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Disenfranchisement

Petri Krohn has repeatedly attempted to push disenfranchisement into this article, as he has done repeatedly before -- most notably in Bronze Soldier of Tallinn. A new twist is sliding the evaluative claim of "restrictive citizenship laws" in.

I have removed both of these claims. As of 2007, the idea that immigrants would be "disenfranchised" by "restrictive citizenship laws" is not even a notable WP:POV in Estonian politics anymore, as it was in 1992, or when Max van der Stoel of the OCSE made his infamous declarations. It mainly a private POV of Petri Krohn, and does not deserve Misplaced Pages as its soapbox. Digwuren 18:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Disenfranchisement and denaturalisatrion (or what ever you want to call them) were not only the policy, but the cause of existance of the Congress. Disenfranchisement was achieved in two ways:

By pressuring the Supreme Soviet into accepting citizenship and election laws that limited citizenship to jus sanguinis Estonians.
By its existance as a shadow parliament elected among the enfranchised.

-- Petri Krohn 07:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S This article is about an organization that existed prior to 1993. What ever Estonians of today think is "notable" in the politics of Estonia today, or whatever "truth" they now subscribe to, should have no bearing to this article. -- Petri Krohn 07:53, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Personal comments

As you brought up the issue of my personality, I guess it gives me the right to respond. I have over 18,000 edits on Misplaced Pages. Very few are about subjects a have an opinion on, many are on subjects I did not even know about. You on the other hand registered to Misplaced Pages only after the Bronze Soldier controversy erupted. (If you are one of the editors from Estonia who contributed to the artilce under an anonymous IP, you do not seem to have any previous edits to your IP address either.) Your edits to Misplaced Pages so far seem to consist only of Estonian POV-pushing. Your chief concern seems to be removing any reference to the "disenfranchisement", or the rights (and lack of them) of Estonia's Russian minority from Misplaced Pages. Please stop. If you want to edit Misplaced Pages, please contribute something usefull.

As for pushing something into this article: I did not "push" anything into the article, I wrote it! You and your Estonian friends could (and should) have done it a long ago.

And now for the positive: Thanks for contributing the "Politics" section to the article. I fully agree with what you wrote. -- Petri Krohn 08:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

...some POV

Estonians had the option of following a "democratic" path to independence. The independence movement originated in the Communist Party of Estonia. The Supreme Soviet "affirmed" Estonia's independence on August 20. By September 17 it was a full member of the United Nations. The fast acceptance of Estonia into the UN, and the almost immediate acknowledgement of its independence was based on the premise, that the new Republic of Estonia was the successor state of the Republic of Estonia (1990-1991) (Oops! you deleted the article!) and the Estonian SSR, inheriting its liabilities and citizens.

This was however unacceptable to the Congress, hence the constitutional changes of 1992. In fact Estonian school book list Lennart Meri and Mart Laar (written by Mart Laar, I hear) as the first President and Prime Minister of independent Estonia, signifying a revolutionary breach of legal continuity between the independent Estonia of Arnold Rüütel and Edgar Savisaar

-- Petri Krohn 07:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

It is rather dubious to claim that the international acknowledgment of Estonia's independence in August-September 1991 was based on the the premise that Estonia was the successor state of Estonian SSR (i.e. of a part of the USSR) "inheriting its liabilities and citizens". The very legality of Estonian SSR itself was not recognized by, e.g., US, PRC, and European Union, which all declared that Estonia was an illegally occupied territory (see, e.g., the 1983 resolution of the European Parliament). There has been no pressure whatsoever from other democratic nations on Estonia to inherit Soviet liabilities (e.g., commensurate proportion of the former USSR's foreign debt) or that Estonia should have granted automatic Estonian citizenship to all Soviet citizens who were resident in Estonia when USSR effectively ceased to exist on 1 January 1992. Acknowledgment by the mentioned fine and dandy organisation, UN, does not indicate anything whatsoever about any existing or new member state's democratic credentials. Membership in the European Union, on the other hand, tells a lot. Why the "poor and lowly" EU was so "naive" to let the "undemocratic Estonia" in as a member after having committed such "revolutionary breaches of legal continuity" is a question for people with Petri Krohn's "infinitely higher level of wisdom" to sort out. Cheers, --3 Löwi 11:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

A good question. I really do not know why. But I believe that the Finns and Paavo Lipponen had a lot to do with it. -- Petri Krohn 12:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Wrong answer. The question is rhetorical. To properly answer it, you would need to first understand that the underlying assumption -- that of Estonia having behaved revolutionarily undemocratically in restoring its independence instead of starting anew, and despite that, being let into EU -- is absurd. Digwuren 16:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Legality of propiskas

Petri Krohn has repeatedly attempted to refer to holders of propiskas in Estonian territory as "legal residents" in this article. This is incorrect and misleading, as the legality of the immigrants' residence, as well as the whole idea of Soviet Union's propiska laws being applicable in Estonian territory, is belied by the occupation's illegality. It could theoretically be feasible to explain this distinction. However, it is far too complicated for this particular article, so it is much better to just avoid using such a term loaded with obviously wrong, and not easily explainable, semantic content. Thus, I have removed the "legal immigrant" aspect from the reference to the propiska system.

As an aside, I'm pointing out (here, not in the article) that the whole utility of propiskas wrt citizenship was only evidentiary. In the political discourse of the time, the primary question of enforcing citizenship was "What shall we do with the *residents* that wouldn't qualify under jus sanguinis?", not "Shall we recognise the propiskas?". Digwuren 16:08, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

If you insist, I will remove the reference to the propiskas. We have reference for legal residency. Linking "legal residency" to propiska was my disambiguation. -- Petri Krohn 04:43, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem with such a reference is that it refers to Soviet Union's laws, not laws of Republic of Estonia, and unqualified "legal" does not disambiguate between these two. Specifically, the immigrations were unlawful under pre-war Estonian laws; the reasons many of the new residents were given long-time residence permits relatively easily were mainly grace, display of non-revanchism and realpolitik.

(I'm pointing out that the No hard feelings displays have been a very significant part of Estonian post-1991 politics. A number of people think that the lack of hard feelings goes too far, and, for example, insist the government should demand Russia to pay reparations for damages inflicted on Estonia during the occupation years. The government's policy has been one of silent forgiveness instead.) Digwuren 06:55, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and I have no problem with the propiska reference. This is factual, even though slightly indirect, and has no potential to mislead, save for minor linguistic concerns that can be easily rectified if it becomes an issue. Digwuren 06:58, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Weird manipulations by Petri Krohn

User:Petri Krohn has repeatedly attempted to attach a number of weird WP:POVs into this article. I'm listing them here, as I did with Bronze Soldier of Tallinn (see Talk:Bronze Soldier of Tallinn/Archive 4#Weird manipulations).

He has attempted to claim that not providing automatic citizenship to extralegal immigrants of 1940-1990 "was", "meant in practice" or otherwise amounted to disenfranchisement, and "restrictive" as citizenship laws go. While this WP:POV has sometimes also been pushed by the local ethnic Russian representatives, and the government of the Russian Federation, he has not referred to these sources, which indicates private WP:POV, possibly WP:OR.
He has attempted to assert that such "disenfranchisement" compares to the Nuremberg laws. (See also User talk:Petri Krohn#Congress of Estonia.) This is done most disingenously; first, "combining" the number of the "disenfranchised" in Estonia with that of Latvia to make the count bigger, then wrongfully supertaxon-classifying both events as "disenfranchisement", and discarding the important distinctions based on illegality of Soviet occupation, and non-ethnic nature of this "disenfranchisement" process. Apparently, he has attempted to convey the Nazi connotations of the Nuremberg racial purity laws onto Estonian restoration-era citizenship policies, in attempt to sneakily deliver the non-supportable position that Estonian policies were, and by extension, are Nazi-minded.
Apparently in attempt to support the idea of "disenfranchisement" and the Citizens' Committees' criteria for citizenship (which later became the recognised base for citizenship of the Republic of Estonia) as peculiar, unsupportable, or a whole-cloth invention, he has repeatedly inappropriately added double quotes around "citizens of Estonia" in the context of voting eligibility.
He has repeatedly replaced "Estonia regaining independence" with "Estonia separating from Soviet Union". While it was I who first introducted the latter wording, I consider it a poor choice, and the first wording is a better summary of the events. Repeatedly reverting to the second amounts to pushing an occupation denialist WP:POV.
He has repeatedly attempted to refer to post-WWII immigrant residence in Estonia in 1990 as "legal residency", although this legality is at the very crux of the primary question faced by Congress of Estonia, and got resolved differently. Such a sneaky attempt to recognise Soviet Union laws as valid in Estonian territory amounts to pushing a Soviet imperialist WP:POV.

Digwuren 08:11, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

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