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The President of the Republic on the anniversary of the restoration of the Republic of Estonia on August 20, 2002, at Toompea20.08.2002
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,
On public holidays of any nation, the past, present and future of this nation, for a moment, are opening up in their entirety. That also applies to Estonia, particularly today, on the anniversary of restoration of our independence.
Revolutionary, epoch-making events in the history of a nation, assessing them in retrospective, may seem inescapable and inevitable. What happened just had to happen and, at the given moment, there were no alternatives to it. And still, on the basis of our life experience we can say that possibilities of one or another historical development to take place are realized by individuals who, in the right time, have to make right decisions. This was the case also on 20 August, eleven years ago. The leaders of the attempted coup in the Soviet Union, the then great power, could have capitalized on our hesitations and eventual inaction, and given, due to their superiority in strength, the wheel of history quite another direction.
Owing to the nationwide political concord reached in Estonia and your decisive action, the Republic of Estonia was restored. Otherwise, a year ago at the Balti Station, our love ones would have been waiting for us - just released from prison camps - to arrive by a train from Moscow. Since a ten-year prison sentence was awaiting all of us for incitement to rebellion and anti-state action. Having been in the centre of those events myself, I can confirm you that, in those August days, such a scenario was much likelier than we have been willing to admit afterwards. Thus, on the one hand, the 20th of August 1991 was a logical result of historical developments, but, on the other hand, a miracle made to come true by you risking the freedom of yourself and your love ones.
Assessing the roles of our singing revolution and different popular movements from today's point of view, we can firmly say that the restoration of Estonia's independence was an expression of democracy's triumph and of our national unity. That was our first national and social pact after World War II, the first lines of which were written down in our declaration of sovereignty on November 16, 1988, and which culminated in the resolution by 69 members of the Supreme Council to restore the Republic of Estonia.
But now, eleven years later, we must be ready to conclude a new national pact. Not for the sake of restoring our unity that for different reasons has dispersed in the course of us rapidly reforming our economy and society. We cannot get back this feeling of unity having matured in the passionate desire for freedom. However, with view to sustainability of the Estonian state and people we need a pact levelling out radically diverging interests and orientating us, first of all, towards a more caring use of our human capital. Certainly, one might say that we already had such a national pact in the form our Constitution and that other agreements were made in the parliament. Yet, oftentimes we have had to admit that the real life had deviated us from the spirit of Constitution and the agreements made in the parliament have born the stamp of party bias.
To speak today of a new social or national pact means to view the future through the prism of the past and present. There are many essential arguments making the conclusion of such a pact strictly inevitable.
The first and most serious of them is that Estonia, as for the decrease in its population, belongs to the first in the world. That is an "achievement" we don't like to boast about in the least. And so, to foster the increase in birthrate and to make our society to concentrate on the child should become one of the cornerstones of the new social pact. To this end, there are many different ways and both long- and short-term strategies. But to start with, this priority should be accepted by the people, it is to be made a contractual criterion based on which all what is going on in Estonia - starting off by legislation and ending by state budget items - will be assessed.
It is really very pleasant that quite many political parties have made of child policy their election slogan. Yet, I am afraid that this might remain a single campaign. I would welcome it far more if society approved that the position and future of the child are an all-party subject of discussion. But making the demographic future of Estonia a party-political issue could prove contra-productive: in this case what somebody said or offered would be set above the goal that Estonia survived as Estonia.
Another cornerstone of the pact must be the education, its contents and system. We are witnessing an obvious discrepancy between the societal demand and the supply capacity of our education system. Here, on the one hand, we can see the elitism of magnet schools and, on the other hand, there are thousands of young people dropping out already of the basic school. It is particularly alarming that the availability of education is declining, and society, based on that, is stratifying both horizontally and vertically. The competitiveness of the Estonian state and people depends, first and foremost, on education, but the development potential of our culture depends on that as well. The action of Estonia's Aleksander School could be regarded as our first national contract in the field of education, the spirit of which provoked the creation of our national university and helped to preserve education provided in the Estonian language throughout the Soviet occupation. And so, we need a unifying action of the kind of Aleksander School also today.
Dear Friends,
The unity of our people, togetherness, usually stressed in connection with the 20th of August, only seems to be an abstract notion. But, if we take it as a model of a peasant family, or a traditional living family by and large, everything becomes conceivable. May-be we have become somewhat alienated from our state and lost the feeling of social solidarity just because we have abandoned the conception of family. And not only the conception: we don't see the family in the centre of values any more. At most, it has become a legal form of our relations with the state. Yet, just a small country and society, which is not backed by a powerful religion or statehood tradition, is based on a strong family.
Therefore, today - on a day when the past, present and future are bound together to form an entirety - I would like us to think more about these original and fundamental things uniting us. For it is much easier to hit those who are separated than those united. The roots of every tree join together in its trunk. So, let us do our utmost to make Estonia's trunk to withstand all winds and storms.
Once again, I would like to thank you for your valour and loyalty owing to which the independence of Estonia could be restored, and I wish that you, both at present and in future, when we need accord and concerted action for the sake of Estonia, be still among the protagonists and active supporters. Our independence and the survival of the Estonian people are worth your support.
Enjoy this festive day!
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