A memorial to the victims of communism has been opened in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital; it is dedicated to all the people of Estonia who suffered under the terror inflicted by the Soviet Union.
The names of more than 22,000 people who were murdered, or who died as a result of inhuman living conditions in prison or forced exile, are inscribed on the memorial’s plaques. A separate wall commemorates Estonian military officers who fell victim to communist terror.
Impressive in its scale and seamlessly integrated into its surroundings, the memorial has already drawn comparisons with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.
“This site will be a permanent reminder of the fragility of freedom and human life, and will appeal to the Estonian people of today and tomorrow to keep their home – free Estonia,” the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory, the NGO responsible for maintaining the memorial and its list of victims, said in a statement.
The memorial has two parts, called the “Journey” and the “Home Garden”. The “Journey” is a corridor of memory, with the names of the victims inscribed on its walls. It symbolises the mercilessness of the totalitarian regime and its hostility towards humanity.
The “Home Garden”, a park with apple trees and honeybees depicted on the wall facing it, conveys a sense of tranquillity and security. “People were taken away from home by force and made to tread the path of suffering. Only some survived and returned to the ‘Home Garden’,” the institute said.
Estonia lost one in every five people from its population of just over one million as a result of the Soviet Union’s terror policies. Today, the vast majority lie in unnamed graves without crosses. “May this memorial be the place where they are remembered,” the institute said.
The Soviet terror
The Soviet occupying authorities began imprisoning people immediately after occupying Estonia in June 1940, arresting almost 10,000 people over the following 12 months. The first victims were members of Estonia’s political elite and military leadership, as well as officers, police officials and patriotic citizens who resisted the occupying regime.
On 14 June 1941, the Soviet occupying regime began deporting Estonians to Siberia. The families of Estonia’s elite were among the first victims, including 2,578 children. Most heads of families were later murdered or died in forced labour camps. Thousands of their relatives died during the forced resettlement from illness and starvation in inhuman conditions. In total, more than 10,000 people were taken from Estonia to Russia in cattle wagons in 1941.
All former heads of state of Estonia who had remained in their homeland suffered. Four of them – Friedrich Karl Akel, Jüri Jaakson, Jaan Tõnisson and Jaan Teemant – were murdered, while four others died in imprisonment. Of the 78 former cabinet ministers who had remained in occupied Estonia, 64 were arrested. Seventy of the 120 members of the last Estonian parliament were imprisoned, along with nine of the 11 county governors.
The first covert mass executions in Estonia began on 5 April 1941. After the outbreak of war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on 22 June, the terror campaign intensified further. The NKVD, the Soviet Union’s interior ministry, together with Red Army soldiers and members of Soviet destruction battalions, killed hundreds of innocent people. In total, at least 2,446 people were murdered in Estonia in 1941.
The communist campaign of terror resumed in Estonia in the autumn of 1944. More than 16,000 people were imprisoned in 1944–1945. The Soviet secret police paid particular attention to pursuing the Estonian government led by Otto Tief, which had been sworn into office in September 1944, as well as its associates and other independence-minded people.
In total, more than 35,000 people were imprisoned after the reoccupation of Estonia. Nearly 500 were sentenced to death and murdered, while thousands more died in the Gulag, the Soviet forced labour camp system.
The deportation carried out on 25 March 1949 had the largest number of victims of any act of communist terror in Estonia. Within a few days, 7,552 families – 20,702 people in total, most of them women and children – were forcibly resettled in Siberia. Two-thirds were branded as “nationalists” and one-third as “kulaks”. Their property was seized. Those who escaped deportation also suffered.
Immediately after Joseph Stalin’s death, the first amnesty was announced in March 1953. Political prisoners made up only a small proportion of those released. Most surviving political prisoners and deportees were then gradually freed by the end of the 1950s, but only a small number underwent judicial rehabilitation. Property seized at the time of their imprisonment was generally not returned, and many were not permitted to go back to their homes. The last political prisoners were not allowed to return to their homeland until 1989.
Estonia lost approximately 90,000 people between 1940 and 1991. Even more fled their homeland between 1939 and 1945. The total human losses caused by the Second World War and the subsequent Soviet terror are estimated at one-fifth of Estonia’s population, which then stood at just over one million.
