Russian shipment fall forces Estonia rail job cuts

Transit trade has fallen dramatically as Russia reoriented its resource rich export trade away from Estonian ports, leaving railway and port volumes down on previous years. It is not possible to confirm how many workers will be fired, it could be several hundred, but the reasons are many," said Urmas Glase, spokesman for the state-owned company. The fall in transit trade was the main reason as the railway required less staff.

Upgrades and automatisation of lines in the south meant fewer workers were needed, he added. He said the number of trains from Russia had fallen from the highs at the beginning of 2007 of around 35 trains a day to 16 a day in May this year. The management board will decide on the fate of the workers in June, Glase added.

Estonia's main oil export port in the the first five months of the year shipped 18.5 percent less oil products, at 9 million tonnes, than the same period of 2007. Until May 2007, Estonia was the transit route for up to 25 million tonnes per year of Russian fuel oil.

After May, Russia's state railway reduced shipments via Estonia after political ties hit a low.

Source http://in.reuters.com/article/oilrpt/idinl0658787120080606

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Foreign Policy In Focus Estonia

The movement played an important role in the downfall of the entire Soviet Empire. Over the previous several years, nonviolent uprisings had helped topple Communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe as well as right-wing dictatorships from Southeast Asia to Latin America. Earlier in the century, Gandhi’s movement in India demonstrated the power of nonviolent action in leading a country to independence against even the powerful British Empire.

The people of Estonia, along with their neighbors in Latvia and Lithuania, similarly showed how sustained nonviolence could be successfully waged against the Soviet occupation of their country. Music was a key part of this struggle. Music around the World Music has played a key role in nonviolent struggles around the world. With updated lyrics to traditional African-American Gospel music that stressed emancipation and resistance, song energized the U.S.

1960s. The Nuevo Cancion movement, blending local folk music traditions with language espousing justice and resisting repression, inspired the pro-democracy campaign in Chile during the 1980s. And the rich harmonies of African folk tradition, with lyrics calling for freedom and defiance against the oppressors, empowered the South African struggle against apartheid.

In most such cases, the music was an inspirational and unifying force for the movement. In Estonia, music – primarily the country’s rich choral tradition – played an even more central role for it embodied the essence of the struggle. For centuries, foreign domination had threatened Estonian national and cultural identity. Many other peoples would have assimilated in the face of centuries of foreign control, but the Estonians refused to give up their unique culture.

They speak a language totally unrelated to the Slavic and Scandinavian languages of their neighbors; they are mostly Lutheran, whereas most of their immediate neighbors are Catholic or Orthodox.

A more immediate threat to their linguistic and cultural heritage was the huge number of Russian settlers who moved into the country since the Soviet re-conquest in 1944 – to the point where these Russian settlers almost outnumbered the Estonians themselves.

Despite claims of international proletarian solidarity, the 20th-century Soviet Communists were in many ways as chauvinistic in their nationalism as the czars who had occupied Estonia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Though one of the world's smallest countries, Estonia has one of the world's largest repertoires of folk songs, and the Estonians have used their music as a political weapon for centuries.

Songs were used as protest against German conquerors as far back as the 13th century and as an act of resistance against the occupying army of Russian czar Peter the Great in the 18th century.

Despite divisions within the nationalist movement and despite violent provocations by Soviet occupation forces and pro-Soviet Russian settlers, the movement gained strength, and the public protests, nationalist displays, and other forms of nonviolent resistance escalated.

Given Estonia’s small size, armed resistance would have been completely futile and only led to more suffering. Russia was 300 times the size of Estonia, whose population was barely more than one million. The Soviet Red Army, the largest armed force in the world at that time, was more than prepared to crush any form of armed resistance.

Yet it was no match for hundreds of thousands of nonviolent Estonians singing their way to freedom. When this nonviolent resistance movement began in the mid-1980s, taking advantage of the limited space made possible by reforms enacted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviets had no clue what was coming. By all conventional measures, they had things under complete control.

Western Responses The West didn’t have a clue what was coming either, however. Washington believed that the best way to deter the feared expansion of Soviet Communism was through NATO, the massive procurement of arms, and the threat of triggering a nuclear holocaust. For decades, the assumption was that these Soviet-imposed autocratic regimes could not be rolled back.

Estonia was deemed a hopeless cause. The United States did provide nominal recognition to the impotent remnants of a rightist Estonian government-in-exile, largely unaware of the exciting changes taking place inside the country.

Few anti-imperialists in the West were aware of what was happening in the Baltic republics during this period, either. They were wary of the right-wing nationalism of many Estonian exiles and offended by the hypocrisy of the U.S.

Eastern Europe while backing brutal autocratic regimes elsewhere and arming foreign occupation forces in East Timor, Palestine, and Western Sahara. However, the burgeoning Estonian struggle for independence crossed the ideological spectrum, with even the Estonian Communist Party eventually confronting Moscow with demands for independence from the Soviet Union.

The Estonian people’s concern was not in great power rivalries, but in national freedom. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration, which did think that Communism could be rolled back, thought the best way to end Soviet occupations was through support for armed groups like the Afghan mujahadin.

Source http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/5275

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US Navy ends search for downed WWII plane off Estonian coast

Three days after the crash, Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union. Neither the Soviet Union nor Russia have acknowledged shooting down the plane. Some believe the Soviet military recovered the Kaleva's wreckage some years after its disappearance. This week, three U.S.

Navy underwater search vehicles found no signs of the plane and called off the search after six days, said Martin Ammond, senior surveyor aboard the USNS Pathfinder. There is no indication of a large human-made object in this area," Ammond said. I have a high level of confidence that the plane is not there.

The search, which began Friday, centered around the tiny island of Keri, some 0 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Tallinn, where Finnish and Estonian experts had believed the plane was lying at a depth of 300 feet ( 0 meters) somewhere near the island. Among the Kaleva's passengers was Henry Antheil, a courier at the U.S.

Embassy in Helsinki, who had rushed to Tallinn to evacuate sensitive documents from the American Legation as the Soviet Union prepared to occupy Estonia and its Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania. The search for the Kaleva was initiated by Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo, who asked the U.S. Kaleva. Disclaimer: This news article is copyrighted by Associated Press and published by PR-inside.com.

Source http://pr-inside.com/us-navy-ends-search-for-downed-r624773.htm

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