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The Politics of History and the “War of Monuments” in Estonia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Karsten Brüggemann  and
Andres Kasekamp
Karsten Brüggemann
Affiliation:
Nordost Institut, Conventstr. 1, D-21335 Lüneburg, Germany. Email: k.brueggemann@ikgn.de
Andres Kasekamp*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Tartu, Ülikooli 18, 50090 Tartu, Estonia. Email: andres.kasekamp@ut.ee
*
(author for correspondence)
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Extract

After darkness fell over the provincial town of Lihula on 2 September 2004, youths pelted riot police with stones. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the peaceful and orderly small Baltic State of Estonia. The police were protecting a crane and its driver sent by the Ministry of the Interior to remove a monument honouring those Estonians who fought on the German side against the Red Army during the Second World War. In the evening of 26 April 2007 demonstrators in Tallinn pelted riot police with stones and went on a rampage of smashing windows and looting. The Estonian capital had never experienced anything like this. The police were protecting the site of a monument honouring Soviet soldiers who had fought against Nazi Germany. At night, when the rioting had ceased, a crane ordered by the Ministry of Defence removed the monument.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 425 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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