Andrey Terekhov: how to integrate young Russians living in Estonia? | Opinion
In a sense, every citizen (and non-citizen) begins his life journey with education. Estonia has had a bilingual education system since Soviet times. This is strange, because the Russian language lost the status of the state language as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Of course, even today there are people (you can find them in Russian-speaking groups on Facebook) who want Russian to be the state language, but they do not take into account the fact that of the former Soviet Republics, Russian is used as the state language only in Belarus, where the elected president on New Year’s Eve addresses the people only in Russian. In fact, the Belarusian language has been killed at the state level.
Estonians want to keep their language, and, of course, that is why Estonia has one state language – Estonian. Of course, in order to cope here, you need to be able to speak and write in the state language, but in a Russian-speaking school there is no opportunity to develop your language, because there is no way to make a person with subjects that can be done.
I myself study in a Russian-language school, in a language immersion class, and most of my classmates do not speak Estonian even at a basic level. One guy from the eighth grade described his hobby like this: ma mangin futboli. I would not say that everyone speaks like this, but, unfortunately, a lot of people either say this or cannot say anything at all in Estonian.
As far as swearing in Estonian, this guy is good at swearing, but is born only in swearing, you won’t reach B1 level, and in the future it will be difficult to find a job, let alone enter a university.
The activity of Russian-speaking schools in the academic union is depressing, only two out of seven Lasnamäe schools with Russian as the language of instruction are usually found, and my school does not speak in it either. This is a serious problem, since Russian schools breed people loyal to the school leadership, who start working somehow accepted in the Center Party.
And this is a serious problem: the closeness of Russian schoolchildren and the imposition of the Soviet mentality. If you do not agree that “The Language Inspectorate is doing nasty things,” then you are a Russophobe, a fascist and a traitor to the Russians. For my part, I can say that I fully support the verification of the Language Inspectorate.
Studying in a non-Estonian school can compensate for participation in the activities of NGOs, youth organizations and academic associations. But, unfortunately, young Russians do not want to be socially active, because they attend Russian schools and in the same information field with Russian propaganda instills in them uncertainty, they think that they are not needed here and that in this country everyone is Russophobes. And those Russians who are pro-Estonian (including me) are called integrators, traitors to their people, Russophobes, and so on.
Those who create this uncertainty do so in order to create an image of “defenders of Russians” in the elections. Unfortunately, someone even supports them. In Põhja-Tallinn, Jana Toom received the most votes, and in Lasnamäe, Mihail Kõlvart received the most votes. Where there are more Russians, the Russophiles win.
There is one reliable option for the unification to finally take place. The time has come for a monolingual education system, and the implementation of the gymnasium is being implemented in the Russian-speaking regions, because this is how Estonians and Russians strive to study together, Russian youth capture that Estonians do not hate them just like that, they hate those who open sections of the Kremlin propaganda and involvement image ” evil Estonian.
Under no circumstances should quotas be used for hiring foreign-speaking persons. This would be a signal that Russians are very weak in language learning. It was also unfair to those who have learned the language and are now successfully moving up the career ladder.
Many Russian-speaking young people born in Estonia have an Estonian passport. Therefore, they participate in the active life of Estonian society. The locomotive of society is the media. This is how the Russian-language and Estonian-language media in Estonia, such as ERR, Postimees and Delfi, should be supported.
In this way, we will be able to integrate the foreign-speaking population into Estonian society, and the result will be wonderful!