Yestonians
Yestonians (
Soviet Estonia with cadres loyal to Moscow. While their ethnicity was Estonian by descent, they grew up in the Russian/Soviet environment, which meant that for many, the primary language was Russian (the ethnic Estonian language was a second language),[1]
which in turn made them prone to apply Russian-language pronunciation rules on Estonian-language texts that they were to publicly read out in speeches.
The term thus relates to and derides the heavy Russian
accent of these people and their practical inability to speak Estonian. To alleviate this, they inevitably read their speeches from paper, and words for Estonians were mispronounced from eestlased to jeestlased [yeestlɑsed], serving as the origin of the epithet. This and the Russian accent were so noticeable, that some high-ranking politicians, such as Karl Vaino, avoided giving speeches in Estonian.[citation needed
]
While some of them tried to
Estonianize, such as Ivan Kebin, who renamed himself to Johannes Käbin and notably improved his command of Estonian, most others remained Russian by culture and language.[2]
Accent
Specifically, their application of Russian pronunciation rules and subsequent mispronunciation of the beginning
Э
is instead pronounced as plain "e", as in Russian, the correct word for Estonians is "эстонцы".
Party makeup
As
Central Committee had only about 27% of local Estonians.[2]
Another demographic distinction between native and "Russian" Estonians was age. In hopes of gaining more autonomy within the Soviet Union, many young Estonians joined CPE around the year 1956, while Yestonians were mostly of older generations.[2]
See also
- Estonianization
- Korenizatsiya
References
- ^ ISBN 0-929590-08-2, pp. 40, 41
- ^ ISBN 0520082281, p. 149