Foreign Scholar Policies at Tartu

The have a love-hate relationship with foreign scholars.

They know foreign scholars increase international recognition, but they are not quite sure who to attract them, or how to keep them.
If you come for a couple of weeks or months, you get treated like a superstar; if you come on a more long-term basis, things are different.
There are fellowships for foreigners that pay vastly more than local researchers get, and offer much better conditions.
Any moderately productive researcher would be eligible. More important than actual talent is "foreign-ness".
In fact, any significant connections with Estonia in the past 5 years will render you ineligible for these fellowships.
With these fellowships, you will be able to live like a king, establish a research program and do some good work.
However, they are for a maximum of 5 years, and non-renewable, so afterwards you will have to go elsewhere.
So, essentially, they are either early-career or retirement fellowships.

Alternatively, you could come as a regular researcher, under conditions similar to those of local researchers.

The pay is enough to live here comfortably, but extensive international travel is definitely out of the question.

Contracts are not with the university, but rather with the group leader, which is typical for Europe, I suppose, but not as common in North America.

Everyone seems to be on "soft money", even long-term, otherwise "real" professors.

For many people, one-year contracts are the norm, so it is impossible to make any long-term plans, personally or professionally.

Professionally, with an average 6-month horizon, research grants, research programmes and graduate students are all out of the question.

Personally, with an average 6-month horizon, only short-term, light and "fun" relationships are possible.

They will wait until your contract has already ended, or has 2 weeks left, before offering you another one-year contract.
The closer you get to the end of your contract, the more effort you will spend looking for another position.
As the end approaches, if you found somewhere to go, you will have already bought a plane ticket home, ended your lease, and started to close shop.
If you do accept their last minute offer and stay, you (and the institution) will have wasted a lot of time and money.

They have clearly-defined relationships between academic rank and productivity (number of papers).
Unfortunately, quality is not a concern, nor is multi-authorship. The result is heavily multi-authored papers of low impact.
But be careful about producing too much or working independently; instead of giving you a real job, they will opt to let you go.

The logic is that they have to support local researchers, who are more likely to stay forever.
Never mind that with a long-term position you could actually fund a whole new group of people.
The problem is that the pie does not get bigger simply because someone new is at the table.
So inviting you at the table (giving you a real job) would be inviting you to compete for the same limited research money.
Everyone's small slice would get smaller.
They assume that things are the same everywhere as they are for them here, and you have a job always waiting for you back home.
They also assume that you do not really want to be here, and that you really want to go back home.
So, in times of financial difficulties, foreigners are the first to go, regardless of productivity (quantity, quality. or impact).