Thirty Before Thirty

|| Warning- Mature Subject Matter ||

Tallinn, a city of fairytale buildings and medieval architecture… and not so long ago, the KGB. Wandering around, it’s easy to forget that just over 30 years ago, Estonia was part of the Soviet Union. Much like it’s neighbours in Latvia and Lithuania, Estonia suffered terribly under soviet rule. Ukrainian flags are everywhere in Tallin, a show of solidarity given that Estonia still very much remembers its time under Russian hands.

I’m chatting with Christopher Robert, my guide for the afternoon who is barely 5 years older than me. We’re stood in front of the cinema, built very much in the grey concrete style that hallmarks the soviet era. He motions. ‘I was born just down there, in my grandpa’s house. It was a home birth so there was no record of me and so my mother put me in a suitcase and smuggled me to the United States of America. I only realised recently I was technically a refugee.’ It’s at this point that the recency of Soviet history hits me hard. It’s one thing to read about it in books and museums, it’s another entirely to speak to people who lived through it.

Christopher Robert is dressed as though he’s about to go for a run in black running tights, shorts and a red windbreaker. He speaks a breakneck speed and I wonder if it’s something to do with the giant travel mug of coffee he’s carrying around. He’s a human rights student and he takes us around the city, pulling back the curtain on the history of occupation that the city easily hides nowadays in its marketing for stag dos and Christmas markets.

We stop in front of a fancy apartment building. ‘Anyone want an apartment here?’ What is now a new fancy block of flats was the site of the KGB prison cells. Christopher Robert explains that when walking around Tallinn with his parents or grandparents, this street was avoided at all costs. The Soviets rounded up random and innocent people up on the streets of Tallinn and sent them to gulags in Siberia. He explains that people smuggled jewellery and goods by swallowing them, they had no other option otherwise they’d be seized by the state. He shows us a necklace around his neck, smuggled through the gulags by his family. He tells us about how his great grandmother was deported to a work camp in Siberia and how his grandfather was 15 when she died. His grandfather bravely escaped and walked back to Tallinn. It took him three whole years. On the other side of his family, his grandfather was a pilot. His plane was shot down and so he returned to his wife. The neighbours saw his uniform hanging on a washing line and reported it to the KGB. By the time they arrived, his grandfather was gone, off to the forest to join a resistance group called the Forest Brothers. Instead the KGB found his grandmother. She spent a week in solitary confinement in a space smaller than a broom cupboard, after that she was tortured to the point that she went blind. Although she survived KGB interrogation and was eventually released, she took her own life shortly after. These stories hammer home just how recent and how horrifying the soviet era was in the Baltics. It explains the profound support for Ukraine and the concern over Russian once again expanding its territory. But one thing that shines through again and again on my travels in this region is the spirit of resistance and rebellion in the face of intolerable cruelty. In the late 80s, the perfect storm of sociopolitical events led to growing dissent within the Baltics. On the 50th anniversary of the Pact between Nazi Germany and The Soviet Union which led to the Baltic nations, Romanian and Finland being divided between the two, people from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia joined hands and sang. They created a human chain stretching from Vilnius to Tallinn. They sang songs of protest, songs of rebellion, songs in languages that had been overcome by Russian, national anthems that had long been put to rest by the Soviets. It stretched over 400 miles and estimates put the number of participants at anywhere between 1 million and 2 million. It was a peaceful protest that drew attention to the Baltic situation.

Today, at the top of the street which once housed the KGB cells, lies the current Russian embassy. The barriers outside decked with Ukrainian flags and protest signs. It’s an ever present reminder that Estonia’s border with Russia remains a constant concern as does its cyber security. One of the first countries to ever experience a cyber attack, Estonia has cemented itself at the forefront of IT, tech and security. In 2022 it experienced over 4,500 cyber attacks, an increase from just 800 in 2020, most of which were carried out by pro-Kremlin hackers and activists.

The spirit of resistance and perseverance in the Baltics and particularly Estonia amazes me but it’s hard not to feel affected by the stories. It might be history but it’s not so far removed from today. Estonia’s only been a country in its own right for slightly longer than I’ve been alive. Talking with Christopher Robert highlights the human cost and it’s a stark reminder that when discussing politics and history, be it soviet era or be it today’s current refugee crisis, that we need to ensure we don’t lose the human element or forget our humanity in the situation.Read more