ABSTRACT
The population of Estonia has included a substantial proportion of people of Russian origin since the 1940s: by 1989 just over 30 per cent of the population were russkiye, compared to 61.5 per cent who were Estonians. Russian speakers in particular have migrated. There have been long-standing tensions between many of the two communities (Vetik 1993), not least in the capital city of Tallinn, where about 60 per cent of all the remaining Russians live. The city is almost equally divided between the two communities. There was significant rioting in 2007, and the cyber attacks on the country’s internet that followed were blamed on the Russian government. Many Estonians feel threatened, economically and politically, by their much larger neighbour.
