![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe excellent website of the Estonian National Museum hosts ethnologist Marika Mikkor's essay "Free Lunches, or Why I Do Not Want to Go to the Caucasus Any More", explaining the difficulties arising from her two decades of study among the ethnic Estonians of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Mikkor describes the origin of this community in her online paper "Funeral Customs of Caucasian Estonians".
In "Free Lunches," Mikkor complains that the Estonian government did little to facilitate the immigration of ethnic Estonian refugees displaced in the 1990s by the conflicts in the South Caucasus, particularly by the Abkhazian war of independence. This she traces in part to hostile stereotypes of "Eastern" Estonians formed during the Soviet occupation.
Although the post-Soviet Estonian government has adopted an active progam of cultural and economic aid to the Estonian diaspora, Hill Kulu's unpublished paper "Government Policy toward the Estonian Diaspora in the Commonwealth of Independent States" (PDF format) makes it clear that Estonia has fallen short of adopting a particularly effective set of policies directed towards the Eastern Estonians, whether one talks about effectively supporting the cultural or educational activities of Estonian minorities or of adopting (like Germany or Finland) immigration policies favouring the immigration of co-ethnics. Kulu attributes this to the reality that even as the post-Soviet Estonian nation-state is still forming, the sense of ethnic identity felt by the Eastern Estonians is weakening. A third factor--the poverty of Estonia relative to Germany or Finland, and the consequently weaker economic pull of Estonia upon potential migrants--could be added to this list.
Of the Estonian villages of Caucasia the village of Estonia was founded in 1882 by the Estonians from the province (guberniya) of Samara, who had left Estonia in the 1850-1860s. The villages of Salme and Sulevi were founded in 1884 and 1885, respectively, by the peasants of Harjumaa, the village of Punase-Lageda was founded in 1886 by Estonians from the North-Caucasian settlement of Esto-Haginsky, who had left Estonia in the 1870s *1 (Võime 1980, 16-18, 21; Võime 1974, 120, 121). In the second half of the past century, in the conditions of arising capitalism, the first settlers of the villages were peasants whose resettlement was favoured by the tsarist government. In addition to the first settlers, new emigrants kept coming both from different regions of Estonia and from other Estonian settlements in Russia. At the same time, there were also leavers. Within the boundaries of one village there lived, side by side, people from different parishes and counties. Parochial belonging of Estonian settlers would be a separate topic of research. For example, in the village of Sulevi descendants of the peasants from Kuusalu and Rõuge parishes married each other.
Settlements were founded as a result of Russian-Turkish wars in the 1860-70s on the lands abandoned by Abkhazian and Circassian people (Chursin 1956, 194). On the arrival of Estonians the only signs witnessing the one-time presence of the natives who had been killed off or fled to Turkey, were fruit trees running wild and village lanes overgrowing with weeds. The Czarist government populated the conquered lands with Orthodox refugees of the Russian-Turkish wars: Bulgarians, Moldovians, Greeks and Armenians, who came from Turkey and its spheres of influence (Volkova 1978, 20, 15; Roos 1992, 73-78) and Lutheran economic fugitives: Estonians, Latvians and Germans. Next to the Estonians in Punase-Lageda was a Greek village, the villages of Salme and Sulevi ad joined to Moldovian and Armenian villages, the village of Estonia to Armenian and Bulgarian villages, Ülem-Linda (Upper Linda) to Latvian, German and Greek villages. All these nations were land-tillers.
In "Free Lunches," Mikkor complains that the Estonian government did little to facilitate the immigration of ethnic Estonian refugees displaced in the 1990s by the conflicts in the South Caucasus, particularly by the Abkhazian war of independence. This she traces in part to hostile stereotypes of "Eastern" Estonians formed during the Soviet occupation.
Due to the fact that after World War II, the attitude towards the so-called Eastern Estonians had been relatively unfavourable in Estonia, and such an attitude was still prevailing in the 1980s--1990s, the Caucasian Estonians who had arrived here (in Estonia) felt insecure. This situation is explainable with the policy of the Communist Party in the 1940s, when communist-orientated fellow nationals were brought to Estonia from the east, so as to teach 'new life'. In addition, red historians had depicted the history of Caucasian Estonians as communistic to such an extent that several scientists asked from me, including the geographer Ott Kurs, whether the Caucasian Estonians were really as "red" as they were described by the historian Lembit Võime and the writer Kalju Saaber. In one TV programme, the historian Lembit Võime treated Caucasian Estonians as somewhat irresponsible persons who should be placed under quarantine before letting them into society.
Although the post-Soviet Estonian government has adopted an active progam of cultural and economic aid to the Estonian diaspora, Hill Kulu's unpublished paper "Government Policy toward the Estonian Diaspora in the Commonwealth of Independent States" (PDF format) makes it clear that Estonia has fallen short of adopting a particularly effective set of policies directed towards the Eastern Estonians, whether one talks about effectively supporting the cultural or educational activities of Estonian minorities or of adopting (like Germany or Finland) immigration policies favouring the immigration of co-ethnics. Kulu attributes this to the reality that even as the post-Soviet Estonian nation-state is still forming, the sense of ethnic identity felt by the Eastern Estonians is weakening. A third factor--the poverty of Estonia relative to Germany or Finland, and the consequently weaker economic pull of Estonia upon potential migrants--could be added to this list.
