ESTONIA'S BIGGEST MISTAKE: X WAS NOT PLACED IN THE BOX

In 1991, every person wishing to work in the state structure of the Republic of Estonia would have had to complete a very simple checklist.

☐ Were you a member of the CPSU?

☐ Were you part of the party nomenklatura?

☐ Did you get your position because of your loyalty to the occupying power?

☐ Did you work as a judge, prosecutor, investigator, lawyer, or police officer in occupied Estonia?

☐ Did you work for the KGB, Soviet Army, Border Guard, Military Commissariat, or other power structure?

☐ Did you work in the occupying power's ministry, executive committee, party committee, or any other governing body?

☐ Did you participate in accusing, stalking, repressing, depriving people of their property, or restricting their rights?

☐ Did you get an apartment, job, education, permit, privilege, or other advantage thanks to the system?

☐ Are you prepared to disclose your activities, connections, and decisions in the service of the occupying power?

☐ Do you admit that Estonia was occupied and that serving a foreign power in an occupied country was not a neutral activity?

But what did Estonia actually do?

Almost all of these questions remained:

☐ X NOT PLACED

The red flag was taken down. The blue, black and white was put in its place. The institutions were given new names. But many of the same people just went on to work.

Yesterday they worked in the court, prosecutor's office, militia, ministry, army or party apparatus of the Estonian SSR. Tomorrow they will already work in the court, prosecutor's office, police, ministry, defence forces or government apparatus of the Republic of Estonia.

The flag was replaced.
The system carriers were retained.

During the construction of the Republic of Estonia, the strictest control should have applied to at least the following structures:

☐ Government of the Republic and ministries
☐ Parliament and higher political positions
☐ courts and judiciary
☐ prosecutor's office
☐ police and investigative agencies
☐ defense forces
☐ border guard
☐ security agencies
☐ prison system
☐ local governments
☐ management boards of state-owned enterprises
☐ State Audit Office and supervisory authorities
☐ public media
☐ University and legal education management

But here too, much remained:

☐ X NOT PLACED

The justification was that the state had to get to work quickly. That people with experience were needed. That not everyone could be left out. That many were in the party only for their careers. That they were not "communists at heart."

But the question is not what a person says they felt in their heart. The question is who they worked for and what they did.

Did he apply the laws of a foreign power? Did he convict people? Did he frame charges? Did he take people's property? Did he restrict their freedom? Did he protect the person from the state or the state from the person?

Serving a foreign power does not become neutral just because it was done for a salary, an apartment, or a career.

An official in a communist system was taught that the state is above the individual. An official in a democratic state must proceed from the opposite: the individual stands before the government with rights, and the state must justify its actions. These two ways of thinking are as different as night and day.

It would have been better to build part of the country from scratch. Yes, there would have been less experience at the beginning. Yes, the system would have started more slowly. But at least it would have been possible to build a new country according to new principles. Instead, the new country was built largely on old personnel, old connections, and old official culture.

We are seeing the consequences now:

☒ official self-defense
☒ distribution of responsibility
☒ closed decision-making mechanisms
☒ treating a citizen as a matter of dispute
☒ failure to acknowledge mistakes
☒ years of proceedings
☒ the state's distrust of the individual
☒ people's distrust of the state

Today, people wonder why many people don't want to know anything about this country. Why they don't trust the government, the courts, the prosecutor's office, or the authorities. Why people don't feel like the country belongs to them or protects them.

But the country's crisis of confidence did not arise out of nowhere. Estonia left the most important box unchecked at the moment of its birth.

☐ Is the holder of the occupation power automatically suitable to be the holder of the power of the restored Republic of Estonia?

The correct answer should have been:

☒ NO

But in reality it remained:

☐ X NOT PLACED

The red flag was replaced by a blue-black-white one. But too many of the bearers of the red system remained in their places. And now we ask why the Republic of Estonia still seems to many not as a state of citizens, but as a renamed bureaucratic apparatus .