A Place of Globalization
Cross-Cultural Cooperation between Estonian and Norwegian Business People in Tallinn
Kari Helene Partapuoli
Thesis presented for the Cand. Polit. degree at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Tromsø, November 1998. Revised: Copenhagen, August 1999
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis is in many ways created by everyone I met throughout my stay in Tallinn.
The Norwegian and the Estonian businessmen and women were very generous with their time and information. Especially everyone working at Martines. Thor Haabet let me participate in meetings and read business plans. Harald Olsen let me enjoy the luxury of his down town apartment. Magnus Skjørshammer and I shared frustrations about being foreigners in Tallinn. Kaarina Ritson became one of my dearest friends. She took care of me when I had my particular «fieldwork moods» and shared her own experiences about the Norwegian-Estonian business setting. She also read and commented on parts of the text. Her help has been invaluable.
Just as important were all the people I met outside the business environment, some of which must be mentioned in particular. Siret Bankier made me realize that Estonia consists of more than Tallinn and taught me about a lifestyle very different from my own. Lilia Kuznetsova served me some of the best meals I have ever had. Dmitri and I ate more food than we could handle. Lilia also taught me to respect the importance of hard academic work and about the nuances of being Russian in Estonia. The people at TTÜ gave me a place to live and a place to work which made my stay much easier. Mare Teichmann responded quickly to my initial letter and made my stay in Tallinn possible. Ave Härsing took care of me from day one and was a good friend. Ilmo Saulep gave me beautiful roses, was a perfect office mate and told stories from a time I know little about. Wayne Thompson solved a housing problem, was a good friend and took me out and about and introduced me to Estonia. A special thanks to the 'English Club'. Helgi and Endla at TTÜ cared for me and gave me a birthday to remember. I spent some magic nights together with Viive, eating home coocked food and practicing Norwegian and Estonian. William Cronenberg shared with me of his valuable knowledge of Tallinn and Estonia and provided insightful comments on my empirical examples.
You all made my stay in Estonia one to remember and I will keep coming back.
I hope I have treated all of you right!
The students of social anthropology in Tromsø have made the study of anthropology interesting and fun. Ellinor Angell, Jørgen Iversen and Per Egil Kummervold have read, discussed and commented on early drafts of the text. Ellinor has contributed with ideas, especially on business stunts, and comfort throughout the entire process.
Mayvi Johansen, Øyvind Eggen and Line Vråberg have contributed in less visible, but no less significant ways to this project through discussions and friendship. Siri Johnsen and I shared last minute frustrations and joys.
My academic supervisor Sidsel Saugestad structured me and my thoughts, persuaded me to write a conclusion, and provided valuable help throughout the writing up process.
Gitte Thune increased my understanding of business in general, and of profit and dress codes within business in particular (and a few other things as well).
Hallgeir Bjørnstad Strand is not here to receive my gratitude, but it still feels appropriate to mention his far-reaching support before and during my fieldwork.
Berit and Gunnar Partapuoli have supported me financially and otherwise, much longer and more generously than I could expect. I can only hope that I am worth their concern and money.
A very special thank you to Finn, together with whom I take chances I never regret.
Tromsø, November 1998 and Copenhagen, August 1999, Kari Helene Partapuoli.
Part One: Global Business Ideology and the Local Setting
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 The Problem
"For me Estonia is the area of land on the shore of the Baltic Sea where our ancestors settled. A place on the earth that with its variability and uniqueness makes one wonder, at the same time, about the diversity and the similarity of the whole world." (Ann Tenno, Estonian photographer).
This thesis sets out to describe and explain what it involves to do business in a Norwegian-Estonian cross-cultural setting, in a situation where Norwegian (and Western) business is expanding into Estonian markets, and more generally, the former Eastern Block. It is based on fieldwork in Tallinn from February to August 1996 among Norwegian-Estonian companies, and thus reflects a specific phase in the ongoing transformation of Estonian society. In the spring of 1996 Estonia had been an independent nation for five years and had during that time experienced extensive economic and social reforms. Since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 the country had also received considerable economical and political attention from the USA and the Western European countries in form of financial investments and developmental programs. Estonia in 1996 was a country which was adjusting to its new and still changing institutions and social structure. It was viewed by the West as a progressive country, suitable for profitable investments. This study will focus on how global processes influenced the cooperation between Norwegian and Estonian business people in Tallinn.
Anthropologists and sociologists have in latter years focused on the transnational flow of capital, business people and consequently business cultures as an aspect of the more universal processes of globalization that are currently taking place in the world. The increasingly world-wide cross-cultural business cooperation and communication raises many issues, not all of them purely economical. Most importantly, perhaps, it involves the interplay between truly global processes (such as capital flow) and local adaptation to such processes. When, as in the case here examined, a translocal flow of individual people takes place (as opposed to a flow of money or technology), the extra-economic aspects of business relations are clearly of the greatest importance. An anthropological study of these themes may hope to reveal specific discrepancies and correspondences between global, translocal and local business cultures as experienced by business people operating in cross-cultural environments.
The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 obliterated the almost fifty year old division between communist and capitalist blocks in Europe, and parts of what had till then been the territory of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern and Central Europe, became major areas of interest for Western (and Norwegian) business life(1). The knowledge that people from the former Soviet Union and Western Europe had of each other during the Cold War was limited and often misleading. As a result of the now extensive contact between «East» and «West», the amount of mutual knowledge and understanding has increased dramatically. However, many misconceptions and prejudices concerning how people from the Western and the Eastern hemisphere think and live still exist. As contact has developed the need for information has increased as well. This is especially apparent when people engage in personal cooperation with real issues at stake like «doing business together». The shared and divergent understandings that the various actors involved in such cooperation have, of «how one does business» and how one creates a «suitable environment» for doing business, are of the greatest importance in the daily operation of a cross-cultural firm.
Norwegian business people come from a cultural business context considered to be Western and capitalistic, even though Norway (population 4 million) has a social-democratic system of government(2)that is often referred to as the «third way» (Hill 1993:177) and thus has a quite extensively planned economy. Norway is also one of the few countries in Western Europe, together with Iceland, Luxembourg and Switzerland, which has chosen to stay out of the European Union (EU). After the discovery of the North-Sea oil deposits, Norway has also become one of the richest countries in the Western world. Estonia, in contrast, is a former Soviet national republic which is now adapting to independent nationhood and a market economy. Estonia's national policy is based on a strong free market orientation including low public subsidies and liberal laws on the import and export of goods. The country, as the first of the Baltic states, has started membership negotiations with EU. While Estonia was part of the Soviet Union, poverty as a social phenomenon was nearly unknown, although scarcity was virtually omnipresent. The radical changes towards a market economy after liberation have on the one hand brought forward desired changes such as free travel, access to a variety of goods and freedom of the press. The termination of national subsidies, inflation and unemployment were, on the other hand, some of the negative factors of the reforms. The income level for many Estonians has been reduced after independence. A report worked out by the Norwegian research institute Fafo concludes that ten percent of the Estonian population was living below the subsistence minimum in 1995 (Grøgaard 1996:127-129). The ambiguity of the situation affected the cooperation between Norwegian and Estonian business people.
During my fieldwork, when I observed Norwegian and Estonian business people «doing business» together, it seemed clear (both to me and them) that their cooperation was heavily influenced by a number of extra-economic factors in the local socio-cultural environment, e.g. rules of etiquette and morality, administrative and legal routines, accessibility of information, ethnic and class differentiation, etc. In addition, local Norwegian and Estonian habitus; an embodied matrix, acquired through learning processes, which guides thoughts, feelings and actions (Richardson 1993:23), affected the cooperation. Pierre Bourdieu, who is the originator of the term, uses habitus to describe deeply learned cultural knowledge which is expressed through actions (Bourdieu 1977). Habitus guides and forms the basis for actions. It is an often unconscious style of practice which is imprinted in the body, but also leaves room for improvisations. Bourdieu says that the homogeneity of habitus within a given socio-cultural group causes practices to be predictable, understandable and taken for granted (Bourdieu 1990:58). In cross-cultural business cooperation the business partners may not share the same habitus, and their practices of «doing business» may be mutually unintelligible and unpredictable. Nevertheless, all my informants related to a set of (presumably global) ideas of what business is and how business should be done, which I shall refer to below as a global business ideology. In practical business cooperation, the interplay of this global ideology with local habitus and personal factors generated a wide range of different and inconsistent ways of «doing business», which I shall refer to as local business practices. Thus, most of the business people I met were firmly convinced that business was «the same everywhere», and tried to act in accordance with this view. This did not mean that they were unaware of the very obvious differences between Norwegian and Estonian business settings and practices. Many of them were conscious of the fact that there exist different ways of «doing business», and able to describe these differences in quite sophisticated detail. But when these same individuals were actually «doing business», they were often unable to act in accordance with their understanding, and tended to assume that all business people spoke the same «business language»: the language of market economics and commercial activity(3). Moreover, even in cases when the parties managed to work out satisfactory terms of cooperation, they did not necessarily refute the global business ideology explicitly as they were committed (cf. Goffman 1972) to global business ideology. Thus, the local processes of Estonian-Norwegian cooperation in Tallinn need to be situated within a larger context that reaches beyond their local setting. They are aspects of a wider, translocal, contact between Norway and Estonia, and are dependent on, influenced by, and even in part caused by global political and economic processes. What is taking place in Tallinn is an articulation of a global, Western-style business ideology within a local post-Soviet setting. The contradictions - between global ideology and local practices - that are inherent in this situation, form the subject matter of the present thesis.
My data, which were mainly collected among twelve small Norwegian firms in Tallinn (population 500 000), the capital of Estonia (population 1.5 million), serve to demonstrate the complexity of this situation. During the cooperation process there were a lot of misunderstandings between the parties concerning for example planning, management styles, proper relationships between business contacts and the flow of information. Some of these misunderstandings never became known to either of the parties, and some had serious economic consequences for the firm. Proper knowledge about each other's starting points and how the various parties in a cross-cultural firm view and react to their daily cooperation may be crucial for both the social environment within a firm and its economic success.
The main empirical focus throughout this thesis will be on cross-cultural cooperation between actors on the management level in Norwegian companies situated and registered in Tallinn but with Norwegian origin (see appendix 1 for a list of companies and individual descriptions). In all of the firms the management level included both Estonians and Norwegians. It consisted of Presidents, Managing Directors, Project Managers, secretaries and translators. Formally, there existed an agreement between the Estonian and the Norwegian partners on the terms for their cooperation. Both acknowledged that they took part in Western commercial business activities. There was general agreement on the global ideology of business. But as we shall see below, there was not agreement on how to «do business» in practice(4). These divergencies between ideology and practice could cause frustrations on both sides and even economic loss. My goal is therefore, first, to describe the ideological discourse about business that Norwegian and Estonian business people participated in, and secondly, to discuss how the business people related to the global ideology of business through practical cooperation.
During my fieldwork there were 14 firms in Tallinn with Norwegian involvement (appendix 1). Apart from the Estonian branch of Statoil(5) and Coca Cola(6) the management level of these companies consisted of 3-4 people on the average. I collected data from all of the 14 firms although the main body of my data is based on information from the 12 smaller firms. Coca Cola and Statoil are included in this study because they are viewed by the Norwegian business people as important forerunners for the Norwegian business environment in Tallinn, but I have only conducted interviews with a few people in these two firms. Most of what will be said about the two larger firms in this thesis is based on accounts from Norwegian business people who were not themselves directly involved with these firms. My data were collected through 37 formal and informal interviews (see appendix 2), in addition to extensive conversations, and participant observation in the social life of people connected to the firms. I also worked for one of the firms over a period of three weeks, mainly as a translator. In return for my services I was allowed to read business plans and take part in meetings. I lived in a student dormitory, had access to an office at Tallinn Technical University, and socialized with students and employees at the university. I returned to Tallinn in November 1996 for two weeks in order to take part in the official program during the Norwegian Prime Minister 's visit to Estonia. During this visit I participated in a «business day» with both Norwegian and Estonian business people present, and in a work shop on cross-cultural cooperation. I shall not at this point discuss my fieldwork in further detail, and in the main body of the thesis, methodological comments will be included only if they are directly relevant to my main argument. A more detailed and personal discussion of field methods and experiences is included as an epilogue. This does not mean that I consider methodological elaboration superfluous. The story about my fieldwork experiences and the story about my findings are inseparable, but the stories have different protagonists. In the first, I represent the reality of my Norwegian and Estonian informants, while in the second the researcher herself is brought into focus.
The thesis has five chapters, which focus on the following themes: global business ideology (Chapter One), the local context and its participants (Chapter Two), the articulation of global ideology through practical cooperation in the local setting (Chapters Three and Four) and finally conclusions (Chapter Five). The present, introductory chapter, will discuss how global discourse on business generates a global ideology of business. Global common denominators of business ideology will be discussed and incorporated in an analytical model of business as a «discursive object». The model will later be used as an analytical tool to explore the relationships between practical business activities and the ideal model of business. Chapter Two will deal with Western responses to the changes in Eastern Europe, which formed the background for the Norwegian business people's arrival in Estonia. We shall see how official policy and media in the West formed a popular view of the East as a challenging, «uncivilized» place, in need of Western help. The production of Estonian national identity will be briefly examined on the background of both historical events and mythical history that is actualized in the present. The chapter also gives an overview of the business environments in Tallinn and provides a brief description of the Norwegian-Estonian companies. Chapters Three and Four will analyze empirical cases through comparing cross-cultural business practice to aspects of the global ideology of business, as defined in this introduction. Chapter Three will mainly deal with misunderstandings in the cross-cultural cooperation, whereas Chapter Four will analyze more successful situations. Finally, Chapter Five will summarize how global ideology affected the Estonian-Norwegian business situation together with local Norwegian and Estonian business habitus/practices. A discussion of method is incorporated as an epilogue, as well as two appendices. The first appendix consists of a detailed list of the fourteen companies examined. This list should be consulted during the reading of the thesis. The interview guides I used during my fieldwork are included as the second appendix(7).
1.2 The Perspective: Global and Local Worlds
Globalization is a term which is often used to describe a dominant tendency within the modern (or rather postmodern) world of the late 20th century. It is a result of increasingly intensive contact between previously distant localities. Globalization theories deal with the ways localities are connected, how they are influenced by global processes and how localities effect the global level. Consequently Roland Robertson sees globalization as
«...indicating the problem of the form in terms of which the world becomes 'united'» (Robertson 1990:18).
Mike Featherstone argues that globalization processes produce, aside from their more obvious, socioeconomic effects (wage labor, monetary economy, citizenship, formalized education, and abstract ideologies such as nationalism), a «...globalization of culture» (Featherstone 1990:1; see also Eriksen 1991). As a result, people who have never met each other before can form anonymous «imagined communities» based on for example commitment to an ideology such as nationalism. Global cultural flows can produce ideas of similar ways of thinking and communicating among people which cross traditional cultural boundaries. Featherstone further argues that global cultural flows are complex, but although the terms globalization and global culture are widely used there seems to be no clear consensus regarding their meaning and results. Thus, the Norwegian author Thure Erik Lund argues that globalization has no intrinsic meaning at all: when we speak about globalization or a global culture we disregard the existence of local cultures, since the global culture is assumed to have an over-arching, and hence morally superior, value (Lund 1998:41). According to Lund, global culture is a fiction which exists only in the media or on the Internet and has little relevance to people 's actual lives. In contrast, many anthropologists and sociologists stress the complex effects of globalization processes such as global cultural flows. It is true that the world may become more homogeneous and uniform as global processes impinge on and eclipse distinctive local traits, but the world may also become more diverse in reaction to global, macro-level processes. Homogenization and diversification are two sides of the same coin, as most contemporary theoreticians seem to agree. It is therefore difficult today to find consistent proponents of either of these extreme positions. A more typical view might be that expressed by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, who states that the world is shrinking at the same time as various local distinctive traits enjoy recognition (Eriksen 1991). Jonathan Friedman similarly argues that assimilation and segmentation are two processes which take place simultaneously on the global scene:
«Ethnic and cultural fragmentation and modernist homogenization are not two arguments, two opposing views of what is happening in the world today, but two constitutive trends of global reality» (Friedman 1990:311).
I will argue along similar lines that a number of disparate events taking place in the world may be part of the same process, whether they originate from an obscure local community or a transnational company. I will argue that processes which are global in their reach also play a role in people's lives. Even though some global processes are transmitted through the media they still communicate between real places and purvey cultural ideas which are interpreted and articulated by real people. The idea of a global culture (or global cultures) does not presuppose the disappearance of local cultures, but takes into account that mechanisms which have a global effect will influence localities. The Norwegian and Estonian business people will, for example, relate to global ideas of business culture when they are cooperating. Throughout this thesis global processes will be identified and related to local processes.
Translocal contact between people and transfer of technology have always existed to some extent. In the second century BC, Polybius wrote of the rise of the Roman Empire:
«Formerly the things which happened in the world had no connection among themselves ... But since then all events are united in a common bundle» (quoted in Robertson 1990:21).
The difference today is the extent and intensity of the global flows. Since the 1970s we have seen an increasing internationalization of capital, technology, goods, information, media and production. The seemingly footloose nature of international capital, production etc. has made theoreticians point to deterritorialization as an important aspect of globalization (e.g. Appadurai 1990, Cox 1997, Eriksen 1991, Storper 1997). A car factory can close down in Tokyo and influence the stock markets in Oslo or Tallinn. People connected to the Internet in Ny Ålesund, the northernmost community in the world, can communicate with Internet users in Nigeria. This focus on deterritorialization as an aspect of globalization does not, however, preclude a regard for local geographies within the world, but is a way of explaining the reach of global processes. But it is also true, as the geographer Kevin R. Cox argues, with reference to critics like D. Gordon (1988), P. Hirst and G. Thompson (1992), that global processes with beneficial social effects mainly reach the Western World and not the Third World countries (Cox 1997:3). This, however, should not overshadow the more general point that the reach of globalization is, practically speaking, universal today. Even resistance against this trend by major economic and political powers cannot in the long run, keep the global world out, as the fall of the Soviet empire convincingly demonstrates. There remains, however, the complex question of how global processes touch down in various localities, which can only be answered empirically.
At least two dynamics of globalization can be identified within the deterritorialized world. There exists a world-wide flow of images through, for example, commercials, television and the Internet and a world-wide flow of capital and commodities through international transactions and stock exchanges. These are flows which are initiated and manifested by people, but do not necessarily involve direct human contact transnationally or have a fixed center. The other main dynamic involves a flow of people and involves direct encounters. These are people like tourists, immigrants and business people who for various reasons move around in the world. They may be air hostesses or exchange students, but together they form a fluctuating global world of interpersonal contacts. This distinction between two separate flows with separate characteristics within the global dynamics is, of course, analytical. Global processes always include both human contact and a disassociation from place: the flow of people to and fro between Western and Eastern Europe is a result of global political processes, and global Coca Cola commercials would not be made unless they influenced local consumers to buy the soft drink. The difference between these two spheres is that one is constituted of people and involves direct, personal encounters in real, local settings, while the other can influence localities without the actors ever being physically present. Though different, both dynamics involve the communication and transfer of ideological concepts and enable communication between people and a sense of shared global cultures. Both the flow of images, money and commodities and the flow of people thus contribute to shaping our ideas about aspects of the world. They provide us with knowledge about foreign countries, notions of how business should be done, beauty ideals, political ideologies, expectations of standards of living, progress, identity etc. There exists, somewhat paradoxically, a global idea of «indigenous» cultural representation; Inuits, Sami and Nenets meet with Indians in global conferences focusing on preservation of local identity. Similarly, and less surprisingly, there exists a common, global ideology of how to «do business» among Norwegian and Estonian business people despite their different business backgrounds. These ideas affect the practice of the people who are «doing business» together.
Arjun Appadurai further differentiates global processes by defining five dimensions or «landscapes» of global cultural flow within which actors navigate: ethnoscapes (human movement), technoscapes (technological flow), finanscapes (financial transfers), mediascapes (flows of images produced by media), and ideoscapes (flows of ideology) (Appadurai 1990:297-301). Finanscapes involve the complex nature and form of global capital influenced by stock exchanges, currency markets, multi-national companies, national financial policies, the movement of business people, etc. Political images, often connected to nation states or opponents of national policies, are the main contents of Appadurai's ideoscapes. Ideoscapes constitute a fluid discourse on terms such as 'freedom', 'democracy', 'human rights', 'dictatorship', 'power' etc. I shall not discuss Appadurai's «scapes» much further in the following. I will use them to define the empirical focus of this thesis, which will be on what I have chosen to call businesscapes, which exist in the intersection between finanscapes and ideoscapes, between the practice of «doing business» and the ideological discourses concerning how to do business.
As Appadurai points out, the relationship between the «scapes» is always one of disjuncture and unpredictability:
«...current global flows occur [...] in and through the growing disjunctures between ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes.» (Appadurai 1990:301).
This means that the flows of people, images, ideas, money, and machinery tend to manifest themselves in incompatible combinations. Appadurai mentions as an example the Japanese who are open to import and export of goods, but oppose the idea of immigration (Appadurai 1990:301). We should expect cross-cultural business people, operating on the disjuncture between ideoscape and finanscape, to exhibit similar breaches of logic.
As we have seen, the ideology of «doing business» among Norwegians and Estonians in Tallinn is a result of processes on a larger scale than the day-to-day cooperation between the parties. The fall of the Berlin Wall resulted not only in changes within Eastern Europe, but also in a wide-spread acceptance of capitalism as the victorious world ideology. International financial organizations such as The International Monetary Fund (IMF) invested and lent money to Eastern Europe through the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on the condition that sweeping socioeconomic reforms be carried out, including large-scale privatization of the economy. Governments in the West designed bilateral aid and reconstruction programs based on the guidelines of the IMF and EBRD and on a global political ideology based on classical liberalism. The global media focused heavily on the new business opportunities in the East. As a result of these and other global processes, large multinational companies as well as individual Western entrepreneurs started moving into Eastern Europe.
The Norwegian business people who arrived in Tallinn between 1989-90 and 1996 were part of this process and their «scape» of activity was definitely characterized by disjunctures. One example of disjuncture between expectations and practice was when some of the Norwegian business people came to Tallinn because they saw it as a place which offered quick profit coupled with risk, which was different from the Norwegian business setting, but were surprised when business was done differently in Tallinn. Even though the Western press and politicians emphasized the willingness of the East to embrace capitalism, Western business people who came East quickly learned that practices do not necessarily accord with ideology. The ideas the Western actors had of «how one does business» frequently failed to match the way «business was done» in Eastern Europe. Something similar was experienced by the Eastern Europeans, whose expectations of how Western business was done often differed from the way the Westerners actually «did business». This was often confusing for them, since they from the outset had assumed that Westerners would know how to «do business».
It has been pointed out by most theoreticians on globalization (e.g. Cox 1997, Cvetkovich and Kellner 1997, Friedman 1990, Gertler 1997, Miller 1997) that the relationships between global processes and localities are extremely complex. Global processes touch down in localities and influence them. But various global processes may be articulated in various ways in each place. Some may have no significance in one place, but play a crucial role in others. Students at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland are, for example, engaged in environmental protection on a global scale and consequently many students become vegetarians and take part in demonstrations against global pollution or ruthless exploitation of endangered species. Conservation of the world's environment plays a lesser role among students at the University of Tromsø in Norway, where students line up at the local branch of Burger King late Saturday night to enjoy a juicy hamburger and only demonstrate en masse when the government threatens to reduce public spending on students. «Save the Whales» is thus in many parts of Norway a suspect slogan, which is seen to threaten local adaptation. It is almost impossible to predict the shape of global influence on a local setting.
In this thesis «the local» is defined as the geographic place Tallinn where Norwegian-Estonian cross-cultural business cooperation takes place. This locality is affected by global processes on a day-to-day basis. Indeed, the cooperation itself is part of a global process. The local actors involved in these global processes are Norwegian and Estonian business people. Like business people elsewhere, they travel and meet, directly, in person-to-person encounters or, indirectly via fax, e-mail or telephones. In the course of these meetings, their conceptions of what business is and their experiences of how «business is done» are communicated and spread, and they thereby contribute to an international ideological discourse on how to do business. This discourse is fluid, and its meanings are subject to constant negotiation, as the local and global conditions of international business change. But as I have emphasized above, and in spite of the fact that business people themselves often are very well aware of the fluidity of their discourse, they often tend to assume that they all «speak the same language», the most universal of all global languages today: the «language of business». In this respect, Norwegian and Estonian business people in Tallinn are no exception. They are often unaware of the conflicting business practices that lie behind their apparent agreement. But in the cooperation situation they are unavoidably confronted with the discrepancies between global ideology and local practice, and in the course of time they may learn from these confrontations and generate new ideas of how to «do business» on the background of their experiences. The Norwegian business people who are the main subjects of this thesis become a new kind of professionals (Featherstone 1990:8) who travel back and forth in the global world and hold knowledge and skills of how to «do business» in Estonia with Estonians. They experience business in cross-cultural settings first-hand, learn from their experience, and may ultimately succeed in developing and embodying a new business habitus based on their practical experiences.
1.3 What is «Business»?
Business in the 1990s has become a universal concern that is discussed on many different arenas all over the world. It is of vital importance today to understand this global ideological discourse concerning what business is, how business should be done, how a business person ought to dress, speak, behave, etc., because business is increasingly «done» in complex, cross-cultural settings, where misunderstandings are likely to occur. Since the business discourse has an extremely powerful influence on global affairs, these misunderstandings often have crucial impact on local conditions. Business people working in cross-cultural environments will be challenged by different ideas of business as well as different practices of «business». With business expanding on a global scale, a common understanding or idea of the ground rules of business becomes important to the actors themselves in order to simplify and understand their jobs.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Runar Døving point out in their article «In Limbo: Notes on the Culture of Airports» that the meaning of airports varies from place to place, at the same time as there exists a universal, decontextualized meaning of «the airport in general» (Eriksen and Døving 1992). In one way it can be said that all airports are alike because they relate to the same rules of behavior, or what we may call the same «culture»: «If you've seen one, you've seen'em all» (Eriksen and Døving 1992:1). This can also be said of business. Behavior acquired in one setting can be of use when «doing business» in a different place, and some factors of business are predictable and disengaged from local context. The question is how and why some traits are globally recognizable as belonging to the business sphere.
Hege Aasbø (following Michel Foucault), states in her thesis on discourse concerning the preservation of cultural monuments in Zanzibar that discourse is a very large-scale «discussion» which is separated from time and place and consists of verbal statements, written texts and actions (Aasbø 1997:8-9). Foucault points out that this discussion creates «discursive objects» (Foucault 1972). Discursive objects can be explained as reified themes around which the discussions center. The discursive objects are treated by the partners of the discussion as if they were objective «things». Foucault's example is the discourse on sexuality in psychology and in the wider public in the nineteenth century, which created sexuality as an object of discourse which is now part of our «reality». This thesis will not attempt to give a historical account of how business became an object of discourse (though it is clear that its roots go back at least to the eighteenth century, see Jürgen Habermas 1962). I will merely point out that business today is an established discursive object which is part of our reality, while it is still being debated. The term discourse is not fixed to time and place and is therefore suitable to use on phenomena with both local and global reach. The discourse on business is manifested in local settings such as Tallinn or Oslo, while it is simultaneously part of an international discourse on business.
The ideological discourse on business takes place on both global and local arenas, for example at conferences organized by the World Trade Organization, on the one hand, and in informal communication within the Norwegian-Estonian business environment in Tallinn, on the other. In the latter context, the Estonian business people would define «business» by contrast to how things were done during Soviet times. Estonians, they would say, fit the image of competitive and liberal-minded business people perfectly. They would emphasize the intensely competitive nature of Estonian national character and contrast this to the communist ideology, under which, of course, Estonians, as «natural entrepreneurs», had suffered inordinately. Norwegians would likewise contrast business with conditions under Soviet rule, but they would frequently invoke these conditions as explanations of why Estonians were incompetent business partners, of why «Estonians do not know how to do business» (a common expression of frustration). Such statements may of course be taken at face value and understood as objective judgments of what kinds of action are effective in generating profit, but they are also contributions to an (ultimately) global ideological discourse on how to «do business», in which business itself is taken for granted and treated as a discursive object, an ideal, against which concrete behavior by individuals or groups is evaluated. Thus, an American businessman stationed in Tallinn, who read one of the cases presented in Chapter Four of this thesis, frowned and said that «No real businessman would do business in this way», when he read that a Norwegian businessman had agreed to own only 48% of the shares in his Estonian company. Again, the objectivity of the judgment expressed in this statement may be emphasized, and may well be valid, from a purely professional point of view. But the statement is also a contribution to a discourse that goes much further than this. Thus, an advertisement for a Hong Kong bank in an international glossy magazine pictures two Asiatic businessmen sitting at a table eating with chopsticks and wearing Western-style dark suits. By the table we see an executive briefcase and the front of a Mercedes. The caption reads: «Everything has changed. Except the relationship, and the barbecued duck». One of the messages of this ad is simply that it is safe for Western business people to «do business» in Asia. It emphasizes cultural differences, such as the use of chopsticks, and the importance of personal relations in Asia, as opposed to the supposedly more formal character of «doing business» in the West. But the clue is that «Everything has changed». Even though Asia is different from the West (and even though this difference might be supposed to increase with the incorporation of Hong Kong into Red China), this Hong Kong bank knows what business is. This knowledge is proven, not by statistics or facts, but by the businessmen's attire, their car, and the calm, glossy, exclusive esthetic of the ad itself. This ad, along with the statements quoted above, contributes to creating, maintaining and changing the global discursive object we call business.
1.3.1 A Model of Business
Noting that business exists as a discursive object, and that there exists a global discourse on how to «do business» properly, we shall attempt to describe some of the general and most common traits that define business and business people within this discourse. The model of business which will be presented below stipulates and outlines an ideal of habitus which business people everywhere relate to. The Dutch scholar and humanist Erasmus Rotterdamus described business people in the following way in the fifteenth century:
«the most foolish and vulgar people who exist are business people. They are involved in the most pitiful and degrading craft one can imagine, and besides that they do it in the most shameless way; even though they lie, take false oaths, steal, swindle and always try to cheat on other people, they always force their way in order to be the first, that is why they always have their hands full of gold.» (in: Tikkanen 1987:59 - my translation from Norwegian).
This negative quote might sound disrespectful, but in its own way it describes important aspects of business even today, although business in the 1500 and 1600s was a more marginal activity than it is in the 1990s. (It did not enjoy the same prestige as it does today, as it was mostly done by marginal groups like small-scale Jewish traders or powerful trading families who made fortunes on loans to the Kings or Popes and suffered bankruptcy if the King refused to pay back the loan (see for example Palmer and Colton 1965).)
As the ad for the Hongkong bank suggests, some external factors like clothing help us determine whether or not we are dealing with a business person. When I asked business people to describe businessmen and women they often started with the dress code in business. One Norwegian businesswoman said: «I would have to start with the clothes. Business people have to be dressed nicely and most of them carry a briefcase». The dress code makes it easy to recognize business people. No one will question whether the two Asian men in the ad mentioned above are business people. The dark suits immediately indicate that they work with business even though the ad never mentions the word. I shall not attempt to give a further account of the style in clothing among business people, except to note that there are some differences between how business people dress in Tallinn and Oslo. I once met a Norwegian businessman on the plane from Stockholm to Tallinn who told me that when he met his business partners in Norway he did not always wear a suit, and he had once forgotten to bring a suit and tie to Estonia. The people he tried to make a deal with in Estonia only addressed his Estonian partner who was properly dressed for the occasion. Estonian business people thus dress more formally than Norwegians. One will rarely see an Estonian business person wearing jeans, while this is not uncommon in Norway. This distinction, though in itself perhaps of minor importance, is, as we shall see, symptomatic of more general conflicts that arise between the parties of Norwegian-Estonian business cooperation. It indicates, moreover, that although there exists a generally recognizable global code of dress in business, this code is subject to subtle local variations.
The most striking aspect of business and the main aim of business and business people is, as Rotterdamus put it, to «...have their hands full of gold». Profit, to make more money than you have invested, is the superior goal of all business. But profit is not a goal that can ever be achieved. Once profit has been «made», the ideal business person does not rest contented, but immediately looks around for opportunities for new investments, in an ever-expanding spiral of growth and maximizing. «Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!» (Marx 1867), is how Karl Marx described this basic spiral of growth in classical economy. The idea of accumulation is clearly visible in today's business. If the financial annual results of a firm are better than the previous year, it is common practice in business to estimate an even higher profit rate for the following year. The grounds underlying this logic are based on an ideal belief that a 5% growth rate one year can be doubled into a 10% growth rate the next year. Norwegian media will, for example, report that SAS had a bad result this year because the organization operated with a 100 million kroner profit, down from 200 million kroner last year (not actual numbers). The company has a positive balance, but they have not managed to further maximize surplus and thus the final result is described as disappointing.
It is the search for profit that makes the Norwegian business people invest in Tallinn/Estonia. Tallinn is considered to be a new market with new possibilities and attendant risks. My material shows that many Norwegian business people come to Tallinn more or less by chance, but none would even have considered Tallinn if they had not viewed the business opportunities as profitable. As Tallinn was seen as a profitable (and high-risk) market, it may have been particularly attractive to business people who were trying to start the first turn on a profit spiral, and not only to established firms which just wanted to maximize their surplus.
But business, as a global discursive object, is more than the mere search for profit. The ideal business person is also a responsible agent. Max Weber, in his classical discussion of «The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism», described the connection between the search for profit and the emphasis on responsibility, as part of the foundation for the development of capitalistic society. Weber emphasizes that maintaining a cycle of profit is a long-term activity, which is impossible to engage in without long-term predictability in business relations (Weber 1981 [1922]). Business ethics are one aspect of responsibility which are often focused on by the public. When business people act irresponsibly in order to gain profit, the press might react critically. But another and more fundamental aspect of responsibility is the responsibility business people have towards their business partners and their employees. In order to establish good business contacts one has to appear as a responsible business person. Appearances, including proper clothing and a representative office, are factors which initially indicate whether a firm or a business person is trustworthy. But reputation, based on whether or not one has in fact fulfilled one's commitments in previous business relations, whether one pays back loans, delivers goods on time, is scrupulously discrete in dealing with third parties, etc., plays a much more fundamental role in the long run. In the early stages of cross-cultural business cooperation, we might expect problems of responsibility to be endemic, since the parties have poor access to information about the reputation of prospective partners. Consequently, responsibility or the lack of it was one of the most recurring themes when Estonian and Norwegian business people described each other. Both parties often claimed that the other party acted irresponsibly.
A third significant factor of business as a discursive object apart from responsibility and profit is willingness to take risks. Risk and profit are closely connected. Investment is always risky, and gambling is often necessary in order to attain profit. (It must be pointed out here that there is a difference between business people who are risking their own money and those who work for larger firms and do not have the authority to risk large amounts of money or do in fact risk other people's money). The general opinion among the business people I spoke to is that larger investments increase the chances for a high profit, but also for losses. The factors of risk are seldom constant and they vary from one context to another. Economic crime, insufficient infrastructure, red tape, undeveloped markets are some critical external factors in Tallinn which increase risk. Problems of concrete business cooperation within a firm are also a source of risk. But the key to success (i.e. profit) also lies in the cross-cultural cooperation. «Transaction costs» and the factors of risk both within a firm and in relation to its external environment can be reduced significantly by successful cooperation between Estonians and Norwegians.
Rotterdamus goes on in his description: «...they always force their way in order to be the first». Closely connected to risk is the entrepreneurial activity which is likewise a distinctive feature of the global discursive object business. Fredrik Barth describes entrepreneurial activity as maximization of profit, experimental and speculative activity and willingness to take risks (Barth 1972:7-8). In order to succeed in business the ability to be the first to exploit or create a new niche and take chances in order to maximize profit are viewed as important. Barth also defines entrepreneurship as the ability to exploit discrepancies between different niches (Barth 1981). An example of this may be to move the production in a Norwegian factory to a low cost country or to attempt to sell previously inaccessible Western products on the Estonian market. Part of creating a niche is timing - to be at the right place at the right time. It was frequently pointed out, by Norwegian and Estonian business people in Tallinn, that the Norwegian business people had arrived relatively late on the business scene in Estonia. The Swedes and especially the Finns had already taken advantage of the most attractive parts of the Estonian market. To be first is thus important, but not always easy. Perhaps as a result of this, most of the Norwegians were involved in numerous projects at the same time, hoping that at least one of them would succeed.
Yet another significant factor of «doing business» that has global acceptance is the ability to create networks and establish business contacts both formally and informally. The coupling of business and personal relationships was noted by William Baron Scott, a British jurist, as early as the eighteenth century when he remarked that «A dinner lubricates business» (Scott 1745-1836). The importance of networks is emphasized in today's literature on business: an article written for SAS's flight magazine focuses on how men traditionally have better networks than women and thus do better in business and describes initiatives to teach women how to «network» better (Hervig 1998:22-23), a Norwegian journal for management and economy publishes articles about networks of knowledge within and between companies (Larsen 1998:73-79) and textbooks directed towards students of business and management deal with the importance of alliances and networks (Haugland 1996). The informal aspect of networking is also considered important in business. By knowing and trusting the persons one is «doing business» with one can reduce the risks involved. The possibility for informal contracts and deals also increases by having a large network. A good and extensive network may simplify the process of creating new business relations and the introduction of new projects in a business environment.
Business people covet profit. To attain profit, they run risks and try to find new niches for entrepreneurship. They form both formal and informal networks for themselves and the firm, and seek to establish contacts based on responsibility and trust. These are «common denominators» for business everywhere on the globe, and constitute an ideological frame of reference for both Norwegian or Estonian business people. Of course, the five general factors characterizing business as a global, discursive object that I have singled out above are only analytically separable. In the actual ideological image of the «ideal business person» they are intimately connected, and prescribe an integrated «way of being», an ideal global «business habitus» that local actors strive to realize in their local business activities. In actual business situations, each of the five global factors (profit, responsibility, risk-taking, entrepreneurship and network building) are constantly reinterpreted to fit the local circumstances. Clearly, some local business scenes are more compatible with the ideal they describe, or with parts of the ideal, than others. Thus, Tallinn, as a local place where business is «done» in accordance with the global ideal of business, is a place where risk-taking behavior and entrepreneurship seem problematic, while assessing responsibility in partners and achieving reliable networks are perhaps more appropriate. But in addition, there are also other factors of business that are specific to this local context, and that are not, or are only very poorly, reflected in the global discourse.
1.4 Why Study Business?
The Norwegian press often reports on how Norwegian business people fail in Eastern Europe. One recent example was the Rosnor case in northern Russia where the Norwegian investors were ousted by their Russian counterparts (Dagens Næringsliv, February 19th, 1996). A different «business culture» in the East, often including corruption, is a common explanation for mishaps. Lately the public debate in Norway has focused on the moral aspects of «doing business» abroad. The Norwegian involvement in China and Nigeria are two examples. Critics like NorWatch argue that it is unethical to conduct business in a country that breaks human rights by for example imprisoning government opponents. But apart from these debates very little attention is directed towards the activities of Norwegian business outside home. Ways of controlling or evaluating Norwegian businesses abroad are limited if not totally absent. This is especially the case for businesses which do not receive any public subsidies from the Norwegian government. My study is one way of focusing on Norwegian business activities abroad without merely pointing to the unstable situation in the host country or the moral aspects of investment. This thesis will try to present the reality as it appears for the people involved and provide information about a type of business activity which is unfamiliar to most people, at least in Norway.
When anthropologists choose their field of study, the world of commercial business is seldom an alternative. There are a large number of anthropological studies of trade within communities in the Third World or studies of non-monetary economies such as Barth's study of economic spheres in Darfur (Barth 1981) and Clifford Geertz's examination of economic modernization processes in two Indonesian towns (Geertz 1963). But the situation of business people operating in the economic system of the Western World is mostly ignored. One exception is Edward T. Hall and his wife Mildred Reed Hall who have written books on cultural differences between American and Japanese business people and American, French and German business people (Hall and Hall 1987, 1990). These books are largely directed at the people actually «doing business», not social scientists, and function as guide books in how to «do business». But the authors also introduce analytical tools for a cross-cultural understanding of business situations (these analytical tools are developed in other works by Hall, see for example Hall 1984). But on the whole, anthropology has been known to seek the exotic as its focus. Western-style business may be viewed as familiar and consequently not interesting to American and Western European anthropologists. Another aspect of anthropology is the tendency to study 'down'. It has been argued that Western anthropologists only study people with fewer resources than themselves. Traditionally such studies were conducted in countries which are considered less fortunate than the West when it comes to financial resources and influence over the World system. When anthropology is done in the West, the anthropologist often focuses on groups which have less power, such as sub-cultures and ethnic minorities. Laura Nader notes that little anthropological work in the United States has been directed towards the middle and upper classes (Nader 1969:289), and although the situation has to some extent changed during the thirty years that have passed since Nader's article was written, her argument is still in the main valid. Business people are viewed as a powerful group in the Western world, even the ones who are focused on in this study, who do not enjoy as much power as executives of multi-national corporations. Business people may have a higher Western education and make a lot of money. They speak the language of stock exchanges, international trade and banking; all considered to be powerful arenas. One of the reasons Nader gives for anthropologists to study 'up' is that we should not neglect issues which influence our daily lives (Nader 1969:286). It is not difficult to see that Norwegian and Western business done in Estonia, has direct influence on the daily life of Estonians, although it does not, directly affect the lives of people in Norway.
The often small entrepreneurs who set up businesses abroad form a sea of knowledge concerning how global processes materialize themselves on a micro level. These business people come in different shapes: Swedish brothel owners in Asia, Norwegian scrap metal dealers in Kaliningrad, Pakistani shop owners in Norway, Norwegian business people in the Baltic States and American business consultants in Estonia. They are often more or less long-term and committed residents in contrast to more mainstream actors such as representatives of transnational corporations. Through their practical experience with working in a global environment they become global agents who hold valuable knowledge about global languages of power in various localities.
The experience of such agents raises more general issues that are relevant outside the Estonian-Norwegian context. Among Estonians the nature of Norwegian and other foreign business activity is discussed regularly both in the media and among the people directly affected. This side of the story is seldom told outside Estonia. In my opinion it is important that Estonian perceptions of Norwegian business customs are known in Norway. The knowledge that both sides have of the situation they have in common is rarely presented as a whole. It is my hope that a presentation of the situation from both sides by an outside observer will contribute constructively to our understanding of the day-to-day situation of «doing business» in a post-communist country or even in cross-cultural settings generally.
My study will mainly focus on concrete segments of cooperation between the actors and on cultural context. I will not offer a cost-benefit analysis of the Norwegian firms in Tallinn. Nevertheless knowledge of the local situation is often a prerequisite for successful cooperation and therefore directly linked to economic accomplishment. So I must disagree with one of my Norwegian informants who claimed that as long as he «knew his job» as a business person, he did not need any knowledge of Estonia beforehand (see Chapter Three). I believe that the «job» of «doing business» is not the same everywhere, and that an awareness of the surroundings one is «doing business» in only increases one's chances of economic gain and reduces the risk of actually harming the country in which one is a guest. The two seemingly opposed perspectives are interdependent.
Chapter 2: The Local Setting. Tallinn as Oppurtunity and Life-World
2.1 Why do Business in Tallinn in the First Place?
Glasnost, perestroika and the collapse of the Berlin Wall are well known historical concepts and events which symbolize the break-up of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block. The changes did not only affect the former Soviet Block, but also created an insecurity for the future of the rest of the world. The situation in Europe had been kept stable since the Second World War. The Eastern and Western Blocks faced each other as enemies, but the situation was frozen in a stable deadlock. The dramatic power struggle between the USSR and the USA and Europe created a constant threat of war, but also a degree of predictability within the world community. With the new and unclear situation it became important for the international community to influence the development in order to ensure stability. A new type of attention had to be directed towards the East. A will and a sense of obligation from the West to change and help the East evolved. What direction the development should take and how reforms ought to be implemented became important issues both to the countries of the former Eastern Block and to the surrounding world community. Powerful international organizations like The International Monetary Fund (IMF), The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), The European Union (EU) and The International Finance Corporation (IFC) recommended dramatic economic reforms involving a high degree of privatization and a turn towards a liberal market economy. The fulfillment of these reforms, often measured by the rate of the country's inflation, became in many cases obligatory criteria for the reception of funding. The fall of communism necessitated its replacement by the victorious capitalistic ideology. The Eastern part of Europe was considered a promising market, and forty thousand Western European companies opened up offices in Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1995 (Thorheim 1995:12).
But as John M Howell asks in his book Understanding Eastern Europe «...why privatise?» (Howell 1994:71). Privatization was strongly recommended as a sensible policy for the countries in the East and was implemented in all of them, although to various extents. It was also seen as a value to quickly implement reforms involving a high degree of privatization, as stated in a Norwegian report to Parliament on Norwegian aid to Eastern Europe:
«The general impression is that the countries which have [...] carried out rapid reforms have had a more favorable economic development compared to those which have adopted a more gradual reform strategy» (Stortingsmelding Nr 47: 10 - my translation).
One may argue that the countries which were the first to implement market oriented reforms, such as the Baltic States, Hungary and the Czech Republic, also had the most favorable basis for reforms. They were relatively small and had experienced some economic reforms prior to 1989 (Mailand-Hansen 1988). The economic success of these countries may thus be due to their favorable starting points in contrast to other Eastern European countries, and not only the swiftness of their implementation of reforms after the breakdown of the Eastern Block.
The strong belief the world community had in the success of rapid implementation of privatization as an instrument to stimulate economic growth in Eastern Europe leads Howell to point out that the Eastern countries were asked to go through with privatization to an extent that no Western democracy has ever done. He claims that the world had no prior experience with a privatization process like the one about to be realized in the East in the beginning of the 1990s. The ideology of capitalism and liberalism seems to have become stronger in the Western world after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. But in many ways it is an ideology that is being implemented to its fullest extent in countries outside the Western hemisphere. In practice every Western country is, to a greater or lesser extent, based on the idea of the welfare state, not a totally privatized state, and spends a large part of its gross national product (GNP) e.g. on health-related services to its citizens. Even Great Britain, which has gone through profound privatization processes compared to other Western countries, has privatized quite gradually and still spends large amounts on social services provided by the state. The average public spending in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries amounted to 45.9% of GNP in 1997 (Skonhoft 1998:2). It thus seems strange that countries which until recently have been heavily dependent on state services should be advised to go through with a rapid privatization of sectors such as the postal services, hospitals, electricity and water supply. Nevertheless, this is the procedure the IMF and the World Bank recommend towards countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and lately in Indonesia. In order to be considered creditworthy and to receive advantageous loans during the economic crisis the country experienced in 1997-1998, Indonesia had to reduce its official spending dramatically. This is not to say that the reforms throughout Eastern Europe have been unsuccessful in all respects. But the elimination of public safety nets in already rapidly changing societies, without the reinstatement of new institutions, has created a situation of insecurity among the public. Thus, in the Fafo report mentioned above, on living conditions in Estonia after independence, the research team found that a majority of the Estonian population distrusted the new national authorities and that many Estonians viewed the recent changes as a threat to their standard of living (Grøgaard 1996:243).
Even Norway, a country with considerable focus on high public spending which has only recently started to privatize a few national institutions, has based its official strategy towards Eastern Europe on private enterprises and liberal capitalism. Norway's main official response to the changes in the East was the establishment of the Action Program for Eastern Europe(8)by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1992. The main aims of the program are:
«...to contribute to a fundamental restructuring of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS states in order to ensure a democratic and economically sustainable development» (Stortingsmelding 47:3 - my translation).
The main geographical areas of interest in 1994 were North-West Russia, the Baltic states and Poland. Twenty five percent of the program's funds were directed towards the Baltic states. The program calls on commercial enterprises to invest in the area and offers funding (three of the firms I studied in Tallinn had previously received financial aid from the Action Program, though only one of them did so during my fieldwork).
In addition to the Western governments' official policy towards the East based on a will to change the societies through the application of liberal capitalist ideology, media and popular opinion stressed the importance of the West «helping» the East with know-how derived from the experience of living in the Western world. The «helping» attitude was at the same time a mixture of idealism and condescension on the Western behalf. One of the few exceptions to this tendency was an article written in a Danish newspaper in 1988, which focused on what Eastern Europe could offer Western Europe. The article claimed, among other things, that inspiring intellectual discussions going on within Eastern Europe could contribute to constructive critiques of the West (Sperling 1988:4). In the business arena the Western world could offer «help» in the form of hard currency, capital and commercial skills to the East, which was portrayed as a place with high productivity, skilled labor and low wages. In the early years after 1989 Norway was very positive towards interaction with the former Soviet Block. Environmental cooperation, cultural exchange, trade and commercial business were some of the main activities. Russia was seen as the most important partner in all respects, also when it came to business, but Estonia and the Baltic states were viewed as attractive markets for investment as well. Estonia and the Baltic states also valued Western investment highly. Marian Walny, a Polish mayor, describes his situation at the time like this:
«What characterized me as a mayor in the beginning, was impatience on the one hand and on the other hand a lack of experience, a lack of theoretical knowledge and that I trusted people too much. The wish to change and improve the world was overwhelming» (Letnes 1995:12).
His words and especially the last sentence cover much of the general feeling at the time: improvements coupled with impatience. Western investors could argue that they were «helping» the society in question by investing, while they had the possibility of making money at the same time. The Eastern party wanted Western capital in order to make their region or country wealthy, prosperous and safe. A general feeling among many Estonians was that Western investments in their region would create strong bonds to the West and hence reduce the risk of Russian military, political and economical dominance (e.g. Stalsberg and Harry 1996). At the same time a considerable amount of short-term humanitarian aid was directed to the East from the West. The sense of helping, recreating, reforming and changing a region for the better was strong on both sides.
2.2 Wild West in the East
One aspect of Western ideological discourse was aid to and restructuring of the former Soviet Block. Another element was the representation of the East as an 'Eldorado' for money making and almost anything else. The former Eastern Block was suddenly the 'land of opportunities'. In order to be successful in the future, investments in the East were seen as essential by both Western media and public. I have noted this even in the case of my own fieldwork. The responses from people in Norway when I told them about my project are invariably that I had made a wise choice of region and that I most definitely will get a job(!). A parallel might be the perception of computer technology as 'the future'. One of the aims of the Norwegian and Western aid to Eastern Europe was the spreading of global business ideology to the East. The assumption was that Eastern Europeans were unaware of how to relate to the business ideology and how to «do business». With both official policy and popular opinion emphasizing Western involvement in the region as aid and help, the motivation for Norwegian business people to «do business» in Estonia was only strengthened. In a parallel strand of discourse that was simultaneously followed, especially in the media, the East was portrayed as booming and hazardous. The focus on the mob, corruption, violence, insecurity on all levels, prostitution and fast money helped to mystify the East. A Norwegian film was shot in the Latvian capital Riga, called The Virgins of Riga (Jomfruene i Riga), picturing Norwegian business people striking shady deals, succeeding by chance and being entertained by women and cheap liquor. The East was seen as daring, unreformed, unstable and adventurous. The then Norwegian Minister of Trade, Grete Knudsen, described the situation for the Eastern countries and the Norwegian business people as the «...great challenges in the [Eastern] countries» (Thorheim 1995:21). The Baltic states were featured in an article in one of the main Norwegian financial papers, Dagens Næringsliv, which described them as the «Baltic Bonanza» (Bugjerde and Engdal 1996:20). The same paper interviewed a Norwegian scrap metal trader in Tallinn (Engdal 1996:18) and described Via Baltica, the highway project meant to connect the three Baltic states, as an extremely dangerous road where one is likely to be killed or robbed. Dagbladet, one of the most widely read daily newspapers in Norway, printed an article by an economist, titled «Norwegian Encounters with the Mafia» («Norsk møte med mafiaen») (Maurseth 1996:42). The article was accompanied by a black and white drawing, picturing two gangsters, with hand-guns instead of heads, threatening each other at gun point. The main argument of the article was actually that only very few Norwegian companies had contact with the so-called Mafia. That the title had to focus on the Mafia and that the article was illustrated in the described manner falls in line with the ongoing discourse picturing the East as something out of the Wild West. Norwegian business people in Tallinn could all tell stories in the same genre as the newspaper headlines from Norway. At the same time they often pointed out the importance of correcting the negative 'Wild West' image that the Norwegian press painted of Estonia.
The Mafia, corruption and violence, or rather the stories about Mafia, corruption and violence, had a mythical importance among the Western people in Tallinn (see Chapter Four). Literally the first description that was presented to me by a Norwegian business person in Oslo who also had an office in Tallinn was that «Tallinn is the Chicago of Europe». He went on to say that «...the whole of Estonia is corrupt, they'll smuggle anything - even liver paté!». One of the stories which circulated among the Western crowd in Tallinn was a horror story of an American businessman who had to jump out of window in order to avoid two Russian gangsters. This is how the story was told to me: The American had been drinking at a popular bar among the Westerner crowd in Tallinn. He made friends, or so he thought, with two Russian men. They talked about music and found out that the American had some CDs that the two Russians were interested in borrowing. When the bar closed, the American invited the two men up to his apartment to look at his CD collection. Once in the apartment the two men attacked the American. He managed to crawl into the bathroom and lock the door. While in the bathroom, he could hear the two men discussing how to kill him. He decided to jump out of his bathroom window, which was on the third floor. Both his arms and legs were crushed in the fall. He lay screaming in the street for a couple of hours until an ambulance arrived. He stayed in a hospital over the weekend in agonizing pain, without receiving any anesthetics. He constantly asked the nurses to call representatives from his company, which they refused. On the following Monday his Western employers were finally contacted. They ordered a helicopter, and he was flown out of the country and never set foot in Eastern Europe again.
There are other stories about men being drugged by Estonian and Russian women and subsequently robbed, of women being molested, of people being shot at noon in the main street, of a bullet missing the Finnish ambassador's wife by millimeters while she was drinking coffee at a friend's house - and the local police allegedly commenting: «What can we do, there are bullets flying everywhere!» etc. But the story above represents the utmost scare for Western people living in Tallinn. It combines the crime factor, insufficient medical infrastructure (no anesthetics at the hospital), the unpredictability of the Estonians (why did the hospital not call the Western employers at once?) and emphasizes the differences between East and West (he is flown out of the East in a helicopter to get proper treatment in the West).
Some of these stories are rooted in reality, but their meaning is generated through their use in discourse. The stories are utilized not only as a way of coping with the difficulties of living in Tallinn and dealing with fear, but also as a way of reinforcing the myth of Tallinn as a challenging place for a Western person to be and to «do business». Thus the myths of Tallinn may be utilized as explanations for some of the problems Norwegian and Western business people experience in Estonia. The stories also function to personify the experiences of Tallinn. When a Norwegian business person (or anthropology student) tells or relates to the stories, they mediate the difference between themselves and the Estonians. The Estonians are «less developed» and live in an unstable country as opposed to the stable and civilized West. They are also saying that they are brave individuals who are able to master life in Tallinn. The Estonian author Viivi Luik describes, in her novel Ajaloo ilu (The Beauty of History), how the scare of being summoned for interrogation during Soviet times sounded both impressive and indeterminable (Luik 1994:61). She presents the uncertainty of not knowing when or for what reasons one could be summoned, but the certainty of knowing that there existed a threat, that was mystical, scary, impressive and real at the same time. Similarly the scare of corruption, violence and the Mafia today generates stories which might be based in reality, but mostly support the idea of Tallinn as a barbaric and wild place. Why else would I choose to do fieldwork in Tallinn rather than in civilized places such as Berlin or Paris! But despite, or maybe because of, its criminality and risk, the East continued to be seen as a place with new possibilities. I have often heard Tallinn described as a «Boom Town», a metaphor associated with the Gold Rush in California, and Eastern Europe as a whole described as the «Wild West». These metaphors are connected to the history of North America. Frederick Jackson Turner presented his 'Frontier Hypothesis' in 1893, where he focused on the importance of the conquering of the American West in American history. Turner argued that the idea of «the frontier» shaped American mentality in important ways. He described life on the frontier as follows:
«[...] at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. [...] Little by little he transforms the wilderness [...]» (Turner 1966:11).
Whereas Turner focused on the effects of «the frontier» on Americans, America was often viewed, by Europeans and foreigners in general, as a «frontier society». This image of the USA was an important part of the European myth of America. Similarly, the Western focus on the East in general and on Tallinn in particular as unstable and explosive generates an image of the East as a «frontier society». But in Eastern Europe it is the barbaric culture which needs to be «transformed», not the wild nature. Both Western and Eastern Europeans can thus take part in a quest of civilizing the East, although with different motivations. The conquering of a frontier can be a suitable task for business people who, as the ideal model of business presented in Chapter One implies, are supposedly competent in handling risks and entrepreneurship. New markets such as the Estonian offer unused business opportunities and risks which may prove profitable. The ultimate Eastern frontier would be Russia, of course, but Estonia seems to offer many of the ingredients of a «frontier society» in more moderate form; it stands as a «frontier» between «uncivilized» Russia and the «civilized» West.
2.3 A Modern, Traditional, and Historical Place
«To describe Estonia seems like an infinite task, as it presents new facets of itself with every step one takes.» (Ann Tenno, Estonian photographer).
We have so far focused on the production and contents of Western and Norwegian myths of Eastern Europe and Estonia. But the Western images of the East may not coincide with local identity or the local «ideology of self». By looking at actual historical facts as well as myths of Estonia based on history, some aspects of Estonian collective identity will emerge.
With its strategic location by the Baltic Sea, Estonia and its capital Tallinn has throughout history been a center of international trade and commerce. Estonia was an important link in the Viking trade routes via Russia to the Byzantine empire as early as the ninth century (Cannon and Hough 1995:21). During the first two periods of German rule in Estonian history (1227-1238(9)and 1346-1561), several Estonian cities were members of the Hanseatic League, and Tallinn was the most significant of the Estonian Hanseatic cities. Walking through the streets of the Old Town of the city once called Reval, one can still see typical trade houses and Guild Halls from the Hanseatic period. The Old Town is in many ways the heart of Estonia. It is a unique place because of its beauty and well-preserved architecture. Each house in the Old Town represents a period of Estonian history and the extensive renovation carried out after independence has brought new life into each characteristic place. The mixture of past and present is striking. A McDonald's sign is the first thing you see when entering the Old Town through its city gates, but the fast food restaurant is housed in an old building which is beautifully restored. Close to McDonald's, women are selling high quality home knit sweaters to mainly Finnish tourists from market stalls. Outside the Old Town the city is growing fast, and in 1996 the Estonians were discussing whether or not to build a skyscraper. A bit further from the city center one finds shabby apartment buildings from Soviet times, but also residential districts with single family houses.
Present day Tallinn is a city which has gone through a lot of changes. Eight different flags have flown from Pikk Herman (Long Herman) at the castle of the Estonian parliament through history. The Danes ruled from 1219-1227 and from 1238-1346. In a short interval between the Danish periods, the German Teutonic Knights administered Estonia. They returned in 1346 and stayed until 1561, after which the Swedes controlled Estonia until 1710. From 1710 until 1917 the Russian Tsars governed. In 1918 there was again one year under German rule before Estonia gained independence in 1918. But this lasted only until 1940, when the Soviet Union held Estonia for one year, before Nazi Germany took over. Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union again in 1944 and this time it lasted until what is referred to as The Singing Revolution culminated in independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The term 'changing society' can be used to describe Tallinn in many periods of history, but the speed of the changes during the last six years since independence is perhaps unprecedented.
Starting in the late 1970s, the Soviet Union experienced a dramatic economic decline, a measure of which can be seen e.g. in the decline in energy and steel production (Nielsen 1996). By 1989 the Soviet press could report record inflation levels, a nationwide coal strike, low labor discipline(10), ethnic conflicts, increased absence from work, and a shortage of grain (UPI 1990). Public protests against official politics which started with the onset of Glasnost in the middle 1980s came as a result of economic crisis as well as the liberalization of politics under Gorbachev, which increasingly allowed critical views to be voiced through the media. In 1987(11), Estonian television revealed plans to extract phosphorite in the north-east of Estonia. This would allegedly affect one third of the ground water in the country. As a result of the frustrations of the economic recession and the new liberalization of the press, the issues concerning the extraction were heatedly discussed in public. Important groups such as the bar association of lawyers and the university council declared their opposition to the planned extraction. This debate formed the starting point for wide protests against Soviet hegemony. In June 1988, 150 000 people gathered at the song ground in Tallinn and later 300 000 gathered in September, as a manifestation of opposition against Soviet rule, and the name The Singing Revolution was coined. The song ground normally hosts the traditional song festivals where traditional Estonian songs and dances are performed, which are, depending on the political climate, held around the first of July every fifth year in memory of the first song festival in 1869. Folk songs played an important part in the national movement in Estonia both during the national awakening in the late 1800s and during the process of regaining independence from the Soviet Union. At one point during the Singing Revolution, a human chain of some two million people held hands across the Baltic nations on the sixtieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, on August 23rd 1989 (Lindström 1994:53). A young Estonian told me that he had never felt so happy before: «I cannot explain the maddening feeling of happiness in my stomach», he said. During the Singing Revolution, people demonstrated against Soviet rule and a nationalistic people's front was formed and won a majority of the seats in the Estonian Soviet during the first elections with more than one party participating in 1990. All through the Singing Revolution, the Soviet army reminded the Baltic people of its existence by driving through the streets of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by night in combat vehicles, and in the first half of 1991 the situation came to a head. On January 13th 1991, Soviet forces stormed the TV tower in Vilnius, Lithuania, and fourteen people were killed in front of TV cameras. The pictures were broadcast world wide. A week later there was shooting in Riga, the Latvian capital. On August 19th conservative communists seized power in Moscow through a coup and Soviet groups occupied TV towers and radio stations throughout the Baltic States. The ports were blocked and troops were flown in from Russia. The Baltic parliaments declared the coup illegal and Estonia declared independence the next day. After the coup in Moscow failed, the Soviet Union swiftly recognized Baltic independence. Estonia had regained independence through the Singing Revolution after having been part of the Soviet Union for more than 40 years (1940-1941 and 1944-1991).
An Estonian friend returned to Tallinn from Norway in Christmas 1991, four months after independence. The trade agreements with Russia had been canceled and the economic recession was worsened. There was no electricity or gas and Tallinn was blacked out. She told me that she had never seen so much poverty in Estonia. Her family ate porridge for Christmas instead of the traditional Estonian Christmas meal consisting of, among other dishes, Estonian blood sausages. But the new year promised changes and optimism for Estonia. The optimism and the need and wish for change was typical of the period before and immediately after independence. Estonia was a country which yearned for changes, and the withdrawal from the Soviet Union was seen as the solution to all problems. However, the reality after independence was different from what many Estonians had hoped. Kristin Rande, who did fieldwork in Lithuania in 1992, describes how the optimistic visions of the future which had been so evident in Lithuania during and right after independence were transformed into feelings of instability and failure (Rande 1996). She explains the growing pessimism as a consequence of the discrepancy between the expectations of life after independence and actual reality. Something similar, though perhaps not as dramatic, happened in Estonia, and the hardships after independence (together with the Soviet legacy) were often blamed for the declining standards of living and the disappointments many Estonians felt.
The optimism and enthusiasm during and after independence can partly be ascribed to a «collective memory» (Connerton 1989) of the first Estonian republic, which lasted for 22 years (1918-1940), between the two world wars. The myth of Estonia as an independent nation and part of Europe instead of Russia, which had been kept alive all through the Soviet period, suddenly promised to be realized in practice during the liberation process and the years of Estonian nation-building. Torstein Bach, who has done fieldwork in Estonia, points out that the First Republic was used as a model during the establishment of the present Estonian republic. Independent Estonia after 1991 was also often viewed as a continuation of the first republic in 1918 (Bach forthcoming). The meaning of national ideology is, according to Rande (following for example Anderson 1983 and Kapferer 1988), shaped by what she calls the «historical present» (the «presence» of the past in the here and now), and provides meaning for the nation as well as for individuals (Rande 1996:23). Such interpretations of history were widely used in the process of creating an Estonian national ideology after independence, and some periods of the country's history were given stronger emphasis in the forming of national consciousness than others. Selected aspects (both positive and negative) of Estonian history which were considered to be of current interest, were part of the creation of a national ideology.
An Estonian friend of mine told me that right after independence Estonian national identity was debated among Estonians. The participants were looking for historical facts or events which would describe Estonians. My friend told me of an Estonian proverb which was commonly referred to as characteristic of Estonian character: «The favorite food of an Estonian is another Estonian» (Eestlase lemmiktoit on teine eestlane(12)). When I confronted people with this saying they all recognized it (except Russians living in Estonia) and agreed that it was descriptive of Estonians. Many Estonians would characterize Estonian national identity as competitive and envious. They saw this as both a negative and a positive trait of their people. Estonian business people would voice similar opinions when they described Estonian ways of doing business. The Estonian novelist Anton Hansen Tammsaare portrays two Estonian villagers/farmers in his five-volume epic Tõde ja Õigus (Truth and Justice), who initiate a feud between their families which lasted for generations (Tammsaare 1926-33). They were competing to dig a grave, but neither of them wanted to give up before the other. This novel is well-known in Estonia as a description of the developments of the Estonian nation from 1870 to 1930, but was also referred to as an example from literature of the Estonian competitiveness and envy of other people. Other aspects of history were also utilized in order to understand and analyze Estonian identity. Quite often this interpretation and use of history would portray Estonia and Estonians as different from Russians and as oriented towards Western Europe.
Estonia was seen as a special place in Soviet times by both Estonians and Russians, and was often referred to as «Our West» within the Soviet Union. It was common for people living in Russia to go on shopping trips, take vacations and buy summer homes in Estonia and to regard this as a somewhat «Western» experience. The Baltic states became a socioeconomic laboratory within the Soviet Union as early as in the 1960s (Mailand-Hansen 1988). Around 1970, Estonian salaries were paid on the basis of labor achievement, production was decentralized, and working hours were reduced ten years before these reforms were attempted in the rest of the Soviet Union. Several major economic reforms were initially tested in the Baltic states, and some remained in force there, even after they were abandoned in the rest of the Soviet Union (Nove 1977). People from the Baltic States were allowed to travel rather extensively to the West. But even though this exceptional position within the Soviet Union perhaps made the Estonians more oriented towards Western ways of life, Tallinn in 1991 was still definitely outside the sphere of direct Western European influence, and the coastal borders to Europe were often completely sealed off by military posts. Nevertheless, Estonians being situated on the Western border, receiving Finnish television, having a European history and enjoying a special status within the Soviet Union, had an awareness of being different form Russians and at odds with Soviet ideology, even while they were a part of the Soviet Union.
Estonians will emphasize the Hanseatic period, the Swedish era and the first Estonian republic as the most positive periods in their history. The Soviet times are often blamed for everything that is dysfunctional in Estonia today. This is similar to what Rande noted in Lithuania two years after independence. She argues that the Lithuanians used the Soviet legacy as an explanation of why things had not gone as planned (Rande 1996). The «Hanseatic spirit» is treasured and brought to the surface in many parts of Estonian life today. The Old Town is a magnet for tourists, but also a symbol of pride to the Estonians. The Hanseatic history is often used by Estonians as an example of a prosperous time when Estonia played an important part in the trade within Europe, and contrasted to the Soviet period. It is also said to prove that Estonians are traders at heart, have long traditions of commercial activity and know not only how to relate to the planned economy that existed during the Soviet period. The Swedish times are associated with education. Estonia's first university; the University of Tartu, was established by the Swedish king as Sweden's second after Uppsala. These periods are examples of historical events which are viewed as better for the Estonian nation than other historical periods(13).
But despite these positive visions of Estonia in history, the Soviet legacy exists for better or for worse in present-day Estonia. Almost anything can be blamed on the Russian influence or the Russians still living in Estonia. Some things are easy to notice like the Soviet-style buildings or the ethnic Russians, but certain kinds of behavior and certain legal and administrative traditions are also explained by reference to the Soviet period. Parts of Estonian management styles and behavior in the workplace would be accounted for by my Estonian and Norwegian informants as results of the Soviet past. For example one Norwegian businessman complained that his Estonian employees were unable to plan ahead and take responsibility. He interpreted this as a result of the Soviet system. During Soviet times, he said, Estonians did not own their own apartments or have any real influence on their jobs. Since they were told what to do and were unable to make truly individual decisions, they did not feel obligated to act responsible at work. This behavior continued to be a part of their lives in 1996, according to him. An example of how Estonians themselves 'blame everything on the Russians' was when I discovered cockroaches in my room. The Estonians would give me a sad look and tell me that I would never get rid of them and that there were no cockroaches in Estonia before the Russians came. But Estonians are not only negative about their recent past. Many people would complain and say that some things used to be better prior to independence. The level of crime was lower, it was easier to keep a job, the pensioners had a more secure situation, everyone could afford medical care and society was generally more secure. But if you ask any ethnic Estonian whether he or she wishes the country to return to the Soviet Union they will most certainly say no.
One of the most visible results of the Soviet influence is a Russian ethnic minority which constitutes approximately 30% of the Estonian population (U.S. Bureau of Census 1989). The majority of these Russians moved to Estonia during the Soviet period, mostly because of higher salaries and somewhat higher living standards in Estonia and a shortage of workers. Some Russian families also have roots going back to Tsarist times. There exist a number of obstacles to obtaining citizenship for Russians in Estonia, all sorts of discrimination against the Russians, the Russian language and the general legitimacy of Russian culture. The antipathy towards Russians has long historical roots, and Estonians and Russians today have limited contact. Estonia has been criticized by Russia as well as the rest of the international community for the handling of their Russian minority, especially the knowledge tests in the Estonian language and culture that are required in order to acquire Estonian citizenship. This has worsened the political relationship between Russia and Estonia and among other things led to high customs on Estonian goods exported to Russia. This is an important issue for Estonia which wishes to promote itself as a transit country between the West and Russia and as a country which is well-informed about how to do business with Russia.
During the first Estonian Republic a notable number of foreign companies settled in Tallinn and Estonia. From literature and historical sources it seems as if in the commercial sphere at least much of what happened during the first Estonian republic, is repeating itself today, only to a much greater degree (Kross 1991). Already during the Glasnost period foreign investors started to regard Estonia as an interesting market, and in 1996 Estonia received more foreign investment than both its Baltic neighbors together, although both Latvia and Lithuania are bigger than Estonia. (This tendency seems to be changing in 1998, as an EU report claims that development in Estonia has slackened and that Latvia is about to take over as the most progressive Baltic nation (NRK Tekst TV 1998).) Most of the Western capital was directed towards Tallinn. Among the Nordic countries Finland has made the largest investments in Estonia. But Sweden and Denmark are also well represented. Norway, with traditions in export of raw materials like oil and fish, rather than trade outside its borders, is only represented with few and mainly relatively minor companies (see Chapter Three and Appendix One).
Estonia has through its history been
influenced by both Western and Eastern Europe. These different influences
affected the formation of an Estonian national identity after 1991. We
have so far focused on how Estonians see themselves as competitive, different
from the Russians, and as «natural traders», as a result of the focus
on the Hanseatic period in the country's history, a tendency to contrast
themselves to Russians, and an idea of Estonians as individualistic and
competitive as opposed to the communist ideology. The awareness of these
national collective traits may be more dominant in the capital city than
in the rest of the country, as there are considerable differences in lifestyles
between Tallinn and the rest of Estonia. It is difficult to know how aspects
of the collective national identity, such as the «favorite food» proverb,
create meaning for individual Estonians and affect their actions. But
through studying the Estonian business people's practices and reactions
to the Norwegian-Estonian cooperation, we may be able to understand the
effects of some parts of the national ideology on for example
Estonian business practice. Another issue which influenced the Estonian
business people's cooperation with the Norwegians was their idealized
conception of the West, fondly nourished throughout the Soviet period.
After independence many Estonians expressed disappointment. Life in independent
Estonia did for many people seem more difficult than during Soviet times.
Similarly, Estonian business people were often disappointed when they
did business with Norwegian business people, as they did not live up to
their expectations of the ideal Western business person.
2.4 Tallinn Today
The old town of Tallinn is today a mixture of historical architecture and new Western style restaurants and stores. It is a place where people seem to be constantly rushing somewhere to become rich fast. Women dress according to the newest European fashions and men in suits with mobile phones are a common sight. New stores and bars pop up almost every week and old ones suffer bankruptcy. People who have experienced the changes from communism to capitalism describe them as unbelievable. Estonia has in many ways gone from one extreme to another. Today only Hong Kong has more liberal trade regulations. The younger generation stresses the liberal, individualistic and competitive nature of their society, and expresses pride in Estonian national identity. The Estonian Finno-Ugric language, which is closely related to Finnish, is a distinctive national stamp which the Estonians take pride in. And it seems as if Estonia is on the right track, if they want to achieve what they term a 'Western standard'. The economy is growing fast, the local currency which is pegged to the German mark is strong and Tallinn has its own stock exchange. Just recently Estonia was invited, as the only Baltic country, by the EU to start membership negotiations.
Outside of the old town, Tallinn looks different. The suburbs are dominated by high rise «cookie box» buildings built during the Soviet era. Here the old «trolls» (electric buses) and trams run crammed with people next to the rush hour bumper-to-bumper-line of new Western cars. Tallinn is a city of contrasts and in some respects it has always been so. The manor houses from the 1700s inhabited by the German aristocracy in the Estonian countryside do not look anything like the plain wooden Estonian farm houses from the same period. And though the communist philosophy was one of equality, even during Soviet times people talked about a «threshold» culture:
«During Christmas time we celebrated at home, but once we left the house there were no signs of Christmas. We even had a tree at home.» (30 year old Estonian woman).
Behavior and even language could change literally by crossing a threshold. At home one could express opposition towards Soviet rule, but once out of the house people would conceal such opinions. Today the fancy new offices down town have little in common with the small and crowded apartments in some of the suburbs of Tallinn. But modern offices may be concealed behind steel doors in run-down buildings. The gaps between rich and poor, old and new, ethnic Russians and ethnic Estonians, and Tallinn and the rest of Es