The bronze soldier and its deportation to a military cemetery

The Past Revisited

When I began to go to school in Tallinn in 1951, the statue of the Soldier-Liberator – Voin-Osvoboditel, as it was called in Russian – had already been erected at Tõnismäe. This cast bronze Red Army soldier in full uniform, a Russian-type submachine gun on his back and war medals decorating his breast, was a reminder of the liberation of the capital of the Estonian SSR from the clutches of German Fascist aggressors on September 22, 1944.
In Soviet times, there were two big demonstrations held in Tallinn every year – on Labour Day on May 1 and on the anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7. It was absolutely obligatory for all schools to participate in these celebrations, as pupils’ absence was harshly punishable. The procession started at Tõnismäe and headed towards the platform built for Communist party bosses and high-ranking military officials on Freedom Square, then renamed Victory Square, to disperse somewhere down Estonia Boulevard. As I recall, when I was at school the Bronze Solider was not exploited in connection with these two most important celebration days. If wreaths were laid at the foot of the statue, only a select few functionaries participated in the ceremony.
Joseph Stalin had had himself appointed a generalissimo, a general of generals. He was worshipped as the ingenious Leader who led the Soviets to a glorious victory in the Great Patriotic War. By the way, according to the Russian interpretation, the victorious war during which Fascist Germany (it was characteristic of Soviet jargon to prefer ‘Fascist’ over ‘Nazi’) was crushed, did not correspond then and does not correspond now to World War II in its entirety, but included only the period from June 1941 to May 1945. The first two years of intense cooperation between the Soviets and the Nazis were ‘forgotten’ the moment the forces of the Greater German Reich crossed the western border of the Soviet Union. The fact that Stalin and Hitler formed an alliance and even its traces which were later distorted by propagandists have mysteriously been wiped from the collective memory of Russians.
After the war, Stalin’s cult of personality grew to enormous proportions, whereas the victory cult remained quite moderate during his lifetime. In the Soviet Union, Victory Day – May 9 – became a first class national holiday, when people did not have to go to work, only in 1965, twenty years after the end of hostilities on the European fronts. From 1965 onwards, great military parades were regularly organised on Victory Day.
Already during Khrushchev’s time in office, there was a shift in attitude towards the war, but only after Brezhnev’s rise to power (1964) was the entire propaganda machine put to work to glorify the war. Khrushchev and Brezhnev, who later both became General Secretaries of the Communist Party of the USSR, served as politruks, i.e. political officers of the Red Army, during the war. Neither had had any military training, but both still managed to rise to the rank of general by the war’s end. For Brezhnev, this was not enough – he wanted to be a marshal and in 1976 he did indeed become a marshal of the Soviet Union, a marshal whose breast was completely covered with all kinds of wartime and post-war military awards. It was precisely during Brezhnev’s time that the war and the victory acquired their mythological meaning and significance, which were supposed to pale and finally outshine the pain and humiliation that the tyranny of the Bolsheviks brought to Russians and other subject nations of the Soviet empire.
My high school years were long gone by the time the Bronze Soldier began its second life. In 1964, an underground gas pipe was laid, fuelling a flickering Eternal Flame. Wreaths were laid at the foot of the monument on every anniversary meeting; even delegations from other Soviet Republics or faraway countries arrived to do that. Moreover, there was a period, during which pupils from schools in Tallinn were ordered to gather there. Teenage boys and girls, wearing uniforms imitating that of a soldier and carrying wooden machine guns, were to march in front of the Bronze Soldier and to form a guard of honour. In this way, young people received their ‘military-patriotic education’. However, the importance of Tõnismäe fell in 1975 when the memorial complex ‘To those who fought for Soviet power’ was opened at Maarjamäe near the Pirita Road. By the way, this complex was established on the edge of a German military cemetery that had been ploughed up and destroyed ‘by victor’s right’. All the most important ceremonies of the party and the government (including protocolary ceremonies) were transferred to this new location on the sea front.
Of course, I had heard various rumours and urban legends about the Tõnismäe statue in school and later on. These offered a wide range of ‘facts’ from the identity of the different models whom the artist had used for the monument (there were several ‘definite’ candidates) to the assertion that the coffins buried at the foot of the statue during the festive ceremony in 1945 had actually been empty or, to be more precise, contained sawdust. The latter suggestion was probably prompted by the circumstance that those who had allegedly been buried in the mass grave – all of whom had Russian names and most of whom had received officer rank – were said to have been Red Army soldiers who had died when liberating Tallinn. But Tallinners knew very well that there had been no armed conflicts in the city on September 22, 1944, and that the Germans had left one or two days before the Russians arrived.
And naturally I had also heard that the red flag hoisted on Toompea had not been replaced with another one that day: a red flag with a swastika was not substituted for a red banner with a star, as was shown in a (fake) documentary. The flag that the Russian invaders tore down from Toompea’s Pikk Hermann Tower was the Estonian blue-black-and-white flag that had been there for two days. On the other hand, I must point out that in Soviet times the Tõnismäe statue did not signify anything in particular for most Estonians. Estonia was covered with red idols to be worshipped and the Bronze Soldier was just another statue, although its design – a mourning soldier with his head bowed – was certainly among the most decent ones. It was transformed into a symbol of hatred for many Estonians only years later.
On August 23, 1990, on the 51st anniversary of the secret Stalin-Hitler pact, members of the National Defence League removed a bronze Lenin standing on a pedestal in the centre of Tartu in front of a building in which the Defence League had once been headquartered. Others soon followed their lead and during the next couple of years most monuments, busts, plaques and memorial statues that symbolised Soviet power or commemorated Communists disappeared from Estonia. Understandably, this campaign did not affect the graves or cemeteries of Red Army soldiers; in addition, most memorials to World War II erected by the Soviets remained intact.
In 1992, the Pro Patria Union won Estonia’s first fully free parliamentary elections and formed a coalition government. But there was no way round the question of what should be done with the soldier in Soviet uniform still decorating a green area in a central location in Tallinn. The air was thick with vague promises to either remove it or move it from Tõnismäe to a ‘less irritating’ place. The relocation issue was further complicated by the possibility that soldiers could have been buried near the statue. This would have meant reburials together with appropriate ceremonies. At this point, it should be emphasised that up until August 31, 1994, the forces of our great eastern neighbour were still stationed in Estonia and the possible reactions of those forces inevitably had to be taken into account.
Soviet-era designers and re-designers of the area had done nothing to mark the graves that might have been there. When the area was excavated last year, it turned out that it did indeed constitute a burial site. However, it also turned out that Soviet functionaries had treated the bodies of those who had died in the war with cynical disrespect: many coffins were located under the area upon which people walked and trampled the most; moreover, when Suvorov Boulevard (the name then of Kaarli Boulevard) was expanded, the ends of one or two coffins were left under the surface of a trolley stop.
Anyhow, those on Toompea did not take action. After the 1999 and the 2003 elections, national conservatives formed coalition governments (the Pro Patria Union and Res Publica, respectively). Again, people began to talk about the area between the Kaarli Church and the National Library that should be liberated from the Soviet symbol, but that was that. Meanwhile, it started to look as if there was no need to use drastic measures. The meaning of the memorial statue was transformed in 1995: the plaques with the inscription that labelled Red Army soldiers as ‘liberators’ were replaced with two new plaques that stated in Estonian and Russian that the Bronze Soldier commemorates all those who died in World War II. As Estonians fought on three fronts, some even suggested that a memorial complex of three bronze soldiers should be established at Tõnismäe – one soldier in Russian, one in German and one in Finnish uniform.
The 1990s passed almost without notice. On May 9 and September 22, predominantly Russian-speaking elder men and women, some accompanied by children and grandchildren, laid flowers at the statue, drank vodka from tea glasses the ‘Russian way’, clanked the decorations and medals they wore on their breast becoming talkative and loud-voiced under the influence of vodka, but then went home without disturbing anyone or anything. Many Estonians secretly hoped that if they allowed time to do its work, these war veterans would disappear eventually and the Bronze Soldier would become an ordinary memorial, similar to those that were erected all over Europe after World War I and II.
But that was not to be. Four or five years ago, the more observant Tallinners began to notice that well-organised groups of Russian-speaking pupils and even kindergarten children under the firm leadership of their teachers started to visit the Bronze Soldier and to lay flowers there. ‘Festive days’ were celebrated by more and more people, among whom middle-aged men and women and callow youths prevailed. During the last few years, a significant shift occurred – previously, celebrators shunned the use of Soviet flags and insignia, but they started to gradually embrace such a practice. The crowds that gathered at Tõnismäe demonstrated their solidarity with the bronze Red Army soldier by waving red flags and carrying posters and symbols of a lost era.
By the way, during the two nights of rioting in April 2007, Russian-speaking gangs not only hurled stones and abuse at policemen, but tried to provoke them by shouting ‘Russia! Russia! Russia!’ At the same time, the Estonian blue-black-and-white flag was publicly desecrated, as video recordings demonstrated. Here and there, protestors held up provocative banners, the wording of which varied slightly, but the meaning of which was still clear: ‘CCCP 4ever’ – ‘The Soviet Union Forever’. A few years ago, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin had declared that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century”. A couple of thousand abusive ‘defenders’ of the Bronze Soldier on the rampage in Tallinn, supported by smaller groups in Jõhvi, Narva and Kohtla-Järve, clearly shared the Soviet nostalgia of the leader of our neighbouring state.
Let us now return to the topic of Russia. In order to understand the symbolism and events related to the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn, we must examine the developments in Moscow over the last decades, because Moscow had a pivotal and influential role to play in the saga of the Bronze Soldier.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were the first Russian leaders who had not been at the front in the Great Patriotic War. This fact might have contributed to their lack of enthusiasm for the Brezhnev-like festivities commemorating the victorious war. In addition, both of them wanted to emphasise that they were different from their predecessors and that, even though they knowingly used propagandist tools and ideological rhetoric for achieving their aims, they did so in a totally new way.
Gorbachev was definitely not a destructive man. He wanted to make the system, i.e. the Soviet Union, more operational, hoping that a selective process of restructuring (known as glasnost and perestroika) would do the trick. It soon became clear that you cannot reform an unreformable entity; even Gorbachev and his associates realised this in the end. If the attempted coup in Moscow in August 1991 had been successful and putschists had managed to retain power for a while, it would have only brought a postponement of the final collapse. A state based on lies and violence, on a planned economy, one-party system, one-nation domination and ideological absurdities could not have been made effective. At the same time, Gorbachev deserves widespread recognition, including from Estonians, as a historical figure who did not use military force to ‘rectify’ his failures or to stay in power.
Yeltsin, however, was not interested in preserving the Soviet Union. Engaged in a power struggle with his rival Gorbachev, i.e. the first President of the Soviet Union on the one hand, and with a hydra, whose poisonous tentacles were choking the entire society i.e. the hierarchical and corrupt nomenklatura of the Communist Party who had enjoyed absolute power for more than 70 years, on the other, Yeltsin draw the right conclusion that he and his supporters would have more to gain if the colossus with feet of clay were to fall to the ground. Yeltsin’s Russia recognised the independence of Estonia already on August 24, 1991, i.e. on the third day after the adoption of the historical decision by the Supreme Council of the Republic of Estonia. The issue of why Yeltsin did not manage to democratise Russia, failing to gain popular support as he made his promising efforts in that new direction, unfortunately falls outside the scope of this paper.
Putin’s rise to power marked a massive backward step. Despite various euphemisms used in Moscow, the clique that has ruled Russia for the last eight years – most clique members have a KGB background or are directly involved in the work of its modern counterpart, the FSB – was clearly set on restoring the ‘21st century version’ of the historical empire. This lands us in a curious paradox: Putin’s own definition of the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” means essentially that Russia’s independence is a glaring mistake according to its second President.
The arguments presented to ordinary Russian people were quite simple: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing period of decline and fall created chaos and destruction in the Great State of Russia; Russia is destined to be great; destined by whom or what – Almighty God? Fate? History? Geopolitics? –, it does not really matter; what matters is that Russia must rise again and become as powerful, strong and fearsome as its current leaders believe Russia must have been under Tsarist and Communist rule. In other words, the world must become multipolar and Moscow must form one of the three or four power centres. Russia must evolve into a superstate that will rule by force and have a right to dictate to others what they must do – a right others will not be able to ignore.
The concept of Great Russia promoted by Putinists is based on a glorious, illustrious and majestic past. Russia’s future depends on a successful restoration of the past, on regaining everything that was ‘lost’ after the Cold War. History and its interpretation play an exceptionally significant role in shaping the patriotic (read: chauvinistic) worldview of Russians and in their relations with their ‘close neighbourhood’.
Here, however, the Kremlin faces a problem, as the history of Russia indeed includes very few events, developments and persons that a contemporary Russian could be proud of.
For example, let us take the 20th century: a Tsarist regime that was incapable of implementing any reforms, that could not tackle the challenges of change and that finally fell apart during a war it was about to lose to the Germans; eight months of a bourgeois republic that was a complete failure; and what followed then? An overthrow of the government by a handful of leftist radicals called the Bolsheviks; the most violent civil war this part of the world has ever experienced; the Gulag archipelago; a merciless industrial revolution aimed to develop heavy industry; the destruction of peasant communities and sustainable agriculture through forced collectivisation; the constant harassment of the entire society by means of witch hunts targeting the ‘enemies’ of the regime; tens of millions of people tortured, killed, starved to death… Or let us consider the leaders of Russia: Nicholas – an indecisive autocrat; Lenin – a misanthrope with a homicidal lust for power; Stalin – a paranoid and bloody tyrant; Khrushchev – a boaster preaching ‘subjective voluntarism’; Brezhnev – an intrigant who induced a period of stagnation; a Politburo of gerontocrats desperately clinging to power…
Still, there is a series of events that stands out against this background. These events happened during the four devastating years of war, when Russians – this is the word Westerners used instead of ‘Soviets’ – were allies of the USA, Great Britain and France. During that period, Russians won the battle of giants, wiped Nazism off the face of the earth and liberated Europe from the brown plague.
Devastating wars, suffering for a cause, defeated aggressors and glorious victories have always united nations. This also applies to Russians, the more so that the Great Patriotic War has had a beneficial side-effect for them: it serves as a palliative for their aching souls, as they suffer from an acute inferiority complex. A nation whose history is characterised by violence, injustice and frequent fits of paranoia cannot help but yearn for positive memories of past achievements.
Yet the current power elite still refuses to reveal the whole truth about the Great Victory. There are too many episodes, which occurred before, during and after the war, that must not be remembered or must be presented as products of the Soviet propaganda machine or even as outright forgeries. These include the secret Stalin-Hitler pact concluded in August 1939; the attacks on Poland and Finland; almost two years of close cooperation with the Nazis; the occupation and annexation of the Baltic states; acts of terror perpetrated in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Eastern Poland and Bessarabia; wartime atrocities committed by soldiers of the glorious Red Army; mass repressions carried out in the conquered areas; and the incarceration of the entirety of Central and Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain.
Whatever role an impartial non-Russian would attribute to the Stalinist USSR in World War II and however he would assess its activities during the war, the period of the so-called Great Patriotic War has become a unifying factor for Russians, a personal purgatory for a nation that became more delusional and saw more hardship over the last century than any other European nation. Furthermore, the victorious war has long ago been transformed into a myth with larger than life features. A majority of Russian speakers would consider it a sacrilege if you failed to appreciate it. Putin and co. hit the bull’s eye in restoring the cult of the glorious war, a cult already blown out of proportion by Brezhnev and his colleagues.
Before reaching the focal point of this paper, I would like to emphasise two more facts: two publicly known historical facts, which are still worth mentioning in the present context. The context, however, is the following: for years, Moscow has incessantly derided Estonia, using all available means from ambiguous accusations to vicious slander. The Bronze Soldier riots helped to fuel Moscow’s resentment. Kremlin spin doctors concentrated their attention, among other things, on two central arguments: Estonia as an independent state glorifies Nazism and wants to rewrite the history of Europe, i.e. of World War II.
So, here is the first fact: Estonians have never denied or belittled the role Russians played in the extermination of Nazism and German expansionist militarism. During its independence before 1940 and after 1991, Estonia has not had a single government that could, even conditionally, be characterised as pro-Fascist or Nazi-sympathising.
The second fact: World War II and its aftermath brought a complete loss of independence for Estonia and caused terrible human suffering, because a fifth of its population died prematurely or lost their homes, as they were driven out of their homeland. As a result of a joint operation by the land, naval and air forces of the Red Army, Estonia was occupied in June 1940 and re-occupied in the summer and autumn of 1944. Estonia’s independence and freedom were not restored in 1944; instead, one occupying force was substituted for another, i.e. German occupiers were replaced by Russian invaders and a Nazi puppet government swapped places with a Soviet one.
If the cast bronze Red Army soldier had been left in peace to symbolise the Allied victory over Hitler’s Germany and to mourn those who died in the brutal war – attempts to assign such meanings to the statue were made in the middle of the 1990s – it would still be standing at Tõnismäe. A majority of Estonians would have put up with the soldier’s statue, if it were seen as a historical monument.
Although some politicians or other figures repeated now and then that the Bronze Soldier should be removed from the city centre to a less conspicuous place, it is a fact that neither Estonia’s government nor Tallinn’s city government (occasionally dominated by the Reform Party and the Pro Patria Union) took no concrete steps to ‘get rid of the occupation memorial’ before 2007. No efforts were made even to create – just in case – a formal legislative basis for the exhumation, identification and reburial of the human remains at Tõnismäe and for the relocation of the monument in a legally correct and internationally acceptable manner.
There was a prevailing sense of hope for the future, a hope that time would heal all the wounds and the problem would disappear by itself. Unfortunately, these sentiments were not shared by pro-Russian activists, for whom the restoration of Estonia’s independence was a major geopolitical blow of the 20th century. Nevertheless, our political leaders exhibited an ostrich mentality up to May 9, 2006. Still, they went on pretending that they were surprised when it ‘turned out’ that the provocations of Russian ultranationalists caused Estonian ultranationalists to act the same way and that the transformation of a Tallinn bronze monument into a symbol of Russian chauvinism could not but make the public feel rather anxious. Even Estonians, who are quite tolerant, will eventually lose their cool.
Tõnismäe underwent a rapid and ominous metamorphosis. It took only a few years to transform a memorial to those who had died in the war to restore its initial meaning, as it was understood by a significant part of the Russian-speaking population. Those who were looking for self-serving excuses could exploit the monument in order to reinforce their belief that the Red Army liberated Tallinn and Estonia, reinstating it to its rightful place as a Soviet republic that had to belong to the USSR. It was Hitler’s Wehrmacht that occupied other countries, while Stalin’s Krasnaya Armiya did not occupy anything, but won battles and liberated countries.
For speakers of Russian – or at least for some of them – it is much easier and more comforting to believe this interpretation of the past than to admit that the Soviet authorities committed crimes. According to this line of thought, the Estonian nation voluntarily joined the Soviet Union in 1940; Estonia was a poor agricultural state, a mere appendage to the West, but the selfless assistance of the Russian nation made it possible to quickly transform Estonia into a Soviet republic with a booming industry and agriculture; in 1991, when Russia was at its weakest, nationalists seized power in Estonia; these nationalists are all Fascists and ungrateful Russophobes in disguise; they produce false facts about the past and praise Nazism; moreover, they even deny the glorious victory of the anti-Hitler alliance, the victory that liberated Europe from Nazism.
Provocations and scuffles on May 9, 2006, opened the eyes of many in Estonia. Whether we liked it or not, the Bronze Soldier was turning into one of the toughest problems in Estonia’s recent history; a problem that could not be solved easily or neatly. No matter what Estonia decided to do, i.e. to leave the monument and the 12 (or according to the Soviets, 14) bodies buried at Tõnismäe or to relocate them to a military cemetery, it would have brought highly unpredictable, but nevertheless serious consequences. Our eastern neighbour and its local advocates (including several Russian-language newspapers published in Estonia, politicians of one or two small parties that did not make it into the parliament and those among our Russian community who are aggressively opposed to Estonia’s orientation towards the West) would anyway use the monument to accuse and slander us. Still, it was not clear back then how far Moscow would go in its attacks and whether a ‘third solution’ could be found to calm the tensions.
By then, the Bronze Soldier had achieved a symbolic status. This complicated the situation even further: many Russian speakers did not regard the statue as a mere historical monument any more. What meaning did the Tallinn memorial statue have for them? Here, I must pay tribute to the spin doctors in Moscow who managed to broaden its meaning during a relatively short period of time, so that those who laid flowers at the statue’s foot in May and September – I have a sneaking suspicion – increasingly did not know themselves whom they commemorated and what was the true meaning of their pilgrimage.
The monument had been transformed into a symbol that was simultaneously associated with a glorious victory and Great Russian chauvinism, with grief and Soviet nostalgia. Various meanings could be attached to it: some visited the statue to demonstrate their anti-Estonian feelings, others to support Putin’s Great Russian ambitions, and still others just looking for their own identity. There can be numerous underlying reasons for rituals. For example, the initial motive behind the establishment of a ceremonial flower show at the foot of the statue might remain hidden even from its participants. But if a place, a fixed installation or a monument, a tree, a rock or a body of water has acquired symbolic value, it cannot be denied that its disappearance, relocation or redesign will elicit violent, painful and often irrational reactions from people for whom it has become a symbol, because its location is sacred, i.e. untouchable.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, Russia has waged a propaganda war against Estonia, but also against Latvia and Lithuania. Moscow reproaches us for what we have done since the restoration of our independence and for the way we have drifted out of its suffocating sphere of influence. The Kremlin resents us for having made it on our own, for our effective integration with the West and especially for being a role model for those countries with whom we once shared a similar fate. Hence, it should not have come as a surprise that Moscow took full advantage of Tallinn’s plans to relocate the statue to further its current ‘ideological war’ efforts targeted against its former captive nation. The Bronze Soldier offered a welcome chance and pretext to unleash yet another wave of insinuations.
Unfortunately, the self-serving myopia of Estonian politicians made a significant contribution to the success of the Moscow propaganda machine. In the spring and summer of 2006, regular parliamentary elections were to be held in less than a year and the pre-election campaign was in full swing. Three partners – the Reform Party, the Centre Party and the People’s Union – formed the then government coalition. They decided to stay together until the March elections, even though they were deeply split over political differences and suffered from internal conflicts. At the same time, it was obvious that the next government would not include the same partners. So, it was vitally important for the two bigger parties not to draw the short straw in order to be authorised by the President to form the next government coalition.
In Estonia, decisions on sensitive or important foreign policy issues have sometimes been influenced by politicians’ hopes of scoring domestic political points. For example, in May 2005, President Arnold Rüütel decided for personal and party political reasons not to go to Moscow, where more than fifty presidents and prime ministers had gathered from all around the world to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the victory gained on the European fronts in World War II. Although five out of six parties represented in the parliament suggested that Estonia should participate in the Moscow festivities, President Rüütel and his advisors thought it more ‘profitable’ not to go, as presidential elections were to be held next year and it would have meant that the rating of the People’s Union would have fallen.
In a similar manner, the parliament referred to three specific documents in the preamble of the ratification act of the treaty on the Estonian-Russian border only in order to demonstrate its unequivocal nationalism to the public, i.e. the electorate. Moscow seized the opportunity to exploit our domestic political abracadabra to its advantage and straightaway made the most absurd accusation that Estonia had territorial claims against Russia (theoretically, we could have had such claims until the ratification of the border treaty, but not after its entry into force). On this pretext, Russia ‘withdrew’ its Foreign Minister’s signature from the treaty. Four EU member states have a joint border with the Russian Federation. Estonia is the only one that does not have a bilaterally ratified border treaty with it, despite the fact that the coordinates of the border line were essentially agreed upon already in 1996.
Two coalition partners were sending out contradictory messages to their potential supporters for almost ten months: the Reform Party and its chairman, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, promised to liberate the city centre of Tallinn from the ‘liberator’ if they won; the Centre Party and its chairman, the then Minister of Economic Affairs Edgar Savisaar, asserted the opposite – if they formed the next government, the historical Bronze Soldier would remain at the same location where it had stood for the last 60 years. From the very beginning, the Centre Party has enjoyed the support of more Russian speakers than any other Estonian party; before the last elections, its top leaders felt that their Estonian electoral base was dwindling, so they placed their bet on Russian-speaking citizens.
Both parties hit the bull’s eye. Neither the Reform Party and Ansip nor the Centre Party and Savisaar had ever won more votes than they did on that memorable election day of March 4, 2007. I am not trying to say that the best results ever were achieved only on account of a controversial statue. Nevertheless, the distribution of seats on Toompea would have been different, if the two parties had not dragged this inflammatory topic into the election campaign.
Yet the only way to win an election is to fight. Those who are more cunning and know in advance what issues and arguments appeal to the public will prevail. The same was true of these elections, only this time the Bronze Soldier was drawn into the fight – the Bronze Soldier that had never constituted a mere domestic political problem. Although the monument could be treated as a symbol reflecting the deep differences between Estonians and a majority of the local Russian-speaking community on how to interpret various past events, it would be wrong to be content with only this explanation.
The pre-election altercations Estonians were busy with for almost a year were grist to the Kremlin’s mill. Moscow launched an intense and forceful propaganda offensive to hammer Estonians before and after the relocation of the statue to a military cemetery, eventually losing all sense of proportion. If the reactions of our eastern neighbours had not been too arrogantly brutal, as a result of which they shot themselves in the foot, Estonians could have lost a lot, especially in the eyes of the international community. It was pure luck that they overreacted.
The length of this paper does not accommodate a full description of the anti-Estonian smear campaign that lasted for several months and took on various forms, during which Moscow used the Tõnismäe statue and buried Red Army soldiers as cover. The nature of the campaign and the bitter disappointment felt came quickly to the fore in the statements top Russian politicians made before and after the April riots (see excerpts below).
First, let me remind you of the sequence of events. In the early morning of April 26, the Tõnismäe green area was cordoned off, as metal barriers were erected; by afternoon, most of the area (the statue together with its limestone back wall and the alleged burial sites) was covered by a huge tent. At the same time, the police moved in reinforcements. Up to now, it is unclear what scenario the government would have used, if the ‘defenders of the statue’ had not staged violent protests in the city. When the process was initiated, the decision-makers possibly still entertained a faint hope that at least some of the planned operations could be carried out in a semi-public way, i.e. be accompanied by special ceremonies, wherein members of the public could have participated. Earlier, there had been talk about a religious service held before the exhumation of the graves, broadcast live on TV, and even about a solemn funeral procession across the city to the cemetery.
The evening and night of April 26 saw anti-Estonian demonstrations that continued into the next day and night. Approximately 2,000 demonstrators, most of whom were Russian-speaking residents of Estonia, expressed their anti-government, i.e. anti-state, views. The protests sparked at Tõnismäe and spread quickly into the city centre where massive rioting and looting broke out, as police forces maintaining order were openly attacked. After those two April nights, there have been no further riots in Tallinn or anywhere else in Estonia – not even on the fearsome dates of May 9 and September 22.
In the early morning hours of April 27, the Bronze Soldier was secretly and without any hindrance moved from its original location to a then unknown place of transfer. Exhumation activities were carried out under the cover of the large tent, while the police secured the perimeter day and night; at the same time, information on and photos of the progress and results of the exhumation were published regularly. Journalists and TV-cameramen were also allowed to take a look under the tent, hence it could be said that, in a way, the whole process was completed in the public eye. The monument was reopened and the human remains reburied at a ceremonial ecumenical service held on May 8 in the presence of ambassadors residing in Tallinn, although the Ambassador of the Russian Federation refused to participate and conducted his ‘own’ ceremony the next day.
So, let me offer you a small selection of excerpts from the statements top officials of the Russian Federation made at the end of April and in May 2007 with respect to Estonia. Most of the quotes and references come from the news the Baltic News Service (BNS) published at the time.
April 23. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation denounced the planned exhumation of Soviet soldiers’ remains in a diplomatic note. According to Moscow, such activities were aimed at “reconsidering the role of the anti-Hitler coalition in defeating Fascism”; the activities would have been carried out in contravention of international law, undermining morality and the fundamental principles of humanism. On the very same day, the spokesperson of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed her regrets that “the note contained deliberate misinformation and libel”, emphasising that the Estonian government always based its decisions on Estonian legislation, international law and good practices.
April 24. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov issued a warning at a press conference in Luxembourg: “We cannot remain indifferent to what is going on in some EU member states, especially in Estonia, where a blasphemous decision has been adopted to rebury the soldiers who defended Europe against Fascism.” Lavrov claimed that it would have a negative impact not only on the Estonian-Russian relationship, but also on “the entire post-war Europe.”
April 26. Members of the Russian State Duma condemned the start of the exhumation activities at Tõnismäe. Here are some quotes from them. Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov: “What is happening in Estonia is pure madness. /…/ What the Nazis did not manage to do to the living, the Estonian government is now trying to do to the dead.” Chairman of the Council of the Federation Committee on Constitutional Legislation Yuri Sharandin: “Soviet soldiers came to Estonia to liberate it from Fascism, and if Estonian political forces cannot understand it, it is their problem. /…/ Russia must implement all appropriate measures to influence Estonia, including economic, political and ideological measures, in order not to let Estonians present themselves the way they want to.” First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov: “Estonia must be deprived of profits earned from transit operations. /…/ I already gave an order to the Minister of Transport to take the necessary steps.”
April 28. Speaker of the State Duma Gryzlov urged the international public to intervene in solving the monument issue: “We must draw attention to the fact that human rights have been trampled underfoot and we demand the strongest response from the international community.” Gryzlov asserted that a memorial to anti-Fascist fighters had been destroyed in Estonia, that protestors had been dispersed brutally, and that the authorities themselves had provoked mass demonstrations that led to human casualties.
Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs Konstantin Kosachev supported Gryzlov: “The Estonian government’s actions with respect to those who protested against the demolition of the Soldier-Liberator were barbaric and unwarranted. These actions must be scrutinised immediately and condemned by the international public. /…/ People from the most peaceful social classes participated in the Tallinn demonstrations. Regardless of nationality and political affiliation, they could not accept the fact that the Bronze Soldier was taken down. /…/ Every observer capable of some impartiality realises straightaway that the protests were not organised or provoked by a political movement. What we have here is a civil society that has taken a stand against the Estonian government and its brutal methods that could only be employed in a totalitarian state.”
Chairman of the Council of Federation Sergey Mironov added the same day that the Estonian government “continues to repress citizens who took public action to defend the Soldier-Liberator in Tallinn.” When the police tried to subdue the looting rioters who were on the rampage in the city, Mironov called it “a genocide of Russians.” Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov encouraged his compatriots to bring economic cooperation with Estonia to an immediate halt: “We wholeheartedly support the initiative of Muscovites to boycott Estonian goods and the plans of Russian businessmen to end all forms of economic cooperation with Estonia. In addition, we invite Russian state and municipal organisations to terminate financial, economic, business and cultural collaboration with Estonian state organisations. /…/ We consider it necessary to join up the efforts of all no-nonsense politicians and public figures, of the cultural and business sector, of all who cherish the memory of the victims of Fascism in order to demand that the memorial of the Soldier-Liberator be immediately reinstated by the Estonian government.”
In May, accusations of flagrant human rights violations, persecution of the Russian-speaking community, Russophobia, Nazism, rewriting history, enforcing a police state and totalitarianism were still being thrown around. These were complemented by calls to boycott Estonians, Estonian businessmen, Estonian goods, etc., and to curb transit operations in Estonia. Anti-Estonian rhetoric and actions (from removing Estonian products from shops to the impudent siege of the Estonian Embassy in Moscow) began to influence public opinion that can be easily manipulated. A former underling, whose transformation into a western democracy after the restoration of its independence was unacceptable for the Kremlin, quickly acquired the title of Russia’s ‘Enemy no. 1’.
Foreign Minister Lavrov’s letter of complaint sent to the governments of EU member states in connection with Victory Day on May 9, i.e. the 62nd anniversary of the end of World War II on the European fronts, is a typical example of the smear campaign mounted during those weeks. Clearly, it was a nasty surprise for Moscow when the EU and US legislative and executive authorities together with NATO leaders began to support Estonia. On the one hand, Lavrov accused the police of using force when it dispersed peaceful demonstrators who were defending the statue; on the other hand, he asserted, without offering any proof, that Estonians were rewriting history and rehabilitating Fascism.
“We believe that the blasphemous and brutal acts of the Estonian government present a challenge to the democratic community worldwide, undermine the fundamental principles of humanism and morality, and defy all the values upon which our current world order is based,” wrote Lavrov, adding a few paragraphs later: “Russia has paid a terrible price for the victory gained over Fascism and we cannot remain indifferent when sacred historical memories are held hostage to serve the political needs of the moment. The Tallinn events have unleashed a wave of strong protests and condemnation at all levels of Russian society. This may lead to the most serious consequences for our relations with the European Union and NATO.”
Of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not miss out on attacking Estonia. For example, at an EU-Russia summit held in Samara on May 18 he publicly condemned the desecration of a sacred memory of Soviet fighters who had sacrificed their lives to liberate Estonia. He also denounced the police brutality suffered by protestors in Tallinn and repeated violations of the rights of the Russian-speaking population in Estonia and Latvia.
Since May 2007, the cast bronze Red Army soldier erected at Tõnismäe sixty years previously has been standing in the Tallinn Military Cemetery against a background of a replica of its original limestone wall. The reburied rest in peace close by in their marked graves – they had been in an unmarked grave at Tõnismäe – although the relatives (identified by DNA tests) of some of the exhumed preferred a reburial abroad. Many people, including speakers of Russian, have affirmed that the new location is not only more respectable, but also more peaceful and aesthetic than the previous ‘island’ surrounded by heavy downtown traffic.
People have always exhibited a tendency to move human remains from the outside to the inside of graveyards. Similarly, there is nothing wrong with relocating a memorial to a worthy cause from one place to another, nothing that would “undermine the fundamental principles of morality”. It has been done all over the world; there are many memorials that have been relocated inside Russia. Why then did our eastern neighbour react so hysterically this time – what was the purpose of all the unfounded accusations, the absurd slander campaign and the threats realised?
It is obvious that, by whatever standards, the episode in Tallinn was of only local import. Nevertheless, the Kremlin tried to provoke an international scandal. Not a single Estonian politician – either from the coalition or the opposition – demanded that the statue be disassembled or destroyed. All the while, the only topic under discussion was how to relocate the bronze statue and rebury the dead and how to do it respectfully, taking different opinions into account. The top leaders in Moscow were very well aware of that.
Occasionally, a politician or a political scientist on the other side of Lake Peipus claims that the trivial size and insignificance of the Estonian nation make Estonians act like puffed-up frogs next to a bull. These scientists bid us welcome to the real world where Moscow does not give a damn about Estonia and where the people of today’s Russia reply with a condescending smile to the bombastic rants of Estonians. As it turns out, that is not what the real world looks like: the Bronze Soldier unleashed a wave of unbelievable ferocity and frenzy. The highest leaders joined in, taking a strange pleasure in abusing Estonia. Meanwhile, and this point should be emphasised, nobody followed the principle of altera pars, i.e. nobody wanted to listen to the arguments of the other side. Who cares what the Estonians might say.
Indeed, what was the point of such fierce narrow-mindedness and irrationality? There is no conclusive answer to this question. However, it is important to bear in mind that the Bronze Soldier that had acquired great symbolic value in the eyes of the Russian-speaking population during the last four or five years – or to be more precise: that had been transformed into a signifier of different and controversial concepts important for them – constituted a perfect excuse for top politicians in Russia to spit fire and venom at a secessionist region.
Sadly, Russia-Estonia relations, like Russia-Latvia and Russia-Lithuania relations, are as bad as they can get. The situation is made even worse by the fact that whatever steps Estonia might take or not take, the relationship would not improve. We may look at the matter from whatever angle we like, yet we still have to admit that if the Kremlin could not have used the Bronze Soldier for releasing its anger towards insubordinate Estonians, it would have found another pretext for aggression against us. As long as Russians and the current rulers of Russia in particular refuse to embrace their history in all the complexities and controversies it is riddled with, it is very hard for us to believe that a breakthrough is possible and that we could have good neighbourly relations.
Estonians have no leverage to enforce any changes. I can understand the predicament of our politicians who have to resist eastern pressure and attacks; at times, it might seem almost impossible for them to act sensibly and clear-headedly. Nevertheless, Estonia has to be especially cautious in two aspects: we must refrain from doing anything that could be used for malicious purposes and, as entertaining as it might sometimes seem, we should not irritate the Russian Bear just for the fun of it.
I would like to quote William Shakespeare: All’s well that ends well. A soldier with his head bowed stands in a cemetery, commemorating in eternal grief all his slain brothers-in-arms. I hope he has found his peace at last. Alas, there is no reason to believe that the same applies to the living. Estonia still has a lot to pay for its independence.