On the 7th September 2022, during the second week of my trip to Finland, I got a ferry across the Gulf of Finland, in the Baltic Sea, from Helsinki to Tallinn, the capital of the Republic of Estonia. From one country bordering Russia to another, six months after Russia invaded Ukraine, another of its ex-Soviet neighbours. Not that long ago, if I’d been visiting Finland, I would have been tempted to cross into Russia to visit St Petersburg, just an hour and a bit from Lahti by train. All of that changed in 2022. Russia was now enemy territory.

Ukraine was on everyone’s mind in 2022, as it still is today, and it was impossible to visit any of the Baltic countries without thinking about the hostile country just over the border. I had heard many good things about Estonia, once a reluctant part of the former Soviet Union, but now a vibrant and optimistic independent country, a member of NATO and the EU and, apparently, a leading hub for start-up businesses and new technologies in Europe.

Tallinn, the capital city, I was told was lovely – it is.

It is not far across the water from Helsinki, but the whole feel of the place is different. Finland impresses me as a ‘new’ country, not tied down or held back by its history, or defined by its inherited architecture. I know Estonia is a modern country too, a new country too, but with a much more visible history. I know that there is a Manhattan-style modern half to Tallinn too, but I was here just for a day-trip, all I had time for was a long and fascinating walk around the old city.

Where to start, when you don’t have much time? I suppose it made sense to find Freedom Square (Vabaduse väljak). Freedom from Russia for Estonia has meant many things over the last two hundred years or so. Freedom from the Tsarist empire, didn’t occur until 1917, after the February Revolution, only to be lost again with World War II, to the Soviet Union and then the German Wehrmacht, before being fully absorbed into the post-war Soviet Union and only achieving the freedom of independence w again in 1989 after the ‘Singing Revolution’ (laulev revolutsioon) and the Baltic Way human chain when around two million people joined hands which stretched for 430 miles across three Soviet countries, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia on 23 August 1989.

The Cross of Liberty and the Monument to the War of Independence in Freedom Square was opened in 2009 to commemorate all those who died fighting for independence in the Estonian War of Independence (1918 – 1920), but also including the many thousands of Estonians who had died for freedom in the years between 1918 and 1989.

I thought of all those freedom fighters that day, standing in Tallinn’s nearly empty Freedom Square. I felt we should remember them but also move on to the optimism that was palpable on the streets of this vibrant and proudly independent nation.

I tried to forget the present day realties of living next-door to Putin’s Russia while I walked round the extraordinarily well-preserved Old Town, thinking about history lessons at school about the 13th – 16th-century trading city ports along the German side of the Baltic Sea, known as the Hanseatic League. Places I never thought I would ever see, but of which Tallinn is an almost the perfect example.

Then I turned a corner and saw what was becoming a common sight all across Europe and beyond, the familiar blue and yellow flag of brave Ukraine, and suddenly I was back thinking about the present again.

Round another corner and I saw a gathering of people, some banners and flags and I went to investigate.

Yes, it was the Russian flag – the building was the Russian Embassy – and the people gathering were posting their protests about the invasion and their support for the people of Ukraine

It must be embarrassing working in the Russian embassies of the world as the country whose culture and history has always fascinated me, turns into a pariah state before our eyes. Good luck Ukraine, I thought, and still think, hoping that this terrible situation can be sorted, but knowing it is going to be a long war with the probable need for yet another Freedom memorial for the victims of Russian imperialism.

I saw another memorial on another street is this beautiful old town. A smiling bespectacled man, his smile, the smile of reason, his expression that of a classic liberal intellectual. I wondered who he was, standing there on a street corner, a benign presence, watching life on these now very pleasant streets.

It was Jaan Kross (1920 – 2007), the most well-known of all Estonian novelists, no stranger to repression during the Wehrmacht and Soviet years, when he spent time imprisoned during the German occupation and then in the Soviet years, he was deported to a Russian Gulag. He survived to see the birth of the new Estonian republic, and was one of that honourable band of writers who stood up for what he believed and tried to use the power of the pen to bring about change. He deserves his place on this Tallinn street corner.

I had to find somewhere for lunch before continuing the tour and before heading back to Helsinki, hoping that, one day, I can spend more time in this impressive and beautiful city.

Lunch alfresco was elk sausage with chips and cornflower petals…..a first for me…

… a glass of prize-winning Estonian red wine, called Regent…

… one more glass and Tallinn felt like home.

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There was encouraging news today about the Ukraine ceasefire – Like all of us, I’m hoping it will hold and lead to a lasting solution to the appalling escalation of violence that had been growing in East Ukraine all week. Well done to our European leaders who stayed up all night in Minsk, Belarus, negotiating with the Russians and the Ukrainians until reaching this agreement. Phew.

This has been a major crisis in Europe and we were all lucky that the German and French leaders were united and up to the challenge. This is what Europe is all about. Hang on a minute, where was Britain in all this? Britain? Is it still in Europe? Maybe David Cameron had an even bigger problem to solve today and that’s why he wasn’t anywhere to be seen over this crisis.

So where was he? Oh, yes, silly me, he was electioneering in Lincolnshire with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, for the UK General Election, which is months away still, in May. I suspect even Conservative Party loyalists must wonder if Britain is in safe hands.

Luckily for the rest of us, our European partners didn’t take their eyes off the ball. Let’s all hope that they will be peace in Ukraine and that the good folk of Lincolnshire asked the British Prime Minister why the **** he wasn’t in Minsk.

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Looking at Vladimir Putin’s chilly expression, I felt cold too this morning. I had just been looking at the appalling images coming from the destroyed and corpse-filled Donetsk Airport and despaired of the situation in Ukraine which is running out of control and challenging anyone who loves many things Russian to keep faith with that inspiring country.

The images from Donetsk are painful and depressing and, it’s pretty obvious that, if it’s not the Russian army that is doing this, then it’s most definitely Russian- (I mean Putin-) inspired.

Inspired, as you may have noticed, is my chosen word for today. I’ve always been inspired by Russian culture, its music, film, literature and art and I’d like to swap that photograph of Putin with this portrait of the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) and remember the nobility and sensitivity of the Russian spirit than the devastation that its current leader has let loose in Ukraine.

I don’t want to just turn my face away from the horrors of Donetsk but I’d like to rekindle some of my inspiration and faith in Russia. Beauty can, after all, open our eyes to our humanity.

On my chronological journey through the history of classical music, I’ve reached the year 1889 and, recently, I’ve been listening to Tchaikovsky’s great ballet score from that year, Sleeping Beauty. I thought of Putin and Donetsk while watching the currently matchless Russian ballerina, Svetlana Zakharova, in the Rose Adagio from Sleeping Beauty in a production from the Bolshoi Ballet, and thought about the other sleeping beauties that Putin has hidden from our eyes here in the West.

I have only recently taken to watching classical ballet, so I’m am no expert but I do know that this wonderful dancer is about as inspiring as ballet it can be. Physical prowess meets artistry and beauty on a level that we can all understand.

Take a moment to watch this glorious performance to Tchaikovsky’s passionate music, while thinking of the terrible things coming out of Russia these days. It can give us hope for the true spirit of that country and for our own future.

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Dear President Putin,

You know as well as everyone else knows. The unspeakable barbarity of that missile attack on a civilian plane, Malaysian Flight MH17 was committed by terrorists (known, for some reason, as separatists) with your armament support. Neither they nor you, I am sure, planned to kill all those 298 civilian men, women and children but that is what happens when angry men file missiles. Look at the Gaza Strip and Israel – but you know that too. So stop the denials, stop the futile blame games and try to make this gigantic and cruel miscaulculation the beginning of a better way. You could agree that futile acts of missile aggression only makes things worse and you could try to bring President Obama with you – and maybe the World, including Palestine and Israel, might learn a painful lesson from this despicable act.

You know, as do I , that that won’t happen but at least do yourself a favour and get real over your denials. No one believes you and, one day, even the Russian people will learn the truth – you can’t hide it from them forever.

STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

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It was an Anglo-French victory and a Russian defeat but, in reality, it was the nastiest war in Europe between the Battle of Waterloo (1815)  and the First World War (1914 – 1918) with 25,000 British dead, 100,000 French and nearly one million Russians. It saw the collapse of the peace treaties that had kept Europe war-free for over half a century and the beginning of new European rivalries that would explode with the First World War. Let’s not take peace for granted in Europe so let the politicans remember that their job is diplomacy.

The Crimean War was vividly immortalised by the pioneering work of the first generation of war photographers allowed to work on the battlegrounds themselves. The most famous of them was Roger Fenton (1819 – 1869) whose well-known photograph, The Valley Of Death (1855) showed a bleak cannon ball strewn landscape that was to become one of the very first icons of the horrors of war.

 Generally Roger Fenton and his colleagues kept to carefully posed shots of the soldiers and their encampments. He avoided taking shots of the dead leaving that for the brave photographers of the American Civil War of ten years later.

 He travelled over the battle fields in his custom-made photographic van driven by his assistant, Marcus Sparling, photographed above.

Even if he was principally contributing to the morale-boasting ambitions of the British government, his photographic legacy brings human faces to what could have been merely a set of  statistics in the history of warfare.

War photography was in its infancy in the 1850s but it was soon to prove its power to sway public opinion especially in unpopular wars. It was still left to painters at this time though to portray the heroic deeds of war as, apparently, it actually happened.  One of the most famous of these was Thomas Jones Barker’s 1877 history painting, The Charge Of The Light Brigade, the war’s most famous/infamous incident. 600 cavalrymen from the Light Brigade followed apparently inaccurate orders and charged, woefully outnumbered and outgunned, into an unforgiving battery of Russian guns. Whatever the causes and whoever was to blame, there has never been any question about those men’s bravery.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns1′ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

The post Remember the Light Brigade and the first Crimean War casualties. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

President Viktor Yanukovych, it’s a long time since we last saw civilians shot down on the streets of Europe by government troops. I’d hoped that we’d never see it again. If the new deal holds, and that looks unlikely, it is time for you to go.  If you are stuck on the dilemma of whether Ukraine should be either a part of Europe or of Russia, ask those people on the streets, listen to them and settle it in Parliament not with guns. Europe doesn’t want to see her citizens dying from your government’s snipers’ bullets. We thought we’d seen the last of our presidential thugs. Ask Vladimir Putin if he agrees. Hopefully, we will soon see you go the way of most failed leaders – into obscurity. Good luck Ukraine.

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My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

The post Russian puppet, Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine has brought shame to
Europe. He should go. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

WBC heavyweight world champion Vitali Klitschko may have hung up his gloves but as the leader of one of the Ukraine’s main opposition parties, he hasn’t forgotten how to pack a punch.

He has shown his courage and his mettle out there on the freezing streets of Kiev but also in his negotiations with the unpopular government of  President Viktor Yanukovich who tried to make him deputy prime minister yesterday in an attempt to silence him in a powerless job. Britain’s deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, knows just how powerless that job can be. Taking it is often the road to unpopularity and political ruin. So Vitali Klitschko is back out there on the streets with the demonstrators who are also showing that they are prepared to stand their corner.

As are President Yanukovich’s riot police.

Both sides are prepared to fight…

… and, as is usual in street fights, people have got injured and others have died. The anger is high on both sides and now we are reading of new stories of beatings and torture inflicted on some of the demonstrators.

President Viktor Yanukovich is now deeply unpopular…

…and it doesn’t look like he’ll be signing photographs out there on the streets of Kiev any time soon.

He comes across as a tough guy, for sure, but everyone knows that it is really the Russian president Vladimir Putin who is telling Yanukovich how to fight.

To find a solution to Ukraine’s problems and to stop the violence, maybe we should return to the old days when opposing forces selected champions, like Achilles and Hector,  to settle disputes in single combat.

President Putin is unembarrassed about flexing his muscles in public…

…so maybe Vitali Klitschko should return to the ring for one last fight.

All eyes would be on the already controversial Winter Olympics at Sochi if Vladimir Putin agreed to take of his shirt (yet again) to fight it out with Vitali Klitschko. Then we would all be shouting “Let the best man win!”

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My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

The post Kiev needs a champion to defends its honour against its enemies. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.