The slow Estonians

Lithuanians like to tease the Estonians for their slow nature. Vigantas Danilavicius applies this to their conduct in the bronze statue dispute. "The Soviet monuments should have been removed straight after the putsch in the Soviet Union, when the Russians themselves were pulling their Dzerzhinsky statues from their pedestals, but not now, when Russia is erecting monuments to Lenin. ... The reaction of Russia to Estonia's move is nonetheless completely paranoid. The Estonians didn't raze the statue, as was often enough the case after the putsch; they just removed it to the place where it belongs: a cemetery. Perhaps in other cultures people prefer to mourn in public and on highly frequented squares, but this is certainly not the case in the Baltic states."

» full article (external link, Lithunian)
More from the press review on the subject » Religion, » History, » Weltanschauung, » Estonia