Polarisation is worrying for experts, but Russian minorities are not
The early-afternoon talk ‘Divided we fall, united we stand: is polarisation of societies undermining the security of the Baltic States?’ featured a panel of university academics with an interest in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. They discussed how the liberal world order seems, according to some people, to be collapsing, and what might replace it.

Dr. Martins Kaprans, from the University of Latvia, who is also an Adviser to the Latvian Ministry of Culture, said of his own country and its large Russian-speaking community, “The Russophone community in Latvia is becoming more differentiated… There is a clear generation gap in the Russian-speaking community, but also socio-economic. Pro-Kremlin views are still heard very strongly, but there is no truly organised group, so the Kremlin itself finds it very hard to [get traction] among them. The idea of being Latvian is also very strong among the Russian-speakers, and this is one reason why the Russian-speaking community does not pose a threat. Support for some geopolitical claims is still a problem, the in terms of polarisation, it doesn’t have the potential to be antagonistic.” He added that the increased popularity of the KPV.lv party, who have had a late run in the polls as we approach the parliamentary elections, is surprising people.

Dr. Anu Realo, from the University of Warwick and Tartu University, who has been studying social change in Estonia, added, “Estonians and Russian-speakers seem to live in parallel worlds, We don’t seem to have problems, but we don’t really see each other, and that is an issue.”

Continuing, she said, “we don’t like to think of ourselves as a class-based society, but you can see a divide in terms of education and other areas. Maybe it’s not a threat, but I don’t really want to live in a country that allows that [kind of social divide] to develop [without addressing it].”

Kaprans, talking about the potential fortunes in the upcoming elections of Latvia’s Russian Union (now rebranded as simply Union) Party, said, “The political landscape is changing. They have historically been seen as pro-Russian, but they’re doing their best to remodel themselves as social-democratic. How successfully? Not very, according to the polls so far.”

Progressive politics are hard to adopt, and harder to stick to, in the Baltic region
In the same discussion, Dr. Kestutis Girnius, of Vilnius University, had scathing words for his country’s politicians. “It’s not a big stretch to say that government in Lithuania has been incredibly selfish. Lithuania has been run by Social Democrats for 12 years. In that time, not a single progressive thing has been done. They are saving the salaries of the rich and having less to distribute. Whatever the IMF says, Lithuania does, unless the IMF asks for a real-estate or automobile tax, in which case they are just those strangers from Geneva.” Realo added, on Estonia, “there’s still this idea that is you work hard, then you can be successful and look after your family, and what happens in the wider society is not really your concern.”

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s going
The discussion ‘Civil society in Europe: why, who, and how should they be mobilised?’ looked at the question of how important civic activism is in shaping a country’s politics, particularly focusing on the swing towards authoritarianism of countries such as Hungary and Poland, and the general rise of political strongmen around the world. “Democracy has suicidal tendencies,” said Jakub Wygnansky, a Polish sociologist and activist. “Maybe history is moving in circles. Madeleine Albright [the Clinton Administration’s Secretary of State] wrote recently, ‘every century needs its fascism.’ To know the value of democacy, sometimes you need the risk of losing it. We see that politics is cyclical. We thought that institutions would be enough to ensure democracy flourished, but now we see that we need actions too.” He later gave the talk a slogan, “remember nothing depends on you, but act like everything does.”

Andre Wilkens, the German CEO of Offene Gesellschaft, cited the example of his late friend Martin Roth, who announced he would quit “the best job in the world,” as Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, at the end of 2017, due to the changes after Brexit. Wilkens told the audience Roth had said, “if something happens to change the world for the worse, what will I tell people in the future that I did?” “He said, ‘what should I tell my children? That while all this was happening, I put on some exhibitions?'” In answer to the question of what ordinary people can do if they want to hold off the tide of authoritarianism, Wilkens told us, “hold a meeting, to promote an open society. We all have a table and chairs. Then, if you start with something small, you might find that things go to the next level, and you might find yourself doing things you’ve never done before.”

Sometimes, the simple things are all that matters
Local politics can, on occasion, seem concerned about comparative trifles, but one issue that angered a sizeable group of people was the raising of alcohol taxes by the current government in 2017. The result was the ‘Your taxes are driving to Latvia’ campaign, begun, according to Sigrid Solnik of the Estonian Roundtable for Development Cooperation, as a campaign on Facebook between friends, that became a trip to Latvia for 500 people, on their day off on Estonian Independence Day 2018, to demonstrate on social media their distaste for the policy.

Narva is next!
In a discussion about the importance of the European Capital of Culture title, for which Estonian cities and towns Narva, Tartu, and Kuressaare are bidding, the co-ordinator of the Narva campaign, Helen Sildna, as this link shows, gave a compelling case for the city in east Estonia, which has a majority population of Russian-speakers.

In the Baltic region, people save rather than spend
The discussion ‘Who is richest? The financial portrait of the Baltics’ focused on the ways that Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians bank, and the nations’ view of money. The panel felt, anecdotally, that Baltic people as a whole were more likely to save for a long period of time than were, for example, Swedes, and the reason is partly due to the difference in the financial circumstances of the average working person in the Baltic and Nordic regions. Some people, panel members said, have even commented that Estonians deposit too much in the bank without using it.

“If you lose a job in Estonia, the social security system is not overly generous, so people need a big deposit for that reason. It’s the opposite in Sweden, where social security is more generous,” explained Kristjan Taimla, Director, Investment Funds at Swedbank. Perhaps another contributor to this is the relatively laissez-faire approach to employment law in Estonia, with job security lower than in Sweden, and protections so much less.

In any case, added Taimla, “the issue is not too much deposit, it’s that people start to save too late.” Pointing again to Sweden, he said that in his opinion it was normal for Swedish citizens to begin saving money for the future, in a deposit account, in their thirties. In Estonia, he said, “it’s more like [aged] 50 when they start doing that.” This, he continued, was because of the far lower average salary in Estonia.

Lack of capital might be stunting companies’ growth
On the topic of whether Baltic companies will ever have the wherewithal to expand and take over companies based in other countries, Vaidotas Sumskis, of the Bank of Lithuania, pointed out that the Lithuanian-owned Maxima group had already taken over a Swedish company. Taimla contended that the largest company on the Baltic Stock Exchange was Tallink, the Estonian ferry, taxi, and hotel company, but said more generally that the relative lack of equity capital available to Baltic companies meant that “in Estonia we’re pretty good at doing the opposite – selling our companies to foreigners!”

Questions over Estonian immigration laws
Riigikogu member Rainer Vakra took part in a debate with Latvian politician Juris Vilums, and three panellists who are active in youth politics in the Baltic region, ‘Baltic Countries: A disappearing nation?’ They were mulling over the hot-button issue of why people born in the Baltic region were choosing to leave for other countries such as Australia, the United States, and (at least until Brexit) the United Kingdom, while also taking advantage of their free movement rights within the European Union.

The debate, in some ways, was a contrast with the earlier one, in which budding entrepreneurs were being encouraged to think and act globally. Here, the onus was more on making sure the Baltics can develop and keep its own home-grown talent in the future. One of the other difficulties facing businesses, as articulated by Vakra, was the immigration quota set by the Estonian government, which some business leaders view as draconian.

“The migration quota was filled at the start of March [fact-check – according to ERR News it was April when the quota was filled]. What’s changed? Nothing, except now the workers in the construction industry are working here illegally. We’re lucky that, at least, the startup visa programme is happening,” Vakra said, referring to the programme that enables tech companies to recruit specialists from outside the EU for areas with an identified need.

Foreign investment not as easy as it could be
Vakra also pointed to what he felt was an unfriendly Estonian government attitude towards foreign investment when it came to small businesses started by non-EU citizens, which had led to a climate of what he felt was suspicion and conservatism in the banking sector. “Some people are now blaming e-Residents for the banks being too conservative,” he said.

This feeling has grown of late because banks are purportedly apprehensive about granting accounts to some users of the Estonian e-Residency programme, amid some account closures for entrepreneurs who fail to prove their link with Estonia to the liking of the bank. This thorny issue is explained further by ERR News, and the response from the e-Residency team was published in March.

Nor is returning to Estonia
Vakra linked this issue back to the core topic of the discussion. “Why should those people who have left come back if nobody’s welcome? It’s the mentality [that is the issue]. They [emigrants] went to those countries because they were welcome there.”

Mikk Tarros, Vice-Chairman of the Estonian National Youth Council, added a personal perspective, about his own family. “My mother lives in Switzerland. Perhaps we should try to entice her back to Estonia? She actually tried to come back a few years ago, but she couldn’t get any interviews because it was assumed that her salary expectations would be too high, even before she could state them.”

The growing number of Erasmus courses offered by Estonian universities is also helping to change the complexion of Estonia. How are foreigners finding life in Estonia, and how good are relations with local people? This was one of the questions considered by the talk on Saturday, ‘Do Non-Native Residents Feel Like Hosts or Guests?’, presented by Estonian World and the Estonia 100 Celebration team.

‘What Can We Do For World Peace?’ is possibly the biggest question on the planet, and at the Opinion Festival on Saturday morning, an intrepid group of academics, educators and activists attempted to answer it.

Although it is fair to say that, over the course of 90 minutes, it was not possible to reach a consensus on how to achieve world peace, or even if it is possible, the most interesting part of the discussion was, as is often the case in such theoretical talks, the individual stories of the speakers.

The honeycomb ceiling kept the audience warm and sheltered, and although each piece was made from cardboard boxes, they were reinforced with waterproof, insulating material which is often used for packing computers.

The result was a spot that felt uniquely-attuned to great debate, and was a credit to the ingenious third-year EKA students, who have set down a marker for their successors who will design the stand for next year’s Arvamus Festival.

When I was at school in the 1990s, many teenagers would talk about their summer trips to Ibiza or Ayia Napa, which were a fortnight’s blur of clubbing, alcohol abuse, and possibly a lot more. This was the era of the superclub, Cream and the Ministry of Sound hoovering up customers every Saturday in Liverpool and London respectively, then going on tour to the Balearic Islands to play to an audience dominated by British tourists.

I didn’t go to Ibiza with my school friends. Of course, some people were comfortable at home, like I was. But the aim of these trips was to get very, very drunk – and this wasn’t something I was interested in. I was a country boy who enjoyed reading and music – and not played at 100 decibels. I sometimes asked my parents why I wasn’t the “kind of person” who could go, but they just looked at me with that look that says, “one day, you’ll understand”.

Now, I do. It seems to me that young Estonians are growing up with so many more positive influences than my school class had. Last night, in the Must Puudel’s party for Arvamus Festival-goers, I saw happy people singing along to obscure pop tunes released in 1984 or ’85, when I was 3 or 4 years old, and they were a long way from being born. This was the kind of music I loved playing – in private, of course (I even got picked-on for buying Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet or Ultravox from the record store when I was a teenager), but now it wasn’t a source of shame for anyone. Indeed, it seemed like a badge of honour to know as much of the music as possible.

The knowledge extends to the debates, too. Young people are being thanked for their contribution, being actively praised for their knowledge of complex topics – and more and more people know more and more things, that’s something that’s obvious from asking a few questions, and hearing the different opinions expressed at the Arvamus Festival.

I never used to mind being called a “nerd” or a “geek”. Those are terms that just mean someone knows a lot about something. But what’s changed beyond recognition is the way the nerd and the geek are now seen as the intelligent, well-rounded people they always were.

So how about it, are we getting smarter by generation? That, like everything else here, is a matter of debate. All I know is, I wish I’d been given this festival when I was 20 or 21. I would have loved every minute, just like I do now.