Time To Stand Up For Estonia

investors.com ^ | 5/3/2007

[Tailgunner Joe]

Last Thursday, Estonia's leaders decided to move an imposing Soviet war memorial from a dominant spot in Estonia's capital of Tallinn. Russian officials denounced the removal of the ugly Stalinist relic as "sacrilegious."

The memorial was put there by Soviet troops who invaded and annexed Estonia as part of Josef Stalin's and Adolf Hitler's secret 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov pact to divide up Europe. Estonia's forced incorporation into the Soviet Union cost it five decades of freedom until it finally broke free in 1991. ...Russians resent Estonia's exit from the Soviet Union and its success afterward. Hence, the harsh — and illegitimate — chain of responses.

First, local Russian mobs — Estonia-based remnants of the Soviet colonizers — rampaged through the capital, looting and vandalizing shops. To Estonians who remember 1947, it no doubt evoked the pillage of Soviet troops.

But instead of the Red Army, these punks now belong to an ultranationalist mob called "Nashi," meaning "Ours" in Russian. Besides stealing, they intended to intimidate. About 600 looters were arrested, with 44 injured and one dead in Estonia's worst violence since '91.

The mobs' message was clear enough, but it's hard to prove they're acting on orders from Moscow. It's worth noting, however, Russian officials have loudly criticized not the looting but Estonia's police response.

What can be more directly traced to Moscow is that Russia's upper house of parliament, or Duma, voted by a wide margin to break relations with Estonia in a nonbinding move.

The message got clearer when Sweden's envoy to Moscow was harassed by Nashi thugs who surrounded the Estonian embassy on Tuesday.

After that, Russia stepped up pressure on Estonia by cutting off energy shipments for rail "maintenance." This revived doubts about Russia's reliability as a nonpolitical energy supplier to the West.

[GATOR NAVY]

The Russians are pining for their commie thug days.