Russian Bronze Statue in Estonia

[Stan]

You're in your late 60s and have had just about enough of looking at Red Army Monuments in your home town. With little else to do as the government claims to be powerless in removing those offending objects, you rent a crane and pull the Sierra out yourself

TALLINN, May 23 (RIA Novosti) - A radical Estonian nationalist, known for his threats to blow up the Bronze Soldier statue in Tallinn last year, has dismantled two other Soviet-era war memorials in the capital, national TV reported on Friday.

Yuri Lijm, 66, hired a crane and drove it to Audentes University. He then removed two statues of Soviet World War II heroes and delivered them to the Estonian History Museum.

One of the monuments commemorates Soviet cadets of the Tallinn military school, and the other is a statue of the founder of Estonia's Communist party, Hans Poogelmann.

"I came here to do this because it is the responsibility of a citizen of Estonia. If the authorities are so helpless, I have to do this myself. It is our holy duty," Lijm said in a TV interview.

"Estonia still has too many these socialist monuments. I will definitely not stop until I clean Estonia of them. A period of cleaning out the trash has been declared in Estonia. I am cleaning out the red trash," he said.

Last spring, Lijm publicly threatened to blow up the Bronze Soldier statue in central Tallinn, but was later acquitted by a court.

[Stan]

Estonia's Minister of Education, Tonis Lukas in an interview with Reporter.ee.

Brief translation:

Tonis Lukas does not recommend using the Latvian documentary "Soviet Story" as teaching material in Estonian schools.

Minister Lukas believes that the film, which describes Soviet Communists' collaboration with German Nazis in organizing mass killings, is accurate but that it is too shocking to be shown to children.

Lukas feels Estonia should make her own film on the subject to be used as teaching material, and also be shown in Estonia's Russian schools.

The film, two years in the making, analyzes Soviet heritage and its impact on contemporary Europe. It covers the Great Famine in The Ukraine, the Katyn Massacre, SS-KGB collaboration and Soviet mass deportations.

The European Parliament's National Political Group sponsored a portion of the documentary which premiered in Europe earlier in May.

[Stan]

... literally out of bed, by armed Red soldiers.

Book tells of Soviet crime against Estonians

Sixty-seven years ago this weekend, Estonia residents were dragged from their beds, shepherded to the train station and shipped to a Siberian labor camp by the Soviet Red Army.

To those who lived in the small Baltic country of Estonia at the time, it is an event known as the Great Deportation.

On Sunday morning, a memorial service for those victimized by the Great Deportation was held at the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Holy Ghost.

One of the invited guests was Tiina Ets, the translator of "We Shall Live in Heaven,'' a first-hand memoir written by Pastor Harri Haamer on his days spent at a Soviet slave labor camp.

[Stan]

KHANTY-MANSIISK, June 28 (Itar-Tass) - The Russian and Estonian presidents discuss how to improve bilateral relations and solve accumulated problems.

"We meet rarely, and the considerable number of accumulated problems in our relations is linked with it. I suggest the opportunity should be used to discuss the problems," Dmitry Medvedev said, when opening the meeting with Toomas Hendrik Ilves on Saturday.

"I am glad to welcome you in Khanty-Mansiisk. We have a good event -- the Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples is held here," Medvedev said.

Estonian president Ilves who was attending a conference of Finno-Ugrian nations held in Russia decided to leave after Konstantin Kossachov, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian Duma, started to make insults and veiled threats against Estonia in his speech.

Kossachov criticized Estonia by drawing parallels between the violence against the Mari national leaders and the Estonian police's use of force during the April riots in Tallinn 2007.

Estonian officials say that the claims made by the Russian official in his speech were libel and contained no facts and that Ilves was right to act the way he did.

Shortly after Ilves’s departure also president of Hungary and Finland left the congress.

[kaur]

Paul Goble writes overview of Russian newspapers.

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/...sia-clash.html

President Ilves speech is here.

http://www.president.ee/en/duties/speeches.php

The atmosphere reminds one point form very old speech

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/fourteenpoints.htm

[kaur]

Russian films take a page from Soviet playbook
The Kremlin helps to produce movies and TV miniseries that promote its views.
By Mansur Mirovalev, Associated Press

In the new millennium, Russian filmmakers have found themselves in a business-oriented environment of investments and profits. But the government has taken a greater role in film projects and remains the country's largest film producer. Putin recently proposed a merger of three Soviet-era film studios into a mammoth, state-owned concern

"Law enforcement agencies are part of our state, and the government has the right to propagate whatever it considers necessary," said producer Leonid Vereshchagin of 3T, Mikhalkov's own production company, which has released several highly patriotic films.

Russian intelligence, police and military agencies have underwritten at least a dozen television series or films in recent years, spending tens of millions of dollars to polish their images.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,1093579.story

[kaur]

I'm reading at the moment Norman Davies' book "Europe. East and West." There is chapter called "Misunderstood Victory". Part of it was published in "Sunday Times".

How we didn't win the war . . . but the Russians did.

Britain and America still insist they defeated the Nazis, in the face of overwhelming evidence that they were minor partners, says Norman Davies

Similarly, the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states in 1940 was no mere “strengthening of the defences” or “readjustment of frontiers”. It was a brutal act of depredation that destroyed three sovereign European states, together with a quarter of their population. All these events were facilitated by the Nazi-Soviet pact, which gave Stalin the same licence for banditry in the Soviet sphere that Hitler was exploiting in the German.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article625175.ece

[Stan]

A top railway official said Estonia has seen a steady fall in volumes of Russian oil product exports and is eventually expecting the flow to dry up completely...

Russia used to export a quarter of its heavy fuel oil, about 25 million tonnes a year, as well as light products, through Estonia's port of Tallinn. But a diplomatic quarrel led Russian railways to divert most of the light products to its own ports.

"After the controversy over the Bronze Soldier in April 2007, Estonia already lost around 40 pct of Russian transit, which is 3-4 pct of GDP... "

"The full re-direction of Russian oil product exports via Russian ports will cost around the same. In addition, we will lose our safety cushion in case of economic crisis," Bronshtein said in comment on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's comments on an end to all Russian oil product exports via Baltic ports.

[kaur]

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Paper Recalls when Soviets and Nazis Marched Together

September 23 – Sixty-nine years ago today, Soviet and Nazi German soldiers marched together in a military parade in Brest, just one month after Hitler and Stalin had concluded the non-aggression pact that made their countries allies, opened the way for World War II in Europe, and led to Moscow’s occupation of half the continent for 50 years.

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/...r-recalls.html

[kaur]

RADIO created the Third Reich’s ethnic battering ram: the Sudeten Germans, stranded in Czechoslovakia under the Versailles treaty. As David Vaughan recounts in his meticulous and poignant study of the war on the airwaves, Czechoslovakia’s own German-language programmes were hopelessly outgunned by the quantity, quality and audibility of the Nazi propaganda effort. Patriotic Czechoslovak journalists argued that it was the national radio’s job to broadcast in the national language: if their fellow-citizens wanted to hear programmes in German, they could tune in elsewhere. They did.

What Prague did offer was sometimes magnificently erudite (Thomas Mann, the exiled German literary giant, was a contributor) but had little appeal to skint, resentful German-speaking workers: they were easy prey for made-up stories of atrocities, discrimination, and conspiracies. That forged the crucial link in the Nazi argument: that ethnic Germans, around a quarter of Czechoslovakia’s population, wanted—and deserved—to join the Reich.

That is topical as well as tragic. You could read Mr Vaughan’s book, substituting ex-Soviet countries such as Estonia for Czechoslovakia. With Kremlin talk of “privileged interests” in Russia’s neighbourhood, and a litany of real and imagined grievances there, it is easy to imagine a resurgent Russia whipping up its millions of compatriots, living in foreign countries thanks to the collapse of the Soviet empire, into a frenzy while the outside world stands aloof. These stranded Russians tune almost exclusively into the Kremlin-run electronic media, not local stations, which broadcast poorly in Russian, if at all (the same mistake that Czechoslovakia made with German). The lesson of the 1930s is that once you lose hearts and minds, and malefactors gain them, everything else usually goes too.

http://www.economist.com/books/displ...ry_id=12376682

[Stan]

Estonian business association calls for better ties with Russia

TALLINN, November 17 (RIA Novosti)

Russian-Estonian relations hit a low-point in April 2007 after Estonian authorities relocated a Soviet-era war monument from central Tallinn and disinterred the remains of soldiers ahead of Victory Day.

The Estonian Business Association said that Estonia should ratify a border agreement with Russia, by dropping a provision, which had earlier angered Moscow, as well as conclude a treaty to protect military cemeteries.


"We are calling for the establishment of neighborly relations, based on mutual respect and focused through opportunities and without offensive rhetoric against others," the document said.

The two countries signed border agreements on May 18, 2005, and the Estonian parliament ratified the documents on June 20, but with additional demands linked to the 1920 peace treaty between Soviet Russia and Estonia.

On September 6, Russia notified Estonia that it was revoking its signature from the treaties because the 1920 document was no longer valid. Moscow said the new provisions in the ratification of the law could be seen as legally entitling Estonia to make some territorial claims on Russia.

[Stan]

The Memory Remains
By Anthony Johnston
Russia Profile

In the former Soviet satellite states, namely in Poland, Estonia and Ukraine, various ethnicities and political forces have competitively jousted for official ascendancy through the manifestation of monuments representing one cause or another, or their symbolic iconoclasm.

Maria Mälksoo, a researcher at the International Center for Defense Studies in Tallinn, views the controversy surrounding the Bronze Soldier statue, a Soviet World War II memorial in Tallinn's city center, as a moment when "[Estonia] and Russia seek more recognition from Europe of the Europeanness of their [respective] efforts in WWII, while, at the same time, denying the Europeanness of the other."

Estonians see the monument as a symbol of Soviet occupation and repression and its removal as a gesture of liberation and espousal of European values, while ethnic Russians see it as a marker of Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, their claim to reside in Estonia, and their contribution to the outcome of European history.

Then there's this to further stir the pot

Russians protest at Estonia SS calendar

[Stan]

Now we have an acquittal with nobody to blame, other than hamstrung law enforcement. At the point most of us were ready to introduce reinforcements with armed military, the government stood down and Russia balked

"The actions of Night Vigil and the defendants prior to the mass disturbances were in the opinion of the law enforcement agencies not unlawful until April 27, 2007, as the police did not intervene in their activities or demand that such activities be ended," the court ruled.

On Monday the Russian foreign ministry issued a statement welcoming the court ruling.

"The decision of the court again confirmed the fairness of the public outrage triggered by the provocative venture by the Estonian authorities to desecrate the graves of the Soviet soldiers and transfer the monument in Tallinn," it said.

If not already a farce, this evening's public poll indicates that 80 percent of those polled are afraid of yet another Bronze Night.

[kaur]

Vienna, January 13 – On the 18th anniversary of USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev’s use of lethal force in Vilnius, a Russian portal has posted a recent lecture by a Russian historian who concludes that the incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union in 1940 was “worse than any occupation” and created “a headache” for Moscow that continues to this day.

If one looks at Moscow’s approach to the Baltic countries in 1939-40, Zubkova said, it is clear that “this was above all an imperial project of Stalin, a project for restoring the empire despite the fact that in its details, its realization was seriously affected by the current political arrangement and in the first instance was connected with the war.”

Had the Soviet leader simply occupied the three Baltic countries and left their independence in place, the Moscow historian said, the entire situation would have been different. But what began in 1940 in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was “not an occupation,” but rather the “arrival of Soviet power.”
And “the consequences of the introduction of a Soviet regime” and the suppression of the independent state existence of these three countries , Zubkova argued, “turned out to be worse [not only for them but for the USSR] than any occupation could have been.” And she suggested that this was a lesson that Moscow had learned when it moved into Eastern Europe in 1945.

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/...zation-of.html

[kaur]

Behind The Estonia Cyberattacks

March 06, 2009

Asadova, who was moderating the discussion, asked why Russia is routinely blamed for the cyberattacks in Estonia and Georgia, where government sites were seriously disrupted during the August war.

She might not have been expecting the answer she got from Sergei Markov, a State Duma Deputy from the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party: "About the cyberattack on Estonia... don't worry, that attack was carried out by my assistant. I won't tell you his name, because then he might not be able to get visas."

Markov, a political analyst who has long been one of Vladimir Putin's glibbest defenders, went on to explain that this assistant happened to be in "one of the unrecognized republics" during the dispute with Estonia and had decided on his own that "something bad had to be done to these fascists." So he went ahead and launched a cyberwar.

"Turns out it was purely a reaction from civil society," Markov reportedly said, adding ominously, "and, incidentally, such things will happen more and more."

http://www.rferl.org/content/Behind_...s/1505613.html

[kaur]

Kremlin-backed group behind Estonia cyber blitz

March 11 2009

Russia has consistently denied any involvement. Yesterday, however, Konstantin Goloskokov, a "commissar" in the youth group Nashe, which works for the Kremlin, told the Financial Times that he and some associates had launched the attack, which appears to be the first time anyone has claimed responsibility.

"I wouldn't have called it a cyber attack; it was cyber defence," he said.

"We taught the Estonian regime the lesson that if they act illegally, we will respond in an adequate way."

Sergei Markov, a parliamentarian and Mr Goloskokov's boss, volunteered the information that one of his assistants had planned and implemented the attack at a conference earlier this month.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/57536d5a-0...nclick_check=1

[kaur]

RAND's "Russian Foreign Policy"

As Russia's economy has grown, so have the country's global involvement and influence, which often take forms that the United States neither expects nor likes, as the August 2008 conflict in Georgia demonstrated. Despite the two countries' many disagreements and the rising tension between them, the United States and Russia share some key interests and goals. In this monograph, the authors assess Russia's strategic interests and the factors that influence Russian foreign policy broadly. They examine Russia's domestic policies, economic development, and views of the world, as well as how these translate into security policies at home and abroad. They then consider the implications of Russia's evolving approaches for U.S. interests.

Eastern Europe and the Baltic States
EU and NATO enlargement into former Soviet-controlled Eastern
Europe and the Baltic states has further complicated Russia’s relations
with Europe. Poland and the Baltic states are determined to resist any
perceived Russian influence in their affairs and to use their new status as
EU and NATO members to help cement the independence of neighboring
Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine (as well as Georgia). These policies
impinge on what Russia perceives as its zone of influence in Eurasia and
they inflame Russian nationalism. Tension with Estonia and Latvia,
especially, over alleged discriminatory treatment of ethnic Russians and
Russian-speakers in those countries has been a consistent problem. Tensions
came to a head in 2005 over commemorations of the end of World
War II. Estonia and Latvia refused to attend commemorative ceremonies
in Moscow unless Russia admitted to having occupied those countries
after the war.67 The 2007 relocation of a statue that commemorated
Red Army liberators (according to Russia) or occupiers (according to
Estonia) from its position in a central square in Tallinn to a local cemetery
resulted in a war of words, demonstrations, and cyber attacks on
the part of the Russian and Estonian governments and publics.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG768.pdf

[Stan]

A little intrigue and another naive Russian Blogger here at Radio Free Europe

A new blog post for Ekho Moskvy makes a startling revelation about the 2007 attacks. The post, by journalist Nargiz Asadova -- a columnist for RIA Novosti based in Washington, and an Ekho Moskvy host -- describes a March 3 panel discussion between Russian and American experts on information warfare in the 21st century.

Asadova, who was moderating the discussion, asked why Russia is routinely blamed for the cyberattacks in Estonia and Georgia, where government sites were seriously disrupted during the August war.

She might not have been expecting the answer she got from Sergei Markov, a State Duma Deputy from the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party: "About the cyberattack on Estonia... don't worry, that attack was carried out by my assistant. I won't tell you his name, because then he might not be able to get visas."

[Tom Odom]

A little intrigue and another naive Russian Blogger here at Radio Free Europe

Hey mate,

Are you back at home base?

Maybe that would get the visitor an extended visa....

Best
Tom

[Stan]

Hey mate,

Are you back at home base?

Maybe that would get the visitor an extended visa....

Best
Tom

Hey Tom,
Arrived yesterday morning with 5 others and darn glad to be back in civilization. I think my first shower lasted 20 minutes

We're on the verge of yet another anniversary of the Bronze Dude and Nights, and granting visas to Dumas and their cronies will be a non-starter

With new legislation in place, some fine weapons for rioters, several hundred volunteers (assistant police officers), and authorization to employ the military and reserves... Hmmm, well, it should a good time.

Best, Stan