The newly formed Russian Baltic Party of Estonia plans to create Estonia's first Baltic Russian history museum next fall as part of its platform to improve life for Estonia's Russian minorities, said party board member Viktor Lanberg.

RBPE formed last June as a splinter of the Russian-speaking People's Trust party. One of its major cultural projects includes a museum intended to preserve Russian culture in the Baltics and improve attitudes toward ethnic Russians living in Estonia, Lanberg said. Lanberg said he hopes the museum, which will be housed in Tallinn, will help raise awareness that Russians were contributing members of the Baltics long before the great influx of Soviet Russians led to tensions between the two cultures. "It is politically not fair, and historically not right to think that the history of Russians in the Baltics started in the 1940s," said Lanberg, adding that Russian immigrant groups were important contributors to Estonian culture as far back as the 13th century - long before Soviet Russification policies increased the Russian population of Estonia to nearly 40 percent. Lanberg said the party, which now has 800 members, will try to find funding for the museum from next year's budget. If Parliament approves the funding, the museum will house historical documents, photos and artifacts from as far back as the 13th century. Much of the museum's content will be contributed by archivist Alexander Dormidontov, whose photo collection of Baltic-Russian culture has traveled throughout Estonia and was on display at Parliament last spring. Dormidontov, who will be a permanent board member of the museum, said he wanted to find a better way to preserve what he and others have collected as well as give ethnic Estonians and Russians another perspective on the country's history.