The European-ness of Estonia's Ethnic Integration Policy: Nation, culture, and security in an applicant state
This article argues that the process of European Union accession prioritises the linguistic and cultural hegemony of the ethnic Estonian majority as a necessary condition of securing post-Soviet Estonia in an enlarged European Union. This occurs through a conceptualisation of security used by 'e´lites of statecraft' that binds together 'nation', 'culture', and 'state' as cornerstones of a stable interstate system. Evidence is gathered from extensive interviews with Estonian and western European officials as well as analyses of international agreements on minority rights and Estonia's main ethnic integration document, State Programme: Integration in Estonian Society 2000-2007. Estonia's ethnic integration policy should not be understood as a peculiar, eastern European case of cultural protectionism. Rather, it is a logical expression of broader European patterns of political organisation. The research was funded by a 1999-2000 Fulbright-IIE fellowship to Estonia and 2000-01 David L. Boren Fellowship. I would like to thank the staff of the Integration Foundation and the United Nations Development Program: Estonia for their invaluable assistance during my ethnographic fieldwork. Numerous diplomats, administrators, officials, and minority leaders also provided indispensable help. I would also like to thank Merje Kuus and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Understanding processes of ethnic control: segmentation, dependency and co–optation in post–communist Estonia
ABSTRACT. Amidst an arguably exhaustive range of studies regarding ethno-politicsin post-communist Estonia, this article sets out a new framework derived from IanLustick’s model of ethnic control. We argue that one of the key reasons for ethnicpeace and stability in Estonia over the past ten years has been a considerable degree ofcontrol instituted by the Estonian political community over its sizeable Russian-speaking minority. We analyse this control using Lustick’s three main indicators ofsegmentation, dependence and co-optation. In addition, we differentiate within eachof these categories between structural, institutional and programmatic levels of controlmeasures. Our aim is to place Estonia into a better comparative perspective bybringing to light its particular configuration of control mechanisms. The articleconcludes with an assessment of what this configuration might mean for future ethno-political developments. Within the ﬁeld of post-Soviet ethno-politics, perhaps no other country hasreceived as much attention as the small Baltic state of Estonia. Whethermeasured by the number of journal articles
Ethno-political transformation in the states of the former USSR
The collapse of the USSR resulted in a decline of institutions which had supported the dominance of ethnic Russians throughout the periphery of the country. In their place new institutions and mechanisms have been developed to regulate the access of people of different nationalities to power, resources and prestige. This article provides a comparative analysis of ethnic transformation in ten of the fourteen successor states of the former Soviet Union. The analysis identified five types of ethnic transformation in the successor states. In the Baltics the attempts of titular ethnic groups to secure predominance over ethnic Russians and radically transform institutions of the Soviet state resulted in the creation of exclusive ethnic democracies. In Central Asia an elite-negotiated transformation led to the emergence of ethnocracies in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, while the regimes formed in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were characterized by a mixture of ethnocratic and consociationalist features. In...