This sounds great and has a high degree of truthiness to it.
However, can you point to any proof / study / support of your hypothesis? Is it *really* more difficult to reform a for-profit criminal compared to a racist youth?
The latter might well have been influenced by wrong friends -- by locking him up for long the system ensures he can keeps similarly racist, but more violent company.
You make some good points from the Estonian point of view, but there is more to the issue.
Most importantly, note that Staling was not Russian, nor did Russian people ever choose or elect him in any meaningful way.
Soviet occupation of Estonia was indeed marked with arresting intellectuals and shipping thousands of people off to Siberia. Terrible, but not significantly different from what Stalin did in other parts of the USSR, including Russia itself.
Indeed, it was Soviet policy to encourage Russians to settle all over the USSR, in order to unify and strengthen the country. I'm not defending the Soviets, but for a vast, multi-ethnic country, this policy does make practical sense. Not many of the Russians settlers deliberately chose to oppress Estonians, and many might not have chosen to move there -- it was a Soviet policy.
When it comes to the citizenship question, your analogy with Spanish speakers in the U.S. is flawed. Most present-day Russians in Estonia were born there, and have no other land or citizenship. The situation to Estonia is more analogous to the hypothetical example of Canada stripping all Quebecois (French-speaking, natural-born Canadians) of citizenship until they passed an English exam. It would, of course, cause an uproar and be a significant human rights violation.
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This sounds great and has a high degree of truthiness to it. However, can you point to any proof / study / support of your hypothesis? Is it *really* more difficult to reform a for-profit criminal compared to a racist youth? The latter might well have been influenced by wrong friends -- by locking him up for long the system ensures he can keeps similarly racist, but more violent company.
You make some good points from the Estonian point of view, but there is more to the issue. Most importantly, note that Staling was not Russian, nor did Russian people ever choose or elect him in any meaningful way. Soviet occupation of Estonia was indeed marked with arresting intellectuals and shipping thousands of people off to Siberia. Terrible, but not significantly different from what Stalin did in other parts of the USSR, including Russia itself. Indeed, it was Soviet policy to encourage Russians to settle all over the USSR, in order to unify and strengthen the country. I'm not defending the Soviets, but for a vast, multi-ethnic country, this policy does make practical sense. Not many of the Russians settlers deliberately chose to oppress Estonians, and many might not have chosen to move there -- it was a Soviet policy. When it comes to the citizenship question, your analogy with Spanish speakers in the U.S. is flawed. Most present-day Russians in Estonia were born there, and have no other land or citizenship. The situation to Estonia is more analogous to the hypothetical example of Canada stripping all Quebecois (French-speaking, natural-born Canadians) of citizenship until they passed an English exam. It would, of course, cause an uproar and be a significant human rights violation.
You cannot get a public defender in a civil case.