RSSSoviet Heritage
Apr 27
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-Giustino- Justin suggests to replace the monument of the Bronze Soldier with a more feminine monument, commemorating many many civil lives lost during the World War II, when all three Baltic States found themselves sandwiched between two mighty powers.
I can hear voices of Russian youth that such a monument would be considered re-writing history. As most Russians have been taught from a very young age the Red Army indeed freed Estonia from the Nazis.
Even though, “On September 20, 1944 Otto Tief government proclaimed Estonian state restored,” according to this source.
“Tief used the interregnum that was created by the withdrawal of German troops from and the advance of the Red Army toward Tallinn. His government never managed to take full control of the Estonian capital. Military units loyal to Tief clashed both with Germans and Russians. On September 22, 1944 Red Army took Tallinn under its control. Members of Tief government fled Tallinn.”
That is so different from Latvia where no government was formed in the immediate period following the Nazi withdrawal.
For Russians, and especially for Russian youth, it ought to be important to learn the history of World War II from a point of view of other countries.
Boris Makarenko, the first deputy director of the Center for Political Technology, in the English-version of Kommersant makes several excellent points regarding history.
For a while, I’ve been reading Latvian newspaper archives from those 1940 events, when Soviet tanks rushed through Latvia’s eastern border to “preserve peace” that July morning. Following arrival of the Red Army, changes in the society took places swiftly. Already a couple of weeks following the invasion, the new pro-Moscow minister of education announced that Russian would be taught in all schools. And I’m quite certain the same thing happened in Estonia.
Unlike other European countries, the Baltic States were swallowed into the family of nations known as Soviet Union without asking, they were overcome by Russian-speaking immigrants who exemplified the imperialist behavior. They didn’t bother to learn a national language or understand the culture. They perceived the natives as pygmies, a primitive culture that cannot compare to the richness and mysterious Russian soul.
Riots in Eastern Estonia and Tallinn are only an example of this attitude.
The whole debate in many forums revolves around ethnic superiority. Russians say Estonians suffer from a complex of inferiority therefore they need to remove the damned statue to stick it to the Big Guy Nextdoor. For Estonians, it’s a symbol of Soviet occupation, of a loss of nationhood for 50 long years. It has to be gone.
Whether removing the monument was a good thing — I don’t know. Only time will tell. Removing or destroying the artifacts of the Soviet occupation, 16 years following the country’s independence seems like a moot point. I just don’t think any monument is going to be built in its place.
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