TALLINN — Attorney and political activist Sergei Tšurkin and four non-governmental organizations applied last week to establish official cultural autonomy for ethnic Russians living in Estonia.
The Support Funds for Russian Culture Foundation (Vene Kultuuri Toetuskapital) sent an application to the Ministry of Culture Dec. 21 in order to form a cultural autonomy for ethnic Russians, and three other cultural organizations made a cooperation pact with the NGO to assist the process if the the ministry gives permission. Ethnic Russians are Estonia’s largest minority, making up 25 percent of the total population,
Cultural autonomy can be officially sanctioned and financially supported by the state if an Estonian ethnic minority group wishes to maintain its language and culture. The Cultural Autonomy Act, passed in 1993, stipulates that all Estonian minority ethnic groups with more than 3,000 individuals can qualify for cultural autonomy.
Two minority groups have already established their cultural autonomy in Estonia — the Ingrian Finnish in 2004 and Coastal Swedes in 2007. Both groups shared 1.5 million krooni (€95,000) for cultural activities during the last year.
Tšurkin asserts that ethnic Russians need the autonomy to give their culture a legal standing.
“Cultural autonomy, in other words, is a cultural local government,” Tšurkin told Baltic Reports. “It gives the ethnic Russians as an Estonian minority the chance to develop its culture on legal grounds, where the participant has his rights and duties just like any juridical country has in custom.”
Estonian officials argue that given their large size and established cultural institutions, establishing this for ethnic Russians is unnecessary. Former minister of population Urve Palo says that ethnic Russians already have all the benefits cultural autonomy could give.
“When it comes to ethnic Russians, it is hard to see what benefits the presence of cultural autonomy would give them as today the education in their mother tongue, funding for cultural associations, and news along with cultural programs on TV are all guaranteed by Estonian government,” Palo told Baltic Reports. “We also have Russian drama theater and Russian cultural centers.”
Palo said that only 1 to 2 percent of the ethnic Russians living in Estonia support establishing cultural autonomy, so this cannot be considered the wish of the majority of that ethnic group.
“Most of the Ingrian Finnish and Coastal Swedes wished to receive cultural autonomy,” Palo said.
Anne-Ly Reimaa, deputy chancellor of the Estonian Ministry of Culture, insists that cultural autonomy should represent all of the ethnic Russians living in Estonia, and this petition does not.
“Cultural autonomy should represent the whole ethnic group, but so far Estonia’s largest Russian culture associations have repeatedly assured that forming a cultural autonomy based on current law is not practical,” Reimaa told Baltic Reports.
Denied before
This is not the first time cultural autonomy for ethnic Russians has been attempted. The NGO Russian Cultural Autonomy (Vene Kultuuriautonoomia) applied for cultural autonomy in Feb. 2006, but then the request was denied. The NGO then took its application to court.
However Tallinn Administrative Court overruled Russian Cultural Autonomy’s complaint. The court’s decision was subsequently appealed but when the next hearing will take place is yet unknown. Reimaa said that Russian Cultural Autonomy is not a cultural organization, so its application is not legitiamte.
“There are no signs of that NGO’s real cultural activity, and that is one of the most important issues in forming a cultural autonomy,” told Reimaa.
According to Reimaa, Russian Cultural Autonomy has persistently refused to give such information related to cultural activities and other ethnic Russian minority cultural groups shown any interest in cooperating with them — in fact, rather the opposite.
