Narva, Estonia: A conversation with Dima (b. 1980)
Anecdotes collected in February 2021.
Dima, or Dmitri, is a bit reserved. He attends English Conversation Clubs at the library, but admits that his English is not as good as he would like it to be. Nonetheless, he speaks passionately about issues that are important to him — including the difficulties facing Russian language speakers living in Estonia.
A Finnish sauna is very dry. Maybe 100 degrees Celsius, but no humidity. A Turkish sauna is at 100 degrees, and also 100% humidity. A Russian sauna is somewhere in the middle — maybe 60 degrees Celsius and 60% humidity. They say the heat is good for the body.
I tried a sauna at 100 degrees once. It’s not very good — because everything about you is also 100 degrees. Your hair, the air you breathe. It is probably not very good for your body.
Estonia has a lot of bogs. Walking in bogs is the most popular thing to do, along with camping. I don’t like to live in tents; I was in the army and I lived in a tent in -25 degree weather. I didn’t like it, so I don’t want to live in tents anymore. In Estonia, we call them forest brothers, or forest warriors — those who live in tents. Armies live in the forest, like that. It’s the Estonian way of fighting wars¹.
In New York, there are more Russians than the entire population of Estonia². More than a million Russians there! But in Estonia, there’s only 1.3 million people.
In Narva, there is not so much Estonian food. There are no Estonian restaurants. People here mostly eat Russian food. Lots of cabbage. Cabbage with fat, and pork. Sour cabbage. Vodka and borsch. You can try it at the local cafeteria — actually, the soup there is Ukrainian. There is also a Russian soup called schi. It’s very good. You should try it.
The Russian speakers of Estonia live in Narva and Tallinn. Half the population is in Tallinn. It’s about 200,000 people. They ran away from Narva, for a better life. They have a lot of opportunities. They can obtain a better job. It’s the same situation in America — many people try to move to capitals, or big cities for a better life. But after Tallinn, they move to Finland, Sweden, Norway.
Maybe an Estonian could understand Finnish, because they are similar languages. I can count in Estonian and Finnish — I mean, counting from one to ten. They are pretty similar. But I don’t think anyone in Narva speaks Estonian. How can we learn a language in a place that does not speak the language? I understand that I must speak, read, and practice. But, if I don’t listen to a native speaker every day — I will not learn. I cannot use it.
I think the problem is motivation. If I had the motivation to learn Estonian, I would learn it. No complaints. But, you could not give me a better job than what I have in Narva. English, I need to travel and watch TV, so on. What does Estonian give me right now?
There are some jobs where you need it. If you work in a social job, with people, you must know it. For a construction worker, or an electrician like me, you don’t need Estonian to work in Tallinn.
There is another problem. After the Soviet times, in many places they gave citizenship to whoever wanted it. In Estonia, they did not give citizenship to everyone who wanted it. Even if you were born in Estonia. It was because of elections. Half of the population were Russians, so they were worried about elections.
It’s very difficult to get Estonian citizenship here. You must pass a difficult exam in the Estonian language. Here, people without an Estonian citizenship — or any other country’s citizenship — still must get some kind of identity pass. They get a special pass. It’s an alien passport, and these people are called aliens. Even though they lived here their entire life, they get an alien identity. You can imagine — living here your whole life, and not having a passport from any country. And the government calls you an alien.³
Footnotes
¹ This is a reference to a Baltic resistance front known as the “Forest Brothers,” which primarily employed guerrilla tactics to resist Soviet and German occupation beginning in 1941.
² There are approximately 1.6 million Russian-Americans living in the Tri-State area, with 600,000 residing in New York City.
³ As of 2019, approximately 5% of Estonia’s population remains stateless. The country’s citizenship policy continues to receive international criticism.
This is part of a conversation series centered around the country of Estonia. Click here to read the introduction.
