I have a long relationship with the United States of America. Although i hate the war and i think that Saddam should have lived, i love America. It's been like my second home. And you can smell freedom in the air here.
You see, when Estonia was accepted into Soviet Union, my aunt Endla and her husband Rudy fleed from Estonia with their five-year-old daughter Ene. It was in 1944. They were shipped to a refugee camp in Oldenburg, Germany, but then they decided to go to America and make the country their home. They did not regret it. They worked hard and became millionaires. My father Georg who had a chance to leave as well decided to stay in Estonia and fight the soviets. He was 17 and an idealist. When the war ended, he spent 8 years in a Siberian prison camp, but he survived, came back, married twice and had 3 kids. My mother is my father's second wife.
All my childhood i heard stories about America. My father listened to the Voice of America. My aunt sent me lots of packages filled with beautiful clothes. My father went to America after he'd agreed to spy for KGB which he never did, and brought me lots of nice clothes. We didn't have nice clothes in USSR. Everything was ugly. The clothes, the houses, even the people. People were depressed because they couldn't express their opinions. They were angry like caged animals. Some of that depression and anger still lingers. I hope that someday we'll be able to rid ourselves of it.
My aunt said that one day i could come to America and one day i did. I was 17 and my aunt and his daughter, my cousin bought me lots of clothes. I would've liked to travel the country, see maybe Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, but there was no time because we couldn't miss the sales. My cousin loved shopping. She took me shopping from 9 to 5. It was excruciating but she meant well. She was a beautiful woman who loved politics and afghan men.
When my aunt died four years ago, my cousin became so depressed that she was not able to survive without the painkillers. She died of an overdose like Anna-Nicole Smith. She was the daughter of millionaires. Money is not everything, you see.
When she died, i inherited lots of money. Millions in estonian money. Me and my husband had dreamed of opening a café at my grandfather's house in Tartu, so we started renovating it, and our second dream was to travel all over the United States of America, from coast to coast. Now we are doing just that and we've arrived to Atlanta, Georgia. America has not disappointed us. So far we've loved Savannah, San Antonio and San Diego the best, but of our American experience i'll write more tomorrow!
5 kommentaari:
"...when Estonia was accepted into Soviet Union..."
Please, Irja, never ever use this kind of wording, it can mislead people, who do not know our history.
Aktsepteeerimisega polnud siin ikka miskit tegemist. See oli annekteerimine, inkorporeerimine ja okupeerimine.
Interesting writing. Keep on blogging in English, you'll have more readers.
I think that the word is correct, i used it intentionally because our then-president Konstantin, Kostja, as he was called back then, sold our country to the soviets. I also say soviets, not russians because what happened to our country was no fault of ordinary russians who suffered in the prison camps as well.
We in truth accepted to join USSR. The government accepted, but the people didn't. My father said that the people wanted to resist but our president Päts and military commander Johan Laidoner gave the order to collect all the guns, making people defenseless. As a result, the officers who wanted to resist were taken to prison camps and slaughtered like lambs. It was a shame and a tragedy and it was all to do with having a crazy, power-hungry president who also silenced the press but who is still, bizarrely idolized in Estonia. When one finnish journalist Leena Hietanen tried to point that out, estonians accused her of being a russian spy. Truth hurts.
We as a small nation need our few heroes, but we need to look elsewhere. The real heroes were the men who organized resistance in the hopeless 1940s: admiral Johan Pitka and military commander Alfons Rebane. They had hope. That hope was crushed but the spirit of freedom lived on in the young men who they recruited. On of these men was my father Georg Vaher.
Estonian pre-war dictator Konstantin Päts, sorry to say, sold his country for pennies and let Soviet forces in, that lead to socialist coup d'état in 1940. This was not really any kind of occupation or annexation, but political corruption on very high level. And that was absolutely not the decision of the Estonian nation.
But, Estonia has the right to freedom, as the country's destiny was determined by the so called Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in which the 2 predators, dictators of the pre-war Nazi-Germany and Soviet Russia divided the world. According to the pact Russian and German troops annexed Poland in 1939, and Russia "occupied" the Baltic states in 1940. And in 1940 Russia started war with Finland, whose leaders were unwilling to "co-operate". This was a crime! And present-day Russia, who has declared itself the successor of the Soviet Union, hasn't done anything to answer for that crime, even apologize. Because Soviet Russia changed the boat, so to say, in the middle of the war, after previous "big friend" Germany invaded Russia, and the world was divided between the winners afterwards: Soviet Union, Great Britain and USA.
Well, and nobody really spoke about occupation in Estonia right after WWII. This became an issue after cold war broke out, in the 1950s, after the Soviets stole the secrets of the nuclear bomb behind US scientists (actually the Soviets gave money to the hungry US scientists, you see, corruption again!) and thus Soviet Union became a "superpower", and Britain and US were very pissed about the deeds of their ex-friend, and about their own future as the communist "ghost" was trespassing the world.
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