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Acknowledgement
Part of the work towards this article was supported by British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled ‘Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities: Estonia, Sweden and the “Baltic World”’.
Notes
Notes
1. The title of this essay is a translation of the title of a Postimees editorial from 3 August 2007 entitled ‘Häda kivide pärast’. This is a play on ‘Häda mõistete pärast’, which the Estonian title of Aleksandr Griboyedov's 1820s satirical comedy ‘Gore ot uma’, known in English as ‘Woe from Wit’.
2. On the relationship between legal continuity and post-Soviet realities, see Smith, D. J. (Citation2001). With regard to the Supreme Council declaration of 20 August 1991 that paved the way for international recognition of independence, Marju Lauristin (Citation1996, p. 81) has spoken of a compromise ‘third way’ that guaranteed the legal continuity of statehood and yet allowed for the possibility of radical renewal according to the democratic principles of the late twentieth century. Subsequent accounts (Smith, G. 1994; Pettai & Hallik Citation2002) have pointed to continued practices of ethnic control during the ensuing decade and a half, although Western governments and international organizations have been instrumental in the adoption on new measures designed to facilitate the legal-political and linguistic integration of the large non-citizen population.
3. This phrase is taken from a more general discussion of identities across the FSU in Smith, G. et al. (Citation1998, p. 26).
4. This offers a further illustration of how the form and context (physical, temporal, political) of a monument is intrinsic to its ascribed meaning: for instance, it is interesting that the more abstract and far more peripheral Soviet monument at Maarjamäe on the outskirts of Tallinn has not aroused a similar degree of contention, despite being far larger than the Bronze Soldier. In this regard, one might say the same about the immense Soviet war memorial in Riga, which is quite far removed from the historic center of the Latvian capital. To extend this analogy further, it is perhaps also significant that central Riga retained the inter-war Freedom Monument as a symbol of Latvian statehood and national liberation.
5. This conclusion is based on data from the 2005 MeeMa survey, and subsequent survey data from 2006 and 2007, provided by Professor Marju Lauristin of Tartu University. See also Triin Vihalemm and Veronika Kalmus, ‘Conflict, Citizenship and Civil Society’ and Külliki Korts ‘Post-Communist social transformation and changes in the attitudes among ethnic Estonians and Russians’, both papers presented at the 8th Annual Conference of the European Sociological Association, Glasgow, 3–6 September 2007.
6. Vihalemm & Kalmus, ‘Conflict, Citizenship and Civil Society’.
7. From an interview on the DVD of the Estonian Kanal 2 documentary film ‘Pronksöö: vene mass Tallinnas’, 2007.
8. For a full discussion of the Lihula events and their link to debates over the Bronze Soldier, see Feest (Citation2007).
9. See also ‘Politoloog Andres Kasekamp: Eesti on praegu väga haavatav’, Postimees, 27 April 2007.
10. Prime Minister Andrus Ansip stated this quite explicitly during the run-up to the election. As was noted in a the 3 August Postimees editorial, one of the saddest features of the ‘War on Monuments’ was that war memorials had lost their function of commemorating the dead and become objects of contestation. ‘Juhtkiri: häda kivide pärast’, Postimees, 3 August 2007.
11. The Soviet memorial at Maarjamäe commemorates the Soviet army units that took Tallinn in 1944, and was constructed around the 50th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Alongside it one now finds memorials to the Estonians who defended Tallinn against Soviet forces in 1944, and a restored cemetery that contains the graves of Germans and Estonians who perished during 1939–1945 but which is dedicated to the ‘victims of all wars’, as well as the soldiers in question. The neighboring Estonian History Museum complex will also soon become home to a new sculpture park that displays previously dismantled Soviet monuments, along the lines of Lithuania's Grūto Parkas and an analogous museum in Hungary.
12. A number of scholars have explored this relationship in recent times. See, for instance: Smith, D. J. (Citation2002) and the review of more recent work by Pettai (Citation2006). For the best exploration of ‘memory politics’ within this framework, see Onken (Citation2007a).
