Estonia requests part of Siberia from Russia as compensation for years of “Soviet occupation”

The report called “White Book” calculation the damage inflicted to the country by “German and Soviet occupation”, has been submitted to Estonian Parliament.
The document was composed by Estonian State Commission on Investigating Policy of Repression. The Commission was established 12 years ago, and it managed to calculate that Estonia lost 180,000 people (17-18 percent of its population) for the years of “occupation”, аnd the damage inflicted to the environment can be estimated as $4 billion.

Chairman of the Commission Vello Salo said that compensation of $250,000 for every perished person could be demanded from Russia as Germany paid this money to every Jew who was forced to work for Nazi Germany. Mr. Salo calculated the cost of one person for the country – about $77,000 per year, and provided that some Estonians were working for many years in Russian timber industry while serving their prison terms, Russia owes Estonia enormous amount of money. As Russia will not be able to pay  this sum of money in any case, Mr. Salo offered the option to solve the problem, “Let Russia give us Novosibirsk region (part of Eastern Siberia) to Estonia, so that we could take timber from the region for some years”.

As for $4 billion damage of polluting the environment in Estonia, this sum was calculated in the research how much money is needed to liquidate the “waste made by the Soviet Army”.

However, Vello Salo realizes that Russia will not pay this compensation. “Russia still has not apologized to us”, he said. “For this reason Estonia should make Russia confess the guilt of the Soviet Union for its occupation of Estonia”.

Meanwhile, in December 2002 Russian Parliament prepared the draft project of resolution “On assignment to Russian Auditing Chamber”. The deputies were going to request the Auding Chamber to calculate the cost of the property of the former USSR in the Baltic states.

There was Western defense border of the USSR in these areas, and the cost of the objects constructed there is equal to Russia’s debt. Nobody officially calculated the cost of these objects yet. Deputy Victor Alksnis said that the Soviet Union invested about $80-85 billion in Latvia and Lithuania and $40-45 billion in Estonia.

The stories of Molodezh Estonii newspaper were used in this article.