Preliminary Note: I very much regret that I cannot be with you today. Unfortunately, I am
recovering from heart surgery and cannot travel. But I am pleased to have the chance to offer
some reflections for your consideration and I am honored that General Aleksander Einseln has
generously consented to read them.
Allow me to introduce myself: I am not an Estonian but my life and career have brought me into
close contact with your country and its leaders, first as an analyst on nationality issues in the
USSR and the occupied Baltic states, then in 1990-19 as the U.S. State Department’s Desk
Officer for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – I am proud to say I insisted that the position be
called that and not the Baltic desk – and more recently as a teacher at the University of Tartu
and at Audentes University in Tallinn.
Not long ago, one American foreign policy analyst who does not know me said on the basis of my
writings that I had to be “an older Estonian who therefore knew what the Soviet system was
about.” I’m not sure he meant that as a compliment, but I take it as the highest one I have ever
received.
LEST ANYONE FORGET:
ARNOLD RUUTEL’S ESSENTIAL BUT UNHERALDED
CONTRIBUTIONS TO ESTONIA AND THE WORLD
Paul A. Goble
Special Advisor on Baltic Affairs,
U.S. Department of State
(1990-1991)
At 10:00 o’clock in the morning of September 2, 1991, shortly after President George
H.W. Bush announced that the United States was resuming the exchange of diplomats with
Estonia and her two Baltic neighbors, I had the honor of calling Ernst Jaakson, Estonia’s
longtime and irreplaceable representative in the United States, to congratulate him and his
country on that long awaited occasion and to call him ambassador for the first time.
I suggested that he must be celebrating, and he said that he was. But Mr. Jaakson added
that even while doing so, he was recalling all those who had worked so hard often without
receiving any public credit for what they had done. I have never forgotten his wise words, and
they are especially significant to me now in having this opportunity present a few thoughts to this
distinguished gathering today.
In thinking about Estonia’s recovery of independence and its first steps after 1991, I am
struck not by how complete a story we have of what happened but rather by how much and how
many people have still been left out. A revised standard version of those events has emerged, one
that reflects the efforts of some to push themselves forward while denigrating others and the
decision of others not to do the same, a decision taken sometimes because of fear of challenging
the accepted narrative and sometimes, indeed quite often, because of modesty, because of a
belief that the cause and country they served were more important than they were.
One such individual, whose quiet patriotism and fundamental modesty has kept him from
pushing himself forward in this regard but who has impressed all those who have had the chance
to work with him, is President Arnold Ruutel. His services to the cause of the recovery of
Estonia’s independent and reintegration into the broader must be interwoven in Estonia’s
national narrative. And to ensure that happens, those of us who have had the honor and pleasure
of working with him must record what we know to ensure that will happen. Because as a
American official seventeen years ago, I had the chance to interact with him on numerous
occasions, I would like t take this opportunity to talk about just three of President Ruutel’s
essential but largely unheralded contributions to Estonia and to the broader world.
The first of these events has been reported but in such a way that he has been denied the
credit he deserves. A second is unknown except to a small circle of people and yet played a
fundamental role in the defeat of the August coup in Moscow, the destruction of the Soviet
Union, and the reemergence of a free and independent Estonia. And the third involves his
actions behind the scenes at a time when others in the Estonian government wanted to stand on
ceremony but when President Ruutel understood that there are things more important than rules,
an approach that not only prevented a diplomatic disaster but provided a harbinger of his
contributions to holding Estonian society together when others, more given to radicalism, would
have torn it apart.
Backing Away with Dignity
At the start of 1991, the international community had a problem with Estonia. Unlike
Latvia and Lithuania, the representatives of the pre-war Estonian government who continued to
interact with the Western governments to which they were accredited had not become the de
facto representatives of the government in place in Tallinn. There was a simple reason for that:
the leaders of the Estonian diaspora were not prepared to forgive or forget that some years earlier
a statement had been released in the name of Arnold Ruutel denouncing some émigrés as agents
of Western intelligence services.
The hurt and anger of Estonians abroad about such a statement were entirely
understandable. No one likes to be accused of something that isn’t true, and no one wants his or
her patriotism impugned in this way. But the hard line position some in the emigration took
neglected two important things which most of its members did not appear to understand at that
time. On the one hand, a statement issued by a Soviet official other than perhaps the general
secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was never his personal opinion. He was
told what to say by those above him, and consequently, holding every such official to account
for every statement bearing his signature, while morally attractive, rested on a misunderstanding
of how things worked.
And on the other hand, this insistence by the emigration that Estonians abroad in general
and Estonian diplomats in particular have nothing to do with Mr. Ruutel or most others in what
they sometimes referred to as “little red Estonia” was by early 1991 creating a dangerous
situation not only for Estonia but for Latvia and Lithuania as well. If it had continued until the
time of the August coup, this difference between Estonia and her Baltic neighbors, between a
country whose government had not established close ties with the diplomats Western countries
had come to know and respect and two other Baltic states where that had happened, would
beyond any doubt have been used by those in the West who did not want to recognize Baltic
independence lest it undermine Mikhail Gorbachev.
Many people in Mr. Ruutel’s position would have found it difficult to navigate this
situation. It is never easy to back away from something with your signature on it even if at the
time you were given no choice but to sign, and it is especially difficult to do so if it looks like
you are making a concession to people who have done nothing but sought to blacken or, in this
case, more precisely, “redden” it. But Mr. Ruutel found a way, and the way that he found not
only allowed him to serve as a bridge between the past and the future but between the emigration
and Estonia itself.
Following an exchange of messages, many of which I am proud to say passed through my
office, Mr. Ruutel and Mr. Jaakson agreed on a formula which allowed the two men to come
together to ensure that Estonia would not be a drag on efforts to escape from the Soviet past
while laying the foundation for continuity and development. Mr. Ruutel issued a statement, one
that he not only signed but fully agreed to, saying that people should remember that in Soviet
times, his name was placed at the bottom of many documents with whose content he did not
agree. And Mr. Jaakson issued his remarkable explanation of why he believed what Mr. Ruutel
was telling him and why after more than 60 years in service to Estonia, Mr. Jaakson believed that
it was essential to reach across the divides that had separated Estonians rather than building
higher walls.
The actions of Mr. Ruutel and it must be said Mr. Jaakson had three significant
consequences. First, it allowed Mr. Jaakson to host his first ever diplomatic reception in
Washington. Many in the emigration refused to take part lest they be criticized by other émigrés
for doing so, but that meeting broke the ice. And as someone who was there at the Mayflower
Hotel that afternoon, I would like to say that the photograph I have from my public life that I am
most proud of shows me shaking hands with Mr.Ruutel who was flanked by Mr. Jaakson and
then foreign minister Lennart Meri.
Second, Mr. Ruutel’s actions in this regard guaranteed that when the opportunity for
Estonia to regain its place in the international system came at the end of August 1991, there was
no division between Tallinn and the representatives of the pre-war republic of whom Mr.
Jaakson was at the end the most senior and the most outstanding. Consequently, it was not
possible for anyone to use the existence of such a division against Estonia as I am absolutely
convinced would have been the case had it been otherwise.
And third, Mr. Ruutel’s willingness to take risks, to build bridges to the emigration sent a
powerful message not only to Western governments but to all the residents of the Republic of
Estonia that he was more interested in building a bridge to the future over which all could pass
than in maintaining the walls that had kept so many individuals and groups apart. That may not
seem like much from this distance, but I can tell you from conversations with officials around the
world that it was a commitment and a skill that all those who saw it were impressed by – and
hence impressed by Estonia as well.
For Your Freedom and Ours
President Ruutel’s most important contribution in many ways to the recovery of Estonian
independence was a largely unnoticed action on his part that not only contributed the failure of
the coup in Moscow in August 1991 but to the independence of the other two Baltic countries
and to the 12 Soviet republics. Indeed, if he had done nothing else in his career, he would
deserve to be remembered for this action, one that few in Estonia appear to know about but that
some in the capitals of all these countries and in those of many countries in the West will always
give him credit for.
When the coup in Moscow began, its authors immediately cut the 36 telephone land lines
between Moscow and the West, an action that made it far more difficult for Russian activists to
communicate with the West and even more difficult than that for Western governments to gather
the information they needed to assess what was happening not only in the Soviet capital but in
particular in the critically important capitals of the Baltic countries and the republics of the
Soviet Union.
Fortunately for what happened next, the coup people had forgotten the 200 landlines that
the Soviets had laid between Karelia and Finland, in the hope of promoting Finlandization, and
they did not know that anyone who could get into the Finnish telephone network could thus get
into the Soviet one, bypassing Moscow. Fortunately, Arnold Ruutel knew about this and
exploited it. And over the next 72 hours, he spoke with the top leaders of every one of the other
soon-to-be countries (except the leader of Azerbaijan who was on vacation in Iran at the time!)
and communicated what he learned from them to Western governments.
That helped the West enormously because the information Mr. Ruutel supplied allowed
governments there to recognize far earlier than would otherwise have been the case that the coup
was not only failing in Moscow but was going to guarantee the restoration of independence of
the three Baltic countries and lead to the independence of the 12 Soviet republics. From this
distance, a few days may not seem like much, but for the foreign policy establishments of the
Western powers, it made all the difference.
Mr. Ruutel was able to make this contribution not only because he was clever enough to
remember the Finnish link but also because, unlike perhaps any other leader in Estonia or the
other two Baltic states, he had credibility as a man and as an official in the Soviet republics that
allowed him to speak with their leaders and equally he already had standing with many Western
governments in no small measure because of the first of his contributions mentioned here – his
brave rapprochement with Mr. Jaakson, a man whose moral authority not only in Washington but
throughout the West was far greater than many now imagine.
Not Standing on Ceremony
The third event in Mr. Ruutel’s activities that I would like to ensure is not forgotten is
really not one single action but two decisions he made in mid-September 1991 involving the visit
to Estonia by U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III. In both cases, Mr. Ruutel took actions
that many other officials in the Estonian government objected to or would have had they had the
chance, actions that both individually and together showed that he understood when one’s
dignity as a person and as a leader of a country is best served by not standing on ceremony.
Indeed, his behavior not only impressed the entire American delegation at the time but went a
long way to cementing a relationship that ultimately culminated in Washington’s successful
efforts to bring Estonia not only back into the West from which Moscow had kidnapped it but
also into NATO, the most important organization of the alliance of Western democratic
countries.
On the one hand, many Estonian officials wanted Mr. Ruutel to treat Secretary Baker as
very much the junior partner in the talks and insisted that Mr. Ruutel as a president should not
walk down the stairs to meet someone who was “merely a minister.” In terms of pure diplomatic
protocol, such a decision might be correct, but in terms of the situation Estonia and the United
States found themselves in during those first weeks of Estonia’s recovered independence,
standing on ceremony in that way would have been a terrible mistake. Mr. Ruutel immediately
understood that, overruled the foreign ministry, and met Secretary Baker at the door of the
presidential palace in Kadriorg. That may seem like a small thing now, but it was a very big
thing then and meant that Estonia demonstrated that its leader understood how to act without
reading an etiquette book.
And on the other, while some Estonian officials wanted to lecture the American visitors –
and some of them did just that – Mr. Ruutel throughout the visit spent more time listening than
talking, again reflecting his personal modesty. Some officials undoubtedly would have preferred
him to take a more assertive position, especially given Estonian anger that American recognition
of the recovery of Estonia’s independence had come so relatively late. But Mr. Ruutel did not
ask them what he should do or follow their lead. And his approach not only pleased his visitors
but it meant that when he did present clearly and concisely Estonia’s position, he was listened to
by American and other officials far more carefully than were those who spoke far more often.
These three events in which Mr. Ruutel took a leadership role in 1991 deserve to be
remembered in and of themselves. But they also point to an even larger contribution that he
made to Estonia during his presidency. Precisely because he had a foot in both camps, as an
official during the Soviet occupation and as someone who never ceased to be an Estonian patriot,
Mr. Ruutel helped bridge many of the divisions in the population of Estonia, thus opening the
way for a better future for all concerned in ways that others now get more credit for than he. I
am pleased to have had this opportunity to help set the record straight and to reiterate how
honored and pleased I am to have had the chance to work with Mr. Ruutel and to call him a
friend.