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The President of the Republic at the international Conference "Border Changes in 20th Century Europe" in Tartu, on February 3, 2005
03.02.2005


Dear participates of the conference!

It is very pleasant that Tartu has got an opportunity to host a representative international history conference on such an important subject that has been topical through the centuries. The choice of the venue and time of this conference is very symbolic, as both, Tartu and yesterday's date, are linked with the formation of state borders in Europe.

I regret that, due to my official duties, I had to miss the opening day of the conference, where topics, which are continuously exciting many nations, ethnic groups and individuals, were discussed. Certainly, the list of such topics covers issues of language, ethnicity and border changes, but also historical memory changes, which are discussed today.

The issues of state border are often related with historical memory, and this is a topic, which is painful for many nations. However, this topic is interwoven with politics and therefore it stays on the political agenda of quite a few states.

The border has an essential role in the birth and existence of a state, as it defines the space where the people exercise their sovereign power. The border is also a dominant prerequisite for being recognized by other states and for the possibility to develop international relations.

Generally speaking, we can regard the last century as an era of formation of new borders, both in direct and indirect sense of the word. In Europe, including our region here, the borders between states and also between people and their way of thinking have changed. Those developments have made an impact also on the formation of the Estonian state border.

The Tartu Peace Treaty, signed between the Republic of Estonia and Soviet Russia, is taken as the birth certificate of our independent statehood. Though, the independence had been proclaimed two years earlier, it was the peace treaty that made the realisation of the sovereignty possible for Estonia.

Until the overthrow of the tsarist regime in Russia, there were no openly expressed doubts about a union with Russia in Estonia. Very few people believed that a small country like Estonia could succeed all by itself. Having in mind the subsequent history, this fact is rather significant.

It seems to be paradoxical that the idea of separation from Russia and creation of our own state grew out of the cooperation and union idea. For the first time, the Land Council, a representative autonomous body of the Province of Estonia, discussed the issue of Estonia's international status in September 1917. Proclamation of independence was not discussed at that time yet. But it is true enough that one of the most prominent Estonian politicians at the time, Jaan Tõnisson was taking about cooperation between the Scandinavian and the Baltic people.

This was not yet a plan to proclaim the independence of Estonia. Using the words expressed by Professor of International Law Ants Piip, a politician who happened to be in the midst of the events of that time, the idea of independence crystallized on New Year's Eve, 1918. It may be a little arbitrarily chosen parallel, but anyway, it is an interesting observation that at the same time, on the opposite side of the globe, the President of the United States Woodrow Wilson worded his 14 points concerning the right of nations of self-determination and ensuring fair peace.

It is important to note that the idea of independent Estonia was born out of the idea of cooperation between the small nations of the Baltic Sea region, and with that Estonia formulated its foreign policy orientation for the first time. In the 20th century, the Estonian Land Council was the first people's representative body in the Baltic Sea region to address the of topic of cooperation between the nations of that region.

It should be mentioned that most of bigger nations in Europe had already founded their independent nation-states. They had built up their national identity and had relatively stable system of government. There was no threat to the existence of bigger nations, but in case of smaller nations, including Estonia, the situation was different.

When the legal state power in Russia collapsed in 1917 and Estonia was facing the threat of German occupation, the situation demanded and made it possible to act. On February 24, 1918, the Estonian politicians took advantage of the unique opportunity and declared the birth of an independent Republic of Estonia.

Still very young Estonian state had to defend its independence fighting on several fronts against German as well as against Russian troops. The War of Independence that had lasted almost a year and a half ended with the signing of the Tartu Peace Treaty, which guaranteed the independence of our state and gave the other states of the world a legal basis to recognise it.

Estonia gained its independence during a period of freedom movements and disintegration of empires. In the course of that historical process, the practice of centralised regulation of life of nations within an empire was ended. It opened for nation-states a possibility of free cooperation, either within the framework of regional unions or joining with international organisations. However that possibility was not realised then, quite the contrary, the international cooperation started to fall apart, and not only in the Baltic Sea region but also elsewhere.

In 1921 Estonia joined the League of Nations, in order to get more efficient political and military security guarantees. At that time, there were many who hoped that the League of Nations could guarantee peace, and that the world war had been a lesson for states and nations. But the collective security system failed to function as quite a few key states were keeping aside.

The Tartu Peace Treaty, being economically favourable for Estonia, created a unique foreign policy situation, which we have not experienced either before or after that in our history. In the years 1920-1922 the relations of Estonia with Russia were better than the other European states had with Russia. The Estonian governments of that time hoped to restore the economic ties, which Estonia had had before World War I. The idea of Estonia as an economic bridge between the east and west was also topical.

But close economic ties between Estonia and Russia were not restored, on the contrary, over the period of 1913-1923 they shrunk by more than ten times. The weakening of economic ties was not the fault of the Estonian side. The historians say that from an economic viewpoint, it was not Estonia that broke off from Russia; it was Russia that pushed Estonia away.

The same process repeated itself again after the restoration of independence of Estonia, as, due to various reasons, our eastbound trade dwindled almost to non-existence. At the same time, disputes over the recognition of the borders fixed in the Tartu Peace Treaty were going on. And those disputes have continued till today.

In the period between the two world wars, the relations between the Baltic Sea states were characterised by a weak political and military cooperation. The foreign policy of great powers became more and more aggressive. In August 1939, the Hitler-Stalin Pact caused a setback in positive developments that followed World War One.

The state border of the Republic of Estonia, fixed in the Tartu Peace Treaty, stood for only two decades. Conspiracy of two totalitarian powers changed the fate and the borders of Estonia as well as of other small nations. In June 1940 the Soviet Union occupied the Republic of Estonia and incorporated it as a constituent republic of the USSR. The same happened to Latvia and Lithuania. That year, nine states, three of them the Baltic states, lost their independence. The number of the Baltic Sea states dwindled to a mere four.

There were states that recognised the disappearance of the Baltic states from the political map of Europe, but some other states saw it as an act of violence and ruthless distortion of people's will. Herewith we should point out the principled viewpoint of the United States of America, expressed in a statement made by the Department of State on July 23, 1940. With that, the United States of America refused to recognise the forcible incorporation of the Baltic states into the USSR.

Under the influence of Washington's principled attitude, many other states did not recognise de jure the incorporation of the independent Baltic states. All this did not let the world to forget our situation, and at the same time it supported our aspirations to restore our freedom until we gained it in 1991.

This was the second wave of changing the borders resulting from disintegration of empire in 20th century Europe. It concerned first of all the states in our neighbourhood, where several nation-states restored their independence. Right after that, these countries started to participate in extensive international cooperation.

Though, in the period between two wars, the cooperation ideas of Estonian politicians did not find a warm welcome either in the West or in Russia, the situation changed during the second half of the 20th century. Conditions for cooperation and forming a union between the states in Europe and across the Atlantic emerged.

From that point on, an entirely new development stage started, and quite a few theoreticians contemplate that it may lead towards a Europe or even a world without borders. By that we can mean relations between people, cultural and economic contacts, common security system, or even political map.

Dear listeners!

History assures us that the balance in the world is fragile. Therefore, peace, being an expression of balance is valuable. Unilateral attempts to change borders can cause, and history has shown that they have caused, the collapse of peace structure, which is fragile anyway. But in most cases, the concurrent losses arising from this, prove to be tragic for small states.

The topics related to state borders could be treated in historical, legal, as well as in political context. At the same time, all those different ways of treatment are needed in order to get a complete picture. The same holds true also when we handle the topic of the Tartu Peace Treaty.

In historical context the Tartu Peace Treaty is a guarantee to the birth certificate of the Republic of Estonia - the Independence Manifesto. At the same time the Peace Treaty served as a legal basis, both, for international recognition of Estonia and for organising relations with Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union, its legal successor. But rather often legal values are sacrificed for political ambitions. Especially when the interests of superpowers are involved.

The Tartu Peace Treaty was violated when the Soviet Union and Germany signed a conspirative pact on August 23,1939. The USSR Congress of People's Deputies on December 24, 1989, adopted a resolution on the political and legal evaluation of that pact. The resolution of the Congress made a reference to the Peace Treaty of 1920 and noted that it gave a primary legal basis to the states to mutually honour each other's sovereignty and to fix relations between the Soviet Union and the Republic of Estonia. The Congress denounced the signing of those secret agreements and declared them, 50 years later, legally ungrounded and null and void from the moment of their signing.

This created a prerequisite for fair and objective evaluation of history. Honest treatment of historical legacy and mutual respect of each other will hopefully become a norm in Estonian-Russian relations also nowadays.

Speaking here, at the conference on border changes, I consider it important to point out that at the very tense border negotiations with Russia, which were started right after the restoration of our independence and lasted for seven years, Estonia demonstrated its readiness to make compromises. The border treaty was initialised in 1999 and it reflects the realities that had occurred in the world during the second half of the last century.

We should not look at the Estonian-Russian border treaty only in the context of the relations between two countries. We should not underestimate its significance for the entire world, as it is today, where new realities determine the developments.

When the European Union was enlarged and it extended to the eastern border of Estonia, also the responsibility for the common space shifted eastward. I can give several examples, which prove that Estonia perceives that responsibility, but let me point out only one here.

Estonians celebrated the enlargement of the European Union by planting a million young trees. The planting of trees symbolised planting of our new possibilities so that they can grow. Whether those possibilities realise according to our expectations, or not, depends on us, as well as on the development of the European Union. While planting the trees we could imagine how they would look like in a quarter of century, but it is impossible to imagine with the same clarity what would Europe and the future of the world look like.

Allow me to wish all of you great success in this changing world!

Thank you for your attention!


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