(C) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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Estonia's Endangered Soviet Monuments [1]

['Amos Chapple']

Date: 2022-08 

Tallinn has declared the imminent removal of Soviet monuments from public spaces across Estonia. Here's a look at some of the Baltic country's communist-era memorials and statues while they're still standing.

This statue is one of more than 200 Soviet-era monuments in Estonia apparently due for removal. In early August, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas announced at a press conference that "Soviet monuments must be removed from public spaces, and we will do this as quickly as possible."

Kallas cited the Russian invasion of Ukraine as opening "wounds in our society that these communist monuments remind us of."

Estonia was a Soviet republic from 1944 until regaining independence in 1991. Today nearly a quarter of the country's 1.3 million people are ethnic Russians.

Russia's government has slammed the decision to remove the monuments, some of which mark the physical remains of Soviet soldiers who died fighting Nazi forces.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on August 5 that "the elimination of monuments to those who saved Europe from fascism is outrageous, of course. It does no credit to any nation, including Estonia."

The full scope of Estonia's plans remains unclear, though memorials located at cemeteries will apparently be off-limits. Kallas said commemorating the dead "will not be prohibited, but it should be done in the right place, which is at a cemetery where it can be done with dignity."

In April 2007, this bronze soldier was moved from central Tallinn to its current location at a cemetery in the Estonian capital. The relocation, which included digging up Soviet soldiers’ remains, sparked riots in the capital during which a Russian man was stabbed to death.

Local authorities in Narva have set a deadline of August 20 for the removal of this replica T-34 tank from its pedestal. After a crowd gathered around the monument in early August to protest its planned disappearance, officials claimed they would not remove the tank "in the dead of night."

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[1] Url: https://www.rferl.org/a/31989524.html

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