Linda16,
sorry. I do respect your feelings and can see where some of your points come from but still I don't agree. Both governments are involved in this for their reasons and either can be fully believed.
I do put the word 'occupy' not to make it look like whole Estonian nation was dreaming to become a part of USSR days and nights. That's not true. I do put this word in quotes as we have yet to define this term regarding some countries of Eastern Europe and Estonia in particular. Unfortunately I have some urgent work at the moment that I need to finish but once I'm done, I'll get back here and explain what I mean exactly. So don't hurry to argue with arguments you haven't yet heard.
Claiming whole Estonia was absolutely against joining USSR is as wrong as claiming the opposite. Your country has a complicated history and your population couldn't make up your mind quite a lot back in years. There were people that were fighting on Hitler's side against bolsheviks as well as there were people that did the opposite. There were supporters of joining USSR as there's a whole lot of historical, economical and mentality reasons for that. And you can't claim everyone was unhappy because the picture wasn't as bad as your current historics make it look. Don't forget that quite a lot of people in your current government that started all this anti-soviet hysteria weren't exactly rebells hiding in forests. Ansip for example was building a nice happy career and showing effort no one forced him to show.
I don't buy this 'it was organized by russian government' stuff. It goes against logic.
1. Was it Russian government to come up with the idea of removing the monument? Estonia was living on the bomb for a while. It's an obvious mistake (or was it intentionally?) of your government who had to know that good half of their own population will go crazy over this. Their were absolutely no surprise in reaction of Russia either. This was rather obvious after all the fuss that that law itself was surrounded with. Or were your authorities forced to do that?
2. Were they forced to do it so close to 9th May knowing how high the level of russian patriotism gets at such moments both in Russia and Estonia?
3. Was it russian government to put majority of ethnic Russians in position of aliens, that don't have even basic rights? This monument story was just a last drop that got the party started but reasons for all this lay in previous events. Those people basicly don't see what they can lose in this situation.
4. Was it Russian government to put words in the mouths of your authorities and to pay for anti-russian publications in some big estonian papers? Or don't you yourself hear that there's absolutely no respect for russians as nation in this situation? Don't you hear how they all keep calling russians nothing but hooligans and maradeurs and constantly repeat how it was Russia to organize this mess, how we want to tear your country apart with nationalistic ideas? Where is at least a slight concern for the feelings of half of your population, where's realization that those people do feel hurt? Why is it that it's only feelings of Estonians that are taken into consideration? I'm not even saying about respecting those feelings and acting on them, but I've yet to see even a basic realization of the fact those feelings exist.
And the last thing. Look at this objectively and see who really benefits from this situation? What does Estonia get from this and what could Russia possibly count on?
Estonia got the chance to once again play a victim and get attention from EU and NATO. It was rather obvious who's side those organizations would take. This brings Estonia closer to getting protection from NATO (for example military bases on your territory). It brings Estonia closer to their goal of international tribunal equaling Nazi and Soviet regimes and making Russia paying compensations for the past. This idea is quite popular in several countries nowadays. It helps to justify revanchistic and nationalistic ideas your current government is so fond of. It helps to create an image of 'bad' Russian to justify position of Russians in Estonia in particular and this whole 'Estonians and other people' ideas.
Russia couldn't count on getting any kind of countrol over Estonia. We are talking about independant country, member of EU and NATO. Any plans of this kind would be just absurd. Russia gets even worse relationship with the West after this story which doesn't exactly helps us to join VTO. Russia gets bashed in world media and falls even lower in the eyes of ordinary people like public opinion on us wasn't bad enough.
Both countries suffer economically. It was obvious that that reaction of Russia was coming as it's the only measure we can take in current situation. While it's of course more painful for Estonia, still it doesn't benefit Russia either. We don't earn money on breaking relationship with you, we loose them.
Both governments benefit when it comes to inside political situations. It creates the image of the outside enemy that gets public attention off other actions of the government, the wave of patriotism and nationalistic ideas gives additional points to authorities that ride that wave. But selections in Estonia are much closer than ours.
Now while I totally disagree with the idea of
haku and
simon being able to give an objective look on the history of USSR and Estonia for the reason of never being here when all that was happening, I can trust them in giving non-baised opinion on situation that requires common logic. If you, guys, are able to shave away the image of 'poor ocuupated Estonia' and 'evil authoritarian and agressive Russia' for a bit and look at this situation from the point of logic, that would be really cool if you could give your honest opinion on who's responsible for events in Tallin.
I really don't like seeing all those fights in Tallin. It hurts my feelings just as much as yours. This shouldn't happen. But 'drunk youngsters and maradeurs' is the position of your authorities. I'm sure there were a lot of young people in there as they are always most emotional and agressive when it comes to such situations. And I never said this was a peaceful protests. But can you honestly say there was time and reson for peaceful demonstrations? Did those people actually have a chance to be heard? Majority of them aren't even citizens of your country. They had nothing to lose. Claiming all of them came there only for the sake of stealing, robbing and breaking anything is just another way to totally deny right of ethnic Russians to feel deeply hurt but this decision of your government. 1/3 of all people arrasted that night were ethnic estonians, younf citizens of your country. It's still a big question who organized what there.
There were cruel methods used by your police to stop 'maradeurs'. There are quite a lot of reports on russian-speaking forums that hardly come from our government as they are much more descriptive than version of our media. quite a lot of people were beaten and arested for no reason. Many of those were teenagers. I won't say that some of it couldn't be fabricated as I'm quite aware of professionalism of our FSB. No one is going to do anything about it but sending official request for investigation. I hope international community won't ignore this one. It just suprises me how demonstrations in Moscow and St.-Peterburg were met with such a fuss and our police was blamed for cruelty. And at the same time western media pretends not to notice worse things when it comes to EU. I wonder what a big scandal it would be if story like
this one appeared in media and how fast would it be in every paper of the world was it Russian police to be accused of those things (the article is from Finland. The heroes of it are Germans. But probably it was also paid by Russian government. Finns are so on our side when it comes to that war
)
Nashi were using their democratic right to express their opinion. There was police there and people were being arrested for extra-agression. Of course there couldn't be any kind of serious fight when authorities of the city, police guys and demonstrates feel pretty much the same. I suspect that actions of authorities weren't too strict but that doesn't mean everytone could do everything and get away with it. It's also wierd to claim it was organized by authorities as similar protests are happening near in every region of the country. I don't really see anyone around who doesn't feel offended by the action your governmnet took. Would be wierd to expect people bringing flowers to your Ambassy and would be wierd to expect authorities using brutal force against people they share similar feelings with.
In case of attack on the servers, it sounds fishy. Anyone could say anyone but it would be wierd to do it from Kremlin IP's, don't you think? We aren't that bad with computers here. I guess your government should request official investigation on this by the 3rd side. If this investigation proves this really happened, you should insist on punishment for the guilty ones. I will just applause you for that and boo the idiots you did this. But for now this is just another trick used in informational war that is happening now.