Lennart Meri , Leader of the Estonian independence movement who became his country’s first post-Soviet-era president, dies at 76
from the Independent Online
Lennart Meri, who in 1992 became the first president of Estonia after the country regained its independence from the Soviet Union, said, as he handed over the presidency to his successor Arnold Rüütel in 2001, “Estonia is now a normal, boring country.”
As with any remark made by an intellectual brought up in the Soviet Union, this could be taken not only at face value. While it was a positive review of what Estonia had achieved in the previous decade, it was also a none-too-subtle dig at the failings Meri perceived in his successor. Earlier in the same speech, he had said that “every country must have a face, a voice and a way of making jokes”. Meri was certainly that face and that voice and the jokes would come thick and fast, often at the expense of his political opponents.
Being 6ft 4in and fluent in six languages, he could not fail to stand out at any international function. Whether he talked in English, French, German or Finnish, few would have realised how much of his background knowledge had come from books hidden during Soviet occupation or from listening illegally to short-wave radio stations.
He won the 1992 presidential election convincingly, but not overwhelmingly. Pressing the flesh around the country was never Meri’s strong point, nor was small talk, so his opponents such as Rüütel eagerly exploited this weakness. It would never be possible to regard Meri as a “bloke” and he realised that attempts to cultivate such an image would probably have lost him more support than he would have gained.
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