Estonians making a clean break with Soviet past?

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phylo_roadking
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Post by phylo_roadking »

Our opinion is that the Estonian government must resign
what's more worrying - that they have the nerve to express it in this way or that they expect it to be listened to???
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
sid guttridge
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Guys,

It looks as though the Estonians have got the ballance right.

The statue is no longer in an in-your-face position, but remains on display in an appropriate place to honour the dead - a military cemetary.

One can only wonder whether they would have chosen such a sensible solutution without the rioting and external Russian pressure.

However, it appears, according to the Daily Trelegraph today, to have emboldened the Poles to start a similar process. I think we have not heard the last of this.

Cheers,

Sid.
sid guttridge
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Post by sid guttridge »

P.S. By the way, it looks like a very dignified statue. Would that all our more recent one's in the UK were as good!

If the Estonians don't want it, I wouldn't object to it gracing a British public space. Whatever the rights and wrongs of their regime, we owe the Red Army's sacrificed men an enormous amount in terms of saved lives of our own, and I don't think that has ever been publicly reecognised here.

Sid.
Tapani K.
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Post by Tapani K. »

sid guttridge wrote: One can only wonder whether they would have chosen such a sensible solutution without the rioting and external Russian pressure.
From the very beginning it was the intention of the Estonian Government to move the statue to the military cemetery, not to destroy it. The rioting had nothing to do with this decision.

regards,
Tapani K.
pzrmeyer2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

we owe the Red Army's sacrificed men an enormous amount in terms of saved lives of our own, and I don't think that has ever been publicly reecognised here.
yeah, all you German female rape victims HATS OFF to the Red Army!
Poles, Czechs, Hungarians subjugated for 50 years, eyes.....RIGHT!
Ukrainian farmers, Nemmersdorf villagers, Baltic States citizens, PRESENT....ARMS!
pzrmeyer2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

One can only wonder whether they would have chosen such a sensible solutution without the rioting and external Russian pressure.
So now we're justifying rioting and bullying by large authoritarian nations?
sid guttridge
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi pzrmeyer,

You are rather missing my point. You are talking about the Red Army as an institution. I am talking about its dead as individuals and the weight their sacrifice took off our own people. As they inflicted some 80% of the casualties on our common enemy, it is not unreasonable to assume that this saved several million Anglo-American dead.

In the USSR's dying days in the late 1980s I remember watching elderly British Arctic convoy veterans returning from the Soviet Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens wearing freshly awarded Arctic medals with a white ribbon - a recogntion of risk and sacrifice our own government hadn't awarded them. Even the USSR could overlook politics on such occasions. Can't you?

Look at the statue. The soldier is unarmed and bowed in the universal manner of homage to the dead. It isn't triumphalist, militaristic or political. Strip away our own preconceptions and it looks like a well executed work reflecting a universal human emotion.

I can quite see why the Estonians would resent it, but their experience is not ours. They have little reason to see the sacrifice of Red Army men in a positive light. We have.

Cheers,

Sid.
sid guttridge
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Tapani K.,

In that case, full marks to the Estonians. They have handled an awkward situation with sensitivity and dignity.

Cheers,

Sid.
pzrmeyer2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

You are rather missing my point. You are talking about the Red Army as an institution. I am talking about its dead as individuals and the weight their sacrifice took off our own people. As they inflicted some 80% of the casualties on our common enemy, it is not unreasonable to assume that this saved several million Anglo-American dead.
Institutions didn't rape my great-aunt, Hertha 7 times in one day. Individuals did. Fcuk the Red Army.
Reb
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Post by Reb »

Sid

I certainly see your point. From an English or even from an American perspective it makes sense.

From an Estonian perspective? They lived under the lash of the reds. I wouldn't blame them if they dumped the darn thing in the swamp somewhere.

cheers
Reb
phylo_roadking
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Post by phylo_roadking »

Fcuk the Red Army
pm2, you better be careful - because by that logic you'll be forced to support the Taliban and the Mujahedeen....because THEY did!!! :D :D :D :D
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
pzrmeyer2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

phylo_roadking wrote:
Fcuk the Red Army
pm2, you better be careful - because by that logic you'll be forced to support the Taliban and the Mujahedeen....because THEY did!!! :D :D :D :D
thanks for catching me, Phylo. I'm gonna tear up the David Hicks/Chris von D civil union invite I just received. I'll donate the intended gift money to the Gulag guards pension fund instead.
sid guttridge
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi pzrmreyer,

The Regia Aeronautica killed my great grandmother, but that is no reason to damn everyone in Italian uniform.

Cheers,

Sid.
Reb
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Post by Reb »

OK Sid - you've got my attention. What's the story behind that?

thanks
Reb
sid guttridge
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Reb,

My mother's family lived on Malta. (She was a a cypher operator in naval headquarters there through the siege.) Her grandmother lived some way beyond the naval dockyard and died as a result of eratic Italian bombing in one of the first raids of Malta's war. Apparently she thought it was an exercise and was watching outside. However, as she died of shock, she is not listed amongst the island's dead.

Cheers,

Sid.
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