Liminality and Contested Europeanness: Conflicting Memory Politics in the Baltic Space

This chapter unfolds the competitive claims for Europeanness in the context of the acrimonious diplomatic confrontation between Russia and Estonia over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial (the so-called "Bronze Soldier") in Tallinn in the spring of 2007. I argue the "Bronze Soldier"-controversy to be, on the one hand, emblematic of the post-communist Baltic states' re-appropriation of their suppressed pasts, and their consequent attempts to seek Western support for influencing Russia to acknowledge the troubled legacy of communism in the region. Russia's painful reaction to Estonia's decision to relocate the war memorial commemorating the country's "liberation" by the Soviet Union is, on the other hand, indicative of its difficulties in coming to terms with the mnemopolitical emancipation of its former dependents as well as of its agonizing identity-building struggles in the post-Soviet era more generally.