came anywhere near to your 
performance was the Czech Republic. How did you 
accomplish this in so short a period?

Meri:   I think that the democratic tradition in 
Estonia was one of the reasons. The second reason 
maybe was the proximity to Finland.  We were the 
only part of the former Soviet Union that had an 
eye behind the Iron Curtain, which meant that we 
were able to think and to react simultaneously 
with the Free World due to the Finnish TV, which 
was well received in the northern part of Estonia, 
so well that we even have a linguistic influence. 
But I am not very sure that this is the best 
possible explanation because we have a similar 
example in Germany. And I cannot say that East 
Germany is doing fine because she was able to look 
at the West German TV. So there must be some other 
explanation. I think that we must go back into 
history and understand that the knowledge of 
Estonia, a free independent Estonia, was held very 
deeply in the souls of my countrymen. 

Host:   Paul Goble, you keep touch with the former 
Soviet republics and the Baltic countries. What do 
you think accounts for this special success in 
Estonia?

Goble:  I think the President is right, that the 
commitment of the Estonian nation to restoring 
democracy and restoring a free market system is 
critical. But one of the things that pushed 
Estonia and gave it a special impetus to achieve 
the ranking it has, I believe, was a decision by 
the Russian government in early 1992 to say to 
Estonia, alone among what had been Soviet states, 
if you are going to get oil and gas from us, 
energy supplies, you are going to pay world 
prices. And the Estonian response was, if we have 
to pay world prices for oil and gas from the 
Russian Federation, we will buy oil and gas 
elsewhere.  And the consequence of that was that 
immediately the Estonian economy was thrown into a 
deep, deep recession, even depression, for some 
months. But at the end of that time, the Estonian 
people had reoriented their economy far more 
quickly away from Russia and the former Soviet 
republics to the West. It was not what was 
supposed to happen. It certainly taught Moscow a 
lesson because Russia did not do that to any of 
the other countries that had been part of the U-S-
S-R.

Host:   On the other hand, Mr. President, I 
remember visiting Estonia in 1990 and speaking not 
only with you as foreign minister at that time, 
but to your minister of economics and others. You 
all had a very clear idea of what you wanted to 
accomplish and how to do it. For instance, I was 
shown charts of the trade flows between Estonia 
and other countries before the occupation by the 
Soviet Union in 1940 to the Scandinavian countries 
and Germany. And one of your ministers at that 
time said, our intention is to replicate or 
reorient ourselves back to our natural audience in 
Europe.  Was that your intention and have you 
achieved that?

Meri:   Oh yes, definitely. It was not our 
intention just to help Mr. [Mikhail] Gorbachev to 
reform the totalitarian state. On the contrary, we 
definitely were there to rebuild the independence 
of the Estonian state. We had to continue where we 
were just forced to be at the end of the Soviet 
occupation, which was carried through the same day 
when Paris was invaded by the Nazis.  That is not 
a program in itself, but it gives you a certain 
orientation. And I must say that perestroika in 
itself was never used as a term which had a future 
vision for Estonia. It gave us just a very short 
time to reorient ourselves towards the pre-war 
Estonia.

Host:   As a matter of fact, your program was a 
radical one. You adopted a modified currency 
board. You set up a flat tax. You passed an 
amendment that required a balanced budget. You did 
a number of things that might be considered among 
certain circles radically free-market oriented. 
Those have worked?

Meri:   Yes, I am especially proud that we, in our 
financial policy, had the political will to go 
against the advice of the International Monetary 
Fund. 

Host:   Which is typically against currency 
boards?

Meri:   Yes. And it worked. We are proud that the 
Estonian currency has been a firm currency, pegged 
to the Deutsche mark. And so far, we have been 
able to build up the biggest banks in the eastern 
part of the Baltic Sea region. We have been 
successful also in investing in Latvia, Lithuania, 
and Ukraine. And what may be even more interesting 
for you, we tried and will try to help the 
Ukrainian government with our very young 
specialists, especially in how to reorganize the 
financial system.

Host:   So other countries are looking to you as a 
model? 

Meri:   Yes, definitely.

Host:   Since the Russian economic meltdown 
affected you quite adversely, as it must since you 
are right next to Russia, since then, the Estonian 
economy has recovered, has it not? We are seeing 
some signs of growth?

Meri:   Yes. We were close to Russia, which means 
we had our finger on her pulse and, unfortunately, 
the movement towards a real free-market economy in 
Russia was so slow that our business community 
felt some risk. The probability of making fast 
money in Russia was, perhaps for some Western 
investors, something that had an impact on them, 
but this was not the case in Estonia.

Host:   Speaking of Russia, let me get on to a 
question for both of you. I have met many members 
of the Russian Duma across the political spectrum, 
Communist party members, Yabloko, etcetera. 
Without exception, they express extreme concern 
and distress at the prospect of your joining NATO. 
To what extent might your potential membership in 
NATO create the very problem you wish to avoid 
with the security concerns you face? 

Meri:   I have tried to explain to my Russian 
colleagues that Estonia and the two other Baltic 
countries joining NATO will mean for Russia, first 
of all, that her western border will be a secure 
border where she will have no problems like she 
nowadays has in the south. I think that perhaps 
that is only half of the picture. I think that our 
joining NATO will also serve the best national 
interests of Russia, because, if we listen to 
those statements some extremist Russian parties 
have made during the last eight years, the aim of 
Russia is complete restoration of the frontiers of 
[Czar] Alexander the Second, which may include 
even Alaska. So we are on the other side of the 
barricade. You see, if such language were taken 
seriously as an expression of the national 
interest of Russia, it means that Russia will 
never recover from her very long imperial past. 
And that may be a major factor in the 
destabilization of a future Europe. 

Host:   Paul Goble, it is not just extremists, it 
is some of the most liberal elements within 
Russia, including in the Duma, who say, how would 
you feel if we brought a military alliance to your 
borders in the United States?  What is the purpose 
of this alliance? What would you say in response?

Goble:  I would first point out that most of the 
Russian objection to the inclusion of the Baltic 
countries, not only into NATO but into the 
European Union, has very little to do with NATO as 
an institution or the European Union as an 
institution. It has to do with the symbolism that 
these three countries, occupied by the Soviet 
Union, have made a successful turn in their 
direction. And it calls attention to the fact that 
the Russian Federation and others have not. It is 
very offensive when someone who was at the same 
level as you were suddenly does a great deal 
better. That is the first thing. The second thing 
is that NATO is evolving very quickly. And most of 
the people in Moscow are acting as if NATO is the 
same institution it was five or ten or fifteen 
years ago when it was directed at containing a 
Soviet Russian threat in Europe. The fact is that 
NATO is not that anymore.

Host:   In fact, it disturbs the Russians even 
more that NATO has gone into a place such as 
Kosovo with, indeed, some Estonian participation, 
I believe. And they are even more bothered by NATO 
today than they might have been before. 

Goble:  They are complaining about it, but one of 
the things that has happened, NATO has already 
expanded. We have already seen three new members. 
And what has been the practical Russian response, 
as opposed to the emotional verbal response? It 
has been to say, we want to negotiate certain 
arrangements because you have done that. 
Undoubtedly, when Estonia becomes a member of 
NATO, and I am confident that it will be within 
the next few years, that Russians will say, well, 
we need certain arrangements, we need certain 
guarantees, we need certain kinds of conversations 
about what that means to our security. There will 
be emotional words. It will be denounced all the 
way until it happens. And once it happens, you 
will discover that those emotional words will 
mostly disappear and the pragmatic people will 
say: how do we deal with it, how do we get 
something out of it? And I am sure that NATO will 
find a way of entering that conversation. 

Host:   But ultimately, President Meri, you would 
probably say that the security of your country 
rests more completely upon how this transformation 
in Russia is going to come out, whether Russia is 
going to successfully continue along the path of 
building democratic institutions. Would you agree 
with that?

Meri:   Not completely. I think that Estonia, as 
any sovereign country, must look first and 
foremost to herself as to how to solve her 
interior and foreign policy and security problems. 
But having said this, I would like to add that it 
will be in our interest, I am speaking now in the 
plural and mean also the United States, that 
Russia find the political will to overcome the 
difficulties which are enormous in Russia, without 
having any of those traditions Estonia has so far 
been building on, and that Russia find the 
political will to build a normal, open, civil 
society. 

Host:   I want to relate to you an anecdote from 
my visit to Estonia in 1990. I went to Tartu. A 
middle-aged woman there said to me one of the most 
chilling lines I have ever heard in my life. She 
said, "You who were born free will never 
understand us who were born slaves." My question 
is, how does a person who thinks they were born a 
slave restore their self-respect to the point that 
they can be a free person in a free society? I ask 
this question not only in respect to all your 
country has suffered, but in respect to what you 
hope to see in Russia. Paul Goble wrote a piece 
recently pointing out the startling fact that 
Russians today, when asked which human rights are 
most important to them, basically say free 
education and medical care, and only twenty-three 
percent say the right to property, and eight 
percent, the right to worship freely. To what 
extent have you spiritually recovered from the 
disaster of a half-century of totalitarianism?

Meri:   Faster than some of your intellectuals 
here in the United States. Let me point out that 
this old woman you met in Tartu was able to say 
those melancholy and pessimistic words only 
because she was herself very much free. Don't 
forget it. 

Host:   That is very well put. Is there anything 
you would like to say about the importance you 
place on the integration of Estonia into the 
Baltic region itself and then, of course, your 
accession to the European Union?

Meri:   It may be not very well known that the 
three Baltic states are somehow different, that 
Latvia for example, speaks a very different 
language, different from Estonian. Our language is 
closely related to the Finnish and the Hungarian 
languages. And that with a telescope, you perhaps 
will not feel the difference. With a microscope at 
home, we feel the differences. It means that we 
are different in our culture. We are not so 
different in our past, in our history, in our 
economics. And that has been, to a certain extent, 
a problem that the solidarity among the Baltic 
peoples was something very important in the past. 
It should be as important in present times and in 
the future. And I am deadly against a vision which 
has been used by the press very much, that Estonia 
was picked as the first to start the negotiations 
with the European Union, that Estonia has won the 
gold medal and that the next country to be invited 
is a loser because they got the silver medal. 
That's not my view and I am very happy that the 
European Commission has suggested that Latvia and 
Lithuania should be invited also. And in this 
context, I am very optimistic that if we are 
willing to learn from our past and from the 
mistakes we have made in the past, we will become 
the best Europeans, because we, more than the 
Poles, more than the East Germans, know what it 
means to be, for fifty years, subjugated to a 
totalitarian regime. Such words like freedom, 
equality and brotherhood have, even now, a meaning 
in this cynical consumer society in Estonia.

Host:   I'm afraid that's all the time we have 
this week. I'd like to thank our guests - Lennart 
Meri, the President of Estonia, and Paul Goble 
from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty - for joining 
me to discuss the Baltic states and the future of 
Europe. This is Robert Reilly for On the Line.

Anncr:  You've been listening to "On the Line" - a 
discussion of United States policies and 
contemporary issues. This is --------.






21-Oct-1999 07:39 AM EDT (21-Oct-1999 1139 UTC)
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Source: Voice of America
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