Decolonization Models for America’s Last Colony: Puerto Rico

Estonia

137 Estonia A small country, with 1,300,000 inhabitants, a former colony of Denmark , Sweden, Prussia, Russia, Germany, and the Soviet Union, which attained sovereignty in 1991 and became one of the most prosperous and advanced countries in the world. —Ángel Collado-Schwarz Estonia in 2010 Population: 1 million Territory: 45,000 square kilometers Population density: 32 per square kilometer Gross domestic product (GDP): $19.2 billion Gross national income (GNI): $19.4 billion GNI per capita: $14,460 Unemployment rate: 13.7 percent (2006–2009) Internet users: 74.2 per 100 people Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011). Estonia  139 Updated Comments Estonia has the smallest and most vulnerable economy of the six interview countries. Starting from the lowest base in the group, it experienced the highest growth rate in the years before the global financial crisis in 2008. Real GDP growth was 7.2 percent in 2004, 9.2 percent in 2005, and 10.4 percent in 2006. Even in 2007, the economy grew at an impressive 6.3 percent. But the collapse of investment and consumption that followed the bursting of a real-estate bubble caused a sharp economic contraction. Real GDP dropped 3.6 percent in 2008 and 14.5 percent in 2009, pushing the unemployment rate up to 17.5 percent. The Estonian government has been consistently conservative in its fiscal management. In 2007, the public debt was only 7.7 percent of GDP. However, this low debt did not shield the economy from the effects of the global financial crisis. A sharp focus on exports to European neighbours such as Finland and Sweden helped start a recovery in 2010, when real GDP posted a 3.1 percent gain. Sustained growth of between 3.5 percent and 3.8 percent per year is projected for 2011–15. Estonia joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2010. In January 2011, it adopted the euro. Francisco Catalá-Oliveras Juan Lara Interview Interview aired on La Voz del Centro, Univision Radio Puerto Rico and New York, August 26, 2007. ÁNGEL COLLADO-SCHWARZ: Paco, let’s give our radio listeners some historical background on Estonia. FRANCISCO CATALÁ-OLIVERAS: The first thing we have to do is give Estonia’s geographical location because I am sure that many of our listeners do not know about Estonia. It is located between the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga on the Baltic Sea. It has borders on Russia to the 140  Interviews east and on Latvia, another Baltic country, to the south. The remaining Baltic state, Lithuania, is farther south. Estonia is the smallest of the Baltic republics; it has only 1.3 million inhabitants. In fact, of the countries we have reviewed, it is the one with the smallest population. Its history has been truly difficult, I would say even unfortunate. It is not exceptional in that regard because there are many countries that have had quite unfortunate histories. So, Ángel, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Estonia was ruled by the Swedes. Then in the eighteenth century it was ceded to the Russian Empire. In the nineteenth century, it generated a fairly strong nationalist movement, which was eventually to lead the fight against the German invasion during the First World War. In February 1918, Estonia declared its independence and defended itself against the Soviet Union’s attempt to annex it. Finally, the Soviet Union acknowledged Estonia’s independence in 1920, and Estonia managed to be independent for eighteen or twenty years, until 1940, when it was again annexed by the Soviet Union. This, by the way, was after the infamous German–Soviet Nonaggression Pact signed in 1939, which the Germans themselves broke when they later declared war on the Soviet Union. During Soviet rule, under [Joseph] Stalin, there was much conflict. Many Estonians who resisted Stalinist policies ended up buried in faraway regions of the Soviet Union, as we all know. Afterward, during Leonid Brezhnev’s rule at the beginning of the 1980s, clandestine opposition to the Soviet Union developed in Estonia. Toward the end of the 1980s, a party known as the “Independence Party” was founded, and a popular front was established, composed, interestingly, of both nationalists and Communists. Both groups promoted separation from the Soviet Union. All these factors, along with the destabilization experienced by the Soviet Union in 1990 and 1991, opened the opportunity for...