Town Petitions To Join Estonia

IVANGOROD, Northwestern Russia -- For centuries, Narva and Ivangorod were practically one town on two sides of the Narva River, sharing a common infrastructure and forming one community. Now the Russian side is petitioning to reunite with the Estonian neighbors it lost to the breakup of the Soviet Union.


When both Estonia and Russia were part of the Soviet empire, conditions on either side of the river were pretty much the same. But freedom has plunged many towns across Russia into poverty and squalor, and Ivangorod is one of them.


Glancing across the border at the relative prosperity of their Estonian neighbors, some 500 Ivangorod residents have sent President Boris Yeltsin a petition asking him to turn back the clock and reunite the two towns. Any visitor to the twin towns would have little difficulty understanding Yury Gordeyev, author of the petition. Ivangorod is like many small provincial Russian villages: thoroughly depressing.


The town of 12,000 souls consists of one long, bleak road lined with low apartment blocks and surrounded by fields. The center of town is marked only by an ugly Soviet-style hotel, the Knight, and a moribund building site where a house stands, half-finished, next to a metal hangar.


No one works on the site. Two young men sit idly on a pile of logs in front of the hangar, watching teenage girls in cheap fluorescent dresses wander by and middle-aged women hurry along.


Narva is cleaner, cheerier and more attractive than Ivangorod. Neat rows of flowers adorn grassy verges, boutiques dot the streets and people are noticeably more relaxed than in Russia. Local government representatives remind one a little of the Dutch with their airy offices and chatty manners.


The population of 75,000 is dominated by non-Estonians: Russians make up 27 percent and Belarussians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians 43 percent. Estonians make up only 30 percent.


On the other side of the river, city officials estimate that a maximum of 12 Estonian families live in Ivangorod. Russians in Narva can get social security, health care and other benefits just as Estonians can, but do not get the full pension, an average 1,200 kroons, or $86 a month. Non-Estonians can vote in local, but not federal, elections.


But the people who live in Ivangorod are mostly skeptical about the possibility of seceding to Estonia. Mikhail, 37, who did not wish to give his last name, said there were only about 29 signatures -- not 500 -- on the petition.


"It's silly. [Gordeyev] is doing this to bring attention to Ivangorod. He loves scandal. He's not a bad man, he's just that type," he said of Gordeyev, an out-of-work sailor, who was at his dacha and could not be contacted. Mikhail said he did not see Estonia as the land of dreams by any means. "They don't live that well in Estonia, either. It's better than here, but it's still hard," he said.


Others felt similarly. They knew Estonia was a nicer place to live, but also that it wasn't so easy to find jobs there. Many people on both sides of the border have relatives over the river. Though it is easy to visit -- relatives get special border passes allowing them to walk over a footbridge -- it is not possible to apply for citizenship to live with family members.


"I would be very happy if the towns became one because I have a lot of relatives here who can't live in Estonia," said Yevgenia Ivanova, an 18-year-old economics student, who was in Ivangorod visiting her grandmother.


Ivangorod's links with Narva have become looser and looser as the years passed. All that is left of the towns' common infrastructure is the water supply, but this link has caused serious problems.


Recently Narva cut off Ivangorod's water supply for 24 hours to protest Ivangorod's debt of 5 million kroons, or $360,000.


"Of course panic started up in the city straight after they turned it off," said Tatyana Dyachkova, a deputy mayor in the Ivangorod administration. Water is now available in different parts of town at different times of the day, she said. In the small, bare, nondescript building that houses the local government, water is supplied only to one floor. "The town has none of its own money [to pay its water debts], and the Leningrad region does not have the means to pay up, either," she said.


Another deputy mayor of Ivangorod, Antonina Kostitsina, was fired last Friday over the water crisis, according to Dyachkova. Interestingly, Kostitsina earlier voiced full support for the petition to reunite Ivangorod and Narva.


"This is a political action so that the government of the Russian Federation turns its attention to a town that has been completely forgotten," Kostitsina told the local news agency ETA, in remarks reported by Reuters.


Dyachkova said she could not speak for Kostitsina, but speaking for the mayor's office, she condemned the petition.


"I have not heard about what she [Kostitsina] said ... To talk today about seceding to Estonia, about leaving Russia, is indecent," she said. "It's a provocation, wouldn't you say? It's a violation of the sovereignty of the country. It's a second Chechnya."


She said the administration had even written to the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the KGB's successor, about Gordeyev, who she claims is an ex-convict. She maintained Narva was not all it seemed. "In Narva, of course, everything is beautiful, clean and well-kept, but they have no fewer problems than we do," she said.


It isn't ideal for Alla Trubayeva, 53, who was wheeling her bicycle over the border to Ivangorod on Tuesday afternoon. Trubayeva said she would like to move to Narva, but since she worked for some years in southern Russia she would not qualify for an Estonian pension.


"Why should I live in a strange land where nobody wants me?" she said.


Not surprisingly, the Narva administration does not share Ivangorod's wish for unification. City leaders say it would weigh down their social security and pension bill without bringing any visible benefit to Estonia.


"Seventeen thousand people would immediately have to become Estonian citizens without any conditions, and in Estonia, that sort of thing isn't done," said City Secretary Ants Liimets.


The Estonian Foreign Ministry also distances itself from Ivangorod.


"We consider whatever happened or happens in Ivangorod to be a Russian domestic matter," press spokesman Ehtel Halliste said in a telephone interview.


But some elderly Estonians felt that history should be minded. "It is not right that they cut the river in two," said Lilia, 71, a pensioner who used to work in a church.


"Many people have relatives who are buried in Russia and cannot go there [without a visa]. There is a large cemetery there," added her friend Elsa, 66, a retired teacher.


Younger people were more indifferent than anything else.


"It's just a fantasy," said Sveta Vilenson, 35, an Estonian waitress, of Gordeyev's letter. "Ivangorod is just a Russian city. [Estonia] is another country."


"Let them unite the cities," said Russian Lyudmila Svyatinskaya, 43, who works in a bank. "I have no links with Ivangorod -- I have not been there for years. People say there is nothing to do there, that it's completely dead."