Stan, I'm Estonian and living in Tallinn. I was just trying to give little deeper backround to your topic that other forum members could understand this problem better. We, as Estonians, and parlamentarians who represent our thoughts, want do this statue removal in civilized way. Enough is enough (especially after Russia started to use this monument in their propaganda offencive) and it's time to take this statue to cemetery where people can bring flowers. At present time it's just symbol of occupation (in the center of our capital) for over 70% of people (this is the percentage of Estonians in Estonia) and real soruce of misunderstanding between ethnic groups. I know a lot of Russians who understand things the same way as we do. The problem is that a lot of them still see things opposite way, which means via Soviet (now Russian) propaganda prisma. There are several reasons. First, Russian TV ja radio, whisch is real PSYOPS maschine. Second, history lessons in Estonian Russian secondary schools (Russia is trying to give them even history books published in Russia).Third, Russian grandparents who tell to their grandchildren their version of history (hallelujah to Soviet Union) etc.

There are elections coming in March in Estonia. In Estonia, there are couple Russian parties. The fact is that they have not won seats in Estonian parliament. To get those seats they had to find painful issues to give new breathing to their institutions. As we know 1 issue parties are not very succsessful in long term and i hope that this rule is valid also here.

PS. My grandfather was police officer in independent Estonian Republic, before II WW. He was taken to Siberia in 1940 in animal carriage. He was there over 10 years and came back. Relatives say that he was never the same man.