CASE 1: In a parallel world, in a parallel time-scale

In 2008 Slavoj Zizek wrote an article for Die Zeit, where he argued that during contemporary tests of international politics, instead of the superpowers (e.g. USA and Russia), only small nations (e.g. Georgia and Iraq) get wounded, as they are treated like mice in a laboratory. The same argument applies in much smaller scale and in minority groups. In that sense, the Estonian government’s decision to remove an two-meter-long sculpture from the city center in Tallinn in 2007 can be seen as a sort of declaration to the world that Estonia has left its Soviet past completely behind. As if the object’s mere physical presence in the city center could threaten the country’s independence. Yet it is never just about things, in this instance the public statue; it is about the collective memory they embody.

Recent years have witnessed intensified action on the memory front in the Russian-Baltic relations, be they debates over ‘occupation’ or ‘liberation’ in the context of border treaties; or controversies over WWII monuments in Estonia. Both the Baltic and Russia attempt to seek pan-European recognition of ‘Europeanness’ and their ‘self’, whilst denying of the other. Relative geographically peripheral position has created a case where both sides use the other as a negative reference point in order to veil its own sense of inferiority. The attempts to fix certain meanings of the past show that in fact these are substantially struggles over power. The control over the narratives of the past enables one to gain control over the construction of further narratives for an imagined future. In recent years Russia has expressed the view that some of its neighboring countries are trying to ‘re-write history’. But is it re-writing history or perhaps writing your own parallel histories?

001

The Tõnismäe Second World War memorial was erected in central Tallinn in Tõnismäe Park on 22 September 1947. As an obligatory component of Soviet city planning, the memorial was erected in a public place in the city center and surrounded by a spacious square for large-scale events. The entire location, as a burial site for those who fell in the Second World War, was later designated as a cultural landmark.

It is believed that 12 coffins were buried for propagandistic purposes in Tõnismäe on 14 April 1945. Existing archives and documents do not contain information on the exact burial spots. Nor do they give a clear picture of who was buried in Tõnismäe and why. Indeed, existing sources provide somewhat contradictory information and not all archive materials, primarily those in Russia, are accessible. According to the data found, 9 of the fallen on the list were members of the units, which were more or less connected with the Tallinn occupation operation, but there is no evidence that any of them were killed at the time of the conquest of Tallinn.

002

In April 2007, a Soviet war memorial was by Government Decision relocated to the Military Cemetery in the outskirts of the city. The Act led to large-scale demonstrations and a subsequent violent street riot in Tallinn. The night before 26 April 2007 a police operation was held there and the monument’s defenders who were keeping watch on the Tõnismägi hill were expelled from the square. A large tent was erected over the monument and the graves. Legally it was explained as exhumation in accordance with the recently adopted Law on Military Graves Protection of the remains of the Soviet soldiers buried at the Tõnismägi. Early on the morning on 27 April 2007 by decision of the Government of the Republic, the monument was removed from Tõnismägi and some days later it was installed at the city military cemetery.

In a dispute over a Russian war memorial, Estonian government, media and banking websites were the targets of concentrated DDOS attacks. Estonian authorities described the hacker attacks against websites of Estonian government offices at the beginning of May 2007 as the actions of the Russian authorities.

According to the media, it all ended as a successful police operation, and the government won the media war at the international level by creating an image of Russians as looters and hooligans. It could be that the intention of this act was to render the local Russian community invisible for Estonians.

003

Two years after, on 9 May 2009 – the date when Russians traditionally celebrate their victory of WWII - Kristina Norman, Estonian documentary artist, set up a full-size golden replica of the Soldier to its former location. The event documented in video shows a small and peaceful group of Russians gathering and a few members of the public attempted plant flowers around the statue as they had similarly done in the past. The video also shows the replica, made of paper-mass, first pushed over by a gust of wind and then confiscated by the police but returned to the artist few weeks later.

If ‘after-party’ is something that follows the ‘official event’, then After-War is a reference to the idea that the war is over, but the conflict still continues. By not choosing a historical ‘truth’ from either of the confrontational ‘memory collectives’, the artist proposes the space between. After-War does not choose sides but deals with power relations.