Trickster Magazine

You’re from Kohtla-Järve. What kind of childhood did you have there – any smells, images, or feelings that still linger?

I was born in Kohtla-Järve and spent my early childhood in a small village in Ida-Virumaa called Aseri. It was a town defined by a large ceramics factory — both my grandparents worked there; my grandmother drove clay in a ZIL truck, and my grandfather worked on the factory floor.

Growing up in Ida-Virumaa, the smell of oil shale was something I knew well from childhood, and to this day, when I drive toward Kohtla-Järve along a certain stretch of road, if the wind is right, I can still smell it.

However, this nostalgic smell often reminds me that the Soviet era saw nature as something to be bent to the will of humans, when even rivers started to flow in the direction of industrial demands. While technically impressive, this came with significant environmental damage and loss.

Over time, I understood that this wasn’t just a local issue but a global one, and it has certainly influenced how I think about nature and our responsibility toward it.

Over the past 20 years, as the environmental situation has worsened, I’ve come to see how vital it is to give nature more space. My parents’ generation found ways to dominate nature; my generation, as well as my children’s, must focus on restoring it. The damage caused over the past century, mostly unintended but driven by technological progress, now demands repair. This will take decades and be one of the most important challenges for future generations.

You started school in an Estonian-language class in Aseri before you were fully fluent. That must have taken some grit. Did your drive to succeed start at school – or was that something shaped at home?

When I started school, my Estonian was still pretty rough. I’d say until about the fourth grade it was far from perfect. There wasn’t any real systematic support back then, but I had the advantage of my mother speaking Estonian, so I could always ask her if I didn’t understand something.

My father's philosophy at the time was that an Estonian child could earn excellent grades from giving the standard amount of effort, however I would have to go the extra mile to achieve those same results. That way of thinking — to surpass others in substance and avoid mediocrity — came from home and has followed me ever since.

You speak Estonian, Russian, and English fluently, and your background spans multiple identities. Do you ever feel the tug of having to “choose” who you are? Or is that question itself the problem?

My family background is a kind of Soviet-era “compot” — one Estonian grandmother, one Belarusian grandfather, another Russian grandmother, and the fourth grandparent Jewish. I grew up in a Russian-speaking home with an Estonian-speaking mother, and I’ve never had any kind of identity crisis in terms of my origins. I don’t think people should ever have problems with things they can’t choose themselves.

That perspective has only deepened over the years. When I was in the UK studying nationalism and ethnicity, I saw how national identity is less a timeless essence and more the product of deliberate political and social processes. Across Europe, nations like to present themselves as ancient, but the modern sense of nationhood is mostly a 19th-century creation. The real game-changer was the rise of unified education systems, which standardized language, taught shared histories, and shaped citizens to see themselves as part of one community. Over time, that produced citizens who thought of themselves as part of a single national community, even if their parents or grandparents had very different local or linguistic identities.

The way national identities are built shows that shared belonging doesn’t require identical origins; it requires shared civic space, language, and values. When I returned from the UK, I tried to promote the concept of “Estonians with different home languages,” but it didn’t gain much acceptance from either side. Many local Russians weren’t ready to define themselves as Estonian, and many ethnic Estonians didn’t view it that way either. I still think we need a positive Estonian-Russian identity that allows people with a Russian-speaking background to see themselves as a full part of this society without carrying the weight of whatever happens across the border.

And now you and your wife are raising your own children bilingually — what does that look like in practice?

When our children were born, we knew we didn’t want the Russian language to disappear from the family. In many mixed-language households in Estonia, that’s exactly what tends to happen: the parents speak Estonian to each other, there is little effort to maintain Russian, and even if the children retain a few words, the language gradually fades away over time. We felt that wasn’t sensible. If you can give your child the opportunity to grow up with several languages, you should. Research clearly shows that multilingual children generally perform better and acquire new languages more easily later in life.

We looked into different approaches and found the key word to be discipline. We chose the “one parent, one language” method — from birth I have spoken to the children in Russian, my wife speaks to them in Estonian. The system has become so ingrained that if I happen to help out another child on the playground, I’ll automatically start speaking Russian to them — they often just stare back in confusion.

That isn’t to say it was easy from the get-go. When I was serving as minister and party leader, I was away from home a lot, and naturally the children’s Estonian skills surpassed their Russian. Though they understood my Russian, they would answer me in Estonian. In those moments, I myself often felt the pull to switch to Estonian, but knew once you give in, the whole system starts to fall apart. I equally had to keep reminding my own mother to speak Russian to them.

But once you push through that stage, it becomes almost intrinsic. Now we can sit at the the dinner table, my wife and I speaking Estonian to each other, the children speaking Russian to me and Estonian to her, and they switch between the two languages completely naturally, without a second thought.

You studied philosophy at Tartu and then Warwick – both times graduating cum laude. What was it about philosophy that got under your skin? What were you hoping to understand?

The choice was more or less accidental — when I applied to university, I put myself down to two specialities, economics and philosophy. My parents would probably have preferred economics, but I got into both and decided that philosophy just seemed more interesting. At the time I had no clear idea of what I would do with it.

At 24, you boldly mapped out a PhD by 28 – but the universe edited the script. Do you still think about that version of your life? In another timeline where you never entered politics, what would you be doing?

By the end of my master in philosophy, I understood that academic work in this field is a very solitary pursuit — you sit with your books, write your texts, and that’s your world. I realized I didn’t want that, so I used the chance to do a second master’s in comparative politics, focusing on international relations and nationalism. I haven’t really looked back since.

I would say it’s a philosophy of mine – once a choice is made, you must pursue that work or mission as well as possible. When it’s over, move on to the next one. Opportunities come and go, that’s why I think there’s little point in making very long-term plans about what you’ll be doing in 15 or 20 years.

Can you be a genuinely good person and a politician at the same time? If yes, how do you stay both? Why do you think politicians have such a bad reputation – and do they deserve it?

In a democratic society, politicians ultimately sell only one thing: trust. If someone makes a promise and fails to deliver, the problem isn’t only that the specific promise was broken, but that trust was lost. That’s why I try to promise less, especially when it’s clear from the outset that delivering on it won’t depend solely on me.

We almost always have coalition governments in Estonia's political system. That means it’s extremely rare for any politician to fully deliver on everything they promised. And that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a bad politician — the system is just built that way.

More broadly, democracy isn’t a system designed for quick, radical change. It’s built to find compromise, to search for the broadest common denominator. That works in some situations, but with long-term crises like climate change, people tend to underestimate risks that lie 50 years in the future. And when they’re facing immediate problems — like rising food prices — you can’t blame them for not prioritizing global temperatures decades from now.

Furthermore, it only takes one bad example to undermine the credibility of many. When I was in parliament, I saw clearly how it works: if just one politician misuses expense funds, it doesn’t stay an isolated case in the public mind, it becomes a stain that spreads to everyone. One person abuses the system, and people say, “look at them — they’re all the same.” That’s the tragic part of democratic politics: the mistakes of one taint the rest.

If you could get every single person in Tallinn to do one thing each day, what would it be?

I’d get people to leave the car at home — walk, cycle, or use public transport. That’s also a mindset I’ve tried to instill in my kids: from the first grade, they’ve travelled several kilometers to school either by bike or bus. We rarely drive them, and for them, that way of getting around is simply normal.

What’s your favorite corner of Tallinn? Or your favorite overlooked gem in Estonia?

In Tallinn – Linda Park. I like that it’s slightly rough around the edges, not too polished.

What’s your favorite way to switch off?

If you find yourself at the top-levels of politics in Estonia, people recognize you everywhere and your private space is already very limited. It’s hard to be fully out of the public eye — even if you’re just having lunch with your family or catching the bus home. When the kids were smaller, I remember going to a café in a small town and feeling every pair of eyes at the next tables on us: how the children behave, do they eat properly with a knife and fork, are they sitting nicely or running around the place and so on.

If I really want to switch off, then I would either have to go abroad, where no one knows me, or disappear into our summer house, where there’s barely anyone around.

Politics can be brutal. How do you stay sane?

Yes, it can be brutal, and most of the public attention is simply part of the job. When you’re in public life, people are curious not only about your work, but also about your life and the kind of person you are. The line between public and private life is not black and white, and for good reason — if someone’s private life is completely at odds with the image they project publicly, it’s natural for people to question their credibility and whether they can be trusted. In that sense, it’s logical that both sides are examined, because, as I’ve said before, in politics trust is the only real currency you have.

However, there are moments when it goes too far. In 2018, when I was party leader and in a heightened public conflict with EKRE, party-affiliated people wrote to me saying they knew which kindergarten my child attended.

As you’d expect, it wasn’t pleasant, as it not only crossed into my family’s life but also crossed a line that should never be touched. That’s why we have also been deliberate about keeping a firm boundary between my work and home — my wife decides for herself how visible she wants to be, and unlike many politicians, we don’t let the media through our front door.

Is there a quote or mantra that sticks with you when things get rough?

I used to play a lot of GTA in my childhood. There’s this moment where the main character walks up to a car, opens the door, whacks the owner of the car and throws him onto the street. He then gets behind the wheel and says: “I know it’s bad, but it could be worse.”

Do you believe in star signs – even a little?

No.

Interview by Paula-Stina Tasane
Photography by Silver Mikiver
Styling by Camilla Sundvor
Location Paavli Kultuurivabrik