Riots over Soviet statue

last updated 8 January 2015

Tallinn, Estonia

The removal this week of a monument to the Soviet victory over the Nazis caused a deadly riot and paralyzed relations between Estonia and Russia. Estonians say the statue symbolized the brutal, 50-year Soviet occupation of their country. But ethnic Russians, who make up about one-quarter of Estonia’s population, said removing it was an insult to their war dead. After officials took the statue down, Russians rioted in central Tallinn for two straight nights. One person was killed, 150 injured, and nearly 800 arrested. At least half of the ethnic Russians in Estonia don’t have citizenship because Estonia enacted laws discriminating against them as soon as it wrested independence from the Soviet Union, in 1991.