Talk:Estonia

German occupation

This sentence sounds retarded: "The Germans pillaged the country for the war effort and unleashed the Holocaust." It sounds like a cheesy episode of He-Man or something. I'm guessing the Germans didn't really do anything except take control of the government and somebody wants to make it more EEVVVAAALLL!!! then it really was. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.234.60.143 (talk) 09:20, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Russian language

Since the majority of Estonian can speak fluent Russian, can it be considered a vehicular language of Estonia ?Mitch1981 (talk) 19:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Hello again. My response to you on the Latvia page applies here. I would also add that in the case of Estonia, even during Soviet occupation, using Russian as a lingua franca was merely an invitation for glares and bad service. Latvia having been more cosmopolitan (Riga once having had street signs in Latvian, German, and Russian), there was some more flexibility, if that's the right word. VЄСRUМВА  ♪  19:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The majority of the population of Estonia can NOT speak Russian fluently or as "near-fluently" as to make it a vehicular language. Of course, most people in Estonia understand at least some Russian and can put it, at least, to occasional limited informal use. The same can be said about the use of English and Finnish languages in Estonia. Cheers, 3 Löwi (talk) 07:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Younger generations don't speak Russian at all - on the other hand, I have plenty of Russians, Ukrainians and Jewish people among my friends who all speak fluent Estonian therefore the vehicular language here is indeed Estonian.--Sorent (talk) 16:13, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Riigiteataja

Couldn´t find that, but it is important, so it should be added somewhere. home page Pelmeen10 (talk) 12:46, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

illegally annexed

oh, yes, I am pretty sure, whenever URSS annexed something was illegal, the rest of "annexions" are quite legal, is there any "leagl annexation" that could be shonw as example? The term "illegally" must be removed from that sentence or should be incorporated to the whole wikipedia, for any action in which one army enters the territory of another estate or province.

E.g, the cro-magnon tribes illegally entered the lands of neanderthal tribes; this was the cause of a widely media commented trial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.252.72.61 (talk) 14:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

illegally annexed (reply)

The annexation of Texas by the U.S. was legal as the Texans themselves wanted to be a part of the Union. Just... for example... so no, they shouldn't remove the word "illegal".

Jews

The article has a link to every single minority in Estonia's population except one; Jews. Under "Demographics" it reads "The largest minority groups in 1934 were Russians, Germans, Swedes, Latvians, Jews, Poles, Finns and Ingrians. " with a link to every single one of those populations except the Jews.

Such obvious and blatant discrimination by someone who somehow considers itself intellectual enough to be writing in Wikipedia at all is quite offensive and should never be tolerated. It comes as even worst being that the Estonian Jews where targets of discrimination throughout all of history and that population has been nearly totally wiped out of Estonia precisely due to intolerance. Anti-Semites are the ones who should not be tolerated, not Jews and not any ethnic or religious population or nationality.

It should be noted that no mention whatsoever exists to why the Jews have ceased to be an important minority in Estonia, which by the way, wasn't through very normal circumstances. I would write about it myself but prefer someone who is better educated in the subject to do so.

No need to be hysterical about a random act of vandalism committed sometime after 23:31, 22 January 2011 (I didn't care to pinpoint who exactly did this). There are and will always be anti-Semites, anti-Estonians, anti-Americans, etc. If one cannot handle this calmly, one may die of heart attack soon. As for "Jews have ceased to be an important minority in Estonia", I have two bullets to list:

• See Holocaust in Estonia and History of the Jews in Estonia, ling time ago written by "someone who is better educated in the subject" and less nervous.
• about "important minority" - please keep in mind that if you continue poking into everyones' faces that the Jews are "important" or "Chosen People", then anti-Semitic crowds will only grow.

So much fuss about unnoticed vandalism, sheesh! Kérek kerék kerek (talk)

GDP data in $ ?

Now that Estonia joined the Eurozone it should certainly have its economic figures displayed in €..Lhoaxt (talk) 17:20, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that bears any relevance to how the data is displayed. The Germany and France articles also display the value in $. tty29a:talk 17:25, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

As I guess, the data for varuius countries are shown in the same currency unit for ease of comparison. An additional benefit is this would eliminate braintwisting math related to conversion rate fluctuations, which may be significant over time. Kérek kerék kerek (talk) 19:07, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

History section cleanup

There were two history sections in this article, one containing a very short summary and the other one consisting of several subsections on different time periods. For the time being, I placed the first section as the lead paragraph of the second section. However, the history section may now be somewhat against WP standards for country articles, hence I added the cleanup tag. Rain74 (talk) 15:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

There seems to be a duplicate information in the history section. Being bold I replaced the small part with etymology, this seems to be a common design for Northern country articles. FinnishDriver (talk) 20:05, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The short summary version used to belong to the lead section of the article but for some reason (length?) was moved into a separate section. I understand the actions of you both – that section looked redundant and out of place. However, there still should be a paragraph or more about the history of Estonia in the lead section. So, should we just place the deleted summary back there or better, is there perhaps someone willing to rewrite it more concisely? —Quibik (talk) 20:27, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

National dress/fiber arts

Do any editors have references that provide any information about Estonian national dress? I have a couple of books on Estonian lace (a huge fad among knitters in the anglosphere, incidentally), but nothing on the country's traditional dress itself. I'd like to see where lace fits into traditional fiber arts so I can create a section that is inclusive of all native Estonian fiber arts. If anyone knows of a reference, could you let me know on my talk page? Thanks! --NellieBly (talk) 23:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

This, this, this, and this may be a start. --Jaan Pärn (talk) 23:18, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! I've ordered the lace books from Amazon and will write something up once they arrive, so I can get proper attribution. You'd be surprised by how popular Estonian lace has suddenly become among knitters here in Canada. --NellieBly (talk) 01:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Religous trend?

What's the religious trend in Estonia? Is religion increasing or decreasing? If it reaches over 90% that would be a good case for the first atheist state.

-G —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.24.149.241 (talk) 22:52, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

File:2 euro coin Ee.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

An image used in this article, File:2 euro coin Ee.jpg, has been nominated for speedy deletion at Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Copyright violations What should I do?

Speedy deletions at commons tend to take longer than they do on Wikipedia, so there is no rush to respond. If you feel the deletion can be contested then please do so (commons:COM:SPEEDY has further information). Otherwise consider finding a replacement image before deletion occurs. A further notification will be placed when/if the image is deleted. This notification is provided by a Bot, currently under trial --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 10:54, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Not the highest amount of internet freedom in the world

I removed a sentence from near the beginning of the article which claimed that Estonia has the highest amount of Internet Freedom in the world. The source for this only looked at 15 countries, and said that Estonia has the highest amount of internet freedom among those 15 countries. I'm not sure that this is worth having in the article, so I removed it. Feel free to rewrite this to match the source and put it back in, if it is worth keeping. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 11:17, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

POV

I'm not an expert on this topic, otherwise I'd rewrite parts of this section myself, but the current version deffinitely doesn't have an NPOV tone. Some examples:

"In August 1940, Estonia was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union as the Estonian SSR.[49] The provisions in the Estonian constitution requiring a popular referendum to decide on joining a supra-national body were ignored. Instead the vote to join the Soviet Union was taken by those elected in the sham elections held in the previous month."

"Contemporary Russian politicians deny that the Republic of Estonia was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. They state that the Soviet troops had entered Estonia in 1940 following the agreements and with the consent of the government of the Republic of Estonia, regardless of how their actions can be interpreted today. They maintain that the USSR was not in a state of war and was not waging any combat activities on the territory of Estonia; therefore there could be no occupation. The official Soviet and current Russian version claims that Estonians voluntarily gave up their statehood. Freedom fighters of 1944–1976 are labeled "bandits" or "nazis". The Russian position is not recognised internationally.[53]"

It's not for Wikipedia to assert what constitutes a "sham election" or who is or isn't a "freedom fighter." We can report what historians on both sides say and let readers come to their own conclusion. As it's written now though, it has a clearly biased tone. -Helvetica (talk) 08:24, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

On this issue there is consensus among historians, there is no reliably published source that takes the contrary position. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 03:22, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

This sentence doesn't make sense

The first sentence in the German Occupation section does not make sense:

After the invasion of the Germany on 22 June 1941

Any ideas on how it should be? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emarinuk es (talk • contribs) 11:58, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Erko the Estonian

Can someone please delete this joke? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.87.228.66 (talk) 07:17, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Human rights section

Seems Estonia is the only country article that has "Human rights" as a sub-section, seems undue in comparison so I have removed it. --Nug (talk) 20:01, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Religion

Er, if someone has time, this source may be useful for Estonia#Religion or Demographics_of_Estonia#Religion:

• Ringvee, Ringo (16 Sep 2011). "Is Estonia really the least religious country in the world?". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/sep/16/estonia-least-religious-country-world. 

— Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 18:33, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Fair use candidate from Commons: File:RR front view.jpg

The file File:RR front view.jpg, used on this page, has been deleted from Wikimedia Commons and re-uploaded at File:RR front view.jpg. It should be reviewed to determine if it is compliant with this project's non-free content policy, or else should be deleted and removed from this page. Commons fair use upload bot (talk) 22:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Fair use candidate from Commons: File:Tallinn Synagogue.jpg

The file File:Tallinn Synagogue.jpg, used on this page, has been deleted from Wikimedia Commons and re-uploaded at File:Tallinn Synagogue.jpg. It should be reviewed to determine if it is compliant with this project's non-free content policy, or else should be deleted and removed from this page. Commons fair use upload bot (talk) 22:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)