No. 18

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The Russian experience

16 December 2008

Essay

RiTo No. 18, 2008

When she accepted the challenge of being appointed Estonia’s cultural attaché in Moscow, the writer was aware of all of the risks and historical baggage as well as the possibilities represented by Estonian-Russian relations on the political and cultural front.

Feeling extreme sorrow at what the relations had become, she adds that all of the cultural figures with whom she met also regretted that Estonian and Russian intelligentsia have lost sight of each other. Thus, as the first priority, the writer focused on bilateral cultural relations between Estonia and Russia – indeed, everything associated with the primary function of cultural representa-tive. The other important field she concentrated on was cultural relations between Russia and the European Union, which actually proved much more complicated than one would have imagined, as the European Union still lacks a cultural policy as such. The third priority was relations between Estonians and with their compatriots in Russia; and fourth of course, she naturally had to deal as a liaison for Finno-Ugric relations. Listing the biggest success sto-ries, the writer begins with the Estonian cultural festival in Tomsk, in which she took part after she had already left the service of the Ministry of Culture. The other big triumph in her post can be considered to be the establishment of close and promising cultural ties and cul-tural exchange between Tallinn and Moscow’s Yugo-Zapadnyi (southwest) okrug, where the writer had many pleasant meetings and whose cultural leader Nina Bazarova became her principal guide to Moscow and the Russian cultural bureaucracy as well as leading her to many important contacts.

Full article in Estonian

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