Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 7 – Urmas Reinsalu,
Estonia’s justice minister, says that Tallinn is considering dismantling the
Soviet war memorial at Maarjamäe on the seacoast between
the center of the capital and Pirita because there is a risk that the facility,
including a 35-meter obelisk, is at risk of collapsing.
To save the monument, which many Estonians
have long referred to as “the dream of the impotent,” would cost at least a
million euros (1.3 million US dollars), money that officials feel could be better
spent on other things, especially since none of the installations are
especially noteworthy or meaningful for Estonians (belaruspartisan.org/politic/411778/).
The memorial complex consists of
several monuments. The most prominent is the tall obelisk which was raised by
the Soviets in honor of the Ice Campaign by which in 1918, Red soldiers of the Baltic
Fleet were able to break through the German blockade and deliver critical cargo
to the Soviet base at Kronshtadt (lenta.ru/news/2018/01/06/memorial/).
Build
around that obelisk in advance of the Olympics in 1980, when the sailing
competitions occurred off the Estonian coast, is a memorial in stone that
recalls the eternal flames set up in many Soviet cities and remaining in
Russian ones today. During Soviet times,
military parades in Tallinn were staged there.
Reinsalu
did not say when Tallinn might take action, but many will be waiting to see
Moscow’s reaction, given how harshly it responded when the Estonian authorities
in 2007 moved the Soviet “bronze soldier” from in front of the National Library
to a military cemetery. (See windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2007/05/window-on-eurasia-does-bronze-soldier.html).
If
Moscow responds harshly, that will of course please some Russian nationalists
but further inflame Estonian anger; if the Russian capital doesn’t, that will
be a signal that Moscow today doesn’t want to refight a monument war in
Tallinn, an indication that it has concluded it has more to lose by doing so
than by not.
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