Today is the first day of spring, and after my morning digestion of the electronic media I would have welcomed a chance to muse about the latest ignorant agitpropaganda tactic. Ironically, an Alberta news item first captured my attention, followed by one from Tallinn. The irony is that Priit is perhaps best remembered outside political circles for writing the lyrics to “Tallinna teel”, set to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Alberta Bound”. Priit, an Estonian first, and then a Canadian, might have seen something in this juxtaposition.
The fact that the paint job of Alberta’s Wildrose Party campaign bus went viral on Twitter just underlines how media has changed with the internet – an advantage neither Meie Elu nor EKN had back in the day. Briefly, the Wildrose Party’s bus was painted featuring their attractive and dynamic leader Danielle Smith. Alas, her bust (indeed, that is what we call a head-and-shoulders photograph) was placed above the real wheels of the bus. Wags suggested immediately that the party wanted to emphasize Ms. Smith’s pair – important in politics if you are a male, perhaps an impediment if you are a woman.
The unfortunate placement of the leader’s bust on the bus was rectified, and it was just a smile story for most outlets, certainly welcome among the tales of entitlement, corruption and simple ignorance that mainstream media downloads on the naïve subscriber, who has perhaps even forgotten the power of independent reasoning in those social networking era.
Priit would most likely have shrugged of this as yet another moronic attempt by the seltsimehed yearning for the safety and reassurance of Soviet rule. But we would most likely have moved on to other topics, such as why do these types of provocation attempts take place in spring? Is Stalin like a perennial, ready to bloom in full glory by May, and the work of his gardeners and the necessary sõnnikuvedajad, manure-spreaders, must begin in March?
I recalled today also that another organization, the Wiesenthal Centre is very active in spring and in fall, knowing that in winter people work and sleep, in the summer party and make hay. Their desire to place ads seeking information about not collaborators but “active Nazis” in the Baltics during WW II have been rejected by ethnic media abroad.
But Priit would have remembered that in 1999 Estonian media worked hand in hand with the Department of Justice, Canada. (We knew who was behind that action as well). At that time ads ran in the biggest Estonian dailies , most interested in information about Estonian National Guard and Police Unit activities during the German occupation and active battle war years in various Estonian cities. “Meie Elu” refused to run the ad, for it was obvious from the text who would benefit.
(Perhaps Toomas Merilo, as a regular EWR online commentator, has more on this topic to illuminate me. Better yet, I smell another opinion piece coming…)
No-one in their right mind would think that the Stalin portrait would be accepted as advertising in Tallinn or Riga. Then again, who could have predicted the aftermath of the removal of Aljosha, the Bronze Soldier in the spring (there you go again) of 2007? The drunken looters were maybe to be expected, but the cyber warfare that shut down Estonian ministries and newspapers online, the attacks on the present Estonian Ambassador to the USA and Canada, Marina Kaljurand, who at the time was posted to Moscow, were certainly not. It is fair to say that the Kremlin still has many tricks up its sleeve. And far from being paranoid, but the Soviets had their viisaastakud, or Five Year plans, and it has been 5 years since the Tõnismäe uprising, which many Tallinners saw as a real putsch attempt.
And then there is Putin’s risible and purported fear of an attack by Estonia on Russia that made the news earlier this month. (Apparently, Putin had a male relative who was slain by Estonians during WW II. Some say uncle, some suggest grandfather, but I have yet to see any written evidence supporting this as a reason for his seeming hatred of Estonians.)
http://www.delfi.ee/news/paeva... Although from Delfi, where the anonymous commentators belong in a barn, a specific line from that interview is important when we consider inroads made by the FSB and their forerunner the KGB abroad: “inglise keelt räägitakse ka igal pool. Inimene ehk ei teagi, kelle jaoks ta töötab, mis riigi lipu all.”
The above is not the type of researched, reasoned opinion piece that Priit always encouraged me to write. I fear, however, if I had let the breezes of spring divert me from the return of Stalin I might not have written these lines. For this elecetronic era it may be blog-esque, but certainly better than a mindless Twitter. That I already get from the birds outside.