Local resistance, national identity and global swings in post-Soviet Estonia

Globalisation has turned out to be the opportunity for those who have been dreaming of free movement of goods, capital and people through the 'light blue transit pipe', and who identify themselves with the global world despite the fact that they speak and think in Estonian-although 'modern' Estonian is full of international loan words. At the same time, 'identity' and 'sovereignty' have both turned out to be worrisome keywords for those who dislike contemporary developments such as opening to global markets, Europeanisation and consuming mass culture products. Nowadays Estonia is faced with resistance movements which voice national challenges to the proposed EU membership as well as argue for local and national distinctiveness, which may loose ground within the prevailing global swings. Anti-globalists and (economic) nationalists fear that integration might lead to global supranational governance or create regional free trade areas at the expense of national interests and sovereignty. This borderless world, threatening to break the last barriers which separate 'us' from 'them', makes the 'self' insecure and rather unclear. Both the return of Estonia to the world arena in 1991 and the preparations for EU accession since 1997 have inspired some groups to search passionately for ethnic/local identity and a proper path to follow as an alternative to Europeanisation. Although marginal and insignificant at the moment, they may mobilise and gain more support from those who are disillusioned either with 'the return to Europe, relying on foreign aid, trade and investments' or with 'cultural homogenisation to be superimposed by global trends'. In the present article the task is to shed light on prevailing local manifestations in Estonia to resist global forces on the national level. It argues that when Estonia becomes more integrated into the world economy, the Euro-Atlantic security structures and cyber space, there are more people to resist and counter-mobilise. The reasoning behind these new self-identifications continues traditional identity politics of defending the fragile 'us' from the challenging 'other'. However, the latter seems to be not the simply culturally alien ('Russian') but the culturally universal ('globalisation').