Estonia The Baltic Tiger

30 years ago estonia became the latest small european nation to declare independence faced with terrible winters they struggled to even find petrol for ambulances and the supermarket shelves were empty but today estonia is one of the most successful small countries in the eu how did they do it [Music] the estonia people were preparing themselves for independence whole their lives we actually planned a lot of this stuff ahead since we had a firm belief that we would become independent a wave of young people took over dismantling everything so we said these people who have been working for the soviet union and have been supporting this kind of things have to leave now we need to clean the entire state and by cleaning the states i mean everything [Music] the first years were tough for this new baltic nation [Music] you literally had nothing on the shelves of grocery stores in in tallinn or elsewhere in estonia we were in a very different situation but estonia embraced the new digital world and in just 20 years its gdp has increased five-fold it's nothing short of extraordinary it's been very interesting times to live through to see this this transition in in the country happening within basically within a generation yes [Music] um it's very early on the 24th of february and it's absolutely freezing this is the date the estonians have adopted as their independence day it's a national holiday so everyone has the day off including school pupils and they'll be singing later of course but at the moment tens of thousands of estonians are making their way here to the centre of tallinn to watch their national flag being raised at the crack of dawn and they come every year even after all this time [Music] oh why is it so important to come out in the middle of the night to get here because it's a special day for us yeah we're all from the same dancing group so we wanted to come together this is like one the time that everyone is in estonia so we just like gathered here best all the best friends of us and then yes it's just a gathering thing a little bit for us did you do this every year two years ago with it with the same skirts yeah two years ago we even danced here so yeah but i'm not being cheeky but you don't look like you were born when your country became independent no right so why is it so important for you still to come out and celebrate because you are independent you don't need to keep celebrating it we're raised very patriotic it's just like a very nice feeling that you're here and estonia got free and independent and just looking at the estonian flags it's just something that we're kind of born with just respecting that the stories of our grandparents and uh parents are the reason we come here and celebrate our freedom and independence what were those stories that still motivate young estonians estonia first proclaimed independence in 1918 after two centuries of russian rule but soon the country was occupied first by the soviets then the nazis then the soviets again who ruled for almost 50 years with any affection for an older identity cruelly repressed by the kgb her name is magda she was 31 years old when strangers walked into her apartment told her to get dressed and took her away [Music] her seven-year-old daughter ran after her and shouted mom take me with you but they didn't allow [Music] and plum thrust load bricks and gravel and build railroads in one month march 1949 20 000 people were deported most to siberia two-thirds were women and children under the age of 16. [Music] i'm in estonia's second city and ancient university town tartu to meet mario larston from a political family she studied here and at moscow university in 1986 she witnessed a seismic shift at the kremlin president gorbachev introduced glasnost to modernize and refresh the communist bloc but in the baltic states the newfound political freedom gave the chance for dreams of nationhood to be rekindled she found herself at the heart of an independence movement that would be known as the singing revolution say on [Applause] estonia people were preparing themselves for independence whole their lives through whole time in soviet union and and then especially say intensely during those three years we had the singing revolution we were prepared throughout the years of repression huge singing events continued the choirs were a symbol of estonia's unique culture now music became a centerpiece of its politics as well [Music] we were excited but to know not that but not so only that because it was really hard work because we had to make all preparation because from one side we had the big rallies going on tens of thousand hundred thousand people coming out on different places and so on there was a big excitement among the people but at the same time we had to prepare this change institutional change because what is really our lesson may be when we look for example arabic spring or all these kind of movements then you cannot achieve democracy by movement you have to prepare democracy bring a building up institutional order and that's what we did not only were singing and shouting on streets but we were making hard legislative work the estonian supreme soviet was quickly won over with the claim that independence was a restoration of the 1918 former state not a secession campaigners urged the population to sign up and reclaim their citizenship but the baltic states were still occupied by russia a year later in august 1989 the movements of estonia latvia and lithuania combined to form a 400-mile chain of 2 million people demonstrating their unity for freedom [Music] hey we made the baltic chain to make precious gorbachev to make international pressure on governor and to call international attention so we were really organizing this chain as international media event but moscow was not impressed despite a referendum to confirm independence carried by almost 80 percent in 1991 gorbachev's liberalization of the soviet union stuttered hard-liners in moscow reacted against his changes and tanks rolled to end the baltic independence movements in estonia russian troops besieged the city's tv tower in a stark reminder of the old days when military might enforced moscow rule [Music] but the russian pooch found little support and boris yeltsin took over the conflict diffused estonia had achieved a bloodless revolution [Music] we had tanks and streets russian tanks and streets but still we resolution we sent it over the world that now we declare that the estonian uh constitutional independence is restored uh it's the same republic which was occupied by soviet union we ask for recognition of our estonia independence and we get it we get it very quickly iceland was the first iceland was the first independent at last but alone estonia set up its own currency pegged to the deutsche mark but the country had traded almost exclusively with russia and now the economy collapsed it was a government in crisis from the start 1993 in the midst of a baltic winter with daytime temperatures below -10 the state coffers are empty businesses face bankruptcy pensions might not be paid there's a struggle to find petrol for ambulances and the shops are empty [Music] mark lahr became the first formerly elected prime minister at the age of just 32 he now works for the bank of estonia and is recovering from a stroke [Music] he went in the street without any cars because there are no cars because they know this is no gathering because all the government delivers having stopped estonia is a country which is not exporting anything so we are exporting maybe five percent of our production so we are selling everything to the soviet union and it's just disappearing not giving us back the money of course nobody in the world market wants such a bad production but we are sending them we have unemployment which is by the prognosis about 40 to 50 percent our ruble is in very bad inflation it's going inflation is one thousand percent a year so everything is recent the bread milk is recent in there [Music] the changes were really very very harsh because we didn't have money then for example i as minister of social affairs i i had to come to parliament and say that we abolish all soviet time pensions and instead of pensions we started to pay just some old asia loans very very low because when you cut and you cut nothing happens there is no trade there is no trade and that's it and and of course there will be a lot of noise and lot of angry people but not too much because everybody decided that that's our interpretation to be in the past and when we are independent and we are really independent that's it people were patient expecting that country will grow up will improve and after this harsh time there will be better times and we really have to be very thankful even when we had in these times after liberation big meetings then very often it was said that now we have to be thankful not for any of politicians or persons but we have to be thankful for all people who were so patient to go through harsh times and believe that their own country will stand up and then become to flourish someday and it really happened [Music] the transformation did happen help and investment came from nordic neighbours there were even food and clothing parcels from abroad but very quickly estonia began to grow as europe's newest democracy it was a society shaped by a new generation without baggage from the communist era with new ideas and a blank canvas a former banker tarmo yuristo now leads an estonian think tank the previous generation was was by and large wiped away from particularly from the from the economy this didn't go the same way by the way in in latvia and lithuania but it did happen this way in in estonia and this did create a huge opportunity for my generation in in early 90s so you could pretty much do whatever you wanted i was working for uh for hansa bank which was uh one of the original success stories of the estonian economy and and and at that time we had hansa banks bordered the board of directors the older guys were like in their mid 30s and which to me looked really old at that time and i remember the incredulous faces of european bankers who came to establish relations and then suddenly found themselves sitting behind the table with basically teenagers a new talon stands in the shadow of the old town founded by a new generation thomas hendrick elvis spent 10 years as president and is credited as the man who identified a golden opportunity that's estonia's main claim to fame today it's digital economy the insight for me came in 1993 which was four years after the invention of the hypertext transfer protocol or http which is the basis of the web page or the web but i looked at this and i said wow this is one place where we are on a level playing field with everyone else when it comes to building big highways you know the germans the autobahns the us interstates they've been doing this for 60 70 years but here someplace where we are no worse off than anyone else if we get in on the initial stage so the proposal actually initially was simply to put computers in every school connect all the schools and the kids will take off [Music] and they did estonian education has fueled 20 years of digital innovation 90 percent of schools deliver subjects using digital technology by choice not compulsion and 70 of kindergartens have access to robotics scottish education was once the envy of the world now a different small country is turning educational heads estonia like scotland always had control of its education system and taught in its own language not russian but with independence it was able to completely shrug off soviet thinking and embrace the outlook of its most go-ahead baltic neighbor finland chris del rio is head of digital education when we gained our independence from soviet union we had the luxury of starting fresh as well as take the best parts with us and when moving more towards the digital path then bearing in mind the resources in our disposal it was just simply not possible being non-digital so this is where the where this kind of mindset started with a rather young government who was open to make a change and open also for taking the risks in general estonia is really right at the top now for basic education in the pisa charts what have you done that's made the big change first autonomy of schools we have agreed on the learning outcomes that need to be achieved but it's up to the schools and teachers to choose the way they and their students suit best they have a different exercises today and they also have free breaks so they can decide when they are doing this and right now they have a jumping thing but they also can climb or or do something more but they can decide when they need this spray the second thing is our teachers do excellent work with helping weaker students along like to be better and they pay a lot of attention to have this kind of very strong average level of students to be clear your children go to kindergarten from the age of one till six seven till uh six seven yes uh but it depends this kind of normal a beginning of uh ages three but very many go already before before becoming two so is that an important part of education that they get to play as children because our children are going to school at the age of five and even four yes that's uh definitely the case uh of course in estonia we don't have only the play time in in kindergarten we have also the national curriculum for kindergarten so the school would have already the basic level to proceed from in scotland you get the feeling that that education is all exams exams exams and has estonia moved away from that yes we are on the way of moving away from that we have we have at the today's system the final exam in the end of a lower secondary and the ninth grade in here but the discussion already pre-copied where about losing or getting rid of the exams our minister had very clear understanding that we don't need this and the copied again with digital assessment tools that we have in place already that we are on the way of moving just supporting indeed supporting teachers and students in learning not controlling what have been done the education system has spawned a nation of digital entrepreneurs and innovators three estonian engineers built skype with almost 700 million worldwide users the taxi and scooter company bolt was started by a 19 year old and now has a presence in 100 european cities the adoption of digital technology is everywhere and has of course been absolutely incorporated into government and everyday life [Music] is a digital expert and evangelist at the estonia briefing center everyone must have a digital id this is a compulsory document for absolutely every person who lives here in estonia so whenever someone is even moving here and then staying here longer than two or three months they need to have one as well because on a cart we have our identity code number so which is given for us already when we are born at the hospital and and by this code different ministries and of course also private sector institutions can identify ourselves and and i use this car for traveling uh all my prescriptions my medical saronic card this is my driving license i get my discounts from shops also by using this one single card so i've been always saying to my friends who live abroad that if you would check my wallet there is only two things there and there is my credit card and there is my electronical id card that's all i need to carry and does that card that system behind it how does it work because a lot of people would feel scared that the state had that much information and power so it shouldn't be scared at all so you only submit your information to one single uh institution and in that sense when we talk about one part of the information you only store that in one place and when the other institutions want to know this information that is not stored on their servers on their system then they need to request this information from uh from the other platforms by using our data exchange platform excellent and of course in order to do so you need to have agreement between the different institutions but very important thing to know about that here is that every citizen has such thing called data tracker so i can track everything so when um let's say the police is stopping me when i'm um when i'm on the way to the shop here and they want to check my driving license so i'm going to give them my electronic id card and they're going to check if i have a valid driving license and maybe my background and then i can go home later and i can see under that data tracker that police at this time of the day have been checking this part of my information so we have given our people so much transparency so i can truly say that i trust my estates a lot here because i feel that the power of my information is fully in my hands not the other way around you can pay your tax by this e-system how much time and money does all of that save so we have been declaring our taxes already in the past 20 years now so since 1999 that was the first year when we started declaring the taxes online from the citizens point of view it takes me only one minute in order to declare my taxes and when we think about in general like how much time and money this entire system helps us to save then it's very tricky to say because we don't really have anything to compare to but by the state point of view then of course it's a lot of money because we make the entire system work much more efficient i've heard it's something like two percent of gdp that's saved with this that's just by signing documents online by using our digital signature just by using one single solution and this is two percent of the gdp so it's it's it's a very very high amount of money and estonian state only only pays or like i would say uses one percent of our entire state budget in order to keep up the system if you only use one percent of the state budget in order to keep up this entire system and you already get back two percent of your gdp by using one single solution out of 1000 of them so i i think this is just like a great example for the rest of the world that these services are so much needed digitization is everywhere in estonia the country's brand new futuristic national museum stands outside tartu on the runway of a former soviet nuclear bomber air base of course the ticket is digital that's for you thank you if you swipe your tickets at the screens then it turns to english because i've got an english speaking ticket it brings the displays alive and behind the scenes the swipe data collected is analyzed to find out how different audiences interact with different exhibits if it sounds like surveillance it's nothing like it used to be so we're now entering to a ported zone and uh entrance only with uh permits oh you have been followed right i've been spotted imagine having a superpower as a neighbour one that ruled your country sent thousands to siberia still invades other neighbours and whose people form a third of your independent country today it took three years after independence for the last russian military to leave now estonia has an army of its own and an international peacekeeping wall it has three thousand full-time shoulders but twenty thousand in reserve and the support of its nato family since it joined in two thousand four it's probably here to say that joining nato was uh was more of an important milestone and then more of a something which is uh is widely perceived in the sound air as a cornerstone of estonia's defense policy however joining the eu was much broader political project which also means not just economic consequences and uh and benefits but also wider political cultural changes uh being part of the the common labor market which is something that has impacted uh not just the southern economy but also tens of thousands of people in in estonia there's been a lot of eu money flowing into the country a lot of european companies scandinavian companies coming here investing here creating jobs bringing in money it's been very interesting times to live through to see this this transition in in the country happening within basically within a generation [Music] the capital talon has seen the most dramatic development and social change but two-thirds of the population live in the countryside it may look traditional but a vibrant rural parliament brings villagers together every two years and there are three times more councils than scotland here's where estonia's cultural identity survived the bad old days and still binds communities together i think when we were in soviet time we didn't we kept our culture we tried to hide it somewhere or just to still sing estonian songs and still wear our national costumes and we try to maintain our heritage even when we're a big part of soviet union so it was just our way to become free and sing because we didn't fight they didn't know what to do because we were singing i think the choirs in the rural places when you don't have much activities so coming like here i am going every week every wednesday evening for singing there's a nice group of people we have trips together go to the festivals travel so it's like the way to spend your time with the community [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] the country celebrates its traditions and identity big time but what kind of future lies before estonia is young the country's been criticized for a flat tax regime that leaves well off paying the same as the lowest earners just 20 percent and corporations can skip tax altogether if they reinvest what does that mean for ordinary people [Music] one man well placed to make international comparisons is the estonian tv journalist johannes trala a former eu correspondent he presents a travelogue series from his bike there is a huge inequality problem in estonia and when you look at the wage gap between the capital and the well-paid jobs and the countryside with people going on their lives with with ordinary jobs it's uh the gap is is quite remarkable it's quite dramatic it could look though that estonia is a kind of race to the bottom society which is a sort of haven for the super rich it's got such low taxes is that the way it really works when you look at estonia you have a lot of this type of one man and the dog type companies as we call them here every taxi driver is an entrepreneur you have a lot of uh you have a lot of folks in actually all fields of life from from artists musicians i don't know freelance actors who are all registered they all have a company a lot of people have their company so these benefits that we talk about this freedom of uh of certain taxes that you get when you're an entrepreneur is not used so much so much by foreign entities super rich coming from abroad we don't really have these oligarchs in estonia everyone can benefit from it the question is though how do we get to a more even society a society where you don't have this these dramatic gaps and that's a question that i'd say it's still still unanswered in estonia i mean everyone has benefited from the economic development that's for sure and i mean a big part of the society can now live a life that could be only dreamed about in in the 80s or in the early 90s but we still have a lot to do it's 30 years obviously since you became independent again has the influence of soviet policy thinking culture language has that all left you in estonia now when you look at the the unsolved question of of the russian minorities here we we still have like um we still have two parallel systems of of kindergartens somewhat also of of education in in schools a question that no one really wants to touch because it's it's politically sensitive the parties can't really agree on on a solution so there are certainly questions where you can still see the soviet heritage uh the values of of that era being uh being supported by a significant part of society here and at the same time you look at the urban youth uh and it's very hard to distinguish estonian young entrepreneurs startup guys intellectuals i mean whatever people in the cultural sphere from those who are living in berlin or in copenhagen you have divisions in society just how far and fast can estonia go estonia is not going to catch up with luxembourg in terms of the per capita gdp so we might get to you know perhaps past such countries like italy or spain in in 30 years but the question is not going to be catching up the question is going to be setting your house in order making the best out of what you've got there has been increasing talk about revising the uh the tax and taxation framework in sony because the the structure underlying structure of the economy has changed the structure of the society has changed what people expect from the society has also been getting closer to what you just referred to before as a scandinavian model which we we see working uh just you know basically right across the border i'd like to think that we can still build a friendly inviting country for the generations to come but at the same time of course the european union will hopefully be in the future a place where people can work and travel freely and estonia is not going anywhere from the from the eu at least i hope i won't i will never see that happen and by the way i hope we will soon have scotland in the eu one way or another so as johannes comes to terms with wearing a kilt on a motorbike during a film trip to glasgow i'm almost at the end of my trip to estonia it's a remarkable story for a country the size of wales with obvious parallels for scotland as we approach our own crucial decisions the idea of national identity it is nothing negative it is absolutely is a fundamental idea because without that we we we could be now part of russia you see and and the the previous big colonial empires they really don't understand and they don't really even want to understand that most important was to get courage because take this decision towards always the college and you couldn't wait too much because the quality is something what comes and goes but when you want one moment to just you need to have it and then all other things follow [Music]

Channel: Lesley Riddoch

Views: 98,989

Rating: 4.8821974 out of 5

Keywords: Estonia, History, Current Events, Scotland, Politics

Id: GqLJA7sXD-c

Length: 39min 56sec (2396 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/No-Blackberry-3945]

Visited Estonia a few years ago (well Tallinn) and loved it. We stumbled on an exhibition about Estonian independence talking about the Baltic Chain and it's an amazing story with a lot of similarities to the Scottish Independence movement (in the sense of older people not wanting change sure to fear and the younger generation desperate for it.) Would recommend Tallinn to anyone!

[u/elrugmunchero]

12 months

[u/[deleted]]

I like to think that Scotland is to England as Denmark is to Germany. Except for the independence.

[u/baxtardboy]

Sailing around the Baltic is on my bucket list. Estonia is on the list of places to visit when I do :)

[u/AndyinSpace]

Thanks for sharing the video! Married an Estonian and been far too long since we've been able to get back 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇪

[u/luv2belis]

Inshallah both countries will be considered Nordic one day.

[u/BlackSwanStation]

Hard to decide who has the shadier neighbour, I give you that. 🤣

But like others pointed out,even though we have the talent,the mindset somehow isn't flexible enough to truly embrace meaningful innovation. (Well,that's partially true,we're just about to find out how much of that talent was our own homegrown and how much of it has been scared away back to their homelands by brexit.)

[u/Warr10rP03t]

I think it would be cool to be like Estonia. We are still too primitive and stuck in the past bureaucraticly to be like you. We like physical paperwork too much.

We have a little calculator devicd to long into online banking 🤪stupid UK is the only country in the world that uses it.

The Scottish government should try and make Scotland a paperless and then a cashless society.