Estonia, the Monument, and What it Means

I recently took a trip to Kiev, Ukraine for a conference. The conference was boring, but aside from hat Ukraine is just not one of my favorite destinations. The cold, stale beurocratic order that is the nation’s Soviet legacy still persists in Ukraine. The endless reams of stamp-thirsty documents that necessitate a four-hour wait at the border, the corrupt and insidious police, are enough to suck the joy and spontaneity from any journey to Ukraine. (And hence why, despite the fact that it’s nice and warm here these days, I have posted pictures of Kiev in winter: even in spring, Kiev feels cold.)

There are, however, some exceptions to this trend, and one is in the area of politics, an arena in Ukraine that is decidedly hot. Certainly, this is the case now. A political row between the Western-leaning President Viktor Yuschenko and his opponent, Moscow’s lackey Viktor Yanukovych, has provoked Ukrainians of all leanings to take to the streets to air their opinions. Walking in downtown Kiev, I was passed by marching gangs of Ukraine’s youth hoisting flags, bedecked in their party’s colors, and bristling with airs of self-importance and the charge of revolution. One can’t encounter such displays of passion on the part of the polity without feeling some excitement. This is democracy at work.

Or is it?

There is a deep vein of strife that passes through the countries of the former Soviet Union, a tension between ethnic natives and Russian nationalists that depresses and destabilizes the infrastructure of these countries and prevents growth, progress, and a true democratic progress. It is a tension that has been building since the USSR collapsed and that is finally coming to a head.

And nowhere is this seen more clearly than in Estonia.

What is happening in Estonia? The government there, with the approval of the majority of the population, recently decided to remove a monument that commemorated the Soviet Army’s involvement in WWII. The monument was erected by the USSR during the days of its occupation of Estonia (A common practice in all Soviet nations) and served, too, as the gravesite for an “unknown” – although most probably Russian – soldier. To respect the dead, the grave was to be relocated in a war cemetery.

Despite being a decision undertaken by an independent nation with the support of the majority of its population, however, the Russian minority in Estonia protested violently, at first forming a human wall around he monument and then – when protesters were arrested and he monument successfully moved last week – turning to riot and loot in the streets of the capital, Tallinn. At least one Russian died in the process.

From a Western, democratic perspective, the removal of a Soviet monument seems like no big issue. Indeed, why would a country want to maintain a reminder of its oppression by a foreign power in a public, downtown venue? Weren’t scores of Lenin monuments toppled in cities across the former Soviet Union after Perestroika? Why is this monument no different? We know that the Soviet Union was an institution of repression that forced millions from their homes in the dead of night to ride cramped in cattle cars for weeks before being relocated far from family and friends in the bitter cold wastes of Siberia. Why would any people complain that a monument to this legacy be removed?

Clearly, however, the Russian perspective differs greatly from the Western one.

After the removal of the monument, protests were sparked not only in Estonia but across the former Soviet Union. In Moscow and Kiev, Russians surrounded and assaulted the Estonian Embassies, forcing the embassy in Moscow to close temporarily. Many Russian newspapers and veteran groups have denounced Estonia’s President as “bloody” and have demanded that the government step down from power. Relations between Estonia and Russia are at their lowest since Estonia’s independence.

So what’s happening here? From an outsider’s perspective, the Russian reaction seems patently bizarre. Why would the people of one country feel they have the right to tell another country how they can renovate their capital’s downtown? Why wouldn’t it be obvious, even to Russians, that a statue built to commemorate Russia’s involvement in WWII and subsequent conquest of Estonia is – at best, incongruous; at worst, unconscionable – in the borders of Estonia? If the grave itself is of such value to Russia, why wouldn’t Russia instead insist that the monument be removed and relocated in Russia? From an outsider’s perspective, there is no clearer indication than this row that Russia only wants to maintain oppression of and dictate policy within the now-independent nations of the former Soviet Union. Russia, it would seem, has not relinquished its imperialist agenda.

But, how accurate is this perspective? It’s certainly not completely off the mark. Indeed, in the past several years, Russia’s gangster president Putin has committed many acts of oppression against nations in the former Soviet Union, from Georgia to Belarus to Ukraine. Clearly, Russia is not willing to let former Soviet nations have real independence, and periodically tightens the thumbscrews to remind these nations of this fact.

Yet, even if this is the politic agenda of Russia, this does not accurately account for the intense, almost hysterical passions of the Russian populace both in Russia and abroad. The rabid vigor of Russian nationalism owes its roots to something far deeper and more critical than one government’s political agenda.

Russians are consumed by an unconscious feeling of dread and panic that was itself the cause of the Soviet Union and that lies even today at the core of the Russian heart, a feeling that is so dire that it threatens to destabilize this part of the world for generations to come.

TO BE CONTINUED