The Soviet memorial near down town Tallinn has been controversial for years. It was blocked from visitors do to unrest last year when I visited the site (see my photos here).

On the evening of the 28th of April several hundred Russian youth tried to storm the site, where the statue was being removed and the bodies of the Soviet soldiers buried beneath it exhumed. 200 people were arrested and one young man stabbed to death. The statue has since been re-erected at another cemetery at the edge of town. There have been demonstrations by the Russian youth group "Nashi" ("Ours") and Russian veterans in front of the Estonian embassy in Moscow. Partipants carried banners calling Estonia a "fascist" state, echoing the rhetoric of the Soviet period when the authoritarian regimes of the interwar Baltic were grouped together with Hitler's Germany. Russia has threatened Estonia with an economic boycott. Even local politicians, like the mayor of Moscow Yurii Luzhkov, have called on people to stop buying Estonian products. Even the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has spoken out against the removal of the statue.

According to reports in the German press, the issue is being driven in part by Estonian internal politics as well. The Centrist party under former government head Edgar Savisaar is apparently thought to have "dubious connnections" to Moscow and would be damaged by a trade war with Russia.

Today's anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War is likely to bring a renewal of the recent strife. At the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in 2005, Estonia refused to send a delegation to the ceremonies in Moscow. The Latvian president only attended to offer the Russians face-to-face a clear alternative interpretation of that year.

I don't usually like to recommend policy, but it seems to me that this would have been an opportunity for a counter-memorial. A railroad cattle car parked across the street, for example, would have left the gravesite untouched, but would have been a reminder of the mass deportations of Estonians after their "liberation." Such a project would probably only enflame the situation and lead to more violence, however.

In any case it is not the site as such that is contested in this particular case. The site is significant because it was occupied by the Soviet memorial. It bears no particular significance pre-dating the memorial. As such, it is perhaps reminiscent of of the Russian Orthodox cathedrals which were built in the 19th century in the city centers of Riga, Warsaw, Tallinn and other cities to "mark" Russian occupation. The Poles demolished their Russian Orthodox cathedral after regaining independence. The Soviet Union did not object to the destruction of churches. But the post-Soviet Russian state identifies much more strongly with the symbolic content of its "markers" in what are now foreign capitals.

Update: Ironically, there is a scandal afoot in Russia itself in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. To make way for a new shopping center, several World War Two-era graves were hastily removed, provoking some protest. It would appear that there is a level of real sentiment at one level, but that the issue is a matter of pure political manipulation and populism among Russia's political elites.

Links:
Spiegel.de: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,479809,00.html
The Wikipedia article is quite thorough:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Soldier_of_Tallinn