Conditionally, the development of domestic politics in re-independent Estonia can be divided into two distinct periods. First, 1991-2014, which can be described as the post-communist Savisaarian era. Following a time of upheaval in 2014-2016 (the rise of the Conservative People's Party [EKRE] and Savisaar's withdrawal) and dramatic shifts in our geopolitical reality in 2022, the lines of a completely new political logic started taking shape, which we might dub the era of globalization and the new cold war.

The two epochs differ both in their core conflicts or rifts, key persons as well as their style and treatments of democracy. Whereas yours truly was not the first one to notice the shift that took place in the middle or second half of the 2010s.

Marju Lauristin and Peeter Vihalemm claim in a paper analyzing the last 30 years of Estonian history that the country entered a new cycle around 2018, which they describe using the keyword of "populist counterreaction" and tie to the rise of conservative authoritarianism and its challenge of the framework of liberal democracy.

Even though the rise of EKRE and Savisaar's disappearance from the political arena changed the logic of Estonian politics quite comprehensively, Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and its socio-political aftermath have now wiped away even the last remnants of the post-communist period.

A quick look at the two eras

I will now attempt a closer look at 1) the structure and nature of political core conflicts, 2) the key players and 3) style of policymaking as well as 4) treatments of democracy of the two eras. But before we get to the more detailed analysis, allow me to present a short overview of background conditions for the two periods.

During the post-communist Savisaarian era in 1991-2014 (referred to hereafter as POKS), Estonia was a relatively typical post-communist society where the radical reforms of the 1990s caused major social upheaval and created winners and losers from the transition.

Even though Estonia's pro-West and market liberal orientation had firmly taken root by 2004, society and politicians spent at least another decade smoothing over all manner of post-communist complications or, on the contrary, ripping open such wounds to convert them into political capital (the Ansip versus Savisaar adversity and the Bronze Night).

What made Estonian politics stand out was the dominant role of a single person – Edgar Savisaar – throughout this period. Whether one liked it or not, being pro or against Savisaar determined one's political position. Maaleht journalist Argo Ideon was spot on when he said after Savisaar's death (in 2022) that Estonian politics can broadly be divided into the Savisaar era and everything that has happened since (conditionally, starting in 2016).

Externally, the POKS era was the golden age of American geopolitical hegemony where neither Russia nor China were strong enough to credibly challenge the U.S. It was also a period of almost unlimited faith in market liberalism and a minimal state apparatus where the neoliberal ideological dominant ruled supreme.

The first major cracks in this framework appeared in 2008 when the global financial crisis, USA's failure in Iraq, Russia's growing aggressiveness (Russia-Georgia war) and China's economic prowess started to challenge the America-centered neoliberal world order.

The ensuing era of globalization and the new cold war (abbreviated hereafter as GUKS), which started in 2016, transformed the recent socio-political core logic quite thoroughly. First, the symbolic effects of globalization reached Estonia in 2014-2015. I'm talking about the 2014 Registered Partnership Act and the European migration crisis that came hot on its heels in 2015.

While voters in Estonia had felt the economic side of globalization and the European Union's influence before, the value clashes of liberals and conservatives, which had been shaping the politics of Western societies for some time, and migration debates now hit home. The new identity issue was no longer tied to the post-communist past (the so-called Russian question) and was government by entirely different value conflicts.

With the rapid rise of right-wing populism (EKRE) and the arrival of culture wars, Estonian politics suddenly looked a lot more like old Europe, gradually shedding its idiosyncratic post-communist peculiarities. Even though Savisaar's exit from politics (2016), European migration pact debates (2018) and EKRE's involvement in the government (2019) worked to deepen the new political logic based on the conflict between global openness and national closeness, the old nationality-based rift and its post-communist roots were left largely untouched.

February 24, 2022 drastically redrew the symbolic position of the Russian minority in Estonia and the playing field of politicians representing the Russian community. In short, betting on the nationality-conflict, as had been done by Savisaar and throughout the POKS era, became virtually impossible.

Looking at the wider picture outside Estonia, the GUKS era is characterized by the crumbling of the recent American geopolitical hegemony, which has indirectly contributed to the emergence of the new cold war. Estonia has virtually become a front line state between the West and East.

Former liberal ideological hegemony is ending as well, both politically (where increasingly influential national populism is proposing alternative social and democratic concepts) and economically (with faith in neoliberalism and the markets' ability to self-regulate now on increasingly shaky ground).

Varying core conflicts

Attaching meaning to political eras should start with asking what's at stake. In other words, what are the main ideas or social conflicts around which democratic party competition revolves. While these core conflicts and their transformation were referenced in the previous overview, a few details require a closer look.

The main political confrontations of the POKS era grew out of post-communist transition, which had its fair share of winners and losers. As demonstrated by numerous sociological analyses, the winners were rather younger people belonging to the Estonian-speaking urban middle class who became the standard-bearers of economic liberalism and Western orientation. Representing this group have been the Reform Party, Isamaa and, with certain reservations, also the Social Democratic Party (SDE).

The losers in the transition were predominantly Russian-speakers, but also the elderly (pensioners) and rural area residents (or the so-called second Estonia as this group has sometimes been referred to).

It is important to note that ending up on the losing side of the transition did not always have an economic dimension and could also be symbolic and related to status. The latter applied especially in the case of the Russian-speaking part of the population who went from an imperial majority to being a minority in one of Europe's smallest countries, whereas for many, this also culminated in the degradation of their legal status (statelessness).

The contradictions of the post-communist transition gave rise to three core rifts or conflict axes that characterized Estonian politics throughout the POKS era: 1) a socioeconomic gap between the winners and losers from transitionary reforms, 2) the urban-rural gap (considering that the transition was especially hard on rural areas and small towns) and 3) the nationality-based rift.

The latter became the most important as it went beyond mere demographics (Estonians versus Russians) and was associated with existential geopolitical threats, different treatments of history and other emotionally mobilizing components.

Even though a similar structure of rifts was visible in other post-communist societies that shared Estonia's historical background, the peculiarity in Estonia was that the interests of the transitionary period's losers were represented by a single charismatic politician who ruled that niche for the next 20-25 years.

Edgar Savisaar managed for a long time to appear as a messiah who was meant to make good on all the injustice and deprivation of the transitionary period – bring Russians citizenship and usher in a "normal" relationship with Russia, help pensioners escape poverty and bring lost jobs and certainty back to rural areas.

It is likely that the POKS era in Estonian politics would have ended sooner had it not been for Savisaar, Andrus Ansip and the events of the Bronze Night in 2007, the shock from which froze Estonian society and made sure it stayed on the path of old post-communist struggles for another decade, putting the nationality-based rift front and center.

The "unfreezing" came from a completely unexpected direction. As suggested above, what broke the ice was the 2014 registered (same sex) partnership debate and the following year's migration crisis. The relatively rapid rise of EKRE brought to Estonian politics entirely new axes of conflict, which had little to do with the previous post-communist logic.

It is a matter of taste whether we describe the new core rift as between liberalism and conservatism, between the winners and losers of globalization or as a confrontation between the supporters of global openness and national closeness – the general idea remains the same.

On one side is that part of Estonian society that feels they and their children have more to gain, both financially and symbolically-culturally, from an Estonia that is boldly open to Europe and the world. They are not bothered by growing cultural diversity and a plethora of different lifestyles as their more cosmopolitan identity is not threatened by such things and does not clash with more tolerant attitudes. Besides, immigrants usually do not threaten their position in the labor market.

On the other side is that part of society for which global openness is undermining several recent pillars of their identity and status, such as the patriarchal family, traditional gender roles and nationalism. Because of a generally lower level of education, they themselves and their jobs are much more vulnerable in the face of global competition, technological change and immigration pressure in the labor market.

If we take a closer look at the new winners and losers of globalization, we see, paradoxically, the same picture we saw in the case of the winners and losers from the post-communist transition. The winners are once again more liberal, educated, urbanized representatives of the younger middle-class, while the losers sport a lower level of education, live away from major cities and are generally men of modest labor market status.

But unlike in the POKS era, education and gender play a far more important role now, while the Russian community no longer squarely falls in the losers category either. The more educated and Estonian-speaking part of the latter is definitely on the side of the winners from globalization.

The narrative through which the losers are engaged has also changed. With Savisaar's withdrawal in 2016, EKRE and the Helme family virtually monopolized it, putting it on the path of culture wars (in EKRE rhetoric: "libtards" versus the "conservative common-sense majority") and populism (the "globalist elite selling Estonia to Brussels" on Toompea Hill versus the "true" Estonian people).

The reversal of neoliberal reforms and economic justice that had mattered so much to Savisaar were sidelined or reprioritized in the key of culture wars ("immigrants are taking our jobs").

Invasion of Ukraine dots the i's

Even though the rise of EKRE and the arrival of the GUKS era clearly altered the structure of Estonian politics' core conflicts, the nationality-based split remained, and while its importance started to wane next to the new liberal-conservative rift, no inherent transformation took place during the time of Jüri Ratas (who replaced Savisaar as head of the Center Party).

This all changed in February 2022. During the POKS era, the nationality split, which had a massive effect on politics, was made up of three main components: 1) a real demographic and linguistic rift between Estonians and Russians, 2) different attitudes to the Soviet past and 3) a different understanding of geopolitics, or how one positioned themselves in respect to Putin's Russia.

On February 24, 2022, the two former components of the nationality split lost their legitimacy overnight and playing these cards became a political impossibility. Figuratively speaking, up until the full-scale Ukraine war, people in Estonia were still relatively tolerant when a local Russian found it very pleasant to live in the democratic and economically wealthy EU member Estonia, while claiming that life had been better in the Soviet Union and declaring from time to time: "Putin naš president." But no longer.

In other words, what had made the nationality divide a post-communist one (nostalgia for the past mixed with different geopolitical preferences) suddenly lost all public legitimacy and boiled down to common democratic minority politics (the Estonian majority and Russian minority and the latter's rights in a liberal democratic nation state), which we can see in many other Western European states.

This begs the wider question of the future of special Russian minority policy in Estonia. Once the education reform issues start to clear up, what will be the specific Russian topics Estonia still needs to tackle? Unless the Kremlin manages to fan the flames of ethnic tensions with a successful provocation or a new and charismatically led pro-Kremlin party emerges, I really do not have an answer.

Therefore, [Center Party head] Mihhail Kõlvart's recent decision to take in [former EKRE member] Jaak Madison and plot a course for a moderate value conservative niche makes a lot of sense. Kõlvart knows full well that the Russian community includes more losers from globalization than winners, which is why moderate Euroskepticism, opposing the green transition and promoting traditional family values are bound to sell better if presented in a softer style than that of EKRE in an attempt not to alienate some younger Russian people who stand to gain from globalization, at least initially.

Estonia becoming a front line state in the new cold war has resulted in another unexpected convergence with Western political logic and a shift away from its post-communist counterpart. Sharply growing defense spending and the inevitable militarization of society and economy this entails will increasingly beg the question of who will pay for it all.

The question of social justice in a so-called military information oasis (a future scenario for Estonia proposed by social scientists in 1997, which seems to be coming true) will become increasingly relevant and is bound to put matters of economic inequality and redistribution (like the recent tax debate) front and center in Estonian politics, or at least make them more prominent than they've been in the last 30 years.

This will put even the last post-communist peculiarity to bed, with the structure of core conflicts that define Estonian politics becoming increasingly similar to the rest of Europe. At its heart we find the liberal-conservative value conflict and socioeconomic splits. The nationality-based rift, while it will not disappear, will take on a more Western and less post-communist hue. In other words, the war in Ukraine dotted the i's and wiped away the last post-communist remnants.

New key players and style

A shifting core conflicts structure, which forms the basis of party politics, brings changes also to the gallery of key players. While during the POKS era, there was room for agrarian forces like the People's Union (city versus country folk) and ethnic parties supported by a single national group (Savisaar's Center Party), in the GUKS era, the former's niche has been taken over by the populist right (EKRE), and ethnic parties (Kõlvart's Center Party) can no longer count on the Russian-speaking majority to automatically side with them.

Because the nationality split is losing its central position in recent form, replaced by the liberal-conservative conflict of values, with the socioeconomic rift also becoming more important, the Center Party cannot remain on par with the Reform Party as a main player in Estonian politics.

Therefore, based on this logic, EKRE and Isamaa have the best chance to become key players in the long run, the latter especially if most voters prefer a moderate conservative line. Meanwhile, the growing relevance of the socioeconomic rift has good things in store for the Social Democrats.

But considering recent splits at EKRE and Center, the Reform Party's current low and other unexpected developments, it is still too soon to say who will be the main characters of Estonian politics in the GUKS era.

With changing eras, the style of playing politics changes too and the limits of what is permissible and what is not are redrawn. One important keyword of the new age is growing polarization. There was considerable confrontation also during the POKS era, with the supporters and politicians of Center and Reform often doing little to hide their mutual antipathy.

However, there was less polarization inside the Estonian-speaking community and political opponents were considered legitimate "adversaries" in a game of democracy, not "enemies" that need to be repelled and knocked down never to rise again.

The advent of EKRE has introduced the latter mindset into Estonian politics. Political scientists Andres Reiljan, who has spent a long time studying polarization tendencies, has claimed that affective or emotional polarization has become so strong in Estonia that the mutual antipathy between Reform Party and EKRE supporters even exceeds that of U.S. Republicans and Democrats.

New gallery of democratic models

That is the reason we're seeing over the top obstruction in the Riigikogu, attempts to question the legitimacy of election results, verbal attacks against the judicial system, violence and calls for violence at protests etc. Let us recall that while Savisaar may have demonized parliamentary parties during the POKS period, he did not call into question the legality of election results or wield obstruction as a weapon with which to paralyze the work of the parliament.

Whence then this deep polarization and destructive approach to democratic rules? While there are several reasons, it needs to be kept in mind that during the POKS era, liberal democracy seemed as the only fathomable model of democracy if we wanted to be part of the West.

The gallery of democratic models is infinitely richer in the GUKS period where one can exercise Hungarian-style illiberal democracy, take after Donald Trump, idolize Marine Le Pen's welfare chauvinist ideas in France etc.

Picking any of the latter would not amount to Estonia's expulsion from the West and the country being handed over to Putin – likely not even should national populists come to power in key Western countries and set about legitimizing illiberal ideas.

But this also makes politics in the GUKS era even more polarized and confrontational than during the previous age. At the same time, it is more compatible with the modern European and Western mainstream and largely free of all manner of post-communist peculiarities. Whether these trends will render Estonian democracy stronger and more durable, or whether the opposite will happen, remains to be seen.

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