By Sally B. Donnelly

Estonians eye Russia as cautiously as the citizens of Pompeii regard Vesuvius: They worry when the rumblings grow louder. The Russian presidential campaign is now producing just such troubling tremors. Both Boris Yeltsin and Gennadi Zyuganov-playing to nationalist feelings-are calling for a re-integration of the USSR along with Russia's revival as a "great power." And Estonia and its two Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania lie on the crater's edge of this volcanic dream; no corner of the former Soviet Union is more worried about the election in June. Moscow refuses to accept the 1920 Tartu treaty that the Bolshevik government signed with the then independent Estonia. Moscow claims instead that Estonia "voluntarily" joined the U.S.S.R. Envy is another factor in Russian-Estonian relations. In its five years of independence, Estonia has become the most dynamic economy in central Europe. Deterred by Moscow's high tariff barriers and strict customs regulations, the country reoriented its trade policy from east to west-to Tallinn's profit;

ABOVE: Russians patrol the Estonian boarder
Jeremy Nicholl for TIME