Well, it was a good thing we weren’t in Tallinn that evening. We learned on Friday morning, when Margit and Merle brought us the paper about the events you might have heard about in the news, that are going on in Estonia at the moment. It all started with a statue, in comemoration for the russian soldiers who died in the second world war to get estonia out of the Nazi regime. For the russian people, living in Estonia, representing a big minority, this monument is very important and they believe Estonia should be gratefull to Russia. On the other hand, the estonians have a grudge about this event, for this “freedom” from the nazi regime marked also the beginning of the russian occupation which lasted 50 years !
They believe that Nazi germany was falling appart anyway and that Russia only used this as an excuse to invade them.
This monument has been the cause of many disturbances in the country in recent years and the president, when running for the elections promised to take care of this problem, not by destroing it as originaly planned, but dispacing it in a cemetary where it would be more appropriate and less visible as a remnant of the soviet occupation.
The Riot which took place when they actually started displacing the statue, occured because of the importance of russian speaking people in Estonia and it shows that Estonia still has not solved the problem of these state-less russians which do not belong to russia nor Estonia. They want to stay in Estonia but do not want to become citizens, for they still despize the estonian culture as when the USSR occupied it.
It is hard to tell the outcome of this crisis, but such violence has not occured in this country since the independance (1991) and the 9th of may is supposed to be the celebration for the russian victory on the Nazis. Everybody is fearing more violence…
But don’t worry for us, we’re safe in Joelahtme, where the local news is that storks have finally arrived and trees are budding.
