Lennart Meri, who died at the age of 76 on March 14, 2006, will be missed. Meri was Estonia's first post-soviet president and was a key figure in leading its charge to independence after he and his family returned from exile in Siberia. A charismatic leader, Meri will be remembered for his unyielding optimism and his strong intellect.
Meri spoke six languages fluently including English, authored books and wrote films. As a child, he used to transcribe whole radio broadcasts of Churchill speeches and lectures about the expanding universe from his homemade shortwave radio.
A pragmatic visionary, Meri often carried a screw driver around with him in the presidential palace so he could mend broken coffee makers and light fixtures. Likewise, before he was president, he believed that Estonia was fixable and foretold that one day it would free itself from Soviet rule. "In this sense, you could say that, in our family, there was never an Iron Curtain," he said. "The state of mind in my own family was that the existence of a totalitarian state was something very temporary."
Today, Estonia is light years from its broken past. As of Meri's death, the small nation of just 1.4mm people is the leading economic light of Europe having posted the second highest GDP in the Union of more than 10% during 2005. Estonia ranks 7th on the Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index (ahead of the US - Download wsj_article_jan0406.doc), and is considered to be the most wired nation on earth.
MICHAEL TARM, Associated Press Writer, has more...>>
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