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The Bronze Soldier: Identity Threat and Maintenance in Estonia

The relocation of the monument to those killed in WWII, located in the center of Tallinn, on 27 April 2007 triggered the first large-scale ethnic riots in Estonia since 1980, when a punk rock concert mobilized ethnic Estonian youth to riot against Russification. Unlike in 1980, the rioters in 2007 were predominantly Russian speakers. The monument, the ‘Bronze Soldier’, was erected in 1947 by the Soviet authorities, and was ritually used in Soviet identity politics. However, it escaped the removal that befell many Soviet statues in Estonia during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although the issue was usually raised prior to elections, no serious attempts were made to remove the monument until 2006. The crucial question in this context is why the presence of a statue that had been accepted for 15 years suddenly became such an annoyance that it needed to be relocated, and why the relocation of a statue which for years had been visited by a decreasing number of elderly war veterans suddenly incited young people to commit acts of vandalism on the streets of Tallinn. The answers to these questions require an analysis of the shifts and changes in ethnic identities in Estonia that have occurred during the last 15 years. These shifts are a response to the transition of Estonia from a post-Soviet country to an EU member state, as well as to the growing prominence of Russia in world affairs during the last eight years. Thus, the tension around the monument reflected the threat to identity that changed social circumstances have caused in both major ethnic groups in Estonia.