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      <title>Comments On: Live From Tallinn
    
      by Peter Margasak</title>
      <link>http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/04/27/live-tallinn</link>
      <atom:link href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/Rss.xml?oid=941386&amp;id=comments" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />      <description>Comments On: Live From Tallinn
    
      by Peter Margasak</description>
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      <pubDate>Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:01 -0600</pubDate>
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    <title><![CDATA[Re: Live From Tallinn]]></title>
    
    
    <link><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/04/27/live-tallinn/#948359]]></link>
    
    <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/04/27/live-tallinn/#948359]]></guid>
    <author><![CDATA[Dunl]]></author>
    <description>
      
      <![CDATA[The monument *is* in honor of Red Army troops who died fighting the Nazis, but it doesn't follow that those Red Army troops were protecting Estonia.
    
    Under the terms of the secret appendix to the 1939 "non-aggression" treaty between the German Reich and the Soviet Union, Hitler and Stalin agreed Estonia would goto the Soviet Union "in the case of a territorial-political change." As a result, Estonia was occupied by Soviet troops in June 1940 and annexed to the Soviet Union that August. The Nazis invaded a year later. The re-occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union was hardly "liberation."
    
    It's certainly understandable that many Estonians -- especially those who experienced the Soviet occupation, which lasted until 1991 -- might be uncomfortable with Soviet symbols in the heart of their capital city. 
    
    At the same time, this isn't quite in the same league as a statue of Lenin or Dzerzhinsky. It is unfortunate that the Soviet-ness of the statue to many Estonians -- and maybe Soviet-Russian-ness to many Russians in Estonia -- is seen as so central that the statue can't somehow be allowed to serve simply as a memorial to the individual human beings lying in the mass grave over which it was erected -- no matter whether those individuals should have been doing in Estonia in the first place.
    
    It's tragic that ethnic divisions, fundamentally different undestandings of history, and a bit of (mutual) insensitivity can lead to death and injury in the present.
        
        <br />
        
          Posted by Dunl]]>
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    <pubDate>Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:29:04 -0500</pubDate> 
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