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Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

Constantin Cafavy

***

Since the political earthquake of 24th February 2022, when the Russians launched their full scale war against the Ukrainians, the Estonians have been waiting for the barbarians. They were convinced that the tragic and painful scenes in Bucha or Kherson would soon be replayed on the hitherto peaceful streets of Narva or Rakvere, or even Tallinn itself.

With passion and fire, they advocated help and assistance for the Ukrainians, but in their heart of hearts, they knew that the war would come, and that, no matter what, they would have to face a replay of the disaster of 1939-40.  Some, like some figures associated with the far right, almost seem to advocate collaboration- which was the effective decision of Pats and Laidoner in 1939.  Most, were determined to resist, at whatever cost, since 1939 proved that no fate could be worse that to fall once again under the Russian jackboot.

Yet, more than four years after the horrible shock and the return of fear, the Russian invasion of Ukraine seems impossible to advance.  The Russian navy was comprehensively defeated by a country with no ships, and the Russian air force was humiliated by a new drone technology that they did not have an answer to.  As Russian oil infrastructure burns, Russian troops are hunted and destroyed in well named "kill zones".

The easy Russian victory that seemed likely to everyone in 2022 has turned into a disaster- a generation of young men dead, and the humiliation of a once vaunted military force. Yet still the Estonians think that "Narva is next", that the horrors of war are just a step away.

In a poll a few weeks ago, 62% of Estonians expressed a wish to leave their own country. The fear continues. This fear has seen a collapse of investment, and a politics that has in general disengaged from planning a more prosperous future.  Why bother, if there may not even be a future?

The problem for Estonia now, is that the country has not adjusted to the possibility of a brighter future, a positive outcome, where Russia is no longer a direct threat to the political and constitutional integrity of her neighbours.  For the past four years, Estonia has been waiting for the Barbarians, and increasingly it now seems that the Barbarians are not coming. 

It is time to think about catching up the lost years of fear and doubt.  Estonia must recover optimism and dynamism, before it is too late, before the economy becomes trapped in a low investment, low return cycle with high inflation and sclerotic growth.

It would be tragic if Estonia submits to a defeated mind set, when the Barbarians themselves may be fading away to a distant shadow.

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