Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:43writer seems to have one
00:00:45goal: to make us uncomfortable.
00:00:48To make us want to contradict him at all costs, because
00:00:50Tekitada meis soovi igal juhul talle vastu vaielda, sest et
00:00:54he offers a different perspective on what is happening
00:00:56or has already happened in Estonia.
00:01:00He offers a perspective that has either not been discussed before
00:01:03for one reason or another, or that we
00:01:14books was published in the Estonian
00:01:17forces, I Thought series under the title Labyrinth in the bottom left corner. Editor Katri Liik has
00:01:21said about you that you are fiery,
00:01:25sharp, and you even invite
00:01:28attacks. "Is it your goal
00:01:31to invite attacks or
00:01:35why do you, as a historian, bring out such
00:01:39aspects from the past of Estonians that
00:01:42we prefer to
00:01:43forget? Yes,
00:01:46as an addition, as an addition,
00:01:50I would try to be grammatically correct and
00:01:52precise, to what was just heard,
00:01:55that just now in Kadriorg we had another literary
00:01:59event and then
00:02:02a quite well-known person and publisher, who was
00:02:06conversing with Toomas Kall and Taavid Sevijov,
00:02:08reacted
00:02:11to me, seeing me pass by, "Look, the wasp has arrived."
00:02:14So, in that
00:02:17sense, what you are saying now
00:02:20seems to be a broader
00:02:24attitude or observation about me, and it doesn't
00:02:27make me particularly happy, of course.
00:02:30When I was younger, it seemed
00:02:34to me that this might be my
00:02:36function, and at that time, I even
00:02:40occasionally said, very confidently,
00:02:44that I fulfill the role of a mirror, reflecting Estonian
00:02:47custom space with all its
00:02:50shortcomings, with all the defects
00:02:54that are found here. But now that I am older
00:02:58and calmer, I am no longer particularly happy when I am told that a wasp
00:03:02has arrived. But
00:03:05in my time, I did it. I thought that
00:03:08after graduating from the University of Tartu's history department, that
00:03:11it could be one of my functions or
00:03:14purposes,
00:03:16meanings in Estonian society. Well, but it
00:03:20was for a very long time,
00:03:22wasn't it? You did it intentionally, you had that goal,
00:03:25right?
00:03:27No, the goal was not to make anyone angry or irritated.
00:03:31The goal was to create a discussion.
00:03:34But I admit now in hindsight that it didn't particularly
00:03:38succeed, because you don't discuss
00:03:41with a wasp, you repel it, you
00:03:45try to swat it with a rolled-up
00:03:48newspaper. I must remind the listener that,
00:03:51first and foremost, the bloody battles of Sinimäe or the
00:03:55April 2007 riots, but also Andrei
00:03:58Fostov's further
00:04:02delving into Estonian history, these are still topics to which
00:04:05the Estonian public reacted very, very painfully.
00:04:08What
00:04:11purpose do such historical interpretations that
00:04:15are uncomfortable for us to read
00:04:18serve? Is this the purpose of being
00:04:21a mirror?
00:04:24Well, I believe and am still
00:04:27of the opinion that
00:04:30the feeling of annoying
00:04:33oneself, this has not only a deep philosophical meaning, but
00:04:36also a psychotherapeutic one,
00:04:40that if you learn to look
00:04:42at yourself as you really
00:04:45are and not as you would like
00:04:49to be, then this could have not only
00:04:52a healing effect, but also a progressive effect. We
00:04:56learn from mistakes. If we admit that something in our history
00:05:01went wrong and askew, instead of dismissing it or
00:05:04on the contrary, praising it,
00:05:07then there is a danger
00:05:10that mistakes will be repeated, that we will step on the same rake again.
00:05:13Well, this teaching word that
00:05:17was heard during the Singing Revolution, that one must always
00:05:21learn from history and
00:05:23history is what teaches us to be and to live, and then
00:05:27in contrast to that, it is said that the only thing history teaches is that history is not
00:05:31learned from. Now the latter seems to be true, but it's
00:05:35hard to accept. I would still like it to go
00:05:38according to that first saying, that whoever remembers the past
00:05:42has no future. But as a historian, a professional
00:05:46historian, do you believe that every new
00:05:49generation that grows up
00:05:53doesn't remember or doesn't want to remember the mistakes of the previous one, and everything
00:05:56repeats itself?
00:05:59It seems so. Well, let's say on an individual
00:06:02level, this is very clearly
00:06:04observable. When representatives of the older
00:06:07generation try to teach younger people or tell
00:06:11them not to make that mistake, it has usually never yielded
00:06:15results, because making mistakes, making personal mistakes,
00:06:18seems to be part of human rights.
00:06:22No young person has ever been grateful for being
00:06:26prevented from making mistakes. We learn
00:06:28from mistakes, well, and then it probably
00:06:31is so. But as for the perception of history,
00:06:35or well, that's also a well-known
00:06:38saying that every generation writes its own history, and
00:06:42it really changes with generations. The historical concepts change,
00:06:46and the past is re-evaluated once
00:06:48again. And that is, of course, an exciting process, and in my time, I
00:06:52also tried to participate in it. Do you
00:06:55mean that Estonians understand their history one-sidedly,
00:06:58that is, as we want to see ourselves in the mirror
00:07:02or as we want to remember
00:07:04our past? Mm, oh yes, definitely, but this is not
00:07:08at all unique to Estonians, all
00:07:11nations do it. There's a huge beautification and
00:07:14sugar-coating and
00:07:16forgetting of certain
00:07:18uncomfortable episodes and situations. For example, what immediately
00:07:22comes to mind now is that when we had the Republic of Estonia 100, well, we
00:07:26remember that 2018, and before that,
00:07:30slowly moving towards that anniversary, then the
00:07:33100th anniversary of the Estonian War of Independence was also commemorated, and then, well, we even
00:07:37had a cool armored train traveling around Estonia, and then
00:07:40all those important battles and everything
00:07:43were remembered. Do you remember an event that was not celebrated,
00:07:47whose 100th anniversary passed?
00:07:51The Saaremaa uprising, when the men of Saaremaa refused to obey the mainlanders and
00:07:54go to the War of Independence. It was not mentioned at all.
00:07:57Well, that's just one example of how some unpleasant
00:08:01things that happened in the past, well, we try
00:08:04to forget them.
00:08:06And then you are the one who brings out from our history
00:08:10those things that we try to forget.
00:08:12That's what drives you as a historian.
00:08:14Not only as a historian, but also as
00:08:18a writer,
00:08:22because, well, let's admit that if
00:08:25there are taboo subjects, then poking at them is indeed interesting,
00:08:29intellectually interesting, because why repeat
00:08:32and circle around what everyone already knows and what
00:08:36hundreds of mouths and voices repeat? One always wants to go
00:08:39to a somewhat dangerous area. "Where do you
00:08:42find this material? How much do you visit
00:08:45archives? No, you don't even have to visit archives,
00:08:49you just have to remember your own
00:08:52studies at the University of Tartu and
00:08:55what was said, what was hinted at,
00:08:59what was not said at all. Of course, as a student back then, I didn't
00:09:02understand all of it, and I still don't understand
00:09:05everything. Well, in that sense, I don't master all
00:09:08the facts, but I
00:09:11did notice a few things, and that's where I started poking around. I actually started with
00:09:15it already in my second
00:09:17year, in my second-year course paper,
00:09:20where I wrote my
00:09:23essay on the theme of ancient freedom struggles.
00:09:26My supervisor was Sulev Vahtre. I received
00:09:29the highest grade for it, and
00:09:33there I argued against the official
00:09:37interpretation of the ancient freedom struggle. Incidentally,
00:09:40later that course paper became the book "Mõtteline
00:09:43Eesti" (Conceptual Estonia), so this first part, which talks about
00:09:47those ancient times, is based on that student
00:09:50work from back then. And there I
00:09:53took, I took up a study
00:09:57by a German historian, Friedrich Benninghofen, on the
00:10:00Order of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. As far as I know, it has not
00:10:03been translated into Estonian yet, and it was diametrically
00:10:06opposite to what I was taught
00:10:09in my history courses,
00:10:13both in primary school and later at university. Everything
00:10:17was completely different there, and I emphasize that Vening Hofen
00:10:21is not at all among the Baltic Germans, because well, Baltic
00:10:25Germans, Balts, could be suspected of being spiteful and
00:10:28against us, but Beningghof is a completely imperial German
00:10:32and extremely objective and impartial
00:10:35in my opinion, and that's where I got some of
00:10:39those ideas. This Beninhoffen did not justify
00:10:42the activities of the Teutonic Order
00:10:44in the Baltics.
00:10:47No, certainly not, but his urgent recommendation was to
00:10:50look at things in the context of their time,
00:10:53and the context of the time was such
00:10:57that the crusaders, when they came here, well,
00:11:00we remember from our past studies that we were told that
00:11:04they came here to plunder, to rob, to
00:11:07conquer lands, but in the 13th century context, they
00:11:11came to save us, or the people who were here, to save them. From
00:11:14what? From paganism,
00:11:17from the eastern neighbor, from pagan, no, from pagan perdition, from the fact that, well,
00:11:21pagans are all eventually destined for eternal torment in hell.
00:11:25First of all, and secondly, at that time, when I was dealing with this matter,
00:11:29a very modern motif emerged from it, that
00:11:33we all know the glorious story
00:11:36of the Eastern Vikings, that the people of Saaremaa and Courland, that they were once the rulers
00:11:40of the Baltic Sea, they even burned down Sigtuna,
00:11:43this is spoken of quite proudly.
00:11:47Also in the pre-war republic,
00:11:51one of the favorite motifs was the image of a Viking ship, wasn't it?
00:11:54On the two-crown or one-crown coin, there was Toompea somewhere and
00:11:58somewhere there was that Viking ship.
00:12:01Well, young Estonia used the Viking ship motif, well, that's something
00:12:04proud and powerful.
00:12:07If we look from the Scandinavian side, they were the victims of those attacks. That was
00:12:11pure piracy. That was, in modern terms,
00:12:14international terrorism, and it had to be dealt with in exactly the same way as
00:12:18the Americans, when they invaded
00:12:21Iraq, or how they are dealing now with the Yemeni Houthis.
00:12:25Or or with the Iranians,
00:12:27then the justification for such
00:12:31military intervention is the securing of trade
00:12:34routes, international peace, the suppression of international
00:12:37terrorism wherever it arises. So, at the beginning of the 13th century, when
00:12:41this invasion of Western Christians
00:12:44here began, why not look at it as one such military
00:12:48operation to suppress international
00:12:50terrorism? It may seem like a somewhat unexpected
00:12:54idea. "Very unexpected, but those Danish-Swedish territories that fell victim to these
00:12:58Eastern Viking raids, I think
00:13:01they saw it exactly that way and thanked
00:13:05the Lord in church that finally someone had started dealing
00:13:08with this problem. The wheel of war turned, he who
00:13:11was once a plunderer and terrorist, later became
00:13:15a victim and a slave. I
00:13:17now emphasize that everything I just said is
00:13:21very anachronistic, that the word "terrorist" certainly doesn't fit into the realities
00:13:25of the 13th century, but I just used
00:13:29that wording to give
00:13:32today's listener, reader,
00:13:36some points of reference to grasp onto.
00:13:40Valdur Mikita has described that
00:13:43the ecosystem at the border of field and forest
00:13:47is the most species-rich. Species from the forest,
00:13:51plant and animal species,
00:13:54mix there, and vice versa. It is also claimed that
00:13:58for example, when the DNA of people mixes with traces
00:14:01of many nationalities, then it is a person who is
00:14:05intellectually capable and talented in many
00:14:08fields. You are also on the border. How
00:14:11do you currently feel
00:14:13about being on the border?
00:14:15Mm
00:14:18Well, first of all, I know that
00:14:21the border areas between the forest and the open land are the most biodiverse, and
00:14:25I know that even without Valdur Mikita, because when I was studying
00:14:29beekeeping at the time, those areas
00:14:32are indeed the most magnificent, the most
00:14:35suitable for bees.
00:14:37Talking like this now, I took a moment to think.
00:14:41Yes, I'm on the edge, even just by the fact that I come from Ida-Virumaa, which is such
00:14:45a border area. I'm from a mixed
00:14:48family, and here we are dealing with,
00:14:52I emphasize, such a family
00:14:55composition that is very
00:14:58contrasting.
00:15:00If one of my parents were Estonian, the other Latvian, one
00:15:04parent Estonian, the other Finnish, then it wouldn't create such
00:15:07a big contrast as having one parent Estonian,
00:15:10the other Russian. I even once
00:15:13made a table of the contradictions
00:15:16this creates. There were six
00:15:20levels where there is a diametrical contradiction.
00:15:23I don't know, we probably don't need to list them now, but
00:15:27a few examples could be interesting. Well, let's start with
00:15:30the fact that one is a small nation, under
00:15:34a million, which is why we have,
00:15:38for at least a century, at least a century,
00:15:42had this existential fear that at least Estonian intellectual
00:15:45demographers express, that, well, we are in danger
00:15:48of extinction. And Russians, let's say,
00:15:51are 150 million, and although the demographic situation there is also very
00:15:54bad, but as a large nation, they have never
00:15:57felt that existential fear of
00:16:01extinction, so it is not a topic
00:16:05for them at all. Estonia is a small
00:16:08nation-state with a mentality derived from that, and
00:16:11Russia is a large empire, with a mentality
00:16:13derived from that.
00:16:16Estonia has been part of the West for actually
00:16:20all these seven or eight centuries, that is the
00:16:23legacy of the crusaders, they integrated us into the West
00:16:27with very painful methods, and 50 years of Soviet
00:16:30occupation did not change that situation. Incidentally, this is the main
00:16:34motif of "Conceptual Estonia," my first book.
00:16:38And Russia is an Eastern,
00:16:41I don't know, Mongolian-Tatar Eastern type. There are
00:16:44many such contradictions and diametrical contradictions, and
00:16:48in my own family, in everyday life, these
00:16:51manifested, so that while I was between these two
00:16:55drew from one side and drew from the other
00:16:58side, and I kept thinking and thinking and thinking, what is all
00:17:02this that is happening around me? Such a borderline state
00:17:06undoubtedly gives broader
00:17:09opportunities to perceive the world, and on the other hand, perhaps this
00:17:12borderline state also sets its own limits on how
00:17:16to perceive the world. What thoughts does this statement
00:17:20evoke in you?
00:17:25This is such a broad topic,
00:17:27philosophical.
00:17:29When I once
00:17:33corrected, let's put
00:17:35it this way, the "Estonian custom space"
00:17:38invented by President Kersti Kaljulaid, do you remember
00:17:41when it was first mentioned? It was
00:17:44when there was the great migration crisis in Europe
00:17:48and understandably, the Estonian president then expressed
00:17:52an idea or brought up a certain prerequisite,
00:17:55on the basis of which we could then receive
00:17:58at that time, there was talk of alleged or soon-to-be-arriving
00:18:02masses of refugees from somewhere in the Middle East, that we can only accept
00:18:06those people who somehow conform to the Estonian
00:18:09custom space, and she used, in my opinion,
00:18:12in four of her important speeches, I
00:18:16think over two years, this concept
00:18:19of "custom space," never specifying what
00:18:22it is. And then my correction was that, yes,
00:18:26very nice, but please now bring out the
00:18:28criteria that a person must meet in order
00:18:32to fit into the Estonian custom space. Please define
00:18:35this custom space. At that time, I also had
00:18:39some accounts on social media, I had several thousand followers on Facebook, or
00:18:42no, they were called friends on Facebook. Then
00:18:46I received a lot of criticism from there, that
00:18:49a true Estonian doesn't need a definition, a true Estonian already knows what
00:18:53custom space is. But here are some, I don't know, some
00:18:56not quite true Estonians, but those who are
00:19:00foreigners like Fostof, well, they must be
00:19:03explained. So
00:19:07the main content
00:19:09of my
00:19:12argument is that, let's leave aside those refugees from the Middle East or North Africa,
00:19:15someone from America comes to Estonia and says, "Very
00:19:19good, I want to be Estonian, I want to fit into this
00:19:23cultural space." But now tell me, what should
00:19:26I do with my mentality, what criteria should
00:19:30I meet? And what will we then
00:19:32tell him? That, you know, it's
00:19:35undefinable, it's a sort of internal
00:19:38feeling, you just suck it in with your mother's
00:19:41milk and you know, we can't explain it to you,
00:19:45it's so unexplainable.
00:19:48Such an explanation doesn't satisfy me. And
00:19:51this fuss around the custom space really lasted quite a long time, I remember
00:19:54it took two years before a relevant article appeared
00:19:58in the Estonian Wikipedia, the content of which doesn't really
00:20:02satisfy me.
00:20:05But well, let's talk about literature, since
00:20:08I am a literary person, no one would deny that "Truth and Justice" is a very
00:20:12important text for understanding
00:20:16the Estonian mindset.
00:20:18Let's take "Truth and Justice", the first part, and let's take violence
00:20:22against women, it's a very painful topic.
00:20:25Years ago there was a terrible incident when a refugee from Syria, I think a man,
00:20:29poured gasoline over his wife, set
00:20:33her on fire, because in his opinion the woman had behaved incorrectly,
00:20:37violating ancient rules and laws, exactly this
00:20:41woman. But, well, this act is clearly not compatible with the Estonian
00:20:44custom space, it's completely at odds with it. But now
00:20:48let's take "Truth and Justice". Let's take violence
00:20:51against women. Farmer Andres Andres
00:20:53Paas, he generally doesn't beat his wives, well, it's true,
00:20:57he works Krõõt to death, but he beats Mari once, when
00:21:00Mari can't get over Juss's suicide, when Juss starts
00:21:04haunting her, then Andres beats
00:21:07her and also cuts down the tree on which Juss
00:21:11hanged himself. Sauna Madis doesn't
00:21:13beat his sauna aunt, but he threatens her very seriously once when
00:21:17the sauna aunt spreads rumors in the village and talks
00:21:21all sorts of ugly things about the master Andres and his wife.
00:21:25Madis threatens to beat her so much that she is beaten. And then there is
00:21:29Oru Pearu, who constantly beats his wife, who unfortunately
00:21:32remains anonymous, she is consistently called a "sheep whore".
00:21:35She constantly gets beaten. Now the big question is, which
00:21:39of these three men represents the Estonian
00:21:41custom space?
00:21:45Very difficult to answer, isn't it? I have never
00:21:48asked myself this question. Well, a person on the borderline does ask such
00:21:51questions, and if we now become
00:21:55very, I don't know, disgusting and cynical, I am now being very
00:21:58ironic, then probably to that Syrian who will
00:22:02one day come to Estonia seeking asylum, if he asks how he should
00:22:06behave, then we will say, based
00:22:09on an incident in Rakvere, where a
00:22:12person whom Ekre once wanted to get as a
00:22:15minister, came under great suspicion
00:22:19because his wife had injuries, the mechanism of which
00:22:22or the mechanism of their formation
00:22:25was unclear, so the Estonian custom space is such that you beat women,
00:22:29you beat them quietly, and if asked, do you beat them? You deny it. Is that
00:22:32the Estonian
00:22:34custom space? Practice shows that it probably
00:22:37is. It happens regrettably often,
00:22:41yes, and if I say that now, well, thank God, Facebook is
00:22:44long gone, but I can imagine the hail of abuse
00:22:48I would receive right now. That no, it's not
00:22:51like that.
00:22:54It still infuriates me sometimes, this sugar-coating
00:22:57of reality or this Estonianness, that we are something different from what we actually
00:23:01are.
00:23:04We may yet talk about some articles that have caused
00:23:08very strong and lasting
00:23:12objections in society, to which you have been able to respond in turn, but
00:23:16I am currently stuck on your article that appeared in July.
00:23:20It was titled, "What is punishment literature?"
00:23:24So my question related to the previous one is, when you
00:23:28show Estonians in the mirror
00:23:31their uncomfortable moments of customs,
00:23:35character, or history, is this
00:23:37punishment literature?
00:23:42Is it something with which you not only
00:23:45express your personal opinion,
00:23:48but also that we, who
00:23:51read, should feel
00:23:54punished? I am now in a situation where
00:23:57we are sitting in the studio right now. Actually, I
00:24:01should be lying on a couch and a psychologist should be
00:24:03talking to me. Now I should start
00:24:07digging deeply into myself.
00:24:11Because from this question, it is clear that is it like this, that I, as this
00:24:14borderline person, who has heard one thing, another, and
00:24:18a third, perhaps I now somehow want to take revenge on the Estonian
00:24:21people or on this custom space
00:24:24where I live? Your answer
00:24:26interests me.
00:24:35Still no.
00:24:37No,
00:24:42I still come back to the thought that if we talk about unpleasant
00:24:45things, then
00:24:49there is hope that we will learn
00:24:52from something, starting to be ashamed of it or, if not
00:24:56ashamed, then thinking that this is not rational behavior, let's rather not.
00:25:00do it in such a way that right now, to extricate ourselves from this difficult situation, this difficult
00:25:03question, I recall what is happening
00:25:07in the Middle East, since I mainly write in Eesti Ekspress
00:25:10about foreign policy events,
00:25:14then ee in this Arab-Israeli
00:25:17conflict, I have
00:25:20registered over the years, and experts have also said,
00:25:23that what distinguishes Israelis, or
00:25:26Jews, from Arabs is that Israelis learn from their
00:25:30mistakes. If they have suffered a defeat in some military
00:25:33campaign, like during the war in
00:25:361973, then they learn from these
00:25:39mistakes. Arabs, who always instill in themselves
00:25:42some kind of ee
00:25:45victory, the same Yom Kippur War, for example, that
00:25:49it surprised me that in Egypt, the anniversary
00:25:52is always celebrated as a great Egyptian victory, although they did not
00:25:55win, they were defeated in that war in the end. So
00:25:59Arabs, who are not able to admit their mistakes at all... to say that
00:26:02they have been defeated somewhere, then they also don't learn from it. And we see this every
00:26:06single time when another conflict flares up there, that
00:26:10Arabs do not learn from their mistakes because the
00:26:13mirror they hold up shows some kind of
00:26:17well, a very wise, very heroic,
00:26:20very, very close to God person
00:26:23apparently, who is then flawless,
00:26:25infallible. If we don't learn from our mistakes, then it
00:26:29can have very disastrous consequences." If you
00:26:33write in Eesti Ekspress about the
00:26:36clashes between Jews and Palestinians,
00:26:39what kind of feedback do you
00:26:41get?
00:26:44Well, I would even phrase it this way, that
00:26:46many younger generation intellectuals, who were once
00:26:50on friendly terms with me, are no longer so, because
00:26:54there is still a predominantly pro-Palestinian
00:26:56stance. I would even say that
00:27:00there's a small parallel now with the Ukrainian war, which
00:27:02notoriously, when it started in 2022,
00:27:06then in Russian society, well,
00:27:10they got very, very much at odds with each other.
00:27:13There were typical cases where in one family the children
00:27:17had one opinion and the parents had a completely different opinion, and it could even
00:27:21end with them ceasing to communicate with each other. The Ukrainian
00:27:25war made Russians fall out with each other. I
00:27:28say that what happened with Gaza, made the Estonian
00:27:31intellectual community fall out with each other. I wouldn't say that the entire Estonian nation is
00:27:35now divided, but the Estonian intellectual community certainly is, and I perceive that
00:27:38very clearly. So, the fact that I started
00:27:42writing about this and took a very firm stance, I simply created
00:27:45more adversaries
00:27:49for myself, maybe even enemies. But I
00:27:52say that this is not the first time, I have had many such
00:27:56moments in life, starting from the conceptual Estonia, after its
00:27:59publication, the national wing,
00:28:02the conservative wing suddenly discovered that maybe I am a Moscow
00:28:06henchman, maybe I am this or that, because I want to rob the Estonian
00:28:09people of their Estonian history and show everything
00:28:13somehow in a light favorable to the Russian Empire,
00:28:17well, roughly such
00:28:20suspicions existed. And now, with the
00:28:24aftershocks of the Gaza conflict, mentally, now
00:28:27it suddenly turns out, how should I
00:28:30say this? Well, in this left-wing modern
00:28:34discourse, the prevailing definition, I
00:28:37am a white, half-dead man, who
00:28:40patronizes and does something else like that, in short, I unexpectedly found myself
00:28:44in the same company where once in the early 90s I
00:28:47thought those were
00:28:50the conservative nationalists who despised my view
00:28:53of history. I thought I was completely different from them, but now a
00:28:57new generation came and today it's completely different, I'm exactly in the same
00:29:00company. Mm
00:29:02paradox, your most
00:29:06recognized work, Sillamäe Passion, has
00:29:10received the Cultural Endowment of Estonia annual prize, the Virumaa prize, many other
00:29:13prizes, it has also been translated into Russian.
00:29:16Yes, and one of my university classmates,
00:29:20who is now quite a well-known ethnologist, Aimar
00:29:23Ventsel, he did an experiment. He would occasionally
00:29:27give the Russian-language version in Ida-Virumaa to Russian-speaking
00:29:30people to read. And he confirmed, well,
00:29:34let's say, through such an experiment, he confirmed what I already
00:29:38knew, that our Russians hate this book,
00:29:41for the reason, but for the same reason why Estonians hate
00:29:45my text, I write some things there that
00:29:48Russians don't like, which
00:29:51undermines their self-image, puts it in doubt.
00:29:55You are a stranger to
00:29:58strangers and a stranger to your
00:30:01own, right? "I don't even know to whom I really
00:30:04belong, to my closest ones, to my
00:30:07closest, to my family, to them I am probably
00:30:10my own. Let's move in time to April
00:30:142013, when your article "My
00:30:17Life with Leena" was published. It was a frank
00:30:21article about your home beauty, focused on your
00:30:25wife's bedridden mother, who needed
00:30:27round-the-clock care, a place in a nursing home was not
00:30:31possible.
00:30:33This article received a lot of feedback,
00:30:37a lot of thoughtful consideration, a lot of
00:30:39condemnation. It was again such an
00:30:42inflammatory abscess that you
00:30:45pressed. How do you look at all of that, which was 3 years
00:30:49ago, how do you look at it
00:30:52today?
00:30:56It was a deep trauma that we had..."