When it comes to Russian-Estonian bilateral relations and the political use of history, one cannot begin before examining the Soviet occupations in Estonia and how both parties perceive this story. The end of the Cold War, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the re-emergence of pre-communist and pre-Soviet conflicts, as Karlsson (nd) shows, have certainly stimulated historical consciousness since 1990. After the collapse of the Russian population of the Soviet Union faced a global identity crisis (Bagger, 2007, p. 109) and, like Estonia, it also began to search for its identity and roots. In the public domain, the crisis gave rise to a lively debate that revolved largely around the nation's past which, according to Scherrer (cited in Bagger, 2007), was a wave of nostalgia, called "the desire for history” and that it was in fact a “cult” of the past. Furthermore, Scherrer also found that Putin, more clearly than Yeltsin, subsequently emphasized the tradition of a powerful state and abandoned his predecessor's anti-communist stance. The Soviet national anthem was reintroduced with new text and the army banner became red again. Instead of letting the Soviet period be a cul-de-sac that takes it away from the main path of Russian history, Putin sought to place this period within a power political continuum, focusing on its positive aspects – first of all, the heroic achievements of the “Soviet Union”. Great Patriotic War” (p. 115). It is a well-known fact that Estonia has a completely different understanding of the Soviet era and struggles to find anything positive about that era. As Estonia sees that the Soviet Union forcibly occupied and annexed Estonia,...... middle of paper...... and therefore, although the border treaty is signed, Russia refuses to ratify it. One of the latest issues concerns the Russian-German gas pipeline project, which Estonian officials and their Lithuanian counterparts have criticized, and which the Poles even initially called a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Latvian criticism in this matter was silenced (p. 50). Furthermore, during the 20 years of regained independence, there has been no clear change in the coalition and opposition parties in Estonia. Center-right parties have always been in power, with the sole exception of 1995. Likewise, the annual commemoration of Estonian soldiers who fought in the German army during World War II by Estonian nationalists, as well as political of citizenship and the recent educational reform concerning Russian minorities, continue to fuel tensions between Russia and Estonia.