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Comment by MikeMacrmogh | Hacker News Reader

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You are misinformed. Nobody has bulldozed the graves of Russian soldiers, and there were lot of other nationalities in the red army, not only Russians. If you are referring to 2008 incident in Tallinn then the remains of soldiers were transported from City center to the graveyard. And on 9th of May people go to graveyard to pay their respects.

When I saw the memorial on the edge of town near Tallin in 2007 it wasn't in good shape. I think some resentment runs deep. The german graves are well tended. I don't think there is any deeper sub-text, its just one is a brutalist war memorial and the other is a more personal thing of headstones.

The collection of "we don't need a lenin statue" nearby was cool. Lots of standard-pose, lying on the ground. I think the estonians were careful to dismount these but not (if you will excuse the metaphor) 'desecrate' them because .. well.. there are sensitivities.

Last time I visited the Occupation Museum in Tallinn, the old Lenin etc statues were stored inside - downstairs near the toilets, quite appropriately.

There is a German soldier's cemetery in Viljandi: https://www.visitestonia.com/en/german-soldiers-cemetery-in-... ... which, as I understand it, was developed and is maintained with funding from the German government. I wonder if 'Mother Russia' bothers to contribute similarly to Russian-soldier related memorials in Estonia?

I think there is a certain degree of symmetry breaking between Russians and Germans in WWII.

No historian I read draws this parallel even when they refer specifically to the Russian invasion and occupation of the Baltic. Germans actively recruited Baltic collaborators and ran over twenty concentration camps in Estonia killing Jews from the Baltic region.

Your statement is horrible and I totally reject it.

I'm not sure who is saying what in this thread, but Russians had their share of atrocities. Note this is very graphic and haunting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

I think you're misunderstanding, perhaps I should have added /s. There is absolutely a lot of difference between russians and germans during wwii (thus there is symmetry breaking).

Thank you for the clarification. I read the sentence differently and I apologize.

I wonder what you mean. Of course there is symmetry between Russian and German invasions and occupations of Baltic (and other) countries. Both powers wanted to establish their spheres of influence over smaller countries, and eventually each other. They made the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact according to this plan, they had a common victory parade in Brest-Litovsk after they had together conquered Poland. Both powers liquidated their real and perceived enemies.

This doesn't mean they were entirely the same, but there is a lot of similarity.

You may have read too hastily. The comment said there is "symmetry breaking" (i.e. "asymmetry"), not that there is "symmetry".

Russian government is more keen on exploiting the grievances around Russian graves for political purposes than actually caring for the graveyards abroad. The bronze warrior controversy was one big manufactured outrage.

At the same time, there are people who try to maintain a monument for the minorities and political opponents that were murdered during Stalin's Purges, and contemporary Russia rewrites history there, too.

While I cannot condone bulldozing the graves... A lot of those red army soldiers fought against Estonian army. They weren't in any way liberators, just as Germans turned to not be ones.

Only in as much as the Estonian units fought on the side of Germans. There is a reason most jews who didn't flee when the Germans advanced were killed, the level of collaboration between locals and Einsatzgruppe A was very high..

My Estonian grandfather worked as a police officer in Viljandi prior to and during the German occupation. It was only when the Russians invaded Estonia towards the end of the war that he, my grandmother and mother decided it was safer to flee; the terrible reputation of the advancing Russians, murdering and raping as they went, proceeded them. Just was well, as a number of his colleagues were murdered by Russian soon after they escaped.

If you weren't a Jew, you were - in general - treated OK by occupying German soldiers, and least according to accounts I've heard from people who where actually there. The Germans were professional and courteous, the Russians uncontrolled and ravaging thugs.

Funny how Russians always see themselves as 'liberators', not 'occupiers' of Estonia. If this was the case, once they'd driven out the Germans, why didn't they then leave?

Sure, except my family was Jewish and my father's relatives who did not flee did get killed. I have no love for Soviets but I really think we shouldnt normalize Nazi Germans.

You do know Red army invaded and occupied Estonia first? With all the fun things that getting occupied by Red army and purged by NKVD entails.

Even if Russian soldiers have also fought the Nazis, those who fought in Estonia and in all the other countries which were unlucky to be neighbors of Russia, were just invaders, who during the war were notorious for stealing from civilians everything they could and for raping, and the result of their successful fight was the occupation of those countries, which allowed the Russians to steal huge amounts of valuable products from all their neighbors, while killing and torturing all possible opponents from the local populations.

The Western countries were able to free themselves from the Nazis only with the help of Russia, but they paid the Russians with only little of their own money but mostly with what was not theirs to give away, i.e. with what belonged to the Eastern European countries.

What I affirm hear is not from hearsay, but from personal experience, because in 1940, i.e. before Russia being attacked by anyone, so before having the right to claim that they are defending themselves against Nazis, the Russian invaders murdered both my great grandfathers, the reasons being that one was a teacher at the village school and the other had a minor job in the village administration, and everybody who distinguished themselves somehow from the masses were deported to labor camps in Siberia, to make sure that nobody was left there who could lead some form of oppositions.

A few younger and stronger people have survived the Russian labor camps, but my great grandfathers were old, so one was shot before reaching the labor camp, because he was walking too slowly and the other died after a couple of months because of the cold, lack of food and hard labor.

Taking such events into account, it is obvious that the Russian soldiers are not loved in the neighbor countries of Russia.

Are you actually the young Kapruskin described within? Unable to reunite with the girl you fell in love with, while working in a coal mine beneath an orphanage that was atop a prison that was inside the abstract concept of World War II?

Could you please source the bulldozing bit? Just curious, I wasn't aware of that happening and quick search turned nothing up.

That's because he made it up.

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