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Like all cities, Tallinn has its fair share of myths: for example, that all the women are slim, blonde and leggy, or that there is not a single handsome or sober man in town. The ruling political party, Res Publica, exploited this misconception during its pro-EU referendum campaign in 2003, with a poster depicting a Latin-looking man above the words: “230 million males live in EU countries. European males drink less and live longer than Estonian ones. Make your man a European!” There’s more in this than the campaign’s creators intended. Estonia is wedged between the free-market anarchy of post-Soviet Russia and the cool, rational, civilized Scandinavian states; the great task for Tallinn is to absorb these contradictory foreign influences without being overwhelmed by them. Its liberal economic policies have pulled in plenty of investment from Sweden, Norway and Finland, earning it the “Baltic Tiger” tag; yet Tallinn is, thankfully, far from being Nordicized. For one thing, socialism, a Scandinavian touchstone, is still treated with the utmost suspicion. After the collapse of communist rule, a minority got very rich very quick, and not all of them played by the rules. Then there are problems common to east and west: drug addiction, sex tourism and prostitution, the last-named addressed in Swedish director Lucas Moodyson’s harrowing film Lilja 4 Ever (2003), partly shot in Tallinn. When a former foreign minister declared, deadpan, that Estonia’s goal was “to become just another boring Nordic country”, he may have meant that the country needed time to calm down and grow up. Much of what westerners take for granted is still a delightful novelty in Tallinn, although people here are becoming more cynical about everything from democracy to the wonders of the digital age. Instead of being euphoric about e-stonia’s internet revolution, Tallinners tut about system crashes and server problems. Annoyance at any reference to the Soviet time has given way, at least in more enlightened circles, to the admission that not everything was awful then – or rather, that you need not be ashamed of having lived under communism. Older Tallinners can laugh about having developed one way of speaking for public places and another for trusted friends and family, a habit some find hard to shrug off. The attitudes of travelling “easterners” and visiting “westerners” towards each other have also changed: gone are the mutual misconceptions so well captured in Tõnu Õnnepalu’s savagely funny novel Border State (1993), about an Estonian in Paris: “When they [westerners] hear you’re from Eastern Europe, they look on you with pity and speak with hollow words, as if you were a dead relative.” Life for many Tallinners is governed by the need to work, work, work; many have more than one job and are slaves to their mortgages. Yet they always summon the stamina to play, play, play, perhaps unsurprising given the sheer volume of tempting bars in town, and they love to dress up for a grand occasion, and to attend concerts given by one of the many Estonian conductors who’ve made their reputations abroad. In a city where everyone seems to know everyone else, this isn’t social climbing, more a chance to catch up with old school and university friends who happen to be in the government. Theatre too is popular, as a place where you can escape and laugh at yourself, hence the success of Andrus Kivirähk’s play, The Estonian Funeral, an affectionate poke at the ritualistic mania for berry-picking and jam-making, which often results in pots of the stuff mouldering away in cupboards unopened for years. Self-righteous western observers used to delight in asking whether the rights of the Russian-speaking community, which makes up 40% of Tallinn’s population, were being respected. In newly independent Estonia, some Russian-speakers complained about the new citizenship law, which granted automatic citizenship only to those who were citizens of the pre-war republic, including emigrés; others living in Estonia had to apply for citizenship, or choose another nationality. There is still a sizeable pool of as yet undecided inhabitants with “grey passports”. Other than that, there’s surprisingly little tension. Pre-independence, differences were largely ideological (Estonians feared “Russians” would sabotage their bid for independence, while the latter feared they would lose out in the new Estonia); now they are, as one local observer put it, “practical”. Many Tallinners over 30 do not mix with members of the other language community, but the opposite is true for the younger generation, especially on the dancefloor. Younger Estonians do not wince when they hear Russian and younger Russian-speakers have little trouble picking up Estonian, athough more could be done to guarantee quality Estonian- language tuition in Russian-language schools. Following Estonia’s decision to join the European Union and NATO’s decision to let the country in, investment continues to flow into the country, and almost everyone is benefiting, no matter what language they speak. Many companies see Estonia as a handy stepping stone for expansion further east. And tourism is booming as Tallinn cleverly exploits its image as a place where the medieval saunters along in perfect harmony with the modern. Where else in the world would an early-music ensemble translate Black Sabbath lyrics into Latin, taking heavy metal back to the Middle Ages and making it sound entirely new? Workaholics by day, hedonists by night, pragmatists pretty much all the time, Estonians are hell-bent on making up for the lost time of the Soviet occupation, hence the dynamism and lack of complacency that characterize this indomitable city.
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