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“You’ve got to know History!” Remembering and

Forgetting the Past in the Present-Day Baltic

David J. Smith

Introduction: the war of monuments

This essay deals not with History as such, but with the present-day politics of

collective memory. It examines which elements of Estonia‘s past are being

commemorated and which marginalised, and the implications this carries for

political and social cohesion within the re-established independent state.

Commemoration of the past is central to the enterprise known as

nation-building, wherein newly-created or radically reconfigured states seek

to bolster their legitimacy and authority through efforts to nurture a shared

national consciousness or―to use Benedict Anderson‘s phrase―an

―imagined political community.‖

According to Anderson‘s celebrated

definition, the nation is imagined as sovereign but also as inherently limited:

it always has finite boundaries beyond which lie other nations.

Nation-

building thus necessarily entails the creation―through political discourse and

political practice―of new categories of social exclusion as well as inclusion.

It is invariably a fraught and contested process, and this is especially so in

―plural society states‖ that are already home to several fully-developed

national communities at the time of their formation.

In the case of the Baltic States, contemporary nation-building has

taken place against the background of 50 years of externally-imposed Soviet

domination, interspersed by three years of Nazi occupation during the Second

World War. Among the majority or ―titular‖ peoples of the Soviet Baltic

Republics, the onset of democratisation in the late 1980s allowed for the

public articulation of a long-suppressed collective memory of forcible

annexation and subsequent repression at the hands of the Stalinist regime. In

Estonia and Latvia especially, this collective memory became implicated in

an avowedly post-colonial approach to nation-building, which focused on

delivering restorative justice for the majority ethnicity following half a

century of ―illegal occupation‖ by the USSR. Within this frame of reference,

Soviet-era settlers and their descendents (primarily Russian-speaking and

around one-third of the total population by 1989) were branded ―colonists‖

and ―illegal immigrants‖ who had no automatic claim to membership of the

political community. Not only the settler community, but also the

neighbouring Russian Federation was implicated in the post-colonial project:

the politics of ―othering‖ that was practised within Estonia and Latvia after

1991 was basically legitimised by casting local Russians as a domestic

extension of an external threat.

The policies and practices of the restored Estonian state towards

Soviet-era settlers and their descendents and the relations between Estonia

and Russia have been extensively analysed elsewhere, and do not need to be

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282

revisited here.

Prior to 2004, the voluminous literature on nation-building

and ethnic relations within the country focused for the most part on issues of

citizenship and on the political and socio-economic status of Russian-

speaking ―resident aliens‖. The politics of memory, by contrast, received

comparatively little attention prior to EU accession, but its significance has

since become increasingly clear, during what has come to be referred to as

Estonia‘s ―War of Monuments‖.

Disputes over the commemoration of the past have predictably

focused on the Second World War and its aftermath. During the Soviet

period, the officially sanctioned collective memory of these events referred

uniquely to the liberation of Soviet Estonia from fascism: there was no public

space for the articulation or commemoration of any alternative narrative of

the past. Privately, however, most ethnic Estonians plainly adhered to a

different view: for them the Soviet rule established in 1940 had no

legitimacy, and 1944 thus spelled not liberation, but the replacement of one

occupying regime by another. Moreover, this private Estonian collective

memory of the war held the Soviet occupation to be far worse than the Nazi.

When the Estonian narrative of the past returned to the public sphere during

the 1990s, it increasingly came into conflict with the dominant ―memory

regime‖ within the EU, where most of the political class still dispute the

contention that Stalinism ought to be placed on a par with Nazism when it

comes to condemning the crimes of past regimes.

This emerging clash of memory regimes is exemplified by the events

surrounding the monument erected in the western Estonian town of Lihula at

the behest of extreme Estonian nationalist Tiit Madisson (then Mayor of

Lihula) and Second World War veterans‘ organisations shortly after the

country joined the EU in 2004. These groups were evidently concerned that

the specifically Estonian narrative of the past was again being marginalised

as part of the rush to integrate politically with the West.

In what can only

have been a deliberate disregard of international opinion, they put up a stone

dedicated to ―Estonian men who in 1940–45 fought against Bolshevism and

for the restoration of independence‖, but bearing an image of a soldier

wearing the uniform of the Estonian Waffen-SS Legion. The decision by the

Estonian government―in response to external protests―to remove the

monument clearly touched a nerve within broader Estonian society. The

episode quickly became a cause célèbre, which turned the public spotlight

back onto remaining Soviet-era war memorials, most notably the ―Bronze

Soldier‖ monument which continued to stand in the very centre of the capital

Tallinn.

The erection of the Lihula monument elicited protests from a range of

states and international organisations. Yet it was also troubling to the

significant proportion of Estonia‘s population for which liberation from

fascism still remained the defining frame of reference with regard to the

Second World War. Under Soviet rule, the Bronze Soldier (official title the

“You’ve got to know History!”

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Monument to the Liberation of Tallinn from Fascism) provided the

centrepiece for the annual 9 May commemoration of the Soviet Union‘s final

victory over Nazi Germany. In 1995 the Soviet-era plaques on the monument

were replaced by ones marked simply ―to the fallen of World War Two‖.

Official commemorations of Victory Day ceased after independence, yet the

monument continued to be the focus for unofficial commemorations of the

anniversary every year on 9 May. In 2005, however, this monument ceased to

be a simple war memorial, and was again cast in Estonian public discourse as

a symbol of Soviet occupation and repression. Numerous attacks upon and

threats against the monument elicited a counter-mobilisation amongst local

Russian-speakers, many of whom belonged to the generation raised in the

post-Soviet period. The statue issue provoked an escalation of the long-

standing war of words between Tallinn and Moscow, and this international

dimension to the dispute soon became the main focus of attention. Some

Estonian commentators would later maintain that they were ―simply

unaware‖ of the depth of the attachment to the ―Bronze Soldier‖ amongst the

local Russian-speaking population. and of the problems that removing the

statue from the centre of Tallinn would cause. However disingenuous such

comments may appear, the events of 2006–07 plainly testify to the separate

social worlds that the vast majority of Estonians and Russians have continued

to inhabit following the collapse of the USSR.

Much has already been written about the War of Monuments and the

three nights of rioting that followed the relocation of the Bronze Soldier in

April 2007. Relatively few accounts, however, have examined these events

specifically from the standpoint of the local Russian-speaking minority, as

opposed to that of the governments in Tallinn and Moscow. In Estonia,

official statements on the issue have generally dismissed any suggestion of

independent voice or capacity for agency on the part of local Russians: the

focus has been squarely on the criminal actions of the rioters, while the

protests against the relocation of the monument were seen as having been

entirely orchestrated by external forces in Russia.

Opinion polls in the

aftermath of the riots suggest that most Russian-speakers were appalled by

the riots but were nevertheless alienated by the removal of the monument

from central Tallinn. Yet, the voice of this silent majority seems to have gone

largely unacknowledged. Generally speaking, Russian-speakers‘ perspectives

on commemoration of the past have yet to attract the same measure of

attention as those of the Estonian majority.

This essay thus seeks to fill

something of a gap in the literature, by investigating a distinctly Estonian-

Russian perspective on the recent politics of memory. The focus for my

discussion is the mainly Russophone city of Narva, which sits on Estonia‘s

eastern border. In what follows, I examine public debates and perceptions

surrounding the commemoration of key aspects of the city‘s past. Here I look

especially at public monuments, which―as recent developments in Estonia

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284

have highlighted so graphically―serve as a particularly tangible

manifestation of ―memory work‖ processes within any given society.

Historical memory in Narva

Present-day Narva (population 67,000) constitutes a fascinating case study of

historical memory and identity and the ways in which these are being

inscribed in the urban landscape. Originally established during the 1100s, the

city experienced periods of Danish, Livonian, Swedish and Russian rule

during the centuries prior to the Russian Revolution. Notable for the

architecture of its Swedish-era old town and for its industry (its Kreenholm

Mill was the largest in Europe during the late 19

century), the city had

acquired a narrow overall majority of ethnic Estonians within its population

by 1917. It opted for inclusion in the autonomous province of Estland

following a referendum in spring 1917 and formed part of the independent

Republic of Estonia between the wars. In 1944 the city was destroyed in its

entirety, as Soviet forces advanced to re-conquer Estonia from the occupying

forces of Nazi Germany. The existing residents of the city, evacuated by the

Nazis, for the most part did not return after the War. Narva was resettled

almost entirely with new inhabitants from the Russian, Belorussian and

Ukrainian republics of the USSR, and was rebuilt as an architecturally

modernist ―Soviet place‖ suffused with the ideology of ―socialist

internationalism‖.

Within the dominant collective memory of the re-established Estonian

Republic, Narva has essentially been configured as a site of mourning,

emblematic of the destruction wrought upon the country by the Soviet

regime. This framing of the city is perhaps most strikingly evident in a series

of small monuments and commemorative plaques installed by the Old Narva

Society (a group consisting of the city‘s pre-war inhabitants and their

descendents), which mark the site of notable buildings and landmarks

destroyed in the bombing of 1944. It is also apparent in the numerous

calendars and collections of photographs dedicated to ―Old Narva‖, whose

images also adorn the fence which surrounds the external terrace of the city‘s

main hotel, refurbished during the past decade. As regards the current aspect

of the city, ethnic Estonians tend to see this as an unwelcome reminder of

continued Soviet legacy and of the failure to realise fully the vision of a

restored Estonian nation-state. For instance, in a survey of ethnic Estonian

students at Tartu University students carried out by the present author in

spring 2008, respondents described the city variously as ―a good place to

scare foreigners‖, ―an architectural monstrosity of the Soviet period‖, a place

full of ―drugs, Russians and AIDS‖ where ―you seldom hear Estonian

spoken‖.

Seen from a ―nationalising state‖ standpoint, Narva does indeed

occupy an anomalous place within the Estonian Republic. While the

cityscape exhibits the standard everyday ―banal‖ markers of national identity

“You’ve got to know History!”

285

such as the Estonian flag on public buildings and street signs solely in the

official state language, it is indeed rare to hear Estonian spoken when

walking around the town. As regards monumental sites of memory, Narva

remains intriguingly diverse: new monuments of ―cosmopolitan‖ memory

such as those erected by the Old Narva Society and the monument to

Stalinist-era deportees in front of the railway station share the city‘s public

space with numerous Soviet-era memorials to the fallen of the ―Great

Patriotic War‖ and to the ―Liberation of Narva from Fascism‖. There are also

remaining monuments to visible Soviet-era figures and representatives of the

pre-1917 labour movement, as well as tsarist-era war memorials and a

restored German military cemetery. What we see here, to quote one recent

study, ―is not a policy of difference and opposition [typically found in border

zones], but a policy of identity in connection with (...) the most diverse forms

and images‖.

While some notable steps have been taken to ―de-sovietise‖ Narva‘s

public space, efforts in this regard have remained only partial. The new city

government elected in October 1993 was far better disposed to co-operation

with the central government than its predecessor, which was carried over

from the late Soviet era. Yet subsequent leaders have necessarily had to adopt

a rather measured and pragmatic stance in their running of the city, and this is

equally true in their management of public space.

In the autumn of 1993,

Narva‘s Lenin monument―the last remaining one in Estonia―was removed

from the main square, later reappearing in a quiet corner of the grounds of the

city‘s historic fortress.

It is revealing that no permanent memorial has since

been installed in the place where Lenin used to stand, testifying perhaps to

the absence of any obvious coherent ―usable past‖ capable of supporting a

new identity for the city in the post-Soviet present.

Into this void stepped political entrepreneurs from nearby Sweden,

which since 1991 has increasingly aspired to a leading economic and political

presence within its Baltic ―Near Abroad‖.

Swedish ―assistance‖ was

deemed to be especially important in Narva and its surrounding region, which

is 83% Russian-speaking by population overall. Aside from the socio-

economic and environmental challenges posed by an industrialized region

hard hit by the post-communist transition to a market economy, rising

nationalism in neighbouring Russia in the early 1990s fostered a perception

amongst outsiders that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards

Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for

the stability and security not just of Estonia, but of the region as a whole.

Narva, of course, figures prominently within the national collective

memory of Sweden‘s early-modern ―Great Power period‖. From the late 16

to the early 18

century the Baltic provinces of Estland and Livland formed

part of the extended Swedish realm, and Narva became one of its most

important commercial and administrative centres. In November 1700 the city

provided the setting for a remarkable military victory by Swedish monarch

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Charles XII against the numerically superior forces of Russian Tsar Peter I.

This ultimately proved to be the victorious opening to a disastrous war,

which led to Sweden‘s loss of the Baltic provinces and marked the end of its

dominion in Northern Europe. Still the memory of 1700 lived on within

nationalist circles. In the 1930s, a monument of the Swedish Lion―funded

through public donations―was gifted to the city of Narva and inaugurated in

1936 during a visit to the city by the Sweden‘s Crown Prince. The original

―Swedish Lion‖ was destroyed in 1944 during the Soviet bombardment of

Narva. As contacts with Sweden resumed during the early 1990s, Swedish

representatives in Estonia―notably the first cultural attaché Hans

Lepp―joined with local heritage activists in calling for the monument to be

re-instated.

These Swedish overtures were greeted enthusiastically by Estonian

central government and by representatives of the local authority in Narva.

Popular narratives of history among Estonians still make reference to a

―Happy Swedish Time‖ that is supposed to have brought relative freedom to

an en-serfed indigenous peasantry. As economic engagement with Sweden

intensified during the 1990s, Narva‘s city government also began to speak of

the Swedish past as a ―Golden Age‖ of peace and economic prosperity.

Funds to restore the Swedish Lion monument were duly procured from

Sweden and in November 2000 the inauguration of this sculpture became the

centrepiece of ―the Swedish Days‖, a three-day festival (the largest since the

restoration of Estonia‘s independence) to mark the 300

anniversary of the

1700 Battle of Narva.

One of the Narva city officials involved in the Lion project described

the monument―and the wider festivities―as a ―visiting card‖ symbolising

revived links with Sweden and hope for their continued development in the

future. The Swedish Days, the Council and its partners insisted, were not

about the celebration of an historic Swedish military victory, but were

intended as a symbol of modern-day friendship and a tribute to everyone who

perished in Narva during the Great Northern War, regardless of which side

they were fighting on.

To underline the point, the Swedish Ambassador laid

a wreath at the tsarist-era memorial to the Russian fallen of the battle, just as

the Swedish Crown Prince had done in 1936. Such rhetoric and actions,

however, could not mask the obviously nationalistic intent that had lain

behind the original inter-war monument, and which was so plainly at odds

with the then emerging image (subsequently dominant during the Cold War)

of Sweden as a progressive welfare democracy and embodiment of

progressive multilateralism. This fact, it seems, was not lost on

representatives of the Swedish state who attended the inauguration―Lena

Hjelm Wallen, attending on behalf of the government, called the Lion and its

setting ―a wonderful panorama for living history‖. Six years later, however,

the former Deputy Foreign Minister, now the Chair of a Forum for Living

“You’ve got to know History!”

287

History would not consent to an interview with the present author, insisting

that she could not remember anything about the events in question.

The aforementioned Narva official, meanwhile, openly acknowledged

the sensitive nature of this commemoration in a city where the overwhelming

majority of the population was now ethnically Russian. In this respect, he

added, the organisers did their utmost to avoid any possible pretext for a

―cheap political scandal‖.

Indeed, it appears that the organisers not only

downplayed but even deliberately obscured the symbolic link between this

monument and the 1700 battle. The 2000 Lion was smaller and different in

form to the 1936 original, and was erected not on the battlefield site at the

western approaches to Narva (as the original had been), but within the city at

a vantage point overlooking the Narova River and the fortresses of Narva and

the neighbouring Russian town of Ivangorod. While proximate to the centre,

this site could hardly be considered one of the main public spaces in the city,

where the monument would have been visible to residents on a daily basis.

As for the monument itself, this bore only the date of the battle in Roman

numerals, and the Latin inscription Svecia Memor (―Memory of Sweden‖).

If the intention was indeed to obscure the original commemorative

intention behind the Swedish Lion, then this ploy would seem to have paid

off. A guide book published in 2005 claimed that the monument was ―barely

tolerated‖ by Narva‘s population;

however, this is not the picture that

emerged from a survey of 100 local inhabitants organised by the present

author and his co-researcher Stuart Burch in August 2008. When shown a

picture of the monument and its surroundings and asked to talk about it, most

respondents spoke of this small park as a nice place to walk, rest and observe

the famous view over the border and the two fortresses. Only rarely did

people allude to the commemorative function of the Lion statue, and even

then there was frequent confusion and uncertainty as to its meaning. In this

respect, it could be argued that the Lion has been included within a peculiarly

local narrative of the city and its cultural identity, one that subverts the meta-

historical understandings ascribed to it by outsiders.

Yet, the Lion did unquestionably act as a catalyst for renewed public

discussion around Narva‘s history and public space. In the weeks that

followed the inauguration of the monument, one local journalist alluded to

these debates, drawing particular attention to the still vacant site of the former

Lenin statue on the main square. This the author described as an ―empty

place that had to be filled‖, a kind of symbolic void at the heart of the city.

As the article makes clear, the erection of the Swedish Lion had predictably

led to the spotlight being turned onto Narva‘s tsarist Russian past. From 1993

onwards some local circles had been calling for a monument to Peter I to be

installed in place of Lenin, on what had now reverted to its original pre-war

name of Peter‘s Square. With a monument to Swedish King Charles XII now

in place, local commentators asserted that it was only right and proper that

his Russian adversary should also be commemorated in this way. After all,

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288

they noted, a monument to the Tsar had been erected in front of the city‘s

town hall during the late tsarist era and had thus formed part of the

―authentic‖ landscape of Old Narva prior to its removal in 1922 following the

establishment of the Estonian Republic. With independence restored in 1991,

the tsarist era was again cast as a period of oppression at the hands of a

foreign conqueror. Any attempt to commemorate the actions of Peter I in

Narva would therefore almost certainly run counter to the dominant narrative

of history at the state level. When it came to acknowledging the city‘s

Russian past, the post-1993 local authority preferred to focus on the less

contentious and more universally identifiable figure of Aleksandr Pushkin. In

1999 a bust of the celebrated poet was unveiled on the street that bears his

name, as part of a festival of Russian culture which was apparently construed

by the local élite as an important prelude to the much larger Swedish Days

that were scheduled for the following year.

It would seem that the November 2000 festivities―with their

―inclusive‖ reference to the fallen of all sides―were originally intended to

serve as the definitive commemoration of the Great Northern War.

Conspicuously absent from the official record was any reference to the

second Narva battle of July 1704, even though this event was―in the words

of the aforementioned local journalist ―no less significant to local people.‖

As the 300th anniversary of 1704 drew nearer, the city government

apparently approached ―the Russian side‖―presumably the Consulate of the

Russian Federation in Narva and local authorities in the neighbouring

Leningradskaia Oblast‘ of Russia―with proposals for a major event that

would serve to ―balance‖ the earlier Swedish days. In September 2004 Narva

did host a ―Days of St. Petersburg‖ cultural festival, yet the commemoration

of the July anniversary of the 1704 battle was seemingly rather muted. The

major event connected to the anniversary was a small-scale re-enactment of

the battle staged in the castle grounds by local military history enthusiasts

who in 2003 formed their own company of the St Petersburg-based

Preobrazhenskii regiment.

Members of the Preobrazhenskii Group insisted that their activity had

nothing to do with politics—merely the amateur historian‘s desire to recreate

the past as faithfully as possible.

Nevertheless, the founders of the group

were allegedly motivated at least in part by a concern that the Russian

dimension of Estonia‘s past was being increasingly marginalised within the

re-established independent republic. This, at least, was the view of one local

respondent with links to the regiment.

Interestingly, the society first

announced its existence publicly in November 2003 on the 303rd anniversary

of the first Battle of Narva, when its members went on a parade through the

town which began at the Swedish Lion and ended at the tsarist-era memorial

to the Russian fallen of the 1700 battle on the outskirts of town. The choice

of the Lion as a starting point was not coincidental, but was intended to

convey the message that this event commemorated everyone—Russian and