Revisiting the Security/Identity Puzzle in Russo-Estonian Relations
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433030405005 |
| Date | 01 September 2003 |
| Published date | 01 September 2003 |
| Author | Pami Aalto |
| Subject Matter | Journal Article |
573
An Intractable Security/Identity
Puzzle?
It has often been alleged that the prevalence
of close linkages between security and
identity is a particularly pivotal issue in post-
Soviet politics. Sometimes such allegations
come in a declaratory and largely unsubstan-
tiated form, while sometimes they are more
carefully weighed and well documented.
While the unsubstantiated declarations can
be rejected easily, the more serious analyses
deserve closer attention. For example, Suny
(1999: 140) has asserted that
the problem of forging relatively stable
political and national identities is particularly
acute at the present time in much of post-
Soviet Eurasia. Insecurity and danger, fear of
the future with few anchors left to the past,
and a perceptible sense that there is no
purpose in the current chaos mark the mood
of Russians and many other former Soviet
citizens as they drift into the millennium.
Suny’s analysis is a good representative of a
broader literature examining the prevalence
of linkages between security and identity in
© 2003 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 40, no. 5, 2003, pp. 573–591
Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com
[0022-3433(200309)40:5; 573–591; 035592]
Revisiting the Security/Identity Puzzle in Russo-
Estonian Relations*
PAMI AALTO
Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of
Tampere
This article engages the persisting and commonplace claim that post-Soviet politics is imbued with the
prevalence of very close linkages between security and identity. Such a claim is often made in analyses
of Russo-Baltic relations, where especially the inter-ethnic policies of the ethnic Estonians and Latvians
have been found to be in a triadic conflict with the interests of their Russophone minorities and the
declared policy preferences of the contemporary Russian Federation. However, this article contests such
claims and argues that there are several signs of a gradual erosion of the intense security/identity link-
ages. First, the article outlines some overall developments in the strategic and politico-economic context
that have accounted for a relative accommodation in Russo-Baltic relations. Second, the article enquires
into the subjective roots of such accommodation patterns by introducing an in-depth analysis of Russo-
Estonian relations that makes use of an intensive fieldwork method, Q methodology. It becomes clear
that security/identity linkages, as subjectively perceived by ethnic Estonians and Estonia’s Russophones,
are best understood as varied: in some discourses that issue from these groups, they are very close, but
relatively loose in others. Such a variation in security/identity linkages is an important condition for
the gradual erosion of tensions that has been taking place in Russo-Estonian relations and in Russo-
Baltic relations in general. On the whole, these findings speak to the importance of methodological
plurality and case-sensitiveness in the study of the complexities of security/identity linkages.
*Appendix I to this article is available at JPR’s website:
http://www.prio.no/jpr/datasets.asp. For comments and
support, I wish to thank Vilho Harle, John Hiden, Mika
Luoma-aho, Sami Moisio and David J. Smith, as well as
three anonymous referees and the editors of JPR. This
article represents a contribution to the Academy of Finland-
funded project ‘Identity Politics, Security and the Making
of Geopolitical Order in the Baltic Region’ (no. 580552).
Author’s e-mail: pami.aalto@uta.fi.
05 JPR 40-5 Aalto (JB/D) 28/7/03 3:42 pm Page 573
post-Soviet politics. Where such linkages are
particularly close, they tend to constrain and
confine the options for conducting security
policy. By labelling certain security policy
options as unacceptable from the identity
political point of view, and thereby reducing
the range of alternative courses of action,
they set limits to the prospects of inter-ethnic
and interstate dialogue and consequently to
peaceful development in the post-Soviet
space.
Suny (1999: 147–174) has found such
close linkages between security and identity
in Russia and in several cases in the Caucasus
and Central Asia. Several authors have also
directed attention to their prevalence in
Russia (Kassianova, 2001; Morozov, 2002;
Taras, 1997). However, perhaps the most
often cited occasion has been the compli-
cated relations between Russia and the Baltic
states. In Brubaker’s (1996) terms, it has
been found that the policies of the Baltic
republics as nationalizing states, and
especially the inter-ethnic policies of the
ethnic Estonians and Latvians, have been in
a triadic conflict with the interests of their
national minorities,consisting mostly of
Russophone peoples, and the declared
policy preferences of the external national
homeland, the contemporary Russian Feder-
ation.
In many studies, it has been noted that
the Baltic countries are restored states and
that the Baltic elites derive from identities
dating back from the 1918–40 period of
independent statehood. They portray the
Soviet era as an ‘occupation’, which in
Estonia and Latvia destroyed the demo-
graphic balance by increasing the share of the
Russophone population from around one-
tenth to more than one-third, due to reasons
such as deportations, war losses, intentional
Soviet policies of resettlement of ethnic
groups and voluntary migration within the
Soviet Union. Consequently, the post-Soviet
Baltic elites perceive either implicit or
explicit security threats as emanating from
Russia, and Estonia and Latvia have devised
citizenship and language laws with an exclu-
sionist character towards their large Russo-
phone minorities (e.g. Birgerson, 2002: ch.
7; Haab, 1998; Herd & Löfgren, 2001:
277–283; Jæger, 1997; Kuus, 2002; Minio-
taite˙, 2001).1
In this vein, Wæver (1994: 16–19), for
instance, has directed attention to the
Estonian case and to how it has been perhaps
the most prominent example of the preva-
lence of almost intractable security/identity
puzzles in post-Soviet politics. More recently,
Kuus (2002: 100–104) has claimed that not
only Estonian discourses on the Russophone
minority and Russia have been coloured by
the security/identity puzzle, but also Estonia’s
ongoing integration into the EU. Sometimes
EU integration is portrayed as a security
measure to consolidate Estonian identity
from the perceived Russian threat; however,
sometimes integration is portrayed as a
security threat to the Estonian identity,which
in this vision is perceived as unique and
vulnerable. According to Kuus (2002: 104),
the Estonian identity is always constructed as
being under threat: it ‘can only be
approached one way: as an endangered entity
that must be protected from non-Estonian
and foreign’. Moreover, Estonian identity is
not only persistently ‘securitized’ but also
conflated with the Estonian state. Kuus
argues that the linkages between security and
identity are, in many senses, very close in
Estonia, with some ‘liberal’ commentators in
the country – for example, intellectuals and
business people, who otherwise might have
different ideas – also subjected to this con-
straining discursive structure.
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 40 / number 5 / september 2003
574
1The Estonian and Latvian citizenship policies after the
restoration of independence privileged the citizens and
descendents of citizens of the 1918–40 states and excluded
the Russophones who arrived during the Soviet era.
Language laws made the titular languages the only official
languages.
05 JPR 40-5 Aalto (JB/D) 28/7/03 3:42 pm Page 574
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