Violent Clashes in Tallinn Over War Memorial

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From today's issue of "The Moscow Times"
Source: http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2007/04/28/001.html

Quote:

Violent Clashes Over War Memorial
By Anatoly Medetsky
Staff Writer

Estonia removed a Soviet war memorial from a central Tallinn square early Friday, after overnight clashes with ethnic Russian protesters killed one person and injured 99 others, including 12 police officers. More than 300 people were detained.

The move prompted demands from Russian lawmakers to sever ties with the Baltic nation.

Estonian authorities swiftly moved the bronze monument to an undisclosed location. The protesters rallied against plans to exhume the remains of 12 to 14 Soviet soldiers from under the two-meter-high monument and relocate them and the monument to a military cemetery outside Tallinn. Initially peaceful, the gathering turned into Estonia's worst riot since the country broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Ethnic Russians, who make up one-third of the population, revere the monument as a tribute to the Soviet soldiers who died fighting Nazi Germany. Ethnic Estonians regard the monument as a reminder of what they call decades-long Soviet occupation.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Friday that the monument's removal would worsen ties between Russia and Estonia.

"As far as bilateral relations with Estonia are concerned, the Estonian government has decided to make them not normal," he said at a news conference in Oslo.

The decision tramples on the values that emerged in Europe after World War II, Lavrov said, apparently meaning tolerance. "The Estonian government spit upon these values," he said.

Lavrov said everyone in Russia was indignant at police measures to disperse protesters who stood up for the "sacred" site.

Estonia has signed and ratified a border treaty with Russia, but Russia's ratification may now lie in jeopardy.

In Moscow, the Federation Council called on the government to break off diplomatic relations with Estonia, calling the monument's removal "barbaric" and the result of the victory of Estonian nationalists in recent parliamentary elections.

"It is repulsive and sacrilegious. We must express our position," said Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, who floated the idea of severing diplomatic ties.

In a nonbinding statement, the State Duma unanimously demanded that the government recall the ambassador to Estonia, ban entry to Estonian political leaders that "besmirched themselves by the desecration of the graves" and restrict cooperation in transportation, energy and banking.

The Duma expressed support and gratitude to the Tallinn protesters and urged the government to discuss the monument's removal in the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Russia-NATO Council.

Estonia's Foreign Ministry hoped that Russia would not make any hasty decisions. "We hope that Moscow proceeds from common sense when making practical decisions that shape the future of our bilateral relations," said Estonian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ehtel Halliste, Interfax reported.

The president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Rene van der Linden, expressed regret that the memorial's removal threatened to widen a rift between citizens of Estonian and Russian origin.

"When people in a country disagree, they should sit down together and talk about their future and about building bridges rather than dig into their past," he said in a statement. "I urge the Estonian authorities to respect the feelings of all those living in their country and immediately take steps leading to reconciliation rather than to division in their society."

In Moscow, pro-Kremlin youth staged a protest near the Estonian Embassy and at one point blocked the outgoing car of Ambassador Marina Kaljurand, Interfax reported. The embassy has stopped issuing visas until the turmoil is over.

In one voice of dissent, Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky said Russia could not criticize Estonia for dismantling war memorials because it does the same, referring to work to relocate a war memorial in Khimki, just outside Moscow. (Story, Page 3.)

Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves defended the government efforts to quell the protest. "What we saw last night was looting, rampage and theft. It was a crime, and its participants are criminals," he said in a televised address to the nation. "All this had nothing to do with the inviolability of graves or keeping alive the memory of men fallen in World War II."

One protester died after being stabbed by a fellow protester during the violence, Estonian authorities said.

Some 1,500 protesters clashed with police after a small group tried to break through a police line protecting the monument early Friday.

Also FYI a link to the web site of a group who tried to protect the WWII memorial: Bronze Soldier

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Quote:

Ethnic Estonians regard the monument as a reminder of what they call decades-long Soviet occupation.

Got to love this phrase from the Moscow Times. "What they call" decades-long Soviet occupation? Uhm, what else would one call it?

The Soviet troops chased out the Nazi troops. But they themselves in turn imposed a vicious occupation and dictatorship, that had many thousands of Estonians deported to Siberia. No wonder the Estonians had mixed feelings about the imposing monument reminding them.

Anyway, here's a take on the events the Moscow Times article recounted from the opposite side:

Quote:

Russia: Monument Dispute With Estonia Gets Dirty

Friday, May 4, 2007
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

The dispute over the removal of a war memorial in Tallinn has become a dirty war. Hacking, violent protests, intimidation of diplomats, all with the hand -- or at least the blessing -- of the Kremlin.

Estonia has suggested that the Kremlin and its security services were behind the two days of violent protests by local Russian youths in Estonia. At a press conference in Moscow on May 2, Estonian Ambassador to Russia Marina Kaljurand said that she believed that both protests in Tallinn and Moscow were directed by the Kremlin.

Official Russian Disruptions

If it wasn't behind the protests, the Kremlin certainly wasn't a calming factor. On April 30, a delegation from Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, visited Tallinn to investigate the events around the removal of the Bronze Soldier memorial.

The delegation was headed by Nikolai Kovalyov, the former director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and currently the head of the Duma Veterans Affairs Committee. While in Tallinn, Kovalyov called for the immediate resignation of the Estonian government. Many Estonians protested the statement as an intervention in their internal affairs.

In the last few days, several Estonian government websites went down, including the sites of the Estonian president, parliament, cabinet ministers, and the Foreign and Defense ministries. [..]

Estonian Justice Minister Rejn Lang said on April 30 that the Internet-protocol addresses show that the attack was carried out from Moscow state institutions. "The aim of the attack was to paralyze the republic's information infrastructure. That proves that some forces in Moscow have completely lost their prudence," Lang said.

Youth Group Provocations

If the Russian state wasn't responsible, it could have been Nashi, a pro-Kremlin youth group.

Konstantin Goloskov, a Nashi activist, told the Rosbalt news agency on May 2 that he personally took part in cyber-attacks on Estonian websites. But he denied that Moscow state offices were used. The hacking, he said, was done from the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniester.

Estonian websites weren't the only ones targeted. The Russian daily "Kommersant" and the Ekho Moskvy radio station, which were critical of the Kremlin for its handling of the situation, also had their websites hacked.

Nashi isn't just operating in cyberspace. Since April 27, around 600 members of Nashi and a number of other pro-Kremlin youth groups organized a protest outside the Estonian Embassy in Moscow.

On May 2, the group's activists disrupted a press conference held by Estonian Ambassador Kaljurand. They also attacked the car of a Swedish diplomat in which they suspected Kaljurand was hiding.

Estonia's ambassador needed a police escort to attend a meeting on May 2 (ITAR-TASS)

These aren't just the spontaneous actions of young, radicalized young people. Nashi, along with other national-patriotic organizations, enjoys almost open political and financial support from the Kremlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin, deputy presidential-administration head Vladislav Surkov, and First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov have already met several times with these organizations' activists.

Politics By Other Means

Such seemingly state-sponsored actions have some precedents -- albeit circumstantial.

In summer 2005, Polish citizens, including diplomats and journalists, in Moscow were harassed by "unknown attackers." The attacks followed an attack in Warsaw on the family of a Russian diplomat, and Moscow expressed its displeasure at the way the Polish investigation proceeded. But when Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski called on Putin to stop the attacks, the assaults on Poles in Moscow abruptly ended.

Another case of directed physical and psychological pressure was when Georgians were expelled from Russia in October 2006 after relations deteriorated between Moscow and Tbilisi following a spy scandal. Russian police raided Georgian businesses, and rounded up and deported many Georgian citizens, who were working illegally in Russia.

There have been suggestions from many Russian politicians and commentators that the Kremlin take matters further. The Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, on April 29 voted to break diplomatic relations with Tallinn.

Other Russian politicians have proposed economic sanctions, a transport blockade, a tourism boycott of Estonia, and banning those Estonian officials responsible from the removal of the memorial from entering Russia.

Moscow's Weapons Limited

However, the Kremlin knows its limits. Breaking off ties with Estonia is unlikely to be popular with the government and the public, as it would have negative consequences for the ethnic Russian community in Estonia, which makes up around one-third of the population.

Moreover, trade between the two countries is worth less than $300 million. Estonia, especially with European Union backing, could easily find other partners in the case of economic sanctions.

It is also possible that the Kremlin will soften its campaign against Estonia, fearing that further pressure would consolidate the West against Russia.

In fact, already the United States, NATO, EU, the Scandinavian countries, and the Baltic states have all backed Estonia. Only China, Kazakhstan, and Belarus have expressed their official support for Russia.

And the "monument war" has already soured relations between Russia and the EU. The European Union has called on Russia to guarantee the safety of Estonian diplomats on its territory. [..]

Away from the political drama, the real losers in this crisis are likely be Estonia's ethnic Russians, who have become further ostracized in their own country.

Tallinn Mayor Edgar Savisaar has said that all the good work done by the Estonian government, with the help of the EU, for the Russian ethnic minority has now been ruined.

Or as Vladimir Belozeartsev, a Tallinn University professor, told RFE/RL's Russian Service, "As Moscow and Tallinn settle accounts with each other, the [ethnic] Russian Estonians have found themselves caught between two fires."

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Also watching, with interest.

For almost 20 years, I lived beside an Estonian family, who escaped the Russian occupation to eventually settle in Canada, but who left behind many family and friends. My view is coloured by their stories.

They are very proud of Tallinn, both as a city and as an emblem of their culture.

I gathered from them that Estonia, like many of the Baltic countries, had greatly feared the Russians, much more so than Germany in the years leading up to WWII. In fact, the husband was fighting in the Finnish resistance movement when Russia invaded Estonia.

I'm sure that they would view the relocation of the statue and graves of the Russians as the height of tolerance. From my distance, it's hard not see the Russian reaction as overwraught, if not provocative.

What I'm wondering is: the 33% of the Estonian population who are ethnic Russian -- were they a long established community or were they emigrants from post-1945, settled within Estonia to keep it in the Soviet sphere?

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Tico wrote:

What I'm wondering is: the 33% of the Estonian population who are ethnic Russian -- were they a long established community or were they emigrants from post-1945, settled within Estonia to keep it in the Soviet sphere?

Overwhelmingly the latter. There was a Russian minority before the war, but it was very small. After the occupation, the Soviet Union systematically populated Estonia and Latvia with Russians and others from across the Soviet Union (the Ukrainians and Belorussians have merged with the Russians in a sort of "Russian-speaker" or "Baltic-Russian" ethnos).

They didnt need to be forced there; Estonia and Latvia were attractive settlement places for Russians because the standard of living was better there, and the state provided comparatively attractive salaries for those who moved there. Plus, it was relatively easy to make a career, as the Soviet Union also systematically had Russians occupy government, state and administrative jobs.

The in-migration continued throughout the Soviet occupation, and by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, about 40% of the population of Estonia, and 50% of that of Latvia, was Russians mixed in with Ukrainians and Belarussians.

While Lithuania, which saw a much more modest influx of Russians, generously extended citizenship to all who were born there when it regained its independence, Estonia and Latvia, daunted by the sheer numbers, chose a different path.

The position of Estonian and Latvian nationalists was basically that those who had settled in their republics during the occupation had never been allowed in by the legal authorities, since those had been repressed after Soviet occupation, and were therefore akin to illegal immigrants. So they only accorded citizenship to those who were born, or whose (grand)parents were born, in the country before WW2.

Legally speaking, they were formally correct I suppose, though the result was somewhat absurd: hundreds of thousands of people who had often lived in the country for decades, or were even born there, who were suddenly left stateless. Stateless, because their new country didnt recognize them, and their old country, the Soviet Union, didnt exist anymore. So suddenly they were bereft of all rights that citizens have, included voting rights.

It is hard though not to also feel empathy for the Estonian/Latvian position. They'd had an independent country; they'd never wanted to be part of the Soviet Union; Soviet occupation had come with a torrent of rape and murder and, in the case of Latvia and especially Lithuania, a prolonged and doomed partisan war against the occupation; and the Soviets had followed up by deporting a significant share of the population to Siberia, and ruthlessly imposing its own system and authority on the local population.

Over the course of time suffering decreased as the Brezhnev era brought an amount of prosperity, but culturally life remained fraught. National-tinged dissent was clamped down on ruthlessly throughout. And their small countries, their capital cities in particular, were flooded by Russian-speaking in-migrants who overwhelmingly refused to learn the local language and received no stimulus whatsoever from the Soviet state to do so. At that time, it was the Balts who were second-rank citizens in many ways.

So Estonia and Latvia eventually settled on a system where the majority of the Russian-speakers who did not get citizenship automatically could get what US politicians now would call "a pathway to citizenship", involving extensive language tests. Evaluations of that choice can be varied - you can say, well they should learn Estonian anyway if they are going to live in an independent Estonia; or you can point out that it's a devilishly difficult language and that you're often talking older residents, living in Russian-majority cities (Narva) or neighbourhoods where they'd need little Estonian, and most of all that they were also just thrust into this situation.

Interestingly, although anger and resentment about their sudden exclusion has remained strong throughout among the Russian minorities, most have reneged on the alternative possibility of taking Russia's offer of Russian citizenship instead. They dont want to go to Russia - things are worse there. Hence how though the size of the Russian-language minorities has decreased, it's still about a third in Estonia and over 40% in Latvia.

The EU, Council of Europe, OSCE have steered a careful course on this topic for the past decade. On the one hand, they've continuously chided Estonia and Latvia for all too exclusionary policies, and have all the time edged along initiatives to increase the access for non-citizens to rights, services, citizenship. On the other hand, they are well aware of the way that Russia has time and again used the Russian minority issue in the 90s and early 00s to clamp down on the Baltic states whenever those became too cheeky; if they'd turn too assertive vis-a-vis the Russian neighbour, Russia would suddenly become agressively indignant about the oppression of the Baltic Russians, and enact or threaten sanctions of this or that kind. So there's been a degree of solidarity with the Baltic states at that kind of bullying and stirring up as well.

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Violent Clashes in Tallinn Over War Memorial

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