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Circumcision in
Estonia |
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Location and cultural history
Estonia (in Estonian: Eesti), officially the Republic of Estonia (Eesti Vabariik), is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia and to the east by both fresh water and land borders with the Russian Federation. Across the Baltic Sea lies Sweden to the west and Finland to the north. The territory of Estonia covers 45,227 km² (17,462 square miles) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. The Estonians are a Finnic people, and the sole official language, Estonian, is closely related to Finnish.
The present capital and largest city is Tallinn, which was known as Reval until 1918. With a population of 1.34 million, Estonia is one of the least populous members of the European Union, Eurozone and NATO. Today, Estonia has the highest GDP per person of any country that used to be part of the Soviet Union.
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Estonia - Location within the European Union |
Estonia and its immediate neighbours |
The land that is now Estonia was occupied at various times by the the Swedes (1629‒1721), by the Russian Czars (1721‒1917) and then by the Soviets (1917‒1918). There followed a declaration of independence, triggering the Estonian War of Independence (Estonian: Vabadussõda, literally “Freedom War”), which pitched the Estonians, with German and other outside support, against the Russians. The resulting Estonian victory in 1920 brought true independence, but also resulted in the surrender of some territory to Latvia.
Independence lasted a mere twenty years. On 16 June 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Estonia. In the face of overwhelming Soviet force, the Estonian government capitulated the following day in order to avoid bloodshed. In August of the same year, the Soviet Union declared the territory to be a Soviet Socialist Republic. Repressions followed. Many of the country’s political and intellectual leaders were killed or deported to remote areas of the USSR by the Soviet authorities in 1940‒1941.
Operation Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht invasion of eastern Europe in 1941, resulted in a Soviet occupation being replaced by a German one. Then, with the Red Army’s advance against the forces of Adolf Hitler in 1944, the Soviet occupation resumed. Many well-educated members of the population fled via Finland into neutral Sweden. Some of those who remained were deported to Russia, replaced by Soviet military personnel in what was declared a “Border Zone” for the duration of the Cold War.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, independence according to the 1920 model was resumed in 1991. Estonia subsequently joined both the European Union and NATO in 2004 and the Eurozone in 2011.
Thus, over many centuries, Estonia has been closely associated with countries and cultures that do not routinely circumcise. Unsurprisingly, circumcision rates in Estonia are low.
Correspondence received
Partial circumcision as an adult - not enough
I live in Estonia, Europe, where circumcision is a rarity.
Thanks to Circlist I have made my decision to get circumcised. Circumcision is not common here and nobody talks about it. Still I got interested in it when I found at age 18 that a tight foreskin is not normal. Then a urologist made a cut to my foreskin and removed my frenulum. The doctor was a woman and made me shy in this matter. She asked me if I’d like a full circumcision but I declined, something I now regret.
So now I have made my decision to get circumcised properly. Eight years have passed since the first little cut. Meanwhile I have wondered a lot how different my life would be if I’d been circumcised. Now I have decided that the main goal is to make me feel good about my penis. So I don’t care that someone might think badly of it - all will never agree on everything anyway.
But still I’m concerning that there are many men who are ashamed to talk about their wish, as was the case with me until I found this group. There is no reason to be afraid to ask somebody to make you feel better.
Acknowledgements
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