Decolonisation is beautiful.
Here’s just one example from one small corner of one small Estonian town, Viljandi.
Picture 1: An ugly communist party building and car park, built by the soviet occupiers on top of a memorial they demolished for local people who died fighting for independence.
Pictures 2 & 3: The memorial, lovingly recreated down to every last detail, is back at the heart of a public square.
There are some commentators abroad who like to lecture russia’s neighbours not to “erase history” by removing the scars of occupation.
It’s weird because this kind of thing is normal everywhere else in the world. In fact, the very same people who get particularly upset about occupation monuments being removed here also tend to be very articulate about the importance of removing statues to ousted oppressors elsewhere. They just think russian imperialism gets a free pass.
Rather than erase history, plenty of occupation junk across the Baltic countries has been transferred to museums so that future generations can learn about it in its proper context. But it doesn’t belong in our public spaces. Local people here hated that brutal communist party building, which desecrated the memorial in a way so symbolic of the wider ugliness of russian imperialism.
Public spaces belong to the people who actually live here and should reflect the kind of free, modern, open, independent countries that we are - and which remember those who made it possible.
The other bad take on this issue is to constantly frame this kind of thing as a ‘reaction/response/message to russia’. That, again, is imperialist thinking. We make decisions for our countries based on what we want our countries to be. We’d want to remove this kind of junk even if russia had ceased to exist in 1991 or if it had flourished into a friendly democracy.
In fact, here in Viljandi, it took three decades of planning and sculpting to recreate the monument based off grainy photos of the original. The building was finally knocked down a couple of years ago and the memorial unveiled this midsummer.
In the interim, the building was expanded after the occupation to serve as Tourist Information, which was pretty ironic considering the communist aim was to keep us closed to the world. But that has a new home and the time has come to return the space.
There was quite a debate locally about whether to recreate it exactly or update it with some kind of modern reinterpretation. Both are legitimate, interesting ideas.
In the end, the only difference is that the materials are now of a much higher quality. I think they made the right decision.
And the fact that it was recreated in perfect detail by people who never saw the original but emerged from occupation with the same determination to live free does send its own new message from our time too. We will continue to exist.
Decolonisation can suffer setbacks, horrendously painful as we see in Ukraine, but the long term trend is unstoppable. The special protection that russian imperialism still enjoys in the minds of many around the world is starting to shatter.
I stopped by to take a photo of it for you all and a rainbow appeared. 🙂
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