Monumental needs and rethinking Estonia's past

TALLINN - The Soviet T-34 tank in Narva, parked a few meters from the bridge that spans the river between Estonia and Russia, was put there in the 1950s. There is no sign on the pedestal, as the monument needs no explanation: It is one of hundreds spread across the Soviet Union to remind everybody of the country's victory over fascism and the millions of war casualties.

To be sure, the tank has never been a major topic of discussion in Estonia - unlike many other monuments commemorating Soviet, German and Estonian soldiers who fell during World War II - even though, ironically enough, its cannon points toward Tallinn.
One monument aficianado, Leo Tammiksaar, a businessman and history enthusiast, made headlines again last week when he applied for a permit to put a World War II anti-aircraft cannon on the roof of a building under construction in downtown Parnu, where he lives.
Part of the building will reportedly host Tammiksaar's collection of war paraphernalia and will serve as a private exhibition hall.
"To call this thing a museum would be an obvious exaggeration," said Tammiksaar, who runs the nonprofit organization Eesti SS-Leegioni Muuseum (Estonian SS Legion Museum).
"I would simply agree or disagree to show my collection to people who have found a way to contact me. I do not want to talk about the new building because I do not want to advertise the collection."
In his words, it is mainly school children and war veterans interested in seeing the collection, and he doesn't have the heart to reject their requests. For the last 10 years, Tammiksaar has hosted some 15 groups of school students and some 40 to 50 groups of World War II veterans from Estonia, Finland and Germany.
In fact, his hobby has impressed many state officials, and Estonian museums have often borrowed parts of his collection. Even now the national history museum and the occupation museum in Tallinn, as well as one of the border guard museums, exhibit parts of Tammiksaar's collection.
But Tammiksaar's fame goes beyond his collections. In 2002 he received permission to erect a monument to the Estonian freedom fighters - one featuring a soldier wearing a German infantry uniform - but the monument met stinging protest from the national government and was eventually removed. In November 2003 a more neutral monument was erected.

POLITICAL DISPUTE
During the war, Estonians fought on virtually every side possible. Some joined the German Wehrmach, the SS legion or the Finnish army. Some fought in the Red army, and some chose guerilla warfare to protect their homeland. The commemoration of Estonian soldiers from the SS legion and the protection of existing Soviet military monuments has always been a political issue at both domestic and international level.
Russia recently reprimanded Estonia for one individual's initiative to erect a cross commemorating SS colonel Alfons Rebane on private territory.
Under the famous Bronze Soldier memorial in Tallinn, set between the National Library and the Kaarli church, 13 Soviet soldiers were reportedly buried. History experts say that the somewhat unusual location of the grave - the area was in the city center - can be explained by the general practice of the Red army commanders who only cared about having their dead men buried, regardless of the city planning issues.
Despite a number of calls, mostly coming from Estonia's right-wing political parties, to remove the monument, the Tallinn city government has declined to do so. The monument has become the main place for the May 9 (the Victory Day in Soviet Union and in Russia) celebrations for Soviet World War II veterans.

THE SOVIET ANGLE
Sergei Smirnov, 77, chairman of the Union of Veteran Organizations in Estonia, which unites the people who fought on the Soviet side in World War II, said that there were about 320 burial places - mostly mass graves - throughout Estonia that contain Soviet soldiers. Incredibly, new graves are frequently discovered by history buffs. The latest case is a mass grave recovered near Sillamae in northeastern Estonia.
"They have not been classified exactly yet, but for a number of signs we can say most of them are remains of Soviet soldiers," Smirnov said.
"Every grave is taken into account. There are neither forgotten nor forsaken burial places," he stressed.
Although municipal authorities in Estonia maintain a positive attitude in general about the issue of re-interment, cases of vandalism are not uncommon, according to Smirnov.
One of the latest cases occurred in Paldiski last week, when a group of hooligans stole the three anchors of a monument in memory of a Soviet submarine crew that perished in an accident after the war. The thieves then sold the artifacts to a scrap metal company.
Thankfully, the anchors were later recovered from the company warehouse.
Despite these cases, in Smirnov's opinion, the government does pay due attention to the memorials of the Soviet past. Sometimes it even neglects them.
"In the Soviet time there was a well-kept memorial complex in Klooga [not far from Tallinn] where the Nazis killed and burned bodies of some 2,000 people, mostly civilians. Now the memorial desperately needs renovation," he said.
The headmaster of a school removed a bust of General Lembit Parn, commander of the Estonian corps of the Soviet Army during World War II, from his own school territory. It was one of two in the country. The second, still standing in a village in eastern Estonia, is likely to be removed by the local municipality.
"The Parn bust was removed from the school territory because the school needed a place for a flagpole. Well, a flag is an important national symbol, but it was not the Estonian flag that freed Estonia in 1944 but a Soviet soldier led by General Parn," an emotional Smirnov said.
Today in many places where under Soviet rule only the Red army soldiers were commemorated, memorials to the soldiers who fought on the other side have gone up. The Soviet complex - an enormous memorial - on Pirita Road in Tallinn now has a new neighbor: a memorial where the remains of German soldiers have been re-buried.
In Sinimae, a place between Narva and Sillamae, a cross was erected in 1999 for the 20th Waffen SS division soldiers near the Soviet memorial. In July, the Estonian society of Freedom Fighters will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Sinimae battle, a major combat in which German troops tried to stop the Red army from conquering Estonia.
The grave of Estonian citizen Alfons Rebane, a Nazi colonel and commander of an SS division, is now located in the same cemetery where many Soviet generals of Estonian origin are resting.
Now that the war is already more than half a century away, Smirnov admitted that from a humanitarian morality point of view, German soldiers also deserve proper remembrance. However, the government's policy toward World War II issues is one-sided, he said, and those who fought on the German side receive preferential treatment while the Soviet soldiers are thrown into oblivion.

HISTORIAN SPEAKS
Meelis Maripuu from S-Keskus, an Estonian NGO dealing with modern history research, said that in the Soviet times when the Communist Party controlled everything, it was impossible for average citizens to initiate a monument project.
According to Maripuu, usually a temporary obelisk made of wood was erected immediately after the end of a battle or after the discovery of a burial place. Decades later, more dignified monuments were installed. The monuments we see today mostly date form the 1970s.
During the Soviet era, Estonians often commemorated the monuments that were established during the First Estonian Republic from 1918 to 1940, even though they had been removed by Soviet authorities, according to Maripuu.
"For example, people kept bringing flowers to the place where the Independence War monument in Tallinn used to be," the researcher said.
"Civilized society does not maintain a conflict with the dead, and Estonia is a civilized society. At this point, only some of the ideological monuments of the Soviet times have been removed after the restoration of independence," Maripuu added.