BALTLANTIS: What Lithuanians speak about Estonians  

BALTLANTIS announces, Lithuanians find Estonians to be "clever self-promoters":

Our staff sociologist, Vello Vikerkaar, has been interviewing Lithuanians about what they think of Estonians. While answers vary, he has arrived at one major conclusion.

Hats off to the Estonians, say the Lithuanians. "They took a cyberattack and turned it into a NATO cyber defense center. Amazing." Many I interviewed admitted to having long admired Estonians' ability to pull together as a nation and promote themselves positively in the western press. Lithuanians only wish they could do it themselves.

Small countries, much like communities like universities, tend to have communal egos. "I say you're brilliant, you say I'm brilliant, and we're all brilliant together," said one Lithuanian professor, attributing the quote to novelist Don Delillo. Estonia exploits that communal ego and tends to whip itself into a frenzy (the expat's sad song: "Being Estonian is a full-time job"), where, in certain respects, it becomes a nation absorbed in self-congratulation, yet one who puts this to work for itself.

Where else would the world's 150th-ranked (or somewhere thereabouts) tennis player get so much press? (One recent angle: A recent match against the world's number two racket was "closer than it appeared" and appeared five nights running on the evening news.) Where else in the world does almost every local book or movie get a positive review? Where else in the world do glossy business magazines contain only suck-up profiles of the country's leading businessmen? (Okay, probably Venezuela.) It's not entirely true that Estonians are engaged only in self-congratulation (Estonians are also know for eating their young), but most foreigners who learn the language and read the papers tend to shake their heads at just how brilliant everything is. The point is this: the perception abroad is that Estonians are all pulling together.

Those I talked to said they believed Lithuanians spent too much time engaged in putting each other down, and suggested the Estonian model might be more useful. We of course have something to learn from the "gariachi estonski parni" [hot-blooded Estonian guys], noted a leading businessman.