The observation tower at Suur Munamägi, a "must visit".
Photo: Peeter Bush
Photo: Peeter Bush
By now I was familiar with the roads leading out of the small city of Tartu and starting to feel comfortable with the tiny Opel Corsa and its 1.2 litre engine. Despite being small, the car had air conditioning and an automatic transmission. It handled the fairly flat almost empty roads in Estonia quite well and was easy enough to drive although it was sure different from my car, especially at the gas pump. The only drawback was that you needed a lot of empty road to safely pass the odd slow moving old Russian clunker chugging along once you got out of the city. Also, if a bus or large truck was coming at you the wind gust was very noticeable. The upside was that it was the type of car that almost nobody would bother to steal.
Gasoline in Estonia is readily available, although people are grumbling about high prices which were running about C$1.35 a liter for regular. Given that our wages and salaries are probably about 4 times higher this may explain why there was so little traffic on the roads. The traffic that there is, however, likes to move along at a fast pace and people are impatient, taking risks to pass. You notice a high percentage of high-end German luxury cars on the roads as well.
Since there was no traffic to speak of I made it to the small city of Võru earlier than expected. As I was almost out of the city, I passed what appeared to be a very large Red Army cemetery. It was easy enough to pull over and read the signs. It turned out to be a cemetery that had originally been for combatants that fallen during Estonia’s War of Independence. The communists simply interred their dead on top. I saw that more than a few had names that were obviously Estonian. I also noticed that quite a few of the War of Independence soldiers had Russian names. It struck me as a nice quiet place for them to rest at peace together.
This sign at the Võru cemetery marks the location of the graves of the soldiers who died in Estonia's war of Independence as well as their names.
Photo: Peeter Bush
Photo: Peeter Bush
I noticed an older woman tending a grave not too far off and decided to talk to her as she appeared to be just about done with her work. She was probably 80, a little blue-eyed, fine featured woman with a fair complexion and so trim that she could probably still fit into her wedding dress. Even before I saw the names on the tombstone I was certain she was Estonian.
It turned out she was tending the graves of her husband’s parents. Her husband rested close by and had died almost exactly two years ago. She had just finished her work and was quite willing to talk to me. I asked her about the graveyard and she told me about the front part being a military cemetery.
She also mentioned that some relatives of a very famous Estonian author named Kreutzwald were buried close by. I asked if she would take me over to see these graves and the older part of the cemetery. She was quite willing and I visited the graves of Kreutzwald’s mother and daughter.
The final resting-place of F. R. Kreutzwald's mother and sister in the Võru cemetery.
Photo: Peeter Bush
Photo: Peeter Bush
On the way she pointed out many very old graves that were well tended. Many had new headstones right beside them. Apparently space was becoming short and new burials were taking place on top of old ones. She thought this was a good thing because the new people’s relatives started to look after the older, otherwise abandoned neighbouring graves as well. As soon as she found out that I was heading for Haanja she asked if she could get a ride with me to her summer place, which was on the way. All I had to do was drop her off on the main road. I immediately agreed.
During the trip I asked her how the relationship was with the Russians living in the area. She said there were really no problems, especially when it came to looking after the cemeteries. Everyone wanted to live their lives peaceably and tried to get along as best they could. I then asked her whether it was considered an undesirable thing to have your child marry a Russian. She said that a few years ago that was certainly the case, but now nobody seemed to much pay attention to that sort of thing. I had heard much the same from talking to church guardians at the numerous churches I had visited. In one Lutheran church I even heard that young Russians were joining the congregation. There does not seem to be any hostility towards the Russian minority, nor does there seem to be any systemic discrimination that I could detect - despite what Putin and his Moscow minions are trumpeting.
My passenger said that I could drop her along the highway and she could easily walk home. I said that I had lots of time and would drive her right to her house, which I did. I found myself in a small village of small, well tended summer homes with large well cared for leafy lots. She pointed to a sign that said “Pirni tänav” (Pear Street) laughed, and said that there was not even one pear tree there on her street, but lots of apple trees.
I was invited in. The large yard had several apple trees heavy with fruit, a vegetable garden and a neat flower bed. She apologized for the state of the flower bed. Her husband had cultivated roses but she was finding it a bit much to look after and things in the garden were not what they used to be. To my mind the yard was immaculate. I asked her if she had any children that came out and gave her a hand since things were so neat and well tended. She said nobody helped her. Her son was often very ill and was unable to do much because of poor health.
I then asked her if she had any grandchildren. She said there were none, and furthermore that there never would be any. Several years ago during the Soviet occupation time, the police came looking for her son but didn’t say why. He suspected something was wrong and tried to avoid them, but in a tightly controlled communist society you simply could not escape the organs for long. The authorities rounded him up along with many other young men and shipped them off to Chernobyl to work on building the roof over the remains of the exploded reactor. The officers in charge knew enough to stay off the roof but nobody told them at the time what had happened and what the consequences were. She was not angry when she said this, just resigned and on the whole she was satisfied with her life.
I was invited in to the little house, but time was passing and I wanted to get to the big egg hill. The road was still almost empty despite it being late Saturday morning. On the way I reflected on this ticking time bomb that was yet another ghastly Soviet legacy. The full impact on future generations is unknown.
Later that week I was visiting relatives in Jõhvi and I happened to mention that I had talked to a woman whose son had been forced to go to Chernobyl. It turned out that my relative’s husband had also been there as a “volunteer” operating some heavy machinery, but not on the roof. He had been decorated by the then First Secretary of The Estonian Communist Party (now President of Estonia) and showed me his medal. My relative said that for a long time afterwards her husband had trouble sleeping because he was shaking so badly at night. She had wanted more children, but they thought that was not advisable. Somebody else in the neighbourhood had returned and his little daughter’s hair had started falling out and she got quite sick. It turned out that his clothes were badly contaminated with radiation and his daughter had run up to him and hugged him before he had a chance to clean up and change.
So much for the quality of life in what was touted as being a worker’s paradise by one of my relatives who had been enrolled in the Communist Party Higher School at the time of the collapse of the evil empire. Another relative quietly confessed to me that he felt a bit ashamed of having belonged to such an organization, even as a rank-and-file member, but times were such.
It seems likely that the pollution and scars on people’s souls left by the communist system in Estonia will take at least another generation to fade away. The legacy of Chernobyl may never entirely disappear.
The view from atop Suur Munamägi is beyond compare. An educated guess is that the camera was pointing southwest when this postcard quality snap was taken.
Photo: Peeter Bush
Photo: Peeter Bush
