As President of newly-independent Estonia, Lennart secured the final withdrawal of all Russian troops from his homeland in 1994 by the simple expedient of drinking Boris Yeltsin under the table in the Kremlin. That would make quite a monument in downtown Tallin. Mr Meri, we salute you - ave atque vale…
Lennart Meri is a worthy successor to Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas, former President of Lithuania. Mr Brazauskas owed his title mostly to being worth over 1300 points in Scrabble.
Who’s your favourite Baltic leader?
Lennart Meri, yesterday. We shall not see his like again.
36 comments:
My favourite Baltic leader has to be a cute Estonian girl I met last winter in Florence. Tall, slender, blonde, grey-eyed and intellectual--she could lead ME wherever she wants. And that's saying a lot.
The gentleman in the picture looks a bit like an Oxbridge don in the tradition of Isaiah Berlin. If he can drink Yeltsin under the table, I tip my hat repeatedly to him, and will be all too happy to buy him a round or five. Verily and forsooth, a people gets the leaders it deserves.
Well, he came of hard-drinking stock, that's for sure. The Estonians and Finns always vodka-slammed the Russians into insensibility when I was there nearly twenty years ago. You'd think Boris would've learnt...
Estonians suffered for quite a few centuries under the domination of a military aristocracy of Teutonic origin, the Baltic Germans. The sorry vestiges of that extended episode are dismal Northern European architecture and a quite understandable resistance to hard liquor.
Let's give it up for Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim, father of Finland.
Cheers.
Yes, Mannerheim was good - but was he Baltic good? It's a tough one, but we can't be sentimental about these things...
Well, it seems to me if you mean "Baltic" as in the Sea, then arguably, anyone from Russia, Lativia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, Sweden and even Germany could be eligible. Point of order: Are we limiting consideration only to the three countries absorbed by Stalin in 1939?
Cheers.
Charles XII was pretty cool. If Swedes count.
"If Swedes count". Duh - of course not. They're Vikings.
Yup, it's Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania only, I'm afraid. Don't want to make it too easy for you all. Otherwise it wouldn't be any fun...
Ivan, I'm afraid your readership is asking some legitimate questions. Geographically, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are considered (by convention) Baltic countries. Linguistically, only the last two speak Baltic languages (together with the extinct Old Prussian)--Estonian is Fino-Ugric, as you no doubt now. Russians aren't Balts; they're barbarians.
My blog my rules :-P
Does Tito count? My Geogrsphy is a bit vague? And my History isn't brilliant Who was the one who jumped or was pushed from a balcony. Something like Maryk?
Carry on.
I guess PI has Jan Masaryk somewhere at the back of her mind. There were, in fact, several events known as the Defenestration of Prague. In Bohemia, this used to be perceived as an expedient method for political conflict-solving; also, they have beautiful windows, so one goes out in style, as it were.
Some time in 1419, an enraged crowd of Hussites (adepts of religious reformer Jan Hus, a sort of proto-Martin Luther) decided to dismiss a group of seven refractory city councillors who wouldn't go along with the program. The municipal dignitaries were shown the window instead of the door.
In the Second Defenestration, two legates of the (Catholic) German emperor were thrown out the window by another irrascible Protestant crowd. Dumb luck (or divine providence, if you're a Catholic) made it so that they landed on a pile of manure, thus being spared their lives, but not their dignity. It wouldn't be the first time when divine providence lands one in deep shit.
In 1948, at the beginning of the Cold War, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was found dead outside his bathroom window. I'm always willing to suspect the goddamn Commies were somehow involved in it. Czechoslovakia was too much of a prize for the Soviets to keep their filthy hands off it.
And yes, Ivan, your blog, your rules--la loi, c'est la loi, nobody contested that. We were just wondering what exactly those rules were. :-)
Tito? TITO? Now you're just trying to annoy me. Well, I shan't rise to it, d'you hear?
And yes, Des, I think she means Masaryk too. He was indeed Czech - definitely not a Balt.
But I'm a reasonable man and I can relent out of mercy to the geographically challenged. Let this henceforth be "Relatively Obscure Eastern European Leader Day". Now you can all go nuts...
Well done boys! SHE (cat's mother) did mean Jan Whatsit.
Try to annoy you Ivan? Never!
May I respectfully nominate Peteris Stucka, head of the Bolshevik government in Latvia during the Latvian War of Liberation. He was first president of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, so he must have been a very wise and just man.
Always tryin' to push people's wrong buttons, ain't we, Footsie? Very well, then. Everyone's entitled to an opinion here--unlike that den of social justice and true equality, the former Soviet Union (or France, for that matter).
Bad Footie! Naughtie Footie! We're going to rub your nose in the collected works of Karl Marx for that one...
No, we should choose something that stinks even worse: Lenin's "Materialism and Empiriocriticism".
tito? wats worng with im?
Well then, if you guys don't like my chick for her leadership qualities, then how's about old Isaiah Berlin himself? Born in Riga alright, which pretty much makes him a Balt. Fierce defender of liberty, second only to J. S. Mill and Karl Popper. Long-standing don at Wolfson College, which ought to ingratiate him with the Brits. A John Locke for the 20th century. Ain't nothin' wrong with 'im, is it?
Whoa people, slow down for the blonde at the back. I'm way out of my league here, I'm ashamed to admit. We barely got any Scottish, far less Eastern European history in school, and I'm a Scot. We did more on the Vikings than we ever did on Eastern Europe and Scotland combined.
I suppose at any time since school I could have boned up on the great Baltic leaders but, well, I just didn't 'K! I'm Gen X, dudes, gimme a break! I didn't even know that a bloke called Mannerheim was the father of Finland. I'm off now to feel under-educated in a quiet corner for a bit, and to feel the silent pity and condemnation which will, no doubt, radiate off my 'puter each time I visit and comment again.
God, I really do feel dumber than the Irishwoman who broke her teeth on her new vibrator.
Sam, the trick is not to admit your ignorance but to do a quick Google and Wikipedia search and then come across all knowledgable. As I did.
Tito Jackson and Isaiah Berlin - much better...
Sam - don't worry - Footie has just shared the secret shame that we all rely on. Frankly, without Google I'd still be hunkered in a cave trying to eat rocks. I might even have become Welsh. Oh, the horror...
Sam: dinna fash! We have to accept graciously that they are superior to us in some aspects.
Usually the aspects in which we haven't a shred of interest - like tax and insurance - but never mind.
I nominate Good King Wenceslas. He was Czech, I think and it says he was good, right there in his name.
Better St Stephen the Great of Moldavia than St Stephen the Great of Hungary, who slaughtered most of his family in the process of seizing the country, and then demanded the title of King from the Pope.
They still keep his right hand in the Basilica in Pest, gilded and enshrined. It's tiny. Might explain a lot about his savage ambition. He was probably compensating for something...
Sam - good choice in theory, but how do you know he didn't just have good spin doctors? Time to break free from their deadly spell! You're not going to vote Labour again, are you?
I've read all the comments, Ivan, and this is why you shouldn't have a contest. Had you offered a prize, you'd be sued by now for changing the rules in mid stream.
Cheers.
Alas, Mr. Terrible, I can't vote anything, as it happens. I am a thoroughly disenfranchised person; not a green card holder long enough to vote here yet, but non-resident in Britain for too long for me to vote there.
I itch to vote, if only to cancel out some of my husband's votes, but I describe myself as an independant in both the US and UK, not subscribing to any one particular party in either country. I believe both that we should universally educate 'em AND that hanging's too good for 'em.
Being independant, I think, has the side-effect of causing you to pay much closer attention to politics and current affairs, than an entrenched Blue or Red who's decided anyway. (although clearly amn't up to snuff on my Baltic state politics). In any event, I am a payer of close attention and, maybe, have many more opinions than a housewife ought to. I believe passion is something not confined to the extremes of the political spectrum, but that it is possible to be passionately moderate on many questions.
There are no races, Cantemir, don't you know that? Races are social constructs. There are peoples, on the other hand, and the collective destinies they choose.
Sorry I missed this discussion, Des, Canty - sounds like it was a good one. But surely we can all agree to differ on Christian subgroups and get back to despising Islam instead?
You can always count on me for that, Ivan. Sorry about the mess I got involved in on this forum--it was largely of my own doing, and I now regret it. So yeah, let's start a crusade or something. I'm all for it. Time to reevaluate the crusades in a better light.
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