On the Occasion of the 32Nd International Geographical Congress
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On the occasion of the 32nd International Geographical Congress Cologne 26–30 August 2012 ESTONIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY ESTONIA GEOGRAPHICAL STUDIES 11 ESTONIAN ACADEMY PUBLISHERS TALLINN 2012 Edited by Anto Raukas, Kalev Kukk and Tiit Vaasma All the papers of this periodical issue have been peer-reviewed by at least two referees. The editors thank all reviewers. ©Estonian Geographical Society ISBN 978-9985-50-419-2 ISSN 1406-6092 CONTENTS Preface .............................................................................................................7 Peeter Maandi. Land restitution and the return of history in post-Soviet Estonia .............................................................................................................8 Kalev Kukk. Estonia between the Soviet rouble and euro (a macroeconomic approach).........................................................................28 Anto Raukas. Energy crisis and the oil shale industry .................................48 Veiko Karu, Karin Robam and Ingo Valgma. Potential use of underground mine water in heat pumps.........................................................60 Kaija Käärt. Landscapes of North Estonian islands and their changes in the 20th century ..........................................................................................78 Urve Ratas, Anto Raukas, Reimo Rivis, Elvi Tavast, Kadri Vilumaa and Agnes Anderson. Formation of aeolian landscapes in Estonia..............95 Peeter Karing. Thermal resources of Estonian soils ..................................112 Mati Ilomets, Raimo Pajula, Kairi Sepp and Laimdota Truus. Calcareous spring fens in South Estonia......................................................122 Elve Lode, Jaanus Terasmaa, Marko Vainu and Meelis Leivits. Basin delineation of small wetlands of Estonia: LiDAR-based case study for the Selisoo Mire and lakes of the Kurtna kame field.........................................142 Collections of papers published by the Estonian Geographical Society on the occasion of International Geographical Congresses..........................168 PREFACE The Estonian Geographical Society published the first collection of papers Estonia. Geographical Studies in 1972 for the 22nd International Geo- graphical Congress in Montreal. Since then the Estonian Geographical Society has published collections containing different geographical materials on Estonia that may be interesting for foreign readers on the occasion of all International Geographical Congresses. The Estonian Geographical Society represents the Estonian National Committee in the International Geographical Union since 1992. Thus it was 20 years ago, in the 27th International Geographical Congress in Washington when Estonia became member of the Union. This book, which contains nine papers that cover quite a wide area of topics on economic and political changes in Estonia and natural geography, is dedicated to the small anniversary. After regaining its independence in 1991, Estonia has been rapidly trans- forming into a society based on democracy and a free-market economy. In spring 2004, after twelve years of strenuous, demanding and fundamental transformational reforms, Estonia achieved its long-term goal of becoming a full-fledged member of the European Union, including the euro zone, and NATO, which gave us back political and economic stability and security. Rapid political and economic advances have attracted investors and have begun to bring prosperity to Estonian people. In 2011 Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, was the European capital of culture and in 2006 Tallinn initiated the idea of the title ‘European Green City’. Estonia is trying to set an example, increasing awareness about issues related to the environment, introducing modern technologies in waste handling and energy. Our landscapes are variegated and relatively young. They have specific features reflecting their formation and development. These are interesting objects of research and therefore the contributions published in this book pay much attention to their development, diversity and changes. The Estonian geographical Society thanks the Institute of Ecology at Tallinn University for the financial support. Editors 7 LAND RESTITUTION AND THE RETURN OF HISTORY IN POST-SOVIET ESTONIA PEETER MAANDI Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University, Box 513, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden; [email protected] After declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Estonia began to rapidly transform into a society based on democracy and free- market economy. Membership in NATO and the EU one and a half decades later signalled, as it were, the completion of ‘the return’ of Estonia to her proper place in the West. The transformation was carried out, largely, through the implementation of a number of statutory reforms. In general, these worked towards the liberalisation and decentralisation of economic and political structures, including a far-reaching privatisation of state-owned enterprises and other assets. Undeniably, at an aggregate level of analysis the metamorphosis was striking. Yet, ‘the return’ symbolised not only the removal of Soviet-period barriers and the return to the free world. In the midst of forward-oriented reforms, there was also in Estonia and other countries in the region a ‘return of history’, that is a narrative about the past which had been suppressed by communist and Soviet ideology (Lagerspetz, 1999; Müller, 2002). Thus, even if the policies of reform contained elements of ‘shock therapy’, these had to be sensitive to the prevalence of facts and ideals inherited from the past. This was true, not least, for the privatisation of property. Given the acknowledgement of the Soviet period as an unlawful occupation of the independent Estonian state, restitution (i.e. the return of lost or stolen property to the proper owners) was to play a crucial part in the privatisation process. Restitution was a pivotal issue in most post-communist countries (Blacksell & Born, 2002; Kuti, 2009), and its potential consequences and moral implications quickly became subjects of intellectual debate. Some scholars cautioned that the decision to restore property rights, made in several post-communist countries, was itself based on a selective interpretation of the past (Elster, 1992; Judt, 2002). Restitution, they feared, could lead to the replacement of one form of oppression or injustice by another, often dictated by nationalist objectives. Critics argued that restitution 8 would favour some groups of people at the expense of others, by selecting which type of ‘losses’ qualified for restitution and by selecting the historical ‘baseline dates’ that determined whether a taking was illegal or not (Offe & Bönker, 1993). These concerns constitute the point of departure for the present paper, which focuses on the Estonian Land Reform Act of 1991. Indeed, the reform called for the privatisation of land, primarily through restitution according to the baseline date of 16 June 1940 (the final day of independence before the Soviet takeover). The aim of this paper is to examine the idea of the ‘return of history’ through the post-Soviet land reform and its spatial implementation. Thus, the paper does not focus on the economic rationales of the land reform, but rather on the way it addressed the role of the past in the making of the post- Soviet property structure in particular, and Estonian society in general. Indeed, the land reform and its drawn-out implementation cannot be made sense of unless it is placed in a wider historical context. The paper, which focuses on rural rather than urban areas, is guided by three questions: (1) Given the baseline date of 16 June 1940, what characterised the pre- Soviet land ownership situation and which ideals did the property structure express? (2) Given the elimination of private property in land in 1940, did private land ownership matter during the Soviet decades and if so, how? (3) What happened after the passing of the 1991 Land Reform Act when ‘frozen’ pre-Soviet land rights encountered a social and physical space that had changed during the Soviet period? In posing these questions we will get a better understanding of the nature of land restitution in Estonia, and therefore also of the ‘return of history’. From the geographer’s perspective it is interesting to note that the ‘return of history’ was, fundamentally, a spatial process: ‘correcting’ history meant put- ting things in the correct or proper place, as it were. Yet, as becomes clear when reading this paper, the search for the proper place of land rights has been a recurrent theme in the history of Estonia, a fact that the land reform of 1991 could not circumvent. Pre-Soviet Estonia: the making of a cohesive property regime As mentioned above, the Estonian Land Reform Act of 1991 allowed for a restoration of property in land according to the pre-Soviet situation. Thus, let us address our first question and imagine, for a moment, that it would be possible to reverse time and to return to the pre-Soviet years: What was the character of land ownership and the property structure at the time? Firstly, as far as rural Estonia is concerned, we would encounter a property structure adjusted to agricultural production; more precisely, the 9 structure reflected the subsistence needs of rural households. Indeed, at the time, around 70% of the population lived in rural areas (Kuddo, 1996). A second observation would be that land ownership as a concept was readily associated