Ilves is cited here as saying "to be ill at ease with elitism is a northern phenomenon..." Not so sure about that. Even as ERR's Kristopher Rikken wrote last week about our language surviving due to it being a peasant one (to mark Mother Language Day) I thought that the very survival of eesti keel was thanks to the fact that we pushed it out of peasantry into universities and churches, among the first in Europe to do so. Elitism is a belief founded not merely on snobbery but one of separation, of a belief in distincton, and I think that eestlased have practiced just that in establlshing their language as a survivor language. May be wrong, but take only our approach to lätlased - tongue in cheek, is that not elitist?