Regional studies, after all, are very much the product of the past half century. This is especially true for the last two decades, when American academic institutions came to realize that in order to understand different parts of the world, one had to take an integrated approach. A region's history, its literature and music, its foreign policy, domestic and social policy concerns are best studied together. For how can one understand, for example the social policy of the Scandinavian countries today without knowing the history of their labor movements, or Finnish post-war foreign policy without a knowledge of the Winter War? Can we understand Ibsen if we do not understand the impact of the Lutheran Church on Scandinavia?

     Similarly, regional studies are important because geography is important: Just as it is fruitless -- if not impossible -- to discuss any single Scandinavian country without reference to its neighbors so too it is difficult to talk about Estonian culture or its post-war history without reference to Finland; the history of either Latvia or Estonia without reference to their historical influences from Sweden or the Hanseatic League; or to discuss Lithuania's somewhat different cultural traditions without reference to Poland or the Catholic Church.

      But while regional studies have experienced a boom in American Academia in the past fifty years, what happened to those areas of the world, that, thanks to wars and ideology, ceased to exist as entities? This in fact was the status of the Baltic States in the post war era: having been wiped off the political and historical maps, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were wiped out as well from the consciousness of American academia. They became Orwellian "non-countries," known as such outside the emigré communities perhaps to philatelists and to specialists in inter-war European history.

      In a country as large as the United States, where domestic politics and the domestic market so dominate, respectively, popular discourse and the business community, a small far away region about which people know little, such as the Baltic States, was for many decades doomed to oblivion.

      This is not to say that there was no interest in the certain aspects of the Baltic States on the part of academics in the West. Unfortunately this interest, thanks to the ideological vigilance of the Soviet regime and its visa politics, limited to a very circumscribed set of academically "safe" areas. This led to what I would call the "folklorisation" of Baltic Studies in the West: it was safe for Western scholars to study Estonian variants of west-finnic trochaic tetrameter or Kalevala verse; it was possible to study Latvian Dainas or the pagan substrates of Lithuanian folk culture. As long as academic research focused on dancing and singing peasants in folk-costumes, there was no problem. But as soon as one began to look at history, politics and economies of the region; when one actually treated the Baltic States as real countries, then on either had to follow a carefully pre- and proscribed ideological line -- clearly impossible for serious scholarship, or then be denied access to the archives, written materials as well as people, that are the source of all scholarship. &

nbsp;     This is not to say that folklore is in any way less important as a scholarly endeavor or even devoid of political import. It is, however, but one area of regional studies. It is precisely because of the relative "safety" of folkloric research that my President, Lennart Meri made his political mark in Estonian and I might add Finnish affairs, with his book Hõbevalge or Silverwhite, a wide-ranging discourse on Finnic-Estonian folk culture that has more in common with Robert Graves The White Goddess than anything else, and a book that kept Estonian national consciousness alive in the darkest days of Brezhnevian despair. It was at the same time that one of our greatest composers, Veljo Tormis wrote what is considered his greatest work, an necrologue of sorts for the disappearing speakers of Finnic cultures in the Soviet Union, titled Songs of Forgotten Peoples, a cycle, that appropriately enough, was partially banned in the Soviet Union. Now that it is no longer a crime to record it, it has finally appeared in its entirety and one of the gifts the Estonian Embassy would like to give to the University of Washington is the recent recording of this cycle. So folklore too has its very strong political component and has played a strong role in the history of the Baltic states, both in the general awakening of national consciousness in the nineteenth century in the large swath of Europe stretching from Finland down to Adriatic, as well as more recently in the Baltic States during the period of Soviet rule.

      This is one reason why the University of Washington program is so important. Without the kind of program instituted here, American university level study of this region would be non-existent. It is for this reason I wish to express the gratitude of th Estonian people and its government to the University of Washington. Just as independence, a return to market economics and parliamentary democracy are the hallmarks of a return to normalcy for the political and economic life of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, so too, the establishment of a Baltic Studies program within the Department of Scandinavian Languages and Literature is one more sign of a return to normalcy for these three countries in the world of scholarship and academic discourse.

[At this point I would like to switch occupations and let my doppelgänger speak, someone who bears a strong resemblance to the ambassador of Estonia, but who will speak not as a diplomat but rather altogether personally as an observer of the Baltic and Scandinavian region. For I cannot in my diplomatic capacity speak about any countries but my own. So please, from now on I shall be speaking only as a private citizen of Estonia.]

    Much has changed in the short period of time since then. I would like to devote the rest of my speech to discussing the Baltic States as a newly discovered part of Europe, specifically a very Scandinavian region. Much of what I have to say perforce has to do with Estonia, for I know it the best and I couldn't really presume, even a a private citizen, to speak for the other two countries. There are in fact very great cultural differenced between the countries of the Baltic States, as great as or greater than those between, say Germany and France. Or Sweden and Finland or Sweden and Norway. Citizens of countries with far more in common culturally, linguistically and ethnically, such as the United States and Canada, object most strongly when the two are lumped together. But for some reason, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are so often grouped together, that political scientists will on occasion speak of these countries as if they all speak different dialects of a Baltic Language.

      On the other hand, I believe that while we all do differ, a common externally imposed history, common invasions, common military occupations, common policies directed by foreign powers against the region have all left their imprint, politically and culturally, so I do not do too great an injustice to the countries of the Baltic when I speak of them here tonight as a group. Besides, my main point is that historically the differences between the Baltic States and Scandinavia have been overemphasized, just as the similarities between the Baltic States have been overdramatized. My persona belief is that as time passes the entire Baltic region comprising both the Baltic States and Scandinavia will be seen as a region of differences of course, but with strong internal ties that in different ways link all of these countries and cultures.

      Recent history has a way of imposing a false sense of permanence in people's ideas of the way the world is. Perhaps one way to gauge this is to in fact look at the world immediately before and after World War One. In 1914 Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were provinces of Russia. As crucial a player in European history as Poland did not exist at all and had not for over a century. The Czech and Slovak lands were ethnographic regions in the Austro-Hungarian empire; neither Hungary nor Austria had ever existed in the form every educated European or American takes for granted as existing today. And the countries of what for seventy years was known as Yugoslavia were merely provinces of the Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman empires. Yet after W.W.I, thanks in part to the implosion of untenable empires, the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman; thanks also in part to the extension to foreign affairs of American notions of freedom under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson, the post-1918 world looked very much as it did today. Indeed, Soviet imposed differences in economic and political organization notwithstanding, the geography of Europe has remained essentially the same since that period. With the exception of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. These three countries, as a result of Messrs. Molotov and Ribbentrop, ceased to exist. A fate incidentally that almost befell one now upstanding and self-evidently Scandinavian country, Finland, which also was consigned to become, under the scheme envisioned by Stalin and Hitler, a part of the Soviet Union.

      Now that the Baltic States have become independent again, we are faced with a problem of classification. What are these countries? Some people have treated them as Central Europe, and that is the scheme adopted originally by the State Department. There is indeed some merit in this. In the geographic swath stretching from Tallinn, Estonia to Tirana, Albania, we are dealing with a region that emerged as independent states in the wake of W.W.I and then, in the wake of W.W.II endured 50 odd years of centralized economic planning and unspeakable political repressions. True, not one of these countries really wanted this honor, and Finland along with Greece barely escaped a similar fate. Even more than the vicissitudes of Yalta and the Cold War, however, this scheme does injustice to the far more long-lasting cultural, historical and political traditions of the region.

      A second classification of the Baltic States looks only at recent history. This scheme categorizes the Baltic States as belong to the former Soviet Union or the F.S.U., which given Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian history, as well as the veritable explosion of political and economic reforms in the region -- in stark contrast to the rest of the Soviet Union -- shows that the Baltic States have as little to do with the former Soviet Union as they did when it wasn't so former. Related to this classification of sovietologists is the categorization f the Baltic States by Russia, placing these countries in the so-called near-abroad. The term "near abroad" makes all Balts rather nervous since we suspect a confusion of time and space here and that "near abroad" really means "temporary abroad."

      I prefer to call the region not the F.S.U., but only half in jest, the F.S.E. or Former Swedish Empire. This does some historical injustice to Lithuania, but certainly captures much of the history of the region as a whole, as well as the current explosion of political, cultural economic ties between a number of countries that once had Stockholm as their capital, in fact all of the countries in the region did except for lithuania and Denmark. The US State Department, I should add, seems to agree with this scheme, since Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania now belong to a bureaucratic entity know as the Bureau of Nordic and Baltic affairs. And I might add, the University of Washington seems to agree as well.

      Perhaps most convincingly however, are the attitudes of the Scandinavian countries themselves. Perhaps Estonia is here in the most Scandinavian position, thanks to our linguistic and cultural affinities with Finland. Indeed the two languages are as close to each other a Spanish and Portuguese or Dutch and German. In many ways, Finland and Estonia, differ primarily in that the main foreign influence on Finnish culture for the past 800 years has been Sweden, while the main influence on Estonian Language and culture in the same period was German, as it was for most of Latvia. Far more than these cultural ties from the past, however, it is the current state of affairs in the region, where the Baltic States and Scandinavia are not only restoring but also building new ties, that convince me that all of these countries are moving toward ever greater integration. Nothing illustrates this better than Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt's article in the September-October 1994 issue of Foreign Affairs, "The Baltic Litmus Test."

      The ideas Bildt presents in his article regarding the Baltic States are heard in many Scandinavian circles, but instead of repeating the content of the article, which after those of you who are interested can read yourself, I'd like to focus on the article as a change in Scandinavian attitudes.

[Here I would like to reiterate one more time that I am speaking now in my capacity as a student of Nordic Baltic affairs and not as an ambassador. For I do not presume in any way to speak for any of the Scandinavian countries, just as I do not presume to speak for Latvia or Lithuania.]

"For half a century the Soviet Empire stretched its geopolitical power deep into Central Europe, posing a potential threat to the West at any points. Russia now borders Western Europe only in the Nordic and Baltic Regions."

      While I do not wish to go too heavily into close textual analyses, I also think it very indicative of new Nordic thinking that Prime Minister Bildt chose to include the Baltic States in Western Europe.

      The integrative developments we see in Scandinavian political and security thinking regarding the Baltic States are also taking place economically -- The leading investor in Estonia is Sweden, followed by Finland. Finland and Sweden are Estonia's leading trading partners. We project that nearly 3 million Finns will visit Estonia this year. A finnish economic analysis of tourism trends predicts that in ten years 9.5 million Finns -- twice the population of the country -- will visit Estonia each year. For the Nordic economies in an era of dramatically increasing competition, not only within the EU but also with the emerging economies of Southeast Asia, the Baltic States represent new and emerging markets as well as natural economic partners.

      The a cession of Sweden and Finland to the European Union on January 1 of this year and the accession of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to associate member status in the European Union -- in essence following the steps taken by the two aforementioned Nordic countries -- means that ties will be even stronger. It is a fair bet that within a decade the Baltic States too will be members of the EU. I should add that the Nordic countries are the most vigorous sponsors of EU enlargement for the Baltic States.

      From here we can talk about the general devolution of sovereignty that follows European Union accession that will undoubtedly lead to even greater ties, but that is not for this talk. I would like to say, however, that already many in Scandinavia see the entire region bordering the Baltic Sea as a natural economic entity. This represents a return to the era before the rise of the nation state when the Baltic Sea states were all linked to each other in the form of the Hanseatic League.

      Given these directions in the integration of the Baltic Sea region, comprising both the Scandinavian countries and the Baltic countries, one can only add the University of Washington, here in Seattle, separated from the region not only by the Atlantic, but also the North American continent, is once again demonstrating that it is at the cutting edge of academia. Top of Page

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