Do not say Estonians are Russians!

This is the first thing you learn when you start living in Estonia within an Estonian family! Do not even try to compare them, they are totally different. Here is common thinking, there are of course some similarities but they do not want to hear about it.

Yesterday, an article in BalticBusinessNews has, in only several hours, made people react. Why? The article is talking about Estonians and their culture being close to Russians…

Indeed, the future US official in Estonia said that Estonians are ethnic Russians. Some comments claim that the declaration of Johnathan Hilton was misquoted and that he said are “culturally closer to Russians”. He will move next summer to Estonia and will be reporting on domestic policy and the local international relations at US embassy in Tallinn.

I also hope they have specialists working in Tallinn as he clearly shows that he does not know squad about Estonia! In the comments, even Americans living in Tallinn are apologizing for his ignorance.

He said that before moving, they will be in Washington D.C. where he and his wife will be brushing up on Estonian culture, language and etiquette. Yes, do that please and you will learn about the Finno-Ugric origins, and then the mixture that operated during the wars with Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Germany…and Russia. So Russia is just a small part of it.

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La première chose à apprendre en venant en Estonie est de ne pas assimiler les Estoniens aux Russes. Ils le prennent très mal! Ceci a encore une fois été démontré hier à la suite d'un article publié par BBN et qui a fait réagir de nombreux lecteurs.

Les commentaires fustigent la déclaration du futur représentant des USA en Estonie, Johnathan Hilton (aucun rapport avec Paris Hilton si ce n'est le niveau d'intelligence). Celui-ci aurait dit que les Estoniens étaient d'éthnie russe. Mauvaise nouvelle pour lui, ceci est erroné.

Il a prévu avant de déménager en Estonie l'été prochain d'étudier un peu le pays et le langage: bonne idée. Il découvrira peut-être son erreur et les origines Finno-ougriennes des Estoniens puis le mélange culturel et génétique qui s'est opéré durant les guerres successives avec les Polonais, les Allemands, les Danois, les Suédois et... les Russes.