as I don't want to o/t in a client subforum I'd like to encourage Russians to state their own opinions about Estonia.

I would like to present my stance

Regardless for what reason, the Soviet troops DID fight for what they believed was right, for that they have to be commemorated, and any act of vandalism directed to places which commemorate the death of Soviet soldiers is pure mindless violence and I will always pity people who do that.

Anyway, what makes me SUPER annoyed is how Russia is reacting, seriously guys, where the fuck do you get the nerve? You have enslaved countless nations, one of them being Estonia, you had a policy of FORCING ethnic Russian people to settle in Estonia, to mix up the ethnic balance in that country, but you did not succeed in it. I totally approve the Estonian govt's policy towards people living in Estonia. They introduced a system, which grants Estonian citizenship, one needs to know the history and language of Estonia, in order to pass it. Around 30% of the population lives without a citizenship, guess who? Russians. Your superpower country, why won't you get back all of your people in countries you never had the right to rule over and secure them wealth? Why superimpose your superiority over small republics, which just WISH to free, now that you want to cut your oil transit through? I must say I am greatly disappointed by your govt. I do respect Putin, I dare say he has made Russia a whole lot better in many ways, but not in foreign affairs. You act as if you were an empire, which you have never been. Fix your poverty issues and then look around for different nations. Leave us alone, we just want freedom and we want to be good friends with Russia, but with your current state of politics? That's impossible.

Saying this, I have to say I admire the Russian country, your history, and the language (which I'm learning myself), but I also dislike you for many reasons, I am Polish, you also have claims towards Poland, you even enslaved us for 1795-1918, so I totally know what Estonia and other republics fought for, and now they achieved it.

Discuss.

I have no idea why russian people are still live in estonia. In the begin of 90's most of russian people moved out form checniya since they wasnt welcome there. I have no ideas why russians are still living in estonia - they can just move home and there will be no problem.
Estonia is pretty unwelcome to russians, so this offencive talks by politicans sounds reasonable.


After disintegration of USSR there grows 9999 kins of nazi movements on it's territory. Too bad that estonian goverment is this nazi's :E

Good written goqsane!

You cant crisscross the old sovjet with the new russia.
It takes along time to make big changes and I believe that Russia is slowly but firmly moving away from the old sovjet.

Now back to what u wrote, I dont get were all this comes from, is it some current news that Im not up2date with?

If those 30% dont wanna learn the history/languish then let them be, in estonia without the citizenship, its their choice.

To me the russians(not all of them) seem to be somewhat brainwashed but hey thats only my opinion. Saw some interviews with the riot dudes they said that estonia is a fascist country and lots of other stuff but that one cracked me up. Okay after reading disconnects post it occurred to me that they probably referred to the treatment of the russian minority in estonia rather than to estonia and its government? Would make at least some sense that way.

they don't really know what they're protesting for, they just see Putin as some kind of a superleader, and his authorities can dictate anything they like, the people will follow.

It's about relocating the monument of fallen Soviet soldiers from Tallinn (Estonia's capital) to some kind of a village, Russians took offence of that Sassa, read the damn news

Moscow's president said "destroy everything which is Estonian"

wtf?

And btw I could talk out of my ass but isn't russia supposed to be or at least trying to be a democratic country but in truth it is pretty fucking far away from it?

estonia relocating monuments of soviet soldiers, but building SS-soldiers monuments. you call it freedom? i call it fascism.

estonia name ussr as aggressor and demand for russia apologies(we did it in 1989) about soviet occupation.
why they dont name germany as aggressor and demand their aplogies for occupation?
lets look to the history: estonia was always occupied by some other nation, so why only soviet occupation was 'bad'?


estonia is trying to be a nation, not just a country, but also they use all their opportunities to humiliate russia :E

Perhaps you should look up the definition of fascism.

Technically it's a democracy but in the current state I wouldn't call it democracy, sure, people have the right to vote and stuff, but they're brainwashed anyway...

tbh i'm more surprised with italy selecting berlusconi than russia selecting putin.

Like I said before, I don't think that russians are in a position where they can accuse any goverment of being fascists. IIRC, russia has _a alot_ of neo-nazis and open hostility against immigrants. The moving of the statue isn't the problem here, the problem lies with Russia trying to have control over Estonia.

disconnect: While you should feel very free to express your thoughts about the estonia/russia conflict in this thread, i'd like it if you changed avatar. My suggestion is a russian flag instead, without the crossover.

TimesOnline - Analysis: why the Bronze Soldier is so controversial
BBC - Prime minister wins Estonian poll (5 March 2007)

Now the IRL have Minister of Regional Affairs, Minister of Defence and Minister of Education and Research.

BBC - Country profile: Estonia

I'll repeat disconnect's words... Russian people fought with Hitler during the WW2. It wasn't elusive Red Army, that was real people who _died_ to free the world from fascism. Do you know that about 25 millions Russian people died during the war ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Casualties_by_country ) and almost every family in USSR lost a man or two? So if you forgot what was WW2, that doesn't means that we don't remember what fascistic bastards did...

That's why Russian people are overreacting when monuments of people who died to help Estonians are moved away. It's like Estonians are saying: our country hasn't welcomed your so called freedom from Hitler's occupation; we could live a better life if Hitler would win. It's like a spit on the graves of Russian soldiers. (About the "happiness" during the German occupation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Baltic_states#Nazi_occupation_1941-1944 -- yes only 41,000 Estonians died, but the country was occupied and I doubt this was better then followed Soviet occupation...)

About Russians in Estonia. Let me quote this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russians_in_Estonia#Recent_situation ) :

Unreal: nothing is black and white, on top of that you sound like Mother Russia is a saint.

should i remind you that WW2 was possible because of your pact with the Germans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact

should i remind you of spliting Poland with Germany? "zomfg! the soviets were fascists colaborators!!"
should Polish people always hold a grudge against Russians? goqsane apparently does

should i remind you that the USSR annexed a big chunk from Romania which we never got back (after USSR collapse to become Republic Of Moldova, but still under Russian influence and pressure)?

should i remind you that the USSR spreaded communism throughout the world killing and opressing millions in the process?

should i remind you that the USSR armed and offered nuclear logistic to a lot of countries?

should i remind you that the USSR put the whole world on the brink of an apocalyptic WW3?

you damaged the world more than enough in the past! you should have the decency to stop posing as the big heroes of humanity. stop whining about a statue!

by the way. rofl @ "yes only 41,000 Estonians died"
that happened because as of today Estonians aren't reaching for 1 million people (923,908).. probably a little less back then. what kind of argument is that?

Should I remind you who was aggressor? And who won the WW2 and freed the Europe? USA? UK? Kid me not! -- they were waiting for Russia or Germany to be near death to take a part in the Europe dividing. And later they cut a peace of cake from the weak Europe no less then USSR did. After the WW2 NATO greatly influenced Europe but not to hold back USSR but to dominate to world. So there was two "choices": Soviets or States.

But I'm not denying that USSR was a huge scary empire or that Russian _government_ has "occupied" some European countries. But that's a history that is hopefully gone. But the statue is (was) a present day problem. If Estonia don't want to respect people's blood and deaths than we're not gonna respect the country that spits on soldiers' graves. Stalin (and other USSR rulers) was a dictator and Russian people suffered as much as every other nation under USSR "occupation" -- just remember Gulag... But it's simple people that defended the world from Hitler, people shed blood, not the dictators or fat politics!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Casualties_by_country : Estonia: Population in 1939: 1,134,000, Total deaths: 41,000, Deaths as % of population: 3.62%.

Poland: Population in 1939: 27,007,000, Total deaths: 5,000,000, Deaths as % of population: 18.51% -- _this_ is awful!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia : Population in 2006 estimate -- 1,324,333.

So you can't see what the statue might symbolize to the estonians? Stop talking out of your ass and recognize the facts here. Even if it symbolizes the heroic troops to russians, it symbolizes foreign aggression and the "great times" under USSR occupation (the "free" times) for the estonian people.

the figure for Poland includes 3,000,000 Jews.
it's not Estonia's fault it didn't had many Jews during WW2 so their casualty figure would be higher for you to use as an arguement over a dispute caused by a statue :|


i excluded ~345.000 of ethnic russians.


thank you for freeing us comrade and bringing 45 years of prosper communism in my thankful country and to other thankful countries as well. i won't bother to reply after reading this..

bottom line: it's just a statue that was moved from the center of the Estonian capital. not only it wasn't representative for Estonian culture, it was viewed as a painful monument of opression. Estonia is now an independent state and a member-state of EU. it has a legitimate goverment that does what it desires within the confines of Estonian and international law. the rest is just bullshit.

almost all europe anyhow was concerned with fascism (estonia, ussr, poland, etc, etc). so nobody is saint here. the europe was freed from fascism in may of 1945 by international coalition forces. i dont know all details of the 'nations relations' in europe after ww2, but in after ww2 ussr you will be prisoned for like 20 years because of fascism ideas in your head.

but it seems the fascist ideology was reborn after disintegration of ussr. for case of moscow there are some nazi street hooligans which delivers problems to immigrants and police. they dont have real power here. all their power is 10 skinheads vs 1 black-skinned guy somewhere in backsteets at the evening. for case of estonia there are nazi people in goverment. i cannot read their mind, but some of their actions are perceived like planned anti-russian policy.


P.S. Aquashark - the molotov-ribbentrop pact was recognized as not valid, and ussr has apologized for occupation of baltic countries. you can create separate topic for insulting russian people about ussr actions in days of cold war. you should take ussr actions as cruel realities of those days. it's the history and we cant change it. oppressions of russians in estonia is realities of nowdays.

"i cannot read their mind, but some of their actions are perceived like planned anti-russian policy."

yeah ok.. but it's clear that you're overreacting on purpose:
Estonia - moving statue vs Russia - economical sanctions

the statue is only an excuse..

the statue movement is one more action of Estonian government, that was perceived by russian people as anti-russian policy.

hm, is there economical sanctions? i saw only talks about sanctions (i dont think our government is so crazy to stop gas transfer to europe because of some 1m of people which hate russians) by our politicans, riots in estonian towns, baycott of estonian products by some russian companies and peacefull protest by russian people like pickets estonian embassy in moscow, my avatar, etc, etc

yeah but also there's a double-standard
where was the dispute when we moved or dispatched or vandalized our Soviet statues? update your avatar please

as a side story: 3 years ago, a Jewish organization protested against the unveilling of a statue in Paris of a Romanian doctor, Nicolae Paulescu, because he expressed some anti-semitic views in his articles during the 1930's. the statue was removed.

Nicolae Paulescu discovered insulin which saved millions and millions of lives. does the removal of his statue change this? NO. do i hate Jews for removing his statue? NO.

afaik, you are dont oppress russians, so you actions about soviet statues not carry bright political 'painting', like estonian actions
you also dont build SS-soldiers monuments like estonians

if Russians in Estonia would be opressed then why don't you complain about that instead of disputing over a statue?
i get it.. because there's no opression, so you pick on purpose on meaningless actions.

if Russians would be opressed in Estonia they would flee in Russia and alarm the international community.
the EU wouldn't have permitted Estonia to join it due to minority issues anyway.

since estonia located in the center of europe, they cant use chechniya methods to oppress russians. they cant use physical pressure to russians (i mean beatings, murders, enslaving, human trade and other kinds of violence), like it was in checniya, but they use legal(law, judical)/economical and informational pressure to russians. russians, that live in estonia are trying to alarm, but it seems international community deliberately does not notice it.

nobody enjoyed hitler and nobody enjoyed ussr politics, so we dont against removing both fascism and soviet monuments. ideas of communism and fascism are not welcomed in the civilized world. one of this ideas cause to ww2, and second cause world to the threshold of ww3, so both ideas are considered as a plague of the twentieth century. why estonia removes soviet monuments and building ss monuments instead?

building monuments to fascists is extreme degree of disrespect. they dont like communism ideology, ok nobody love it. but they love hitler=ss=fascism, or as it to understand? we are disappointed by that the nationalism and xenofobia prosper in estonia at the state level.

hmm
i find this image gallery sort of disturbing: http://bronze-soldier.com/gallery/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=38

maybe you're right after all :|
no wonder Estonia has the best teams for Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory :|

In such environment extremists usually get more powerfull.

unfortunately content of this image gallery is sort of usall for nowdays. some street hooligans with nazi mood. and 'traces' of their activity. i think every state of EU and ex-USSR have this kind of people. for case of western europe this people usally oppose southern emigrants (africa people) and ex-colonies emigrants, for case of eastern europe and southern ex-ussr states they usally oppose russians (soviet occupation), for case of russia our nazis usally oppose southern emigrants (mostly caucasus people).

in pretty totalitarian USSR it was a bit 'difficult' with nazism , but after disintegration the nazism was reborn as a side effect of 'liberative ideas flow'. personally i concern to it as to illness of a society, same as juvenile criminality, narcotism, alcoholism, prostitution, etc. in estonia this illness a bit uncontrolled, and maybe even supported by government. certainly it causes anxiety and protests of russians.

P.S. i have tried to state an essence of a problem briefly and without emotions. the most of the anti-estonian web-sites consists of 'activity' of anti-anti-russian people. there you can see lot of emotions, if you are to read on russian ofc . this people also appeals to violence and ddos attacks to the estonian web-sites, dns servers and the rest IT-infrastructure. i prefer more peaceful forms of the protest against unfair (in my opinion) policies of the estonian authorities.

there is always some truth in both sides, so I could PARTLY understand why Russians get mad, ...

more tommorow, too tired to be elaborate on this one

took away ur avatar disconnect, with the nazi cross!