PSCRP-BESA Reports No 11 (October 26, 2023)
The issue of political representation of the Russian (or rather, Russian-speaking) minority, who comprise ca. 24 percent of the population, has been a challenge for Estonia since the re-establishing of independence in 1991. Even though some sources tend to exaggerate the problem of non-citizenship in Estonia, only 20 percent of the local Russians have so-called “alien’s passports.” Moreover, even non-citizens are allowed to vote in the municipal elections.
After a number of projects claiming to represent the “Russian voices,” including the Russian Party of Estonia (Vene Erakond Eestis) and Estonian United People’s Party (Eestimaa Ühendatud Rahvapartei) have failed, the Center Party (Keskerakond) took over the initiative. The Centrists are a well-established Estonian center-left party project, an heir to the People’s Front of Estonia. In the late 1990s, its leadership decided to capitalize on the needs[1] of the Russian minority, including education and naturalization. This strategy proved to be successful and was among the factors that made the Center Party one of the major political actors in the Estonian landscape. However, since 2014, the party has begun to gradually drop its “pro-Russian” image, which was aimed at increasing popularity among ethnic Estonians but led in fact to a loss in attractiveness among the Russophones. The latter did not want to tolerate a coalition with Fatherland (Isamaa), a conservative party of the national establishment, and preferred to vote for EKRE – the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia, outward right-wing populists criticizing the EU, NATO membership, homosexuality, and the influx of foreign-looking migrants.
However, the year 2022 brought not only tragedies but also political opportunities for those who wanted to capitalize on the ever-growing cleavage between two major ethnic segments of the Estonian population. Against the background of the war, the estrangement of the Russian voters reached its peak, and the new party project did not wait long to emerge. Aivo Peterson (original surname is Krylov), a 52-year-old masseur and healer-chiropractor from the border city of Narva, established a movement called “TOGETHER Organization Points to Sovereignty” (KOOS organisatsioon osutab suveräänsusele, “koos” is “together” in Estonian), abbreviated to just KOOS. It was initially registered as an NGO named “Together for Peace in Estonia” in April 2022. Peterson’s partner in the movement became Oleg Ivanov, a businessman involved in the affairs with cryptocurrency. Seemingly, Ivanov was responsible for financial aspects, and Peterson’s assets were an Estonian-looking background (Aivo’s mother was Estonian, and his father was Russian) and experience in Estonian politics (in 2002-2008, Peterson was a member of the Center Party, and in 2008-2011 a member of the Social Democratic Party; in 2021 he ran for the Estonian presidency as a “people’s candidate”). Ivanov himself is also an Estonian citizen, born in Tallinn in the family of Vladimir Ivanov, an activist of the pro-Russian (and pro-Kremlin) Constitution Party of Estonia (seized to exist in 2008).
The pro-Kremlin orientation of the KOOS movement has been obvious since the very beginning: it has called for a “neutral status” of Estonia (meaning the withdrawal from the EU and NATO), non-involvement of Estonia in the war in Ukraine, granting citizenship rights automatically to everyone who lived in Estonia in 1991, and the protection of “historical monuments” (meaning the Soviet-era sculptures that have become another stumbling block between the two ethnic communities). Military expenses should not exceed 1 percent of the GDP. The rhetoric of “sovereignty” (against the influence of the EU and NATO) was once again employed to transmit the pro-Kremlin narrative in a European political landscape, together with the tropes of “traditional values” – religion, family, etc. It was amplified by the self-representation strategy of a “peace dove” (literally, this was the initially proposed KOOS party symbol). Also, Ivanov called the Bucha massacre “staged,” and compared the Russians in Estonia to Jews in Nazi Germany; both Ivanov and Peterson have participated in the “Solovyov LIVE,” the Russian propaganda TV show, as guests. Their electoral strategy was entirely oriented towards the Russian-speaking minority.
The KOOS movement has undertaken several attempts to get officially registered as a political party; however, it has failed to reach the required membership number before the March 2023 elections to Riigikogu (Parliament). So, the movement reached a four-month agreement with the United Left Party of Estonia which was also experiencing membership and funding problems, and the candidates of KOOS were included in the United Left’s electoral list. To some observers, the results of the elections came as a shock: Aivo Peterson got 3968 votes in Ida-Virumaa province, becoming the second favorite candidate after Mihhail Stalnuhhin, one of the most experienced and well-known Russian-speaking politicians in Estonia. This is a big achievement for a politician called the “most famous Estonian Putin-lover.” [Link] The United Left has anyway not passed the electoral threshold for its candidates to get into parliament, but the number was sufficient to make other parties realize the threat. (Oleg Ivanov’s result in Tallinn was less impressive, though also not insignificant: he got 2699 votes, mostly in the Russian-populated Lasnamäe neighborhood).
In May 2023, the KOOS movement eventually gained the long-desired status of a political party. However, before that moment, the party leadership got other problems to be take care of. In March, Aivo Peterson was arrested by the Estonian security services upon returning from a trip to Donetsk and Mariupol sponsored by a Russian charity foundation. In May, Oleg Ivanov decided to control the party’s actions from Russia. In September 2023, Peterson was officially accused of treason. Julia Smoli, occupational therapist, officially became the new chairperson. As of August 2023, the party had 740 members and existed thanks to (rather tiny) donations. In the summer of 2023, a new party project started its life, with practically the same agenda and program: the Estonian People’s Party (Eesti Rahvaerakond), led by, inter alia, Harry Raudvere – Oleg Ivanov’s alleged business partner, the owner of the nationalist Nõmme Raadio station. Previously, he was expelled from the Fatherland Party for publicly supporting Putin’s actions in Ukraine. The new political carpetbagger is still not registered officially as a political party, though.
What are the most important problems highlighted by the “KOOS affaire”? The Russian speaking population of the capital and of the Ida-Virumaa northeastern province became the party/movement’s main target audience, and this audience gratefully responded to the call. The Russian voters are disappointed by the dubious policies of the Centrists and by the rhetoric of the ruling coalition. The latter does not always care about publicly distinguishing between the Russian state and the ethnic Russians living in Estonia, or about formulating a clear and targeted policy towards the Russian-speaking citizens. The problem of the Center Party was nicely formulated by Aivo Peterson himself: “The votes were lying on the ground, and someone had to pick them up.” The elections of March 5, 2023, became a textbook example of protest voting that could potentially have grave consequences for Estonian democracy.
KOOS became a niche party, targeting a rather narrow audience, but with a result that is almost warranted; it had just to fill the niche free of both the government’s policies and more balanced political forces. It has become a party movement, broadly interacting with its potential voters on various Internet platforms, including social networking sites and forums. Among the accusations against Peterson, the most important was “spreading propaganda messages and narratives in the social media.” Other parties sometimes lag behind populist actors who do not spare efforts to attract social media audiences.
The Estonian experience is not irrelevant to Israeli politics; on the contrary, political self-encapsulation of the Arab minority bears the same risks, especially after the tragedy of October 2023. In the absence of a strategy targeted towards an ethnolinguistic minority, political carpetbaggers and “agents of influence” come to fill the niche, to “pick up” the votes “lying on the ground.” Building a successful strategy of attracting Arab voters to the nationwide Israeli parties is no less important than making Estonian parties more appealing to the Russophones, and failing to do this might have fatal consequences for political stability in Israel.
[1] Budryte D. (2005) Taming Nationalism? Political Community Building in the Post-Soviet Baltic States. Ashgate.
Dr. Petr Oskolkov is an affiliated researcher at the BESA Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Program (PSCRP) and a postdoctoral researcher at Ariel University of Samaria. His research focuses on ethnic politics, nationalist movements, and right-wing political parties.