The cleaning lady's Volga

Our cleaning lady is a 74-year old lady, who loves to talk about theater and politics. Most of my coworkers think that she's a little kooky, but I generally try to keep up with her because some of the stuff she says is quite interesting. Yesterday I had a very intense conversation with her, and it got me thinking.

The topic of discussion was about the current state of Estonia and Estonian politics. She embarked on a long, bitter rant, in which she expressed her frustrations about the government in charge and the little money she is seeing despite her lifelong work and efforts. She seemed particularly passionate about the topic of kroon devaluation and inflation and drew parallels to the time when Estonia was switching over from the ruble to the kroon. Apparently, she had saved up a bunch of money, enough to afford a Volga, but then with the coming of the kroon, all of her savings were completely annihilated and she was left virtually broke.

As I asked my parents about the "devaluation", I found out that during the ruble->kroon process, people could only hand in up to 12500 rubles, to get 125 kroons (per person). It didn't matter how much money you had - after the currency exchange, you would only have 125 kroons. And for 125 kroons, you wouldn't be able to buy a Volga.

For those of you who don't know, during the last elections, the corrupt and decaying left-wing Central party was replaced by the ultra-radical, center-right Reform party. Since elections, their activity has been focused on rapid change and growth. Their first controversial move involved removing a Russian war memorial, which sparked deadly street riots in Tallinn.

Here's to give you an idea of what was going on here:


After the removal of the memorial, our prime minister's ratings were at their highest ever. In fact, the majority of Estonians seemed to approve of the Reform party's mission. They even got me - who could resist their promise of lowered taxes, longer parental leaves, higher maternal wages (100% for 1.5 years!)! Well, the retired people could.

Out of all the people here, I feel the most pity for the retired people. It hurts to think about what they are dealing with, and to see 70-80-year old people brooming the streets and doing low-end jobs. The reason for that is that the retired people have nowhere near enough money to pay for quality living and food, so they have to work. And so we have a 74-year old cleaning lady coming in every Tuesday and Thursday so that she can afford a theater visit every now and then. She does not believe that moving the statue was the right thing and wishes that the problem would have been solved more discreetly.

The economic situation in Estonia isn't looking good.
Annual inflation in Estonia reached 5.7 percent in August, with an even loftier rise coming up next year, due to a 23% increase in the cost of electricity. The price of butter recently jumped from 11 kroons to 18 kroons. Why? The local butter producers decided that they weren't making enough profit, pulled their butter products from the market and started exporting it. As consumers freaked out, they immediately brought the product back and gave it a new price tag.

In Estonia, the average retirement pension is 3769 kroons as of June 2007. That is equivalent to 240 euros. Mind you, it's a 20 % increase compared to 2006, but it's still a very small amount of money in a country where you pay over an euro for 200 grams of butter and the cheapest bachelor's apartment rents out for 300 euros.

The average monthly pension in Finland was 1094 euros in 1995. However, anybody who will take a boat from Tallinn to Helsinki will notice that the prices aren't that different. Things might be a little more expensive, but the prices of basic food items are the same. Based on what I hear, Tallinn's real estate prices have caught up as well. So how are Estonian retired people even surviving?

Some of them have subsidized housing, I guess. My parents own their own house and run a family business. The healthy ones work.

But man, this system really sucks! No wonder so many retired people are completely depressed and devastated. If I had my eye on one of those swanky Volgas and all my savings were traded in for 125 miserable kroons (the equivalent of, say, 10 beers or a kilo of meat these days)!!!??? With the current inflation rates, it doesn't look like my future is going to be any brighter either...

I'm glad we have the opportunity to step outside this society for a while, but this whole situation is quite upsetting. How about learning from others, coming to conclusions, caring for anything other than your fancy car sitting in front of the Parliament?