The monument unveiled to Alma Ostra-Oinas and the stormy reactions it provoked brought to light one sad reality: Estonians do not know their own history. Once the uproar around the monument began, it became clear that there were more opinions than knowledge and that people were relying above all on preconceived attitudes that can ultimately devolve into indiscriminate attacks. It was somehow disheartening.

A small nation must know its history. Much has been said, and much more needs to be said, about the fact that our curriculum lacks a cultural history course, that literature classes have been steadily reduced over the years and that Estonian literature has increasingly been replaced by translated works and students' "own choices." In any culture that respects itself, such a situation should be impossible.

Less attention has been paid to the subject of our history classes. What is happening in history education deserves a separate analysis, but two telling facts can be highlighted here. First, Estonian history is generally taught as part of broader world history courses. A course specifically titled "Estonian History" is found only at the upper secondary school level.

Second, teacher training programs increasingly emphasize that the "difficult" topics of our history should be avoided. We recently learned quite vividly, through a controversial statement by a senior official at the Ministry of Education and Research, that even the Treaty of Tartu can be considered a difficult topic. Is it any wonder that World War II and the Soviet occupation are regarded as even more problematic?

Only recently, I heard of a history teacher who was advised not to show a film about the Battle of Blue Hills in class because, for students of Russian background, Russians are portrayed too clearly as the enemy. There is even an official document titled "Methodological Guide to Multiperspective History Teaching," which teaches Estonians to view their own history in a "less complicated" way.

This tiptoeing approach to our own history was already evident when the famous Lihula monument was removed and when, only recently, even a replica of it was not permitted to be installed on private property. The memory of Estonian boys who defended their homeland in a hopeless situation must be treated with shame and severity, while the enemy that mercilessly killed and deported us as a people — and is doing the same today in another country — must be handled delicately in the classroom so as not to remind anyone of "old matters"?

Hando Runnel, who understood how important the Soviet authorities considered the erasure of a people's historical memory, wrote: "As a person who uses words, I observe that the beginning of totalitarianism must be considered the prohibition of certain words in the state and society, followed by the prohibition of expressions and thoughts, then ways of thinking and finally the prohibition of independent and free thought altogether by every possible means and justification."

We should therefore be extremely cautious of the mindset that certain topics in our history are not worth discussing. Or that they should be discussed only in a "suitable" manner. This is our history; no one can or should dictate to us how and what we say about it. Behind such pressure lies the desire that history should not interfere with the present.

But let us quote Hando Runnel once more: "Nations are treated in the corridors of international power according to whether they are peoples with a history or peoples without one. Peoples without a history are left to drift and fading away is said to be their fate. Paralyzing a historical worldview is the first mission of all foreign and illegitimate powers. Historicity means treating time and history as the highest common property."

History, together with language and customs, is what makes a people a people. It is the reason one cannot simply become a member of another nation overnight. What is lacking is historical perspective, that shared possession which may be called a collectively experienced history.

That experience, and the sense of a historical dimension, is increasingly overshadowed by a kind of everyday realism in which each day seems to begin anew and even events from the previous week have already been forgotten. Living in such everyday realism is the condition of peoples without a history, Runnel says.

Of course, in everyday life a person's own joys and worries come first, followed by the issues of day-to-day politics. Yet a historical dimension — a sense of belonging to an ancient people and a people of a state — should still exist somewhere within our consciousness. And it should exist as something meaningful and affirming.

Estonians are all too ready to lower their gaze, to leave things unsaid, to quickly adopt someone else's position. In the end, it is more comfortable not to know what has happened on this piece of land. More self-respect, one wants to cry out. More historical knowledge and greater appreciation of our rich heritage! But the less we know, the less we speak and the more we forget. And in the end, as another classic once said, we become like a heap of grains of sand scattered by a gust of wind or like smoke that dissipates into the vastness of space.

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