If you found yourself on this page, then you are pretty much clueless about what is Estonia. In this article, we will try to briefly give you all the basic information about the country and just a little bit more to go along. Most people, when getting acquainted with Estonia for the first time, can’t help but being utterly surprised. Why is that? Well, Estonia is not what you would expect it to be.
Let’s start with some basic facts.
Estonia is a small country, which lies between Scandinavia Baltics and Russia with a population of 1.3 million people. The native people of Estonia are called Estonians. They speak Estonian language which is very similar to Finnish. For 1000 years, the Estonian people lived under the dominance of Danes, Swedes, Germans and Russians. The country became free first in 1920, which was right after the Russian Revolution. During the Second World War Estonia unwillingly became a part of the Molotov Ribbentrop’s pact, which basically divided the Eastern Europe between the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. After the Second World War, Estonia became a part of the Soviet world. Thanks to its geographical position, it was less influenced by the Iron Curtain than any other Soviet state. In year 1991, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Estonia held a referendum the result of which was the country’s re-gaining of its independence.
The impressive side of Estonia
In many ways, this little country is quite unique. After it became a non-Soviet state, Estonia placed a lot of emphasis on developing its IT infrastructure. The result of that experiment exceeded all expectations. It became the first country in the world to incorporate electronic elections. Meaning, no matter where the citizens are geographically, they can still participate in voting process. The system, which allows such a thing to work, is called the digital signature – another clever Estonian invention. The digital signature implies, that every document on your computer can be signed electronically, after which it would be as valid as a real signature on a real piece of paper. As a result, the Estonian citizens can now access all of their medical records, open and run a company or simply do their taxes online, no matter where they are geographically.
A start-up country
After having a huge success with all these systems, Estonia now extends all of its IT solutions to foreign citizens to provide a modern day offshore zone in Scandinavia. As of 2015, virtually everybody can open a company, a bank account or even an account in the medical system, without having the dull bureaucracy waving them down. This is called E-residency and in the period of next five years Estonia expects to have 10 million more virtual residents in addition to 1.3 million real ones.
Estonia was also the birthplace of Skype and many interesting start-ups that now seem to be taking over the world in their own way. The country has a very high percentage of people with a university degree in engineering and science which no doubt contributed to the massive success of the country.
So, you are still interested in Estonia or even planning to visit it – check out our website. Here, you will find a lot of useful information about everything the country has to offer.