Estonia split over WWII memorial

[Aptrgangr]

Estonia split over WWII memorial

Estonia's president has refused to sign a controversial law that would pave the way for removing a Soviet war memorial.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves said some sections of the law were unconstitutional.
Earlier on Thursday the Estonian parliament passed a bill obliging the government to remove the monument within a month.
The "Bronze Soldier" has become a symbol of divisions in Estonian society. Ethnic Russians are firmly against the plan to remove it.
Most of the country's large Russian-speaking minority regard the statue as an anti-fascist symbol, but for many ethnic Estonians it honours a regime which occupied the country for more than 50 years. Russians form about one-third of the Baltic republic's population.
Mr Ilves accused some Estonian politicians of using the issue "merely to draw attention to themselves" ahead of the 4 March parliamentary election.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, quoted by the Interfax news agency, called the Estonian MPs' vote a "very big mistake and an act of blasphemy which is unacceptable in today's Europe".
The law would prohibit the display of monuments glorifying Soviet rule, which ended in 1991.
Mr Lavrov's deputy Vladimir Titov warned that approving the law would have irreversible consequences for relations with Estonia.
After clashes between ethnic Russian and Estonian activists at the statue, the Estonian government said it wanted to move the monument - and the soldiers' remains thought to be buried beneath it - to a more suitable location.
Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said the government would be able to order the monument's removal anyway, using a law on the protection of war graves which was passed in January, the BBC's Laura Sheeter reports from Tallinn.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Estonia split over WWII memorial

[Marulus]

Second world war is the founding myth of political philosophy and ideology of the so-called modern West. The victory of Allies over Germany, Italy nad Japan laid foundations of modern power structures in the West and in the world in general. Even during the peak of the Cold War celebrations of the allied victory were made (military parades, speeches) both in East and West. The both allegedly opposed "blocks" maintained this myth, the myth of the antifascist victory over the "forces of evil" (does this remind you of something?) Victims who were killed by the Axis armies and regimes are often and quite pompously commemorated (see: the religion of Holocaust), while victims of the Allies (Germans, Japanese and others) are not mentioned or are even denigrated ("they got what they deserved")

The myth is still strong, it is persistent, because we live in a world where power structures established in 1945 still exist and rule. The fall of Berlin wall and subsequent changes are being grossly overestimated. I would call it just a minor restructuring. The only notable exception that was permitted by the great powers was the reunification of Germany. All the so-called newly independent countries in Eastern Europe were allowed to gain "independence" according to the preivously established rules, laws and internal frontiers. The legality of former Communist dictatorships was never put into question.

Communism was never publicly and explicitly condemned. Moreover, Communist functionaries in Eastern European countries have been allowed to reatain their positions in politics and economy. It was a great surprise to me, when I first visited Berlin, to see streets in the former East Berlin still carrying the old Communist names (Karl Marx Allee, Rosa Liebknecht Strasse and similar). I heard there are even streets in Germany (not Berlin) carrying the name of Ilya Ehrenburg (Stalin's minister of propaganda, I think), the man who advocated genocide of Germans and was even rebuked by Stalin for that! There are similar phenomena in all so-called post-Communist countries. Fascism and Nazism are still strongly condemned (although these political movements do not exist any more, 62 years from now), while Communism-Marxism is somehow...acceptable.

That is why cases like this in Estonia are extremely sensitive. Countries like this are caught between two fires, so to say. On the one side, shadows of the Soviet era and the oppression, on the other side the liberal West that shares the same myth with the former Soviets.

This myth is going to persist as long as the monstruous world order that we are living in remains intact.

[Marulus]

Gladstone has a wealth of knowledge of these things, maybe he could make a special thread on this.

Gladstone, where are you?