Plague in an envelope

I was born in 1991 – the same year Estonia regained its independence from the Soviet Union. I remember very clearly from my early childhood watching Russian president Boris Yeltsin speak in the evening news, and there was something about him that made me super scared. Maybe it was the tone of his voice or his appearance, I’m not sure. But I even went around the neighbourhood, telling all the other kids how Russia is going to start a war with Estonia very soon and we should all find a place to hide. When I mentioned this childhood memory to my mother, she was so surprised of my fears since no one was afraid of Russia at my home. I even tried to find YouTube videos of that big bad wolf Yeltsin, but all I saw were clips of him dancing and singing and even being drunk like a donkey. Was then something wrong with the news back then?

Of course there is a bunch of reasons why to fear Russia since it doesn’t exactly bath in democracy; in addition, it is hard to forget how much pain the Russian occupation has caused for the previous generations. But I watched recently a great documentary by Michael Moore called "Bowling for Columbine" that gave me a new angle for analyzing the fear of Russia, especially with the current situation in Ukraine.

The United States has a very strong culture of fear where having a weapon at home is not only recommended but compulsory in some states, just in case the ENEMY (who can be absolutely anyone) attacks. And the main suspects are usually people from other ethnicity. I was ten years old when the 9/11 catastrophe took place and it wasn’t long after when teeny-tiny Estonia started to be afraid of the terrorists as well. People were even warned not to open any mail without examining it carefully since it might contain plague. And I am being really serious here; the fears of American people had officially paralyzed Estonia and probably many other countries in the world.  And I really believe that this subtle way of scaring people started to sink in even much earlier, for me in Yeltsin times when Estonia was trying very hard to take the Western direction (sorry, if smells too much of conspiracy here). 

How it all relates to Ukraine is the massive fear of a war conflict that people all over the world have now and this fear is once again strongly supported by media. Russia – the bad guy, enemy; Americans – good guys, potential saviors.  What Russia is doing in Ukraine is wrong, but so is the fear of non-Ukrainians, this irrational increasing worry that takes our attention away from many other problems. No media piece even wants to calm us down by demonstrating the strong interdependency of countries, trade agreements, and investments – all the evidence that would show that no one would benefit from war, especially financially. Our world is safer than it has ever been, yet the global fear and feeling of enemy keeps spreading around and escalating with every conflict. 

To sum it all up, I recommend you to watch the Michael Moore’s documentary and it explains the fear concept probably much better than I did. You could also take a glimpse of the statistics to compare how many people die because of terrorist attacks and how many in car accidents. But my heart is with Ukraine and I hope they can soon stop being afraid.