"Transformation In(to) the Periphery? The Russian Minority in Estonia in Comparative Perspective"

How does the relationship between ethnic majorities and minorities evolve after the fall of the Soviet empire and democratic transitions in its successor states?
My thesis addresses this question by examining the case of the Russian minority in Estonia and contrasting the findings with the case of ethnic relations in the Ukraine. Under Soviet rule the Russian minority enjoyed far-reaching privileges in the economic and political realms. After the formation of an independent state and democratic transition in Estonia, the Russian minority not only lost these privileges, but even beyond that experienced exclusion from political affairs and important segments of economic development, which could be demonstrated by the analysis of citizenship and language policy. According to theoretical approaches about ethnic conflicts, there should be at least signs of ethnopolitical mobilisation. Nevertheless, as of now the Russians have not protested against this discrimination and have not mobilised around an ethnic platform. This is puzzling, given the fact that the Russian minority is a notable group in Estonian as well as in Ukrainian society in terms of both, numbers and resources for political mobilisation.

After a detailed examination of political mobilisation processes and the changes in the social structure – especially in the ethnic composition of the elite strata - in the course of the breakdown of the Soviet empire and the creation of the new Estonian Republic, I argue in my thesis that ethnic mobilisation of the Russian minority is not a function of merely the available resources for mobilisation or the experience of discrimination. Instead, it also depends on the preferences and orientations of elites within the Russian minority and on the question of whether these elites have an interest in mobilisation around an ethnic theme. In the Estonian case there is a strong interest in equal rights and Estonian citizenship, but no specific interest in mobilisation, neither on the side of the new Russian elite nor on the side of the group as a whole. A deep analysis of political and ethnical attitudes and of coping strategies of the Estonian Russians revealed that this community is divided into at least five different segments, of which the majority is loyal to the new Estonian State and its institutions. This process of fractionalisation of the Russian minority in Estonia is still going on, clearly impeding collective political action against their discrimination by the Estonian government. Members of the Russian elite and middle strata of the minority, from which otherwise ethnic entrepreneurs would emerge, can afford a decent living standard within Estonian society and are not interested in ethnic mobilisation, while the –still considerable - share of those who cannot accept the new political and economic environment and adapt themselves to the changed conditions apparently lack the resources for political action. Thus, political representation of Russians in today’s Estonia is rather a matter of those who provide good capacities in terms of skills and contacts to find their individual way in the market economy than of those who suffer most from the ethnopolitical settings of the Estonian government.

Hence, ethnic mobilisation, while certainly not a mere manifestation of class-based cleavages, is not completely divorced from political mobilisation around material issues. The link between these material issues and political mobilisation on an ethnic platform, however, must be specified very carefully, while paying particular attention to political entrepreneurship on the parts of elites.

In order to check the cultural-distance-hypothesis, which is an often given explanation of the development of ethnic relations in cross-country-studies, the Estonian case has been compared with the Ukraine. The cultural-distance-hypothesis stresses that cultural homogeneity prevents ethnic conflicts between Ukrainians and Russians in Ukraine, while cultural heterogeneity causes ethnic tensions and an exclusive ethno-policy in Estonia. In contrast to this explanation, my thesis shows that the Russian elites in Ukraine were not interested in ethnic mobilisation because they could preserve their influence and power stemming from Soviet times. Only when their sophisticated centre-periphery system of clientelism was impaired they started to mobilise around ethnic issues like the use of Russian language in the education system.

The main finding of the comparison of the two cases is that the development and state of ethnic relations in these two transition countries cannot be explained by a mere look on cultural differences. It can only be understood in the context of a set of multivariate factors, of which the most important are the changing composition of the social structure of the ethnic groups, the fate of the elite of the inferior ethnic group during the transition process, the interactions between the elite of the superior group and the (new) elite of the inferior group, and, finally, the degree to which the inferior community shares commonly fundamental political attitudes. The second important result of the thesis is that in both countries the current state of ethnic peace appears to be stable only for the near future, but not for a longer period.

Eventually, the present nationalist agenda of the Estonian state and the ethnic relations have some implications concerning the EU-Enlargement. Like in other East and Middle European countries, the positive response to the EU-access is declining. As Estonia is expecting shelter and support from the EU concerning its critical relation to Russia and its economic development, the Russian minority expects an improvement of their status in Estonia. If this kind of split expectations turns out to be typical for all countries with a large and discriminated ethnic minority that will access the EU in future – many Eastern European countries, and Turkey, feature such demographic structures - the political institutions of the EU will have to find ways and means to deal with new problems of integration.