Geo Political InsidersLos Angeles
Fineas talks with Jaak Treiman, Estonia’s Honorary Consul in Los Angeles since 1986 and author of Carried by a Magic Fan: Memoir of an Estonian Refugee Family, about Estonia’s journey from Soviet occupation to digital nation, and his own family’s escape from war. They discuss what an honorary consul actually does, how the Tiger Leap turned Estonia into a digital nation with online government services and online voting, why trust in government makes it work, and how Estonia approaches national identity, language, and its Russian-speaking and Ukrainian communities. They also cover what EU and NATO membership mean to Estonians today, Nordic-Baltic defense ties and Estonia’s strength in cyber defense, his family’s flight through Finland, Sweden, and Australia to Los Angeles, how Estonian exiles kept their culture alive, what people should understand about refugees, and his advice for students interested in diplomacy.
Jaak Treiman has served as Estonia’s Honorary Consul in Los Angeles since 1986, when he was appointed by Ernst Jaakson, making him Estonia’s longest-serving honorary consul and the only one whose appointment predates the restoration of Estonia’s independence. Born in Estonia during the Second World War, he came to Los Angeles as a child after his family fled the Soviet occupation. He is the author of Carried by a Magic Fan: Memoir of an Estonian Refugee Family (McFarland, 2023).
Transcript lightly edited for clarity. Click any timestamp to play the video from that moment.
Fineas Hi, I'm Fineas, founder of GeoPolitical Insiders, a site devoted to conversations with diplomats, policymakers, scholars, and national security experts about the forces shaping international affairs. Today I'm joined by Jaak Treiman, the Honorary Consul of Estonia in Los Angeles. He works to strengthen connections between Estonia and the United States, support the Estonian American community, and promote Estonia's interests and culture. He is also an author; his work explores Estonia's history and the experiences of Estonians displaced by war and the Soviet occupation. Thank you, Honorary Consul Treiman, for joining me. Let's dive in.
Jaak Treiman My pleasure to be here.
Fineas For viewers unfamiliar with the role, what does an honorary consul do, and how does your work differ from that of a career diplomat?
Jaak Treiman Honorary consuls aren't authorized to do a lot of the work that career consuls do. It depends on the country they're representing, but as a generality, honorary consuls cannot issue visas, and they can't issue most other documents either. Our primary function is to try to generate business between the country we represent and the American business community, to further, in my case, Estonian culture here, and to assist visitors from Estonia who may have run into difficulties here. And another distinction is that we don't get paid. Career people do.
Fineas Right. So for you personally, what does the job look like? What kind of people come in, what kind of questions do they ask, and what kind of cultural events do you help organize?
Jaak Treiman Well, Estonia has a population of 1.3 million, so we don't have hordes of people coming through here. We do have the second-largest Estonian community in America here, but that number is probably around 1,500. You always run into the question of who is an Estonian. Somebody is married to an American and they have kids; what are the kids? How do you classify them? But the number that's generally used is 1,500. As far as cultural events go, when we hear or are told that some musician, actress, or artist is coming through and they want some kind of assistance setting up places to show their work, or they just want to get a better lay of the land, so to speak, I try to help them. The same applies to the business community. Some businesses come in, know exactly what they're doing, and don't need my services. And then there are others, a lot of times startups, who need contacts and need to know how the business community here functions and who the main contacts are for their particular product, so I try to help them with that.
Fineas So that's the job of the honorary consul. Now, to focus a little bit on Estonia itself: since the restoration of Estonian independence in '91, what have been the most important turning points in Estonia's development, and how have they shaped the country today?
Jaak Treiman I think the most important development was in the 1990s, '94 or '96, I'm not sure now, and it was the Tiger Leap. That was an idea of Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who later became president. It was his idea while he was the Estonian ambassador to the U.S., and it was put forth and carried out by Lennart Meri, who was the first president of Estonia after the reacquisition of independence. The Tiger Leap was really what got Estonia into the digital era. And they had an advantage over a lot of the more developed countries, because under Soviet rule they really weren't developed. They didn't have a heavy structure they had to change, so they really had a clean slate to begin with. The Tiger Leap put computers and the internet into the schools, and it led to the thing that Estonia is still best known for now, which is being a digital nation.
All government services in Estonia are accessible online. If you're trying to get a driver's license, you don't have to stand in line at the DMV to take the tests; you can do it all online. And you can vote in elections online, which would probably cause a whole bunch of discussion here under today's circumstances, but Estonians think nothing of online voting in both local municipal elections and national elections.
Fineas Right. Estonia is widely associated with digital government and technological innovation. What lessons do you think other countries could learn from Estonia's involvement in the digital and technological spheres?
Jaak Treiman I think the key lesson is that you need to try it; you need to do it. But the reason the digital era works so well in Estonia is that, regardless of the political fights between the different parties, which can be pretty bitter, the country trusts the government. They don't see a deep state somewhere. They don't see the government as being out to nail them. So there's trust between the population and the government services. I think every country should try to become as digitalized as possible in a lot of areas, but especially in government services. To do that, they have to develop a trusting relationship with their population, and as we can see here, that's sometimes a difficult assignment.
Fineas In America, definitely. But it's efficient, and it's worth trying.
Jaak Treiman Oh, yeah, definitely. Just for the cost savings and the efficiency. And the savings are not only for the government, but also for the consumer, the population that uses it. Instead of going to the DMV to renew your license and standing in line for two hours, or having to make a reservation at some awkward time and then spending another hour or hour and a half there, you can do all of that at home, or from work, wherever. And it all runs smoothly.
Fineas Estonia is a country that has many different ethnic communities, a large Russian population, ethnic Estonians, and other groups. How would you describe Estonian national identity, and how does Estonia preserve its language and culture while building a shared sense of belonging among its different communities?
Jaak Treiman Good question. Before World War II, I can't remember the exact percentage, but Estonia was probably around 90% ethnic Estonian, with other groups, including Russians. During the time the Soviets occupied Estonia, there was a concerted effort to Russify the country. Russification consisted of thousands of Russians being brought into the country as laborers, and street signs being changed to Russian, including the Cyrillic alphabet, which is not what Estonians use. Any dealings with the government had to be in Russian, and any advanced work in education had to be in Russian. So before World War II there was a sort of automatic cultural unity. Then, during the war and the occupation period, I think the cultural unity of the country maybe even solidified a little more, but the problem was that the Russians were definitely left out of it.
The issue today is not so much instilling a sense of identity or cultural unity within the Estonian community, but how to incorporate the other communities that are there, including the Russians. There is now also a large Ukrainian community. Depending on the time frame you measure, Estonia has had more Ukrainian refugees per capita than any other European country. So there's a question of how to assimilate them, and how much they want to be assimilated. Are they hoping to go back? They don't really want to be assimilated completely. There are interesting issues that need to be addressed, and the Estonians are trying to address them, maybe not always as well as they might, but they recognize the issue.
Fineas How much does the national identity of Estonia rely on being ethnically Estonian? Are Russian Estonians able to feel as Estonian as Estonian Estonians?
Jaak Treiman That is a really good question. Ideally, the answer would be yes. In fact, I know that there's a large segment of the Russian community that does not feel Estonian. Many have not applied for Estonian citizenship, partly because the Estonian language is difficult, and especially in the older generation of Russians, they just don't learn it. Language fluency, maybe not complete fluency, but at least the ability to speak and communicate in Estonian, is a prerequisite for citizenship. So, yes, ethnicity is a significant portion of the Estonian identity, and as for how well other groups are incorporated into that, I think the answer is that there is some incorporation, but not nearly as much as there should be in the long run.
Fineas How has that changed since the reacquisition of independence? Do you notice a difference in the way younger Russian Estonians view themselves, as opposed to older Russian Estonians?
Jaak Treiman I haven't been back there for long enough periods to really give you a personal answer on that. But from talking to friends and acquaintances there and reading various publications, I think a larger percentage of the younger generation speaks Estonian and is assimilated into the country. The older group, and I'm not even sure where the word 'older' starts to apply, is in a different situation. They're more bound to Russian traditions. They listen to Russian news, they read Russian magazines and newspapers, and they listen to Russian radio and watch Russian television.
Fineas Since regaining independence, Estonia has expanded its prominence in the Western world, joining the EU and NATO. What has EU membership meant for everyday life in Estonia, and what would Estonia like the EU's priorities to be in the coming years?
Jaak Treiman I think Estonians would like to see the EU more closely coordinated, while eliminating some of the EU bureaucracy. They would certainly like to see more unanimity in some key areas, especially when it comes to Ukraine. You would probably get a diversity of answers from different Estonians to your question about what they're looking for in the EU. A number of Estonians hold significant positions in the EU. And Estonia gets, I don't know the exact figure, a lot of funding from the EU, maybe too much at times. I say too much because if the money is right there and it's relatively easy to get, it kind of destroys the incentive to generate it yourself. I don't think it's a major problem, but it's an issue, not only for Estonia but for the other EU members too: how the money is distributed, what it's distributed for, and what the guidelines are for getting it. So the bottom-line answer to your question about Estonia and its wishes for the EU is that it runs the gamut, from eliminating bureaucracy and being more tight-fisted to, as others would say, getting more money and more projects. I don't think Estonia's reaction would be very different from what Poland or any other country would give. There would be a diversity of opinion, but I don't think Estonia would contribute anything significantly different to that question.
Fineas How has everyday life in Estonia changed since joining the organization? Have things noticeably improved economically in the country?
Jaak Treiman Well, membership in the EU has been significant economically. But the primary reason Estonians wanted to get into the EU was the same reason they wanted to get into NATO, the same reason they wanted to get into virtually any international organization, whether it was some stamp-collecting organization or NATO: defensively, they felt that the more ties they had to Western countries and Western organizations, the more secure they would be. The security wouldn't necessarily come from the military, but just from the knowledge Russia would have that they are tied inextricably to the Western world, and that they weren't part of the so-called near abroad that Russia tends to talk about, referring to the former countries that made up the Soviet Union.
Fineas Right, so joining as many Western international organizations as they could, to be further away from Russia, or safer. In that vein, what does NATO membership mean to Estonians, and what role does Estonia see for itself in the alliance's collective defense?
Jaak Treiman Well, if you'd asked me two or three years ago, I'd probably have given you one answer, and the answer now is a little more equivocal. The Estonian political leadership doesn't talk out loud about doubting the effectiveness of NATO, but there's an undercurrent of doubt as to whether NATO would actually fulfill its obligations under Article 5, that if one gets attacked, everybody comes to its defense.
Fineas What is Estonia doing to ensure its own defense, knowing that it doesn't fully trust NATO to defend it?
Jaak Treiman When push comes to shove, they are tying themselves in with the Nordic countries in a defensive alliance, the Nordic-Baltic Eight. Out of that group, Finland probably has the strongest and most efficient military. So Estonia is tying itself in with the Nordic countries on defense. And they are super good at cyber defense. In the early days they suffered a major cyber attack from Moscow, and that made them realize they were really weak there. Now NATO has its cyber defense center in Estonia, and one of the reasons is that a lot of the cyber defense talent is there. I don't think they've had any nationwide military or defense drills for the civilian population; I think Lithuania probably has done that. But the Estonians have also revamped their military strategy. Before, it was to fall back and wait for military assistance to come in. Now it's more of an offensive defense, where they're lining things up closer to the borders, and it's really a matter of holding off any invasion that might take place.
Fineas What are some important industries currently being developed in Estonia that Americans should be more aware of?
Jaak Treiman It's the electronic sector. Skype was developed in Estonia, but that's kind of old news at this point, almost antique. They are doing some work on quantum computing at a couple of the universities, and I think there's one company there working on quantum computing with applications for real-life fields. But other than that, what does Estonia really have to export? There's forestry, lumber products, office furniture. The best-selling furniture on Amazon, I'm told, is made by an Estonian company. The one thing Estonia got from the Soviet occupation was a tremendous increase in its tree population. The Soviets just didn't do anything there. There were a lot of military bases in Estonia, and a lot of people brought into Tallinn and the urban centers, but they left the forests pretty much alone. So for 50 years the forests were pretty much untouched, and therefore forest products are a pretty significant portion of Estonia's exports right now.
Fineas Right. So timber's big, and then obviously there's the technology sector, which is what Estonia is famous for. You wrote Carried by a Magic Fan, which tells the story of an Estonian refugee family. Could you tell us about the circumstances that forced your family to leave Estonia, and how that experience shaped your childhood?
Jaak Treiman Well, I guess I have to back up a little bit to 1939, when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was entered into, the Stalin-Hitler non-aggression agreement, because there were secret protocols attached to that treaty which divided Europe into spheres of influence. The Baltic states and part of Poland were assigned to the Soviet Union; Germany was assigned another portion of Poland and some other areas. Right after that agreement was signed, Germany attacked Poland and World War II really started, and Soviet troops moved into the Baltic states. So there was a Soviet occupation. I always get the dates mixed up, so rather than give you the wrong dates: the Soviets came in, and the Estonians, including my parents, experienced Soviet rule. Then the Germans came in, and in 1944 the Soviets came back.
In 1943, while my mother was pregnant with me, my dad had to leave. He had done mandatory military service and left as a low-grade officer, and the Germans were drafting anybody who had been an officer. My dad didn't want to serve with the Germans, and it was obvious that the Soviets would be coming back, and he didn't want anything to do with them either. So he left and went to Sweden, leaving my mother behind, and me, I guess. After I was born, my dad came back to get me and my mother, and to do some other things, but somebody reported his presence, so my mother couldn't leave with him; she had to stay. My dad got back to Sweden. Then my mother went from southern Estonia, where she lived, to Tallinn, and got her way onto a coal-powered boat that went to Finland. It took two and a half days to do what would otherwise have been less than a day's journey, and today is about a two-hour ferry ride, just because the weather was so bad. From Finland she was able to make it to Sweden, where she met up with my dad.
We lived there for three and a half years. My parents left because the Swedish government was talking about sending refugees back to where they came from, and in fact they did send a boatload of refugees back, mostly Latvians, though there were some Estonians. My parents wanted to come to the U.S., but they were unable to, with the quota system that existed for immigrants; it was really difficult to get in. It was a crazy formula. So they were able to get a visa to go to Australia. But we didn't have enough money to get tickets for everybody. So my dad went to Manchester, England, and hired on as a second-class steward on a ship going to Norfolk, Virginia, while my mother and I booked passage on a regular ship going to New York. When my dad's ship got to Norfolk, he jumped ship and worked his way to New York, where he met us. Then we took a long bus ride to San Francisco, were taken care of by some old-time Estonians who lived there, and went by ship to Australia.
My dad had put in an application to come to the States, and after four and a half years in Australia, they got a call from the U.S. Embassy asking when they wanted to leave for the U.S. So they basically dropped everything they were doing. They had a pretty successful business going at that point, but they dropped everything, and we got on a passenger freighter that was supposed to go to San Francisco but got orders to stop in L.A. It was going to stop over for about a month. My dad was impatient, so we got off in L.A., and I'm still in L.A.
Fineas What a story. Your family's experience is similar, I imagine, to that of a lot of other Estonians.
Jaak Treiman Very much so.
Fineas During that period when Estonia lost its independence and many Estonians were forced into exile like your family, how did Estonian refugees maintain their national identity and their connection to a homeland they weren't able to freely return to?
Jaak Treiman There was very little communication with the homeland, partly because it was dangerous both ways. When we lived in Sun Valley, California, my parents got a letter from East Germany urging them to return to Estonia. The scary part for my parents was: how did they know where they were living? So for the people who cared, there was concern about being found out. Realistically, in retrospect, there probably wasn't much danger, but during that time there had been some high-profile assassinations of anti-communist political leaders, so there was enough fear there. And in the other direction, anybody in Estonia who was known to have relatives in the West was at risk. So there wasn't much in the way of communication.
The refugees here did stick together a lot. Here in L.A., there's an Estonian House that was built or acquired in the early '50s. So they congregated in groups. There were Estonian houses here and there, and the Estonians in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and L.A. formed an organization, West Coast Estonian Days. Every two or three years they would have basically a week-long festival in one of the cities, taking turns hosting. During West Coast Estonian Days there would be Estonian folk dances, some political speechifying, and it was basically a maintenance of Estonian culture. And whether or not they had an Estonian house, there would be Estonian schools, not in the sense of a school with a lot of buildings, but groups of maybe five, ten, or twenty kids of Estonian parents who would come together on a Saturday and be taught the Estonian language and things about Estonian culture.
Fineas Right, so Estonian Americans were really able to come together after that traumatic history, and managed to maintain their culture through these events and Estonian houses, and really stay together. Having experienced it yourself and grown up with that experience, what would you like people to understand about the refugee experience?
Jaak Treiman Refugees are human beings. I don't care if you're talking about East European refugees, Estonian refugees, Afghans, or Somalis, from wherever. The first thing you have to remember is that they're all human beings with human reactions. To be a political refugee takes a certain amount of fortitude, because no matter what the conditions are, you're still leaving an area you may have grown up in. You're leaving friends, you're leaving family you have buried. You're leaving familiar surroundings and going to a place where you may not know the language, which may have a different culture. So you're going to be nervous. You're going to hang together, at least initially, and probably fight assimilation to begin with. But you also have the same needs: to earn an income, to eat, to have a place to stay.
And almost universally with refugees, regardless of the political discourse these days about refugees coming in and murdering and committing crimes, all the statistics I've seen indicate a lower crime rate among refugees than in the general population. And the attainment level, especially of the children of refugees, in college education and entrepreneurship, is again higher than the national standard. I think what people need to remember is that, yes, you have to be able to handle the initial impact of refugees; there has to be some structure there. But their desires and what they're looking for are no different from what most people have. In fact, what we would consider positive desires are perhaps exaggerated: they're more driven. My God, look at who runs the technology companies you can think of. Think of the CEOs there; you're almost hard-pressed to find a native-born American.
Fineas Right. So understand their hardships, understand that they don't have a place to really call home, that their original home has forced them out, and that they're people with the same needs as everybody else.
Having experienced that displacement yourself, how do you view the experiences of Ukrainians who have been forced to leave their homes following Russia's invasion? Do you see any parallels between their experience and the experience of Estonian refugees during and after the Second World War?
Jaak Treiman Honestly, I'm not that familiar with it from personal knowledge. I've met a few Ukrainian refugees, but not a big enough sample to give a valid opinion. What I've read falls into the category of what I was just talking about. They are no different from refugees from Central America or the Eastern European refugees of World War II. The human impetus they carry with them is universal.
Fineas What led you to become an honorary consul, and how did your family history and your own personal experiences influence the way you approached the role?
Jaak Treiman Well, I'm laughing because Estonia had a consulate here in Los Angeles before the Soviet occupation, and because of the non-recognition policy, the U.S. State Department continued to recognize that position. Estonia had about six or seven other honorary consulates, but they all fell by the wayside, through death mostly. There was one in Chicago who resigned in protest when the Soviets came in, which at the time seemed pretty smart, but in retrospect was probably not the wisest thing to have done. But L.A. still had a consulate. My predecessor also happened to be the person who helped my mother when she had some trouble in Finland while she was escaping, and they both just landed up in L.A. When my predecessor died, there was some curiosity about who would replace him. The appointment would come from Ernst Jaakson, who had been a member of the Estonian Foreign Ministry before the occupation and was in charge of the Consulate General in New York, which was a career consulate position.
The short version is that a Latvian friend of mine, who later became Latvia's first defense minister, recommended to an Estonian friend of mine that the Estonian friend tell me I should apply for the position. I wasn't sure about it; I didn't really know what on earth I would be doing. My ex-wife's sister lived in Mexico City, married to a Mexican obstetrician, and they would come up every summer for vacation. That was about the time I was mulling over the possibility of being an honorary consul. My brother-in-law, Pepe, and I were driving along PCH, having dropped the kids off at some summer camp, and we were driving back into the Valley talking about whether I should apply or not. Finally we figured, what the heck. My comment was, I can always resign. So I applied and got appointed.
Fineas And how long have you been in the role?
Jaak Treiman A little over 40 years now.
Fineas Wow. Very experienced. What has serving as an honorary consul taught you about international affairs? And what advice would you give to a high school or college student who's interested in pursuing a career in diplomacy?
Jaak Treiman Well, I don't know that I have any real words of wisdom about international affairs, but I have learned that international affairs can be influenced by individuals: demonstrations, talking to congressmen and senators, sending letters to the White House, talking to presidents. There is a cumulative effect. It's not something you should just read about and say, well, I don't like that. Maybe not one person alone, but one person working together with other people, just regular people, can have some influence. The adoption of the non-recognition policy, and its continuation by the U.S. government, was in large measure accomplished by private individuals, not getting paid, doing lobbying work, talking to their neighbors, talking to politicians, and it was successful. So I think that's the primary thing I've learned over the years. What was the second part of your question?
Fineas What advice would you have for a high school or college student interested in pursuing a career in diplomacy?
Jaak Treiman Well, the reason I'm hesitating is that the state of diplomacy during the past couple of years, at least, is pretty much non-existent. Diplomacy seems to be more a matter of corruption and real estate deals. Based on what I see and read, the State Department is kind of a shambles right now. I would encourage you and other young people to go into diplomacy, but by the time you're ready to go in, who knows what the conditions will be? Whether the State Department will have become a real State Department again, or whether it's just another place to put political favorites. So I don't want to discourage anyone from going into it, but I think you almost have to go into it with your eyes open, knowing that the ideals you may have in mind don't necessarily exist in the world you're about to enter.
But as far as what skills you should have or what kind of training, I think as broad a range of knowledge as you can have is the best. You have to be culturally sensitive, you have to have a business sense, and you have to have people skills. For most things, really, I would recommend a liberal arts education. I'm probably in the minority these days, but when I went to law school at USC, in my real property class we had a casebook with the cases and the rules of the game, but we also had to read Golding's Lord of the Flies, Marc Bloch's two-volume treatise on feudal society, a series of articles by John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman, and I think Karl Marx was in the mix. When we were taking the class, we were all grumbling: what on earth does this have to do with law? But in retrospect, having that broad range of knowledge was much more important than knowing specific rules of law. The specific rules you can always look up. Being able to grasp the philosophies of Galbraith, Marx, or Friedman, or the writing of Golding in Lord of the Flies, is what gives you the ability, not only in law, to come up with unique ideas and to see things your opponent may not see. I think that also applies in the field of international relations. You handle a whole variety of things, and you can't learn all of it, but you can develop the mental skills to grasp new things you see and make sense of them.
Fineas Right, so really have a broad array of knowledge and understanding of the world.
Jaak Treiman That's sort of my philosophy on going into it. And then just hope for better times.
Fineas That seems like the answer to everything. That's all I have for you. Thank you very much for doing this.
Jaak Treiman Okay, well, I enjoyed it.