Misplaced Pages

#33966

56-615: The Bronze Soldier ( Estonian : Pronkssõdur , Russian : Бронзовый солдат , Bronzovyj soldat ) is the informal name of a controversial Soviet World War II war memorial in Tallinn , Estonia , built at the site of several war graves , which were relocated to the nearby Tallinn Military Cemetery in 2007. It was originally named "Monument to the Liberators of Tallinn" ( Estonian : Tallinna vabastajate monument , Russian : Монумент освободителям Таллина , Monument osvoboditeljam Tallina ),

112-554: A Finnic language rather than a variety of Estonian. Modern standard Estonian evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries based on the dialects of northern Estonia. During the Medieval and Early Modern periods, Estonian accepted many loanwords from Germanic languages , mainly from Middle Low German (Middle Saxon) and, after the 16th-century Protestant Reformation , from the Standard German language. Estonia's oldest written records of

168-654: A huge and coordinated cyber-attack on Estonian institutions, including its Parliament, banks, and newspaper agencies. Although the Estonian government blamed Kremlin, no direct evidence could be produced. On 12 April 2022, the Bronze Soldier entered the news again, when protesters of the Russian attack on Ukraine ground one of the medals off its chest. This came in the context of a governmental ban on symbols of Russian militarism and public meetings which incite violence, leading up to

224-556: A soldier in a World War II-era Red Army military uniform . It was originally located in a small park (during the Soviet years called the Liberators' Square) on Tõnismägi in central Tallinn, above a small burial site of Soviet soldiers' remains, reburied in April 1945. In April 2007, the Estonian government relocated the Bronze Soldier and, after their exhumation and identification, the remains of

280-682: A Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian , and Maltese , Estonian is one of the four official languages of the European Union that are not Indo-European languages . In terms of linguistic morphology , Estonian is a predominantly agglutinative language . The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more fusional , especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection. The transitional form from an agglutinating to

336-451: A broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek , Latin and French . Consider roim 'crime' versus English crime or taunima 'to condemn, disapprove' versus Finnish tuomita 'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item. Article 1 of

392-544: A concept of a נר תמיד or everlasting flame. This is commonly found hanging in front of the Aron Kodesh (holy ark) in orthodox Synagogues. It is meant as a remembrance of the Temple. Occasionally this flame is a fire which is kept lit 24/7. Other times it is merely electric and stays on all the time. In traditional Christian denominations, such as Catholicism and Lutheranism , a chancel lamp continuously burns as an indication of

448-577: A dedicated priest and represented the concept of "divine sparks" or Amesha Spenta , as understood in Zoroastrianism . Period sources indicate that three "great fires" existed in the Achaemenid era of Persian history, which are collectively considered the earliest reference to the practice of creating ever-burning community fires. The eternal flame was a component of the Jewish religious rituals performed in

504-661: A fusional language is a common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system. Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order is subject–verb–object . The speakers of the two major historical languages spoken in Estonia, North and South Estonian , are thought by some linguists to have arrived in Estonia in at least two different migration waves over two millennia ago, both groups having spoken considerably different vernacular; South Estonian might be

560-403: A piped supply of propane or natural gas. Human-created eternal flames most often commemorate a person or event of national significance, serve as a symbol of an enduring nature such as a religious belief , or a reminder of commitment to a common goal, such as diplomacy . The eternal fire is a long-standing tradition in many cultures and religions. In ancient Iran the atar was tended by

616-497: A preceding wooden memorial – a one-metre-high, wooden pyramid, about 20 cm in diameter, of a plain blue color crowned by a red star – that had been blown up on the night of 8 May 1946 by two Estonian teenagers. The two girls, 14-year-old Aili Jürgenson and 15-year-old Ageeda Paavel destroyed it, in their own words, to avenge the Soviet destruction of war memorials to the Estonian War of Independence . Both were later arrested by

SECTION 10

#1732859293034

672-418: Is a resemblance. The sculptor Enn Roos denied this and instead suggested that he used "a young worker who lived nearby", and there have been claims the worker he is referring to was a carpenter named Albert Johannes Adamson. On the other hand, Palusalu's daughter, Helle Palusalu, has claimed that her father served as a model for the statue. Roos's denial could have been motivated by Palusalu's having defected from

728-734: Is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts. Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language . The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists. In Estonian, nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender , but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative , genitive , partitive , illative , inessive , elative , allative , adessive , ablative , translative , terminative , essive , abessive , and comitative , with

784-637: Is pronounced [æ], as in English mat . The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes /ɤ/ , unrounded /o/ , or a close-mid back unrounded vowel . It is almost identical to the Bulgarian ъ /ɤ̞/ and the Vietnamese ơ , and is also used to transcribe the Russian ы . Additionally C , Q , W , X , and Y are used in writing foreign proper names . They do not occur in Estonian words , and are not officially part of

840-488: Is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž , they are replaced by sh and zh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative , as in Pasha ( pas-ha ); this also applies to some foreign names. Modern Estonian orthography is based on the "Newer orthography" created by Eduard Ahrens in

896-748: The idamurre or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of Lake Peipus . One of the pronunciation features of the Saaremaa dialect is the lack of the 'õ' vowel. A five-metre monument erected in 2020, marking the "border" between the vowels 'õ' and 'ö', humorously makes reference to this fact. South Estonian consists of the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether. Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession. Estonian employs

952-648: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian and English: Eternal flame An eternal flame is a flame, lamp or torch that burns for an indefinite time. Most eternal flames are ignited and tended intentionally, but some are natural phenomena caused by natural gas leaks, peat fires and coal seam fires , all of which can be initially ignited by lightning, piezoelectricity or human activity, some of which have burned for hundreds or thousands of years. In ancient times, eternal flames were fueled by wood or olive oil ; modern examples usually use

1008-700: The Germanic languages have very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family, one can identify many similar words in Estonian and English, for example. This is primarily because Estonian has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon ( Middle Low German ) during the period of German rule , and High German (including standard German ). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent. Prior to

1064-619: The Great Patriotic War , but also their claim to rights in Estonia. Most Estonians considered the Bronze Soldier a symbol of Soviet occupation and repression following World War II. In 2006, the conservative Pro Patria Union petitioned the Tallinn City Council to demolish the monument, which saw the Estonian president in January 2007 vetoing a bill which would have allowed for its destruction and instead ordering its removal from

1120-572: The Latin script as the basis for its alphabet . The script adds the letters ä , ö , ü , and õ , plus the later additions š and ž . The letters c , q , w , x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f , z , š , and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and Ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish, Ä

1176-505: The March 2007 elections . The government claimed that the location of the memorial at a busy intersection in Tallinn was not a proper resting place, which led to critics to accuse the government of pandering to Estonian nationalist groups . Disagreement over the appropriateness of the action led to mass protests and riots (accompanied by looting ) lasting two nights, the worst Estonia has seen. In

SECTION 20

#1732859293034

1232-641: The NKVD and sent to the Gulag . The Bronze Soldier monument, with its figure of a soldier against a stone background, was created in 1947 by Enn Roos and supervising architect Arnold Alas . It was unveiled on 22 September 1947, on the third anniversary of the Soviet Red Army re-entering Tallinn in 1944. Originally intended as an official war memorial to Soviet soldiers who died fighting in World War II, an eternal flame

1288-524: The Proto-Finnic language , elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf. maja – majja and the Ostrobothnia dialect of Finnish maja – majahan . The verbal system has no distinct future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal"). Although Estonian and

1344-669: The Tabernacle and later in the Temple in Jerusalem , where a commandment required a fire to burn continuously upon the Outer Altar . Modern Judaism continues a similar tradition by having a sanctuary lamp , the ner tamid , always lit above the ark in the synagogue. After World War II , such flames gained further meaning, as a reminder of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust . Judaism has

1400-720: The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist . The Cherokee Nation maintained a fire at the seat of government until ousted by the Indian Removal Act in 1830. At that time, embers from the last great council fire were carried west to the nation's new home in the Oklahoma Territory . The flame, maintained in Oklahoma, was carried back to the last seat of the Cherokee government at Red Clay State Park in south-eastern Tennessee , to

1456-485: The 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation ex nihilo ( Urschöpfung ); i.e. they created new words out of nothing. The most well-known reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creations ex nihilo (cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921) lists approximately 4000 words. About 40 of

1512-926: The 1930s. There are 9 vowels and 36 diphthongs , 28 of which are native to Estonian. All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Estonian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be close-mid back , close back , or close-mid central . Word-initial b, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with p, t, k instead of etymological b, d, g : pank 'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally, b, d, g represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants), p, t, k represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and pp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example: kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' — kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [ gen sg ] — kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ ptv sg ]'. Before and after b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž ,

1568-512: The 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems by Kristjan Jaak Peterson were published. Peterson, who was the first student to acknowledge his Estonian origin at the then German-language University of Dorpat , is commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature and considered

1624-490: The 200 words created by Johannes Aavik allegedly ex nihilo are in common use today. Examples are * ese 'object', * kolp 'skull', * liibuma 'to cling', * naasma 'to return, come back', * nõme 'stupid, dull'. Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from Russian , German , French , Finnish , English and Swedish . Aavik had

1680-588: The Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century. When the Republic of Estonia was established in 1918, Estonian became the official language of the newly independent country. Immediately after World War II , in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians and spoke

1736-474: The Finnic languages date from the 13th century. The "Originates Livoniae" in the Livonian Chronicle of Henry contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences. The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. In 1525 the first book published in Estonian was printed. The book was a Lutheran manuscript, which never reached

Bronze Soldier of Tallinn - Misplaced Pages Continue

1792-690: The Soviet military and thus having fallen into disfavour with the Communist Party. On 25 September 1944, the remains of two Soviet soldiers were buried in the centre of the Tõnismägi hill, with additional remains of Soviet soldiers reburied there in April 1945. After the burial of the Red Army soldiers on Tõnismägi, the square was named Liberators' Square on 12 June 1945 with the Bronze Soldier Monument added two years later. The exact number and names of

1848-639: The Soviet soldiers, to the Defence Forces Cemetery of Tallinn. Not all remains were reburied there, as relatives were given a chance to claim them, and several bodies were reburied in various locations in the former Soviet Union according to the wishes of the relatives. Political differences over the interpretation of the events of the war symbolised by the monument had already led to a controversy between Estonia's community of polyethnic Russophone post-World War II immigrants and Estonians , as well as between Russia and Estonia. The disputes surrounding

1904-410: The alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters: Although the Estonian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme , there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t

1960-570: The anniversary of May 9. 59°25′17.99″N 24°45′55.67″E  /  59.4216639°N 24.7654639°E  / 59.4216639; 24.7654639 Estonian language Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family . Other Finnic languages include Finnish and some minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as

2016-413: The case and number of the adjective always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for kollane maja ("a yellow house") is kollasesse majja ("into a yellow house"), but the terminative is kollase majani ("as far as a yellow house"). With respect to

2072-483: The city centre. In February 2007, Estonian nationalists unsuccessfully attempted to place on the statue a wreath made of barbed wire decorated with a plaque saying "Murderers of the Estonian People". Amid political controversy, in April 2007 the newly elected Ansip government started final preparations for the reburial of the remains and relocation of the statue, according to the political mandate received during

2128-615: The city retreated rather than seeking to defend it. Instead, the National Committee of the Republic of Estonia attempted to re-establish Estonian independence by taking power in Tallinn, and by proclaiming Provisional Government of Estonia and declaring re-establishment of the country's independence on 18 September 1944. By the time the Red Army entered Tallinn, they were entering an already-empty city with an independent government, hence occupying Tallinn. The Bronze Soldier monument replaced

2184-492: The early morning hours of 27 April 2007, after the first night's rioting, the government decided, at an emergency meeting, to dismantle the monument immediately, referring to security concerns. By the following afternoon the stone structure had been dismantled as well. As of the afternoon of 30 April, the statue without the stone structure had been placed at the Defence Forces Cemetery of Tallinn . An opening ceremony for

2240-422: The end of the 20th century has brought the proportion of native Estonian-speakers in Estonia now back above 70%. Large parts of the first- and second-generation immigrants in Estonia have now adopted Estonian (over 50% as of the 2022 census). The Estonian dialects are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities of Tallinn in the north and Tartu in

2296-584: The founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated in Estonia as Mother Tongue Day. A fragment from Peterson's poem "Kuu" expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language: In English: In the period from 1525 to 1917, 14,503 titles were published in Estonian; by comparison, between 1918 and 1940, 23,868 titles were published. In modern times A. H. Tammsaare , Jaan Kross , and Andrus Kivirähk are Estonia 's best-known and most translated writers. Estonians lead

Bronze Soldier of Tallinn - Misplaced Pages Continue

2352-515: The grounds in April 1945: According to the Estonian Ministry of Defence, the remains of 12 persons had been exhumed by 2 May 2007 and would be reburied by the end of June 2007 at the same cemetery where the statue had been relocated. Furthermore, the archaeologists performing the digs confirmed that no more burials have taken place on the grounds of the monument. The Russian embassy and other former USSR states were asked to provide DNA samples for

2408-537: The identification of the buried bodies. Those persons who can be identified were to be turned over to their relatives for reburial. The initial DNA analysis revealed 11 male and 1 female among those 12 found at the site. DNA profiles of all 12 were turned over to the embassy of the Russian Federation in Tallinn. According to historian Alexander Daniel, the Bronze Soldier has symbolic value to Estonia's Russians , symbolising not only Soviet victory over Germany in

2464-403: The language. When Estonia was invaded and reoccupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of Estonian effectively changed to one of the two official languages (Russian being the other one). Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement. In the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism for Estonians was intensified. Although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in local schools

2520-547: The persons buried in the burial grounds under the monument had not been established with certainty before the excavations of 2007, although the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had ordered a comprehensive historical investigation in 2006. According to official records of the Military Commissariat of the Baltic Military District, however, the following 13 soldiers who fell during World War II were reburied in

2576-755: The reader and was destroyed immediately after publication. The first extant Estonian book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S.   Wanradt and J.   Koell dating to 1535, during the Protestant Reformation period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into the variety of South Estonian called Võro in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on Northern Estonian by Anton thor Helle . Writings in Estonian became more significant in

2632-407: The relocated statue was held on 8 May, VE Day . (Significantly, Red Army veterans celebrate Victory Day a day later, on 9 May.) During June 2007 the stone structure was rebuilt. Relatives have made claims to bodies of four of the war dead. Unclaimed remains were reburied at the military cemetery, next to the relocated monument, on 3 July 2007. On 27 April 2007, alongside the riots, there was also

2688-551: The relocation peaked with two nights of riots in Tallinn (known as the Bronze Night ), besieging of the Estonian embassy in Moscow for a week, and cyberattacks on Estonian organizations . The events caught international attention and led to a multitude of political reactions. The monument was originally erected by Soviet authorities in Estonia to the liberators of Tallinn who entered the city on 22 September 1944. German Army units in

2744-492: The second half of the 19th   century based on Finnish orthography. The "Older orthography" it replaced was created in the 17th   century by Bengt Gottfried Forselius and Johann Hornung based on standard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had, by and large, used an ad hoc orthography based on Latin and Middle Low German orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into

2800-419: The sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as p, t, k , with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology. Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated. ŋ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/. While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees of vowel harmony , central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language

2856-405: The south, in addition to a distinct kirderanniku dialect, Northeastern coastal Estonian . The northern group consists of the keskmurre or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the läänemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding to Lääne County and Pärnu County , the saarte murre (islands' dialect) of Saaremaa , Hiiumaa , Muhu and Kihnu , and

SECTION 50

#1732859293034

2912-514: The wave of new loanwords from English in the 20th and 21st centuries, historically, Swedish and Russian were also sources of borrowings but to a much lesser extent. In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'. Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia from

2968-461: The world in book ownership, owning on average 218 books per house, and 35% of Estonians owning 350 books or more (as of 2018). Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment , during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). Although Baltic Germans at large regarded the future of Estonians as being a fusion with themselves,

3024-410: Was added in front of the monument in 1964. The Soviet liberation theme was changed when Estonia re-established independence in 1991, now stating "For those fallen in World War II"; at the same time, the flame was extinguished. The prototype for the face and figure of the statue is not known. It has been suggested to have been the Estonian 1936 Olympic gold medal wrestler Kristjan Palusalu , as there

3080-522: Was formally compulsory, in practice, the teaching and learning of Estonian by Russian-speakers was often considered unnecessary by the Soviet authorities. In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia's independence , Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia. Since 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union, Estonian is also one of the (now 24) official languages of the EU . The return of former Soviet immigrants to their countries of origin at

3136-600: Was later titled to its current official name "Monument to the Fallen in the Second World War ", and is sometimes called Alyosha , or Tõnismäe monument after its old location. The memorial was unveiled on 22 September 1947, three years after the Red Army reached Tallinn on 22 September 1944 during World War II. The monument consists of a stonewall structure made of dolomite and a two-metre (6.5 ft) bronze statue of

#33966