Estonia gets creative about integrating local Russian-speakers

THE grey Stalinist blocks, potholed roads and intimidating communist-era plazas hardly suggest a hipster hotspot. But Narva, an Estonian town on Russia’s border, is suddenly all the rage. “Within the last six months Narva has become hip in Estonia. Everyone wants to go there,” says Helen Sildna, who runs Tallinn Music Week and who is going to stage a music festival in Narva for the first time in September. The abandoned factory buildings, cheap living space and the frisson of sitting on a cultural front line between Russia and the West will attract trendsetters—or so Estonian officials hope. Making Narva cool is part of Estonia’s new strategy to integrate Russian-speakers in Estonia.

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Western journalists scoured maps for other places that could be next on Vladimir Putin’s hit-list. They stumbled on Narva, where almost the entire population is Russian-speaking. The sight of Russian flags and border guards below the medieval fortress on the other side of a narrow river made for suitably dramatic pictures on news bulletins. Suddenly Narva hit international headlines as “the next Crimea”.