Why Estonia? The 30-Year Journey from the USSR to e-Estonia

Introduction

Estonia–a nation of medieval cities, ancient forests, and wetlands in the Northeast of Europe on the coast of the Baltic Sea–is home to less than 1.5 million people. While small, Estonia has managed to do big things in the digital sphere. We are an e-state and proud of it. Estonia has long had ID-cards and digital voting, online tax declaration and a large number of tech-related startups. 

But that has not always been the case. The first computer arrived in Estonia in 1959, but at the time we regained our independence in the early 1990s, we had a long way to go to becoming a leading digital nation. There is no one single reason that led to Estonia’s digital success, but rather a collection of decisions made by the right people at the right time that started the digital snowball that is still rolling to this day.

This exhibition is based on a temporary exhibition Why Estonia?  that was displayed in Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom from 2021-2023. Vabamu is a museum in Tallinn, focused on telling the story of totalitarian regimes–Soviet Union and Nazi Germany–and Estonia’s struggle for independence, but also about the power and fragility of freedom. For some time now, telling the story of the Estonian digital state has also been a part of what we do. 

Individual & the State

In many comparisons, Estonia’s e-state is at the global forefront. What sets us up is that we have a fully functional e-state that officials, entrepreneurs and citizens use on a daily basis, saving everyone time and money.

Estonians can give digital signatures, vote via the internet on local, state and EU elections and access their medical records online. Taxes are declared and businesses set up in a fast and efficient manner via e-state solutions. Estonian digital services are available to foreigners through a system of e-residency, allowing non-residents to start and manage companies from anywhere, entirely online.

The backbone of the Estonian e-state is the X-road: an interoperability network securely connecting various public and private sector organizations. Via the X-road, data is only requested from the citizen once, but shared between authorized parties, thus avoiding excessive paperwork. For example, the police can access data from the health system and vice versa. At the same time, the X-road is protected by strict security measures to prevent any misuse of data by either third parties or the interlinked organizations themselves.

Challenges to e-Estonia

In 2007, a Soviet-era bronze statue of a soldier, and the remains of Soviet soldiers buried beneath it, were moved from a prominent street corner in Tallinn to a military cemetery. This was followed by days of pro-Russian rioting and a wave of cyber-attacks on Estonia’s banking, media, and government websites, overloading their servers with junk traffic and causing severe Denial of Service (DoS) issues. 

While direct involvement of the Russian state was never proven these attacks are widely considered the first in the world to have been waged –or at the very least supported–by one country against another. As a countermeasure to this new type of warfare, the Estonian Cyber Defence League was established the following year.   

In 2022, Estonia suffered an unprecedented number of cyber attacks and placed 7th in DoS cyberattacks globally. However, in that same year Estonia ranked as the 3rd most cyber-secure country in the world. Despite a large volume of threats, Estonia has been largely successful in fending them off. 

There have also been challenges to e-Estonia from within the country. During the most recent 2023 election, the accuracy of Estonia’s e-voting software was called into question by Estonia’s far-right party EKRE. However, an investigation by the National Electoral Committee determined their claims to be unfounded. EKRE had led the election in in-person votes (which tends to include more rural and conservative voters), but fell behind during the e-vote count, naturally incentivizing EKRE to question the e-voting system’s integrity. EKRE brought similar complaints to the Supreme Court during Estonia’s 2019 elections, but they were also dismissed. 

Scalability

The Estonian digital state is not a case of Estonian exceptionalism nor are such solutions only possible in small countries. Digital solutions are implemented on either municipal or state level all over the world–in many cases with help and advice from Estonian organizations such as the Estonian e-Governance Academy.

Ukraine

The Estonian e-Governance Academy has supported Ukraine in implementing digital services through their EGOV4UKRAINE project. Since most Ukrainians have access to the internet through their phones, the Ukrainian system of digitalization is based on smartphones, rather than the Estonian computer-based system, introduced much earlier. The Ukrainian app Diia is used to access digital documents such as ID (the app provides the world’s first digital passport) and student cards, but since Russia’s full-scale invasion has also been used to report the movement of Russian troops.  

Featured Objects

Radio “Radiotehnika, Riga RT-755”, 1951
electronic device

Before the internet, radio connected the world and provided those in totalitarian regimes a glimpse of the outside world. For many Estonians during the Soviet occupation, foreign radio stations were the only way of knowing what is going on behind the iron curtain. Under Stalin, listening to networks such as the Voice of America or Finnish radio stations was enough to send you to Gulag. 

While large scale terror subsided after Stalin’s death, foreign radio stations remained an illegal and extremely popular source of information, entertainment and hope. The owner of this radio remembers that in order to listen to foreign radio you only needed a piece of electric wire: one end was attached to the radio and another fixed to a curtain rod, creating a makeshift antennae. 

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

School computer Juku, c. 1980s
electronic device

By 1985 it was widely accepted in Soviet Estonia that computer classes should become a part of school curriculum. The schools needed adequate teachers, teaching materials and critically also computers. The answer was Juku, a school computer built in Estonia.

Everything started out great and the first prototype Juku was created by 1986. However, the production of the computers lagged as the Soviet electronics industry was unable to supply components in sufficient quantity or quality. In these conditions, some computer enthusiasts grew tired of waiting and built their own bootleg Jukus from stolen or borrowed parts combined with other available materials.

The arrival of the official Jukus in the school year of 1989/1990 was a landmark event despite the fact that the computers, which were outdated from the beginning, were now hopelessly obsolete compared to Western equivalents. 

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

Cow feeding systems, c. late 1970s
electronic devices

In the late 1970s, scientists at the testing laboratory of what was then the Estonian Agricultural University constructed a system that controlled a cowshed conveyor, issuing each of the animals with their own portion of feed. Here you can see the fully intact ‘Pronorm’ and ‘Konverter’ devices built by dairy scientist and technologist Väino Poikalainen from parts he had to hand. 

Within a few years the system was operating wirelessly: the cows could wander up to the feed stalls whenever they liked, whereupon a signal from the transmitter around their neck would inform the computer which animal it was dealing with and the type and amount of feed to provide. It was the first and possibly only system of its kind in the Soviet Union. Sadly, none of the devices used in the wireless system are known to still exist.

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

Urmas Haud

Dissertation [written in Apple II+], 1984
paper document

This doctoral thesis is likely the first dissertation in the Soviet Union to ever be written on a computer. Astrophysicist Urmas Haud penned it on the Apple II+ computer installed at Tõravere Observatory, which first required him to write the software that would allow him to enter Russian text and physic formulas on the machine. 

However, the dissertation was returned to him from Moscow marked ‘Unsuitable’, as it wasn’t in line with official requirements: it had to be composed on a typewriter, not printed out from a computer. Thankfully, when Haud recalibrated his work and submitted it to Moscow a second time, he was awarded his doctorate.

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

Wifi.ee sign and base station, 2002
mixed media

The website WiFi.ee went online in Estonia in March 2002 and launched a movement that gained the country attention and recognition around the world. It made the Internet freely available (in every sense of the word) in many public places and sparked a plan to cover the entirety of Estonia – or at least its biggest towns and cities – with free, high-speed, wireless Internet.

Within a month there were 10 or so public Internet zones in the country; a couple of months later, hundreds of them. Questions were even asked as to whether mobile data networks like 3G even needed building.

Cafés, hotels and even parks were filled with people nursing laptops, and during the years that followed, journalists all over the world wrote about this country called Estonia where everyone and everything was covered by free, high-speed WiFi. It remains an important aspect of the reputation e-Estonia enjoys to this day. 

This is what a typical WiFi access point looked like in the early 2000s. This particular model was used in a Statoil petrol station.

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

Imre Perli’s database, c. 1990s 
compact disk

In the mid-1990s, something strange started doing the rounds in Estonia: a super-database cobbled together from the databases of state agencies and private companies which, after the man who put it together, came to be known as the Perli database.

The database was the first – and to date only – data breach on such a scale in Estonia’s history. It not only included people’s names, ID codes, home addresses and telephone numbers, but also certain details from their phone and criminal records and about their bank loans. The breach also involved car registration and ownership data, details of traffic offences, and the names of those wanted by the police.

The fact that gathering this disparate information together in one place was even possible served as impetus for the creation of the X-Road, which was designed to rule out the rise of super-databases and make sure that every data enquiry would leave a trace. Perli, whose love of expensive cars was just part of the luxurious lifestyle he pursued, was killed in spring 2000 when police raided a farm in Rapla County on which it was alleged that drugs were being manufactured.

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

Destroyed i-voting hard drives, CDs, and i-voting key , c. 2000s 
strips of plastic and aluminum

How can i-votes be collected and counted so that they’re both anonymous and fraud-proof? To ensure both, Estonia developed a technically complex process that’s been perfected over the years. All votes are encrypted and collected on the hard drive of a server. Once the results of the election have been confirmed, the hard drives are destroyed–because as technology develops, there’s a chance that years down the line we’ll find ourselves in a situation where past votes can be cracked open, revealing how people voted. The CDs that were once used to deliver i-votes from the server to the Electoral Committee were also destroyed. Today CDs are no longer used–they’ve been superseded by other forms of technology. Every member of the Electoral Committee has part of a key, and only when they put all the parts together can they reveal the results of the i-voting.

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

Public hash of Estonia’s first digital signature, c. 2000s 
etched glass

The first ever digital signatures were given in Estonia on October 7, 2002 when the mayors of Tallinn and Tartu, Edgar Savisaar and Andrus Ansip, signed a bilateral agreement on cooperation in the field of IT. This breakthrough moment was also put in glass form: here you may see the public key used to provide the signatures. It’s also a trophy of sorts awarded by the Information System Authority for achievements of special merit.

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

E-state advertising box, 2000
cardboard

As the e-state grew in popularity at the turn of the century and more and more prominent foreign guests descended on Estonia to marvel at it, the need arose for a souvenir or memento that could be presented to visiting delegations. 

The unique result, devised by Linnar Viik in 2000 and then designed by Andrus Kõresaar, was a washing powder box. While colourful and fun, it also carried a deeper message: that the e-state should be as readily available to people as ordinary goods like washing powder, and that governments should therefore communicate using consumer symbols and the archetypes of advertising graphics. Washing powder also worked perfectly as a metaphor: Estonia was doing something so innovative that people needed to wash their brains clean of everything they’d understood up to that point in order to grasp it.

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

Estonia in Silicon Valley

Estonia, often heralded as the “Silicon Valley of Europe,” has emerged as a formidable force in the global tech industry. It is thus no surprise that Estonian tech companies have established a significant presence in the Silicon Valley, contributing to the region’s renowned culture of innovation.

One prominent example is Bikeep, a leader in smart bike parking solutions. In partnership with Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Bikeep has introduced secure, high-tech bike racks at strategic San Francisco Bay Area locations, including the 16th Street Station.

Another key player is Planet OS, a company that made significant strides in data analytics for environmental monitoring before being acquired by Intertrust. 

Veriff, headquartered in Tallinn, stands out in Estonia’s tech landscape. Specializing in identity verification solutions, Veriff has gained international acclaim after going through Y Combinator (YC), one of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious startup accelerators. 

Wise (formerly TransferWise), co-founded by Estonian entrepreneurs, has revolutionized international money transfers, achieving unicorn status with a valuation exceeding $10 billion.

Bolt, another Estonian success story, has rapidly expanded its ride-sharing and micromobility services, becoming a major competitor in the global market.

Pipedrive, a sales CRM platform, has gained a strong foothold in Silicon Valley, offering innovative solutions for businesses worldwide.

Priidu Zilmer [shirt design] 

Skype t-shirt, 2023 
textile 

Courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom.

Bikeep

Bikeep smart lockers at SF Fitness SoMa, San Francisco, N.D. 
digital photograph

Courtesy of Bikeep. 

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