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Every time I read yet another article about the current situation in Tallinn, I recall this Ehrenmal. It strikes me that neither side of the conflict is doing a particularly good job of being intellectually (or historically) honest, and that both the Estonian and Russian governments should take a page out of the “nie wieder” form of historical memory present throughout Berlin—from the Jüdisches Museum to the new roof of the Reichstag building that forever reminds the viewed of its torching to help Hitler’s rise to power on the backs of communists. I can’t, in good conscience, say I support either side of the conflict; I can only hope, which I aim to make clear on the flip, that a sensible middle ground can be found, if not in the actions of the governments, then at least in the minds of those agitating on one side or the other.

In 1947, to commemorate three years since the Red Army marched into Tallinn, thereby ending German occupation of the city, the Soviet government constructed, in the center of the city, the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, or, as he was known then, the Monument to the Liberators of Tallinn (Монумент освободителям Таллина). Some of the “liberators” of Tallinn were buried under the soldier and the stone background, and the area is known as the “Liberators’ Square.” Upon Estonian independence, the eternal flame burning in front of the monument was extinguished, and the site was rebranded to commemorate all of those who had fallen in World War II, not just the Soviet “Liberators” of Tallinn.

Last month, however, the Estonian government decided to move the monument and reinter the remains at a military cemetery a few miles from the square. This decision was made right before May 9, Victory Day, the Soviet analogue to V-E Day. Hell broke loose, Tallinn suffered two nights of rioting, and since then Russia has threatened Estonia, which meant that the EU came back and threatened Russia, and so on. It’s a mess, and it’s been very difficult to keep track of every bit of he-said/she-said going on between the two governments and what ends up being the two warring interest groups: ethnic Estonians (backed by the other Baltic ethnic groups, the Estonian government, and the EU) and ethnic Russian Estonians (backed by Russia).

Three slippages, all of crucial import, should be immediately obvious. Fascist vs. Communist becomes Estonian (statist) vs. Soviet. That, in turn, becomes Estonian Estonian vs. Russian Estonian, which finally becomes Estonia (EU) vs. Russia. What begins as an ideological struggle becomes a self-determination struggle becomes an ethnic (national) struggle which then, again, becomes a state (political entity) struggle. As the terms and foundations slip, so does the sense of the conflict, and you end up with competing factions using different vocabularies to describe the conflict. Immanent disingenuousness grows like a fungus, poisoning every discussion of the topic.

There is, however, something especially peculiar about these Stalin-era cenotaphs, as, after a fashion, they don't make much sense. Tombs of unknown soldiers are supposed to celebrate, precisely, the national subject who died in service to (most likely) his nation burned to his national essences. “What else,” asks Benedict Anderson about the dead soldiers in these monuments, “could they be but Germans, Americans, Argentinians...?” For Anderson, the tombs of the Unknown Soldier and cenotaphs are at the top of “arresting emblems of the modern culture of nationalism.” As such, it doesn’t make sense for there to be cenotaphs celebrating ideological (that is, anti-fascist) soldiers. Anderson even, weirdly, predicts the impossibility of the current situation in Estonia by declaring that “The cultural significance of such monuments becomes even clearer if one tries to imagine, say, a Tomb of the Unknown Marxist or a cenotaph for fallen Liberals... The reason is that neither Marxism nor Liberalism are much concerned with death and immortality. If the nationalist imagining is so concerned, this suggests a strong affinity with religious imaginings.” Anderson then takes this opening in the second chapter of Imagined Communities to move into his discussion of how nationalism grew out of religious senses of identification.

So if a “cenotaph for fallen Liberals” makes no sense, what are we to make of the cenotaph “павшим героям”? Is this a marker of a Stalin-styled Soviet nationalism, then? It could be... Anderson carefully uses the word “Marxist” in lieu of Soviet. Furthermore, the inscription of the Berlin cenotaph does carry nationalist overtones, talking of battle with “немецко-фашистскими захватчиками.” They are not simply fascist invaders, but fascist German invaders. Similarly, the monument celebrates both the integrity of the borders of the USSR, when the German Army marched into them, and, perversely, the Soviet invasion of Nazi Germany. The efforts to cast the situation as simply “fascist vs. communist” seem unsatisfying because of the nationalist undercurrent. The same mentality probably carries over to the Bronze Soldier. What should be a testament to an ideology becomes polluted with nationalist thinking, and the first slippage (fascist becomes Estonian collaborator, and communist becomes Soviet) is accounted for.

Cynical chauvinism. lrytas.lt

Checkpoint Charlie.

This, in my opinion, is the path the Estonian government should have taken. Let the Bronze Soldier stand, insulting as it may be, as a reminder of the historical excesses of both totalitarianism and (to assume Anderson is right) nationalism. Removing that soldier only reframes the memory of the war and the subsequent occupation, without any engagement other than to induce again more antagonism. The grotesque rightist politics swarming through Europe seem to indicate that the lessons of the Second World War have not yet been learned and that we need to be reminded, again:

NIE WIEDER

As a postscript, today’s Lietuvos rytas mentions a poll taken by the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita that announces that two-thirds of Poles believe that Soviet-era monuments should either remain where they are or that knocking them over would be a mistake. This is despite recent Polish pronouncements to give localities the power to destroy any Soviet-era monuments they should choose to. I still can’t tell what LR’s attitude is toward Poland, but it is interesting that it is the people who suffered under communist rule the longest who are least inclined to remove the monuments to their suffering.