Forest Brothers Game: Survive the Russian Cold War Occupation of Estonia
rebootinganation.comI was very fortunate to spend a few weeks in Tallinn in the summer of 1990, an astonishing time to be there.
Estonia emerged as a tech startup incubator in those first few years of independence, as a way of attracting capital and talent.
Now I need to learn about this game and book!
I wonder if the story of "alien" passports[0] and creeping ethnic cleansing[1] in the independent Estonia will make into the game.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_alien's_passport
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Estonia#Ethnic...
Having lived in Estonia some years ago when the debate over whether Russian should be taught in schools was raging (only changing after Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine) it seems to me that the grey passport holders who refused to acknowledge and assimilate into the independent country that returned to its rightful state after fifty years of brutal occupation are the ones holding most of the blame here. Estonia is an exemplar in upholding human rights since regaining independence.
>who refused to assimilate into the independent country
"Cultural genocide may also involve forced assimilation, as well as the suppression of a language or cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate" [0]
>are the ones holding most of the blame here
Blaming the victim. Classic.
>Estonia is an exemplar in upholding human rights since regaining independence.
You must be kidding. Or you just don't count Russians as human.
My hot tale on the ground in 1990 was that Russia treated Estonia like an imperial colony. Forced mass relocation of Russian citizens into the country after World War II, all children taught a Russian curriculum in the (public, free, Soviet) schools.
The doctrine of cultural assimilation was at that time understood to be incorporation into a larger Russian society.
"The Singing Revolution" tells an Estonian side of this dynamic.
>that Russia treated Estonia like an imperial colony
You mean extracting resources, not developing local industry, especially heavy industry, and forcing to buy all the staff from metropolis?
What a load of nonsense.
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the citizens of the USSR had to choose their future. If they were in countries that declared independence from the USSR as it was falling apart, they could become citizens of those countries. They could also apply for the citizenship of Russian Federation, because RF had declared itself a successor state to the USSR. By default, those who did nothing, became aliens, which is a funny legal term for people without citizenship.
A shitload of Russians outside of Russia did nothing out of misplaced belief that the Soviet Union would return any day now, and they remain without any citizenship.
The irony is that all sorts of human rights organizations see stateless people as horrible tragedy, but the stateless Russians prefer it, because being an alien grants certain privileges on both sides (like visa-free travel in both Europe and Russia) while simultaneously exempting from certain duties like mandatory conscription (again, on both sides). In some regards, both countries treat you as a citizen; in others, both treat you as a foreigner. If you have regular business on both sides of the border, then the alien passport is the best travel document to have.
And if you don't want it anymore, all you have to do is demonstrate B1 level language proficiency and knowledge of the constitution to get a citizenship.
I previously wrote a book (Rebooting a Nation) on how the country of Estonia modernized post re-independence from the Soviet Union. As part of my research I also learned about the Forest Brother movement where tens of thousands of men, women, and children in the Baltics fled to the forests as the Soviets pushed the Nazi's back and re-occupied those countries. Most of the stories are equal mixes of heroic and tragic, but I found the resistance movement fascinating and had an idea for a turn-based strategy game that mixed in historical elements (and thought it was a good use case to test Fable). This is my first game, so I'd very much welcome feedback on ways to improve it!
Does the "re-occupied" imply that Nazi's original assault have "liberated" the countries?
And Estonian patriots enthusiastically helped[0] German Nazis make Estonia the first judenfrei (free of Jews) country if you don't count Luxembourg.[1]
These patriots had to flee to the forests when the time came to answer for their part in Holocaust and other crimes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Estonia#Eston...
I don't think anyone would disagree there weren't people who committed terrible crimes in those days but I don't think its fair to paint all who fled into the forests in such broad strokes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_war_in_the_Baltic_st...
>I don't think its fair to paint all who fled into the forests in such broad strokes
That's what Estonians nationalists tell.
"The findings of this article have implications for understanding Baltic and European collective memory. The studied memoirs consistently share the same themes: the Baltic states were purely victims of the Soviets and Nazis; Soviet occupation was worse than Nazi occupation for the titular ethnicities; the Baltic Waffen-SS legions did not commit atrocities; and the Holocaust was solely a German crime. As scholars have argued (Katz Citation2016, Citation2017; Mälksoo Citation2014; Radonić Citation2018; Subotić Citation2019), these rhetorical strategies represent an adaptation to, rather than an acceptance of, the Western narrative of the Holocaust in Estonia and Latvia. This is evident in the omission of Jewish Bolshevism as a threat to Europe and the distancing of Estonians and Latvians from involvement in genocide, which produces a clear-cut story of patriotic defense against the genocidal Soviet Union. The adaptation has had an effect on the wider European narrative, as increasingly more European politicians and commentators buy into the argument that communism was equal to fascism. In striving to emphasize the European credentials of the Baltic states, without accepting any responsibility for assisting – knowingly or unknowingly – in the genocidal Nazi project, Estonian and Latvian Legion veterans have produced a revisionist version of World War II history. In their narrative, which mimics wartime Nazi propaganda, collaboration with Nazi Germany demonstrated their essential Europeanness in the face of Asian Bolshevism. While they may lack some of the political correctness of official discourse, their arguments, with the exception of one author, correspond to the hegemonic narrative in the Baltic states today." [0]
[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01629778.2023.2...
>I don't think anyone would disagree there weren't people who committed terrible crimes
Please help me parse your triple negatives.
You think everyone would agree there weren't people who committed terrible crimes?
They famously didn't. The German occupation authorities' preferred method of dealing with Jews was to instigate pogroms, but they failed to do so in Estonia, and fearing the same pushback from civilians they had seen earlier in Latvia, instead fell back on using German paramilitary units like Sonderkommando 1a, attached to the Army Group North.> And Estonian patriots enthusiastically helped[0] German Nazis make Estonia the first judenfrei (free of Jews) country if you don't count Luxembourg.[1]Judenfrei Estonia is a shared credit between the USSR and Germany. USSR occupied Estonia 1940-1941 and disproportionally targeted Jews because of their social class (doctors, lawyers, etc). Germans finished the job when the German army arrived in 1941 and stayed until 1944. Of the 4500 pre-war Jews, about 1000 remained by German arrival. Their tragedy was that they had an opportunity to flee with retreating Russians, but did not use it, believing that Germans couldn't possibly treat them worse than Russians.
No, people fled en masse to forests to spare themselves from being deported to Siberian labor camps. The first wave was in 1941: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation> These patriots had to flee to the forests when the time came to answer for their part in Holocaust and other crimes.The second major wave was in 1949, about 70% of the targeted were women and children under 16: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priboi
Russians didn't care about the Holocaust one bit. Anti-semitism was rampant in the USSR and remained so until the very end in the early 1990s. The purpose of these actions was to destroy the professional classes who could run a country and organize resistance to Russians (1941), and to punish rural farmers who resisted giving up their land, animals and tools to collective farms (1949). It's notable that these actions targeted entire families. The mother of Kaja Kallas, the current EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, was a six-month-old baby when their family was deported to Siberia. I wonder what her role in the Holocaust was.
In the early 1960s, the USSR authorities held a war crimes trial of Estonians as Cold War propaganda to reinforce the Soviet narrative of "liberation", legitimize their occupation, discredit émigré movements and accuse Western governments of harboring fascists, but they could not find more than a literal handful of defendants.
No, they were occupied by the Nazis too, but then the Soviets came back, hence "re-occupied"