Estonians re-erect Soviet monument after deadly violence
Tensions between ethnic Estonians and ethnic Russians remain at a fever pitch in the capital of Tallinn after  violence left at least one dead, scores injured and 1,000 people behind bars. The violence was sparked by the exhuming of a mass grave of Second World War-era Red Army dead, and the taking down of a statue of a Red Army soldier, called the Pronkssõdur, from the capital. The actions led to two nights of massive rioting, with thousands of ethnic Russians waving flags and battling police. Vehicles, billboards and shops were also the targets of random arson and violence as police responded with rubber bullets in the worst violence Estonia has seen since winning independence from the USSR in 1991. Tallin is bracing for potentially even worse violence as May Day approaches, a holiday that will see hundreds of thousands of people from both sides swarming the capital.
The war markers were taken down in response to ethnic nationalist Estonian demands to distance the nation from the Soviet occupation legacy, and in line with US and special interest plans to influence former Soviet and Soviet-bloc nations as buffers against the Kremlin. Russian fury over what the Kremlin sees as a “desecration” led to Kremlin demands for the mass resignation of the Estonian government, and Russian officials have gone to Tallin for talks about the crisis. In the latest development, Estonian officials announced a compromise: they have re-erected the “Bronze Soldier” at a military graveyard.Such symbols, often in the ugly “Socialist Realism” style, were placed in conquered nations as symbols of Soviet power and have long been the source of resentment. But since most have some connection to the Second World War, they have an added value to many ex-Soviets. Still called “The Great Patriotic War,” the Second World War was a cataclysmic disaster for Soviet people, who lost approximately 20 million people. The Soviet government, whose power was solidified by the war, preached that the occupation of foreign lands was just compensation for the sacrifice of so many, and this kind of thinking is simply a fact of life held by millions of Russians and others.
Estonia won its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, alongside Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania. The Estonians were handed over wholesale to Stalin by Hitler in 1939, along with Finland (which had bravely fought a “Winter War” against the Soviets), Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and half of Poland. The so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or Hitler-Stalin Pact had the result of establishing Soviet claims to Estonia, which the Western Allies agreed to honor after the war. Likewise, Latvia and Lithuania became wholesale “Soviet Socialist Republics,” while Stalin kept much of Romania (today’s Moldova). Poland was dismembered, with vast swathes being incorporated into the Ukrainian and Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republics, and the Polish border being pushed westward into lands once held by ethnic Germans. The accompanying ethnic cleansing was unlike anything ever seen before, and tiny Estonia saw the murder or deportation of its intellectuals. The death of the Soviet Union left whole populations behind in new states, often disliked and resented as invaders. Efforts in the newly-freed lands to redefine themselves have left these populations angry and worried.
The Estonians are a Finnic people who, unlike nextdoor Slavs and Scandinavians, speak a non-Indo-European language related to Finnish and Hungarian. A small nation of under 1.5 million people, Estonia has a large Slavic (mainly Russian) population of 25.7%, with Ukrainians and Belorussians adding another 3%. These Slavs are the descendants of pioneers settled in Estonia when it was a Soviet possession. Just as Third World immigration in the West today seeks to replace white populations with new settlers for political and economic reasons, so too the Marxists shipped an astounding number of Soviet citizens to Estonia, dropping the native population from 96% to 61% between and 1989, to the point that ethnic Estonians today make up only 68.6% of their own nation. But as with Third World populations in the United States and Europe, the bulk of non-Estonians live in urban areas, with much of the nation remaining heterogeneously Estonian.
Apart from ethnic differences and historical resentments, the Estonians are historically Lutherans which, along with their use of the Latin alphabet, forms an Estonian cultural identification with the Scandinavians as well as their Finnish cousins.
The stranded Slavs in places like the former Soviet Far East and Central Asia find themselves without power, surrounded by increasingly militant Muslims, while in Estonia and other European ex-Soviet holdings they are the object of fear and hatred, scorned as former conquering peoples. These Slavs reacted negatively to the collapse of the USSR and formed groups like Interfront, which express a nostalgic (though hardly ideological) affection for Stalin and the “great days” of Kremlin power. Many of them are where they are because of purges and other horrors of the Soviet system, but now identify with the USSR as a symbol of ethnic, Slavic pride, often in reaction to local ethnic and nationalist anti-Kremlin expressions.
The present situation in Estonia is a tragedy. Ethnic nationalism has long been a curse for European people, and is even more dangerous now, as the continent faces non-stop Third World immigration. The attempt of the United States and special interests like the ousted oligarchs hoping to destroy Putin’s government to deepen these divisions is also dangerous. The situation also shows the ongoing ill-effects of the Second World War and the fratricidal impulses that persist.
Hopefully both Slavs and ethnic Estonians will see beyond their differences and come to an understanding on their co-existence.
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