Estonia removes Soviet-era monuments
Estonia on Tuesday removed a World War II memorial erected in the past to honor the Red Army in Narva, a town inhabited by a large Russian-speaking minority.
“My government has decided to remove Soviet monuments from public spaces in Estonia,” Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said in a statement. a tweet, Tuesday. “As symbols of Soviet repression and occupation, they have become a source of growing social tensions – in these times we need to minimize public order risks,” she added.
Earlier, the Prime Minister said Estonia must “act quickly to ensure public order and internal security”. “We will not give Russia the opportunity to use the past to disrupt the peace,” she said.
Local opposition to the removal of the monument, which depicted an old Red Army T-34 tank, had raised fears of a repeat of the riots that broke out in Tallinn in 2007 after the hijacking of another Soviet monument.
For his part, Estonian Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets said it was “in the interests of public order and internal security to remove the monuments in question before tensions around them increase further”.
The WWII T-34 tank that was part of the Narva Memorial will be transferred to the Estonian War Museum. In its place, the mass grave of the war victims is given a “neutral gravestone”.
Narva Mayor Katri Raik had previously refused to hand over the tank to the museum.
The memorial is the focus of the city’s annual VE Day commemoration ceremonies. Narva City Council was unable to make a decision on the removal of the monument, although the government ordered it before the end of the year.
According to Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, Russia is trying to exploit “internal divisions” in the country. Both Estonia and its Baltic neighbor Latvia have large Russian-speaking minorities that are sometimes at odds with national governments. Some fear that Moscow is trying to exploit these disagreements to destabilize these countries, members of the EU and NATO.