Marina Kaas

Member of the initiative group of the EVEA
Member of the Board 1988-1991,
Director of International Co-Operation 1991-1996
Member of the Council since 1999
Vice President 2003-2009
President since 2009

In 1986, being a post-graduate student of the Tartu University, I wrote a research thesis on small entrepreneurship of North-Europe (and its potential in the foreign trade of the USSR). In connection with the thesis, I could take a practical training in Sweden. It was there I discovered for myself the complexity of the relationship between a democratic state and private entrepreneurs, became acquainted with numerous associations of entrepreneurs, support organizations, state aid programmes, acts that encourage forming new businesses etc. On my return, I was very sorry I had no chance to put such exciting experience into practice at home. However, then I heard of forming small state-owned enterprises in light industry and construction business and decided to find the people who were involved in it. Therefore, I met Hardo Aasmäe, Kersti Kraas, Oleg Zavjalov, Igor Jakobson and many others. 1987-1988 the small business enterprises were formed in masses. In addition to common interests, common proble started to arise, the biggest of which was envy from the side of large state parent companies, which started to lose their more enterprising and economically thinking employees who left for new businesses. During a conversation on the same topic I told a colleague - I think it was Mr Zavjalov – how Swedish small entrepreneurs fought for their interests. It was only natural to come across the idea of our entrepreneurs getting organized, as well. The timing was perfect: there were enough new enterprises, their leaders were making future prospects, there was real risk of a forced liquidation under the pressure of large-scale industry, while “perestroika” and economic experiments in Estonia allowed us to evade a number of stagnation period prohibitions. Therefore, we assembled an initiative group, established a programme for forming an Estonian association of SME’s, i.e. the EVEA, and started to prepare for a founding assembly. Most proble were legal: there was no form of a legal person appropriate for a voluntary association of enterprises. An unexpected solution came from Moscow in the form of a sequent Mikhail Gorbachev´s reform, which allowed the enterprises of the USSR to form “Associations of business co-operation with foreign countries.” Although we had planned something different from developing foreign trade, we could use the label to present the EVEA. I was given an assignment to compile a project of the statutes of the EVEA. By the way, the first statutes of the EVEA – which we had to check with many officials to get their acceptance - were in the Russian language and it was translated into Estonian only before the start of the assembly.

At the same time, I was present at the establishing of one of the first joint ventures of Estonia (AS Baltlink, which still functions), and I constantly got additional information on small enterprises, including the fact that in the August of 1988 there was going to take place an international congress of small businesses in Helsinki. We regarded this as a perfect opportunity to obtain additional knowledge and connections and, scraping up the foreign currency for the participation fee and the accommodation from here and there, we made for Helsinki with Oleg Zavjalov and Hardo Aasmäe, taking along a publication in format A4: “EVEA is Coming!” We were received with unforgettable curiosity and sympathy, especially by the president of the International Council of Small Business, who was American and who regarded all of us as Russians. In two days we made friends all over the world, they promised to send us their organizations´ materials and give us every kind of advice, invited us to visit them, and wished to be photographed with us. The congress encouraged us a lot and we were convinced that we had chosen the right path.

The autumn was spent in the last preparations for founding the EVEA and on 3 December 1988 the founding assembly took place. But these events will be described by Riivo Sinijärv in his memories. For me, the EVEA became still more important in 1991 when it became obvious that the independence of Estonia would surely arrive and our activity became so intense that Vello Vallaste, the Managing Director and his secretary, who were both working on part-time basis, had to be found additional workforce. At the same time I was just starting to change my job and I offered myself to be switched from the Board to the Executive Management, where I started to work as the Director of International Co-Operation. Concurrently, Harry Saar started to work as the Membership Director. We had two small roo on the top floor of the library of the Estonian Academy of Sciences and our office machines consisted in a couple of telephones and a mechanical typewriter brought from somebody’s home. The first meeting with a sister organization in Finland resulted in a huge second-hand fax machine which I had to carry as hand baggage all the way from Helsinki to the EVEA office in Tallinn. Today it may sound strange but then it was a remarkable achievement, the machine had been terribly expensive when it was new and for us it was basically the only tool for having documentary communications with the outer world as one could not trust the post service of the USSR. The fax enabled us to communicate comfortably within Estonia, as well. E-mail facility was known only to the scientists of the Institute of Cybernetics at that time. Our office life continued to be very ascetic. A couple of years later the Swedish small entrepreneurs from the organization of “Företagarna” sent us two containers of second-hand office machines that the EVEA distributed to its members. From there we got our first xerocopier (that unfortunately was stolen from us two or three months later). Quite a few EVEA members got a telephone, a typewriter, a fax, even a fridge, office furniture, or curtains thanks to the charity action. So much about the “early capitalism” in the Republic of Estonia.

One of the most important memories is surely drawing up the first draft of an act on small enterprise where we made use of my fresh experience of studying in the United States of America. With the aid of the Government of the USA we launched an extensive project of developing small businesses “Ettevõtja Hääl” (“The Voice of The Small Entrepreneur”), initiated establishing the National Small Business Credit Fund, establishing the regional representative offices of the EVEA in Tartu (the first representative being Alar Kolk), in Pärnu and in Narva; setting up a network of foreign representatives of the EVEA (Finland – Mati Lepre, Sweden – Alar Streimann, Russia – Aarne Pärnpuu, the UK – Liili-Ann Sinijärv). Thanks to the US aid project, we could hire top professionals: so did the ex-Chairman of the Supreme Court Jaak Kirikal become the EVEA Director of Law and Malle Lind who had worked in the newspaper Äripäev became our press representative. Special attention was paid to communicating with the members and serving them, this section was long managed by Rein and Maie Sillamaa. When the volume of international projects increased, Tiiu-Tatjana Reinbusch joined our team. In the spring of 1992, the EVEA got a full-time salaried managing director – Arne Sõna. The present Adviser on Foreign Relations to the Estonian Employers´ Confederation Eve Päärendson started as a secretary and the present journalist of the newspaper Postimees Erki Erilaid got lots of experience at the EVEA. In 1996 the EVEA Managing Board changed completely and then I finally tried to test my luck as a private entrepreneur. In 1999 I came back to the EVEA, first as a rank-and-file member, but I yielded to the temptation to be invited back to the leadership. This means a lot hard and complimentary work but I do not complain because the question “Is the EVEA necessary?” does not exist for me for a long time already.