The Man Who Spoke Snakish, The Woman Who Smiled, And More on Stanford in Estonia
About the author: Catarina Buchatskiy ’24 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with the International Centre for Defence and Security. She is studying International Relations at Stanford University.
Hi FSI readers! My name is Cat, and I’m a rising senior studying International Relations with a focus on security, with a minor in military history (don’t Google it, they don’t actually offer it at Stanford, I designed it myself!) This summer, I’m in Tallinn, Estonia, working at the International Centre for Defense and Security.
I’m from Kyiv, Ukraine, so growing up in eastern Europe/the post-Soviet world meant that I had much less of a culture shock coming to Estonia than perhaps some of my fellow classmates that are living here with me this summer. But it’s been entertaining, and at times charming, to see them grappling with some of the cultural differences, such as wearing more black clothing.
Just the other day, as my roommates and I were heading back from a little dip in the Baltic Sea, I heard one of them turn to the other and say — “that was weird…that lady just smiled at us…” As the other roommates mumbles in agreement, I smiled to myself. Both of them are from sunny and smiley California, but they’re getting the hang of it.
Besides working (and I do work, a lot, I promise!), my days are usually spent in afternoon strolls through the medieval city, searching for an empty bench or a quiet enough side street at which to sit and read. I’ve gotten into Estonian literature — reading Twain in Tallinn feels jarring in a way. I’m surrounded by so much beauty and rich, rich history. Why open up the pages to find myself on the banks of the Mississippi River instead of right here?
So far, I’ve read “The Man Who Spoke Snakish” and “Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St Olaf’s Church”, two Estonian literary classics. The former takes place in the Estonian forests, and it speaks of a boy attempting to preserve the ancient Estonian traditions in the face of “modernity”, or the incoming German settlers. It’s about language, colonization, ancestral rituals, civilization, progress.
Each character in the book is experiencing history in a different way. For some, it’s an eternal, exponential curve upwards in which humanity continues to forge onwards, and onwards, and onwards. For others, the exact opposite — a U-shaped figured, in which the long, long arch of history will bend eventually bend back to exactly where it all began, with the “progress” in the middle being nothing but a blip of curiosity and experimentation. For others, the development of ‘modern’ civilization marks the end of human history, and is entirely another era
Some of the underlying commentary of the book was, to me at least, not so subtle. I saw a lot of parallels between the Estonian struggle to retain their language, traditions, and identity in the face of the all-absorbing Christian crusaders and the Ukrainian struggle during its colonization in the Russian Empire. There is an inferiority complex amongst the Estonian villagers in the book that I found all too familiar. They’ve been told that their culture is inferior, that they must be taught anew, and they really come to believe it, despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary. Many Ukrainians, despite having over centuries of history and culture preceding that of Moscow, were somehow indoctrinated to believe the same.
But Estonia is now Estonia again, not Soviet Estonia or anything else it may have been. Estonian summers are always light, with the very darkest point of the night being only about an hour or two of a vibrant deep blue before the sky begins to lighten again. The flapping of seagull wings are a constant backdrop, almost providing the city with a faint heartbeat. And on a late-night stroll through the cobblestone streets in the old town, you might find that although the McDonald’s closes at 2:00 AM, the flower shops are always open.
