Mihkel Raud’s work has drawn Russo phobic accusations

01.12.2017

This week, Russian websites were accusing writer, Mihkel Raud and his newly released work of russophobia. Namely, they talk about the „Estonian handbook: 100 things that a real Estonian does“ with the headline „An Estonian talks about Russians“, that lists 34 offending names for Russians in Estonian. The topic began on 27. November in the propaganda outlet, Baltnews, who among other things is tasked to produce stories accusing Estonians in the Russian media.

Dimitri Suhhorslov of the United Leftist Party of Estonia and the NGO Russian School of Estonia, talks in the story about regretting that our freedom of speech has reached such a level, that Russo phobic text can be publicly distributed.

The next day the story was already circulating in Russian news stories with fresh propagandistic nuances. Izvestia.ru gave it the headline „ Estonian bookstores selling manuals on how to be offensive“, presenting it as a serious textbook for patriots, and teaching how to communicate with Russians. A similar tone was used for the topic by Rusvesna,  eadaily.co and many others. The most radical in their story presentation was Pravda.ru which included pictures of the EKRE torchlight parade and a video clip of „ the Great Wall of Pribaltika“ which the Baltic nations want to use to separate them from Russia. Since the topic is still relatively fresh, it can be assumed that the list of propaganda stories has not ended yet.

Whether it is really a russophobic text or simply an ironic self-reflection of the Estonian character, anyone can decide for them self by reading the book. According to Propastop’s assessment, the Kremlin minded media outlets accusations deliberately take humorous passages literally and do not want to notice that they are written as an ironic address to the mentality of Estonians or even a criticism of our characters. We recommend a proper translation of the book so Russians readers can realistically decide for themselves. Very soon, we hope to add the comments of the author and publisher to this article.

By the way scandals about calling Russians names has happened before in Estonia. In 2002, Eesti Päevaleht was sued for publishing the word „Tibla“ in an advertisement. Read more about the case in Wikipedia.

Photos: book photo: Propastop, screen shots