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Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Peeter Vares  and
Olga Zurjari
Peeter Vares
Affiliation:
Institute of International and Social Studies, Estonian Academy Sciences
Olga Zurjari
Affiliation:
Institute of International and Social Studies, Estonian Academy of Sciences
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Extract

First Visions

During the Soviet period Estonia, like the other national republics of the USSR, lacked a foreign policy of her own. While foreign ministries did exist, they had just a symbolic function: staffed by only five or six people, they were allowed minimal cultural and trade contacts with the Western countries and limited inter-communist party ties within the Soviet bloc. They had to report to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs on every move they made and served, first and foremost, as cover organizations for the KGB. Designing more substantive foreign policies in the Baltic Republics actually began before they gained independence in 1991. In 1989–1990, the emerging political parties voiced their first visions of the future of the Baltic States, which, generally speaking, boiled down to becoming sovereign democratic states, striving for friendly relations with all countries of the world. By that time, under the pressures of perestroika and glasnost, the Soviet authorities had been compelled to loosen their grip on the foreign contacts of the union republics. Those contacts, however, could not be called yet a foreign policy. They could, rather, be identified as isolated moves in the arena of international politics.

Type
Part I: Estonia's Path to Identity and Independence
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 61 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR 

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References

Notes

1. P. Vares, “Dimensions and Orientations in the Foreign and Security Policies of the Baltic States,” New Actors on the International Arena: The Foreign Policies of the Baltic Countries (Tampere: Peace Research Institute, 1993), p. 3.Google Scholar

2. W. Clemens “The Republics as International Actors,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. XIX, No. 1, Spring 1991, p. 75.Google Scholar

3. W. J. H. Hough III, “Legal Consequences of the Annexation and Occupation of Estonia,” A paper presented at the Conference “Migration and Global Change,” Lohusalu (Estonia), August, 1993.Google Scholar

4. P. Vares, “Dimensions and Orientations in the Foreign and Security Policies of the Baltic States,” New Actors on the International Arena: The Foreign Policies of the Baltic Countries (Tampere: Peace Research Institute, 1993), p. 4.Google Scholar

5. P. Vares and E. Kuusmann “Eesti Vabariik rahvusvahelistes suhetes ja Balti kusimus aastal 1990” (“The Republic of Estonia in International Relations and the Baltic Question in 1990”), Eesti Kroonika 1990 (Estonian Chronicle, 1990) (Tallinn: 1991), pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

6. J. Fitzmaurice, The Baltic. A Regional Future? (Basingstoke, New York: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 154–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Rumor has it that L. Meri once used a window to circumvent a security guard and even missed meals to save money (The Baltic Independent, 26 November—2 December, 1993).Google Scholar

8. Press Releases of the Norwegian (Swedish, Iceland) missions to New York, 2. October 1990.Google Scholar

9. Russkaya mysl, 30 November, 1990.Google Scholar

10. Zurjari-Ossipova, “Russian Factor in the Estonian Foreign Policy: Reaction to the Limitation of Sovereignty,” New Actors on the International Arena: The Foreign Policies of the Baltic Countries (Tampere: Peace Research Institute, 1993), p. 124.Google Scholar

11. P. Vares, “Dimensions and Orientations in the Foreign and Security Policies of the Baltic States,” New Actors on the International Arena: The Foreign Policies of the Baltic Countries (Tampere: Peace Research Institute, 1993), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

12. P. Vares and O. Zurjari, “Baltic Political Orientations and International Politics,” The Baltic Sea Region. Conflict or Cooperation: Region-Making, Security Disarmament and Conversion (Münster, Hamburg, 1992), pp. 103–114.Google Scholar