Talk:Bronze Soldier of Tallinn/Archive 4

message: ====Purification, dedication, lustration====
In Estonian tradition, secular statues are not "dedicated", nor "lustrated".  Such statues, however, can be "opened", or "unveiled"; this can be done several times to a single statue.  Declarations of the Estonian Ministry of Defence are clear that what will happen on May 8th will be an opening ceremony combined with a celebration of the VE-Day; another opening ceremony will apparently be held in June when the mastaba will have been reerected and the exhumed war victims reburied.
The important parts of an opening ceremony are the opening speech and a ceremonial removal of a veil, a cover, or a curtain placed on the statue (or sometimes, just a ribbon set up around it or in front of it) before the ceremony.  It is symbolic of presenting the statue publically, and the statue having been public earlier does not prevent such a ceremony from taking place.  However, it's customary to only have opening ceremonies when something new can be presented.  A new location will qualify; so will newly restored mastaba.
The tradition has been practiced in this form at least since 1920s, and the ceremony can also be performed on a building, a sign on a building, or various kinds of memorials.  In rare cases, farming machines and industrial production lines were "opened" in this manner in the Soviet times. Digwuren 21:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody has commented on it.  I will consider it documented consensus, and reflect so on the main page.  If anybody would disagree, please express the reasoning here. Digwuren 17:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have been informed, off-Wikipedia, that the cases of ceremonially opening industrial production lines were not "rare".  I'm crossing this part out. Digwuren 13:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Nobody has commented on it. I will consider it documented consensus, and reflect so on the main page. If anybody would disagree, please express the reasoning here. Digwuren 17:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm pointing out that the Duma representatives have expressed a notion that the Bronze statue was sawed into pieces which were then welded together again.  This notion is absurd, and after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that to the Duma representatives, they do not appear to have repeated it.  This notion is similar to, but different from, the idea that handling the mastaba and the bronze statue separately constitutes taking the monument apart and building a new monument from the pieces. thus destroying the monument's continuity. Digwuren 11:47, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Nobody has commented on it. I will consider it documented consensus, and reflect so on the main page. If anybody would disagree, please express the reasoning here. Digwuren 17:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion on the misconceptions listed above

message: In Estonian tradition, secular statues are not "dedicated", nor "lustrated".  Such statues, however, can be "opened", or "unveiled"; this can be done several times to a single statue.  Declarations of the Estonian Ministry of Defence are clear that what will happen on May 8th will be an opening ceremony combined with a celebration of the VE-Day; another opening ceremony will apparently be held in June when the mastaba will have been reerected and the exhumed war victims reburied.
The important parts of an opening ceremony are the opening speech and a ceremonial removal of a veil, a cover, or a curtain placed on the statue (or sometimes, just a ribbon set up around it or in front of it) before the ceremony.  It is symbolic of presenting the statue publically, and the statue having been public earlier does not prevent such a ceremony from taking place.  However, it's customary to only have opening ceremonies when something new can be presented.  A new location will qualify; so will newly restored mastaba.
The tradition has been practiced in this form at least since 1920s, and the ceremony can also be performed on a building, a sign on a building, or various kinds of memorials.  In rare cases, farming machines and industrial production lines were "opened" in this manner in the Soviet times. Digwuren 21:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody has commented on it.  I will consider it documented consensus, and reflect so on the main page.  If anybody would disagree, please express the reasoning here. Digwuren 17:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have been informed, off-Wikipedia, that the cases of ceremonially opening industrial production lines were not "rare".  I'm crossing this part out. Digwuren 13:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Purification, dedication, lustration

message: This is a peculiar one.  As far as I can tell, no notable source has raised this question in the form you have pushed it.  However, there are two possibly related concepts.
There have been rumours, now clearly shown unsubstantiated, of the bronze statue having been cut off from above feet, or cut into pieces and then welded together when the protesters required its reinstatement.  (Even the Russian Duma's special fact-finding mission repeated these rumours.)  This has not happened; in part because there was no need to cut the statue for transportation; in part because it's very hard to actually weld bronze.  The seam the Duma representatives fingered is technological, derives from the original casting process, and has been on the statue before its removal, as can be seen on high-resolution photographs taken before the removal.
Furthermore, in the early hours after the removal, there were also rumours of the whole monument having been trashed and irretrievably lost.  Most of these rumours can be traced to Mr. Linter, and, also, are now clearly shown unsubstantiated.
No "continuity" or "sameness" issues have been raised by notable sources; it's consensus among Estonian population (both Estonian-speaking and Russian-speaking) that the statue has been relocated, not destroyed and rebuilt, and the only even remotely relevant notable issue has been that the new location of the statue is somewhat unfamiliar to most people that care for regularly visiting it. Digwuren 22:05, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody has commented on it. I will consider it documented consensus, and reflect so on the main page. If anybody would disagree, please express the reasoning here. Digwuren 17:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm pointing out that the Duma representatives have expressed a notion that the Bronze statue was sawed into pieces which were then welded together again.  This notion is absurd, and after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that to the Duma representatives, they do not appear to have repeated it.  This notion is similar to, but different from, the idea that handling the mastaba and the bronze statue separately constitutes taking the monument apart and building a new monument from the pieces. thus destroying the monument's continuity. Digwuren 11:47, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Demolition of the statue / building a new statue from parts of the old one

message: It is a fact that the monument is legally a property of the city.
However, it merits no more than a mention in the overall narrative, and a claim that it was first erected by the city is incorrect.
First, in Estonian governance practice, the border between city and state property is not always clear; it is routine for the state to command city property through legislative or administrative acts. For property ownership purposes, municipalities of Estonia are not distinct from the state; instead, they are departments or subsidiaries of the state.
Second, the property aspect has only been covered in a single declaration of the Mayor of Tallinn; it was not even considered worthy of response by any state official. (Mention of it in this declaration is the only reason it merits mention in Wikipedia at all.)  No actual legal claim against state has been madefiled by the municipality of Tallinn, neither through a court of law nor through the Chancellor of Justice; all that has been made is a single claim in a press-oriented declaration by the mayor.
Third, in 1947, when the monument was erected, Estonia was under early Soviet rule, and 'city' was not a legal entity that could own property or perform actions. Instead, the erection would have been done by either some sort of 'committee' (most likely, the 'executive committee of the city') or a branch organisation of the Communist Party. Property issues of public monuments was not clearly regulated under the Soviet legal system, there being no need for such regulations, and it was only after the events of 1991 that it became possible to say that the monument was a property of the City of Tallinn.
Digwuren 22:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody has commented on it. I will consider it documented consensus, and reflect so on the main page. If anybody would disagree, please express the reasoning here. Digwuren 17:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: City property claims on the statue

message: I created a stub about the military cemetery. I'm not 100% sure about its official name, so, please, feel free to improve and expand the stub. --Camptown 19:11, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about "Defence Forces Cemetery of Tallinn"? (Defence Force = Kaitsevägi) - 82.131.52.31 20:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Aha... I was wondering about that word. Defence Forces Cemetery of Tallinn is probably more correct. The cemetery seems to have been cited as the Military Cemetery in recent reports, so that should go an inofficial name. --Camptown 20:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Tallinn Military Cemetery]] (Tallinna Kaitseväe kalmistu) 

message: about Thursday, 26-th
news from Friday, 27, in russian: 
http://lenta.ru/news/2007/04/27/embassy/
google translation to english:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Flenta.ru%2Fnews%2F2007%2F04%2F27%2Fembassy%2F&langpair=ru%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.65.192.20 (talk) 19:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the term nashist.  It's much wieldier than the clumsy 'member of the political youth organisation Nashi', or even 'member of Nashi'.  Has any notable source used it? Digwuren 11:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can't find any, though it appears that the term 'нашисты' enjoys fairly common use in russian written media. Ethnonazi 15:19, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Estonian Embassy in Moscow 

message: What is know about him? Supervising architect... The man behind the mastaba.... (wasn't he?) I cannot find any other architectual related stuff to that man, so was he really an architect, or just another Soviet bureaucrat who had been delegated for the creation of a war memorial? --Camptown 21:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: He was an architect; some data about him http://www.virumaa.ee/discuss/msgReader$527?mode=topic - Ahsoous 06:51, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Arnold Alas]] 

message: It seems that the Nikolay Kovalyov mentioned in the article is the same Nikolay Kovalev (FSB) who preceeded Vladimir Putin as the head of the Russian FSB. -- Petri Krohn 00:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, he certainly is. Today, he chairs the State Duma’s Veterans’ Committee. -- Camptown 01:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why the transliteration discrepancy?  I was of the impression ё (yo) is always romanized as such. --153.104.64.72 15:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's because the official romanisation of Russian names is done by the French-oriented rules, which are not always intuitive for an English speaker.  Specifically, the umlaut of Russian yo is commonly left out in written Russian, and the official transliteration use the written form rather than the pronounciation.  Recall also Gorbachev.  Some languages -- for example, Estonian and Latvian -- have their own rules for Russian name transliteration, however. Digwuren 15:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Nikolay Kovalev (FSB)]] 

message: The first image of the statue at its former place should be dated, what's the best format for this? --NEMT 02:12, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the current caption is misleading without a date. --NEMT 02:51, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I added the date, but caption text may need a bit of improvement by way of rewording. -BStarky 03:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Date for first image

message: *BBC: Russia accused of 'attack on EU' But, is there substantial evidence, supporting the accusations of cyber terrorism? --Camptown 10:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Estonian goverment has said that it has enough evidence to support these claims. 195.50.212.85 14:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  theyve got some IPs. --82.131.14.98 16:47, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Mr. Paet, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, has given the address lists to journalists.  None have yet been made public, though.  It is not yet known if it is because the journalists consider them too boring for that, or because the government considers them sensitive. Digwuren 18:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

text: It's important to point out that the loaded term of terrorism does not figure in the official accusations. Digwuren 10:14, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The term terrorism is used in the article. 'Cyber Terrorists', hence 'Cyber Terrorism'! Talk User:Fissionfox 10:42, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Russian goverment accused of cyber terrorism 

message: If there is no monument to the Waffen SS in Estonia, what's this?
Estonia Restores Monument to SS Legionnaires, Russia Angered
15.10.2005
MosNews
The Russian government has released a statement saying Estonia has mocked the memory of victims of fascism by restoring a monument to an SS legion, RIA Novosti reported.
The monument to Estonians who fought on the side of Germany during World War II was initially put up in 2002, but taken down after an international outcry. In 2004 Estonia first restored it but it did not survive criticism again.
On Saturday it was installed near a private Museum of Fight for Estonia’s Freedom in a village of Lagedi outside the capital, Tallinn, in presence of at least 500 people .
“It is especially outrageous that this is happening in the year that marks 60 years since the end of World War II,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “A new attempt to glorify the Estonian SS legion shows that official Tallinn continues to have a supportive attitude toward them. We believe that such an approach has no justification.” (source: http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/10/15/estoniamonument.shtml  access date: today)
A bigger photo here: http://media.militaryphotos.net/photos/Daily-Pics-August/aaz
Grant | Talk 07:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See Monument of Lihula, that is the monument in question. There are no nazi symbols (or any symbols, for the matter of fact) and the uniform is not SS-uniform. The dedication is "To Estonian men who fought in 1940-1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence.". No nazis are mentioned or glorified. DLX 08:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Th monument in question was removed by government in reply to international outcry within weeks, despite of expert being brought in by police determining no symbols of SS were displayed apart from the helmet of soldier depicted being of generic german WW2 make. Ethnonazi 10:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, the only Estonian unit I have come across in the Wehrmacht is the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian). To which non-Waffen SS Axis units did Estonian soldiers belong? Grant | Talk 11:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: http://www.germanwarmachine.com/hitlersforeignlegions/thebalticstates.htm is a well-researched writeup on military aspects. Only units designated as 'estonian' are described in detail, though. Ethnonazi 12:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

text: or http://www.wehrmacht.pri.ee/ for a writeup by a local history buff, only partially translated, though. Ethnonazi 12:55, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I spoke to several Estonian friends and they say their families preferred the German occupation to the Russian one. The Germans raped and looted less. On a related note, I read recently about Berlin during the West and East seperation in the Cold War, in which the citizens of the Democratic side stated "If you are wondering if we'd rather have hardship or Russians, we'd rather have Hardship". (The hardship was starvation, since the Russians surrounded the city and refused to let food convoys in, which led to air drops.) Talk User:Fissionfox 10:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: No SS monument? Really?