Russia is threatening to break off diplomatic relations with Estonia in the escalating row over the "blasphemous" removal of the Red Army memorial in the centre of Tallinn.

The statue of the Bronze Soldier was taken down and shifted to a secret location as an emergency measure at 3am (0100 BST) this morning, after it became the focus of rioting last night in which one person died, 12 police officers and 44 protesters were injured, and more than 300 were arrested.

Estonian police were forced to fire flash grenades and wield rubber batons to hold back the more than 1,000 pro-Russian demonstrators, many of them drunken youths hurling rocks and bottles, as six hours of rioting and looting unfolded, in the worst scenes of unrest since Estonia won its independence from the collapsed Soviet Union in 1991.

To show its extreme displeasure that the statue has been moved, the Federation Council - the upper house of the Russian parliament - today voted unanimously to recommend withdrawing the Russian ambassador from Tallinn.

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"The dismantling of the monument to the liberators from fascism on the eve of May 9 is another episode in the policy pursued by supporters of Nazism, which is disastrous for the Estonian people," said Mikhail Margonov, the head of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council.

Konstantin Kosachyov, his counterpart in the lower house of the Russian Parliament, said that taking the statue down was "barbaric".

He added: "We will of course demand from the executive the toughest possible reaction to what is happening in Estonia."

The Russian Foreign Ministry meanwhile described the removal of the statue as "blasphemous", and promised that Russia would re-examine its relations with Estonia.

"We must react without hysterics, but take serious steps that would show our true attitude to this inhuman deed," said Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.

The six ft (2m) statue of the Bronze Soldier inspires powerful and conflicting emotions. For Russia, and for the large Russian ethnic minority in Estonia, it is the symbol of liberation from Nazism and victory after the atrocities carried out by Nazi troops.

The belief that dead Red Army soldiers are buried beneath the monument increases its mystique, and any attempt to remove it is described as fascist.

For ethnic Estonians, however, the statue symbolises the horrors of nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation.

"In our minds, this soldier stands for deportations and murders, the destruction of our country, not liberation," said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the Estonian President. "It is a monument to mass murder."

The Estonian Government voted last year to move the monument to a less prominent spot than at the centre of a square in the heart of Tallinn, the Estonian capital. The vote was prompted by scuffles around the memorial between pro-Russian and ethnic Estonian groups.

A white pavilion was set up around the statue yesterday, as a prelude to moving the statue and excavating its foundations, so that the remains of Red Army soldiers buried there could be disinterred and moved. They and the statue were to be relocated to the Defence Forces cemetery outside Tallinn.

Throughout the day, pro-Russian demonstrators kept up a largely peaceful protest around the statue, but as night fell the demonstration tipped over into violence.

Andrus Ansip, the Estonian Prime Minister, said that the riots had forced the Government's hand.

"We wanted to move the statue in an open and decent way, but unfortunately failed to do so because of vandalism and violence," said Mr Ansip.

A government spokesman added that the riots showed that the protesters were just troublemakers who "have nothing to do with respecting and protecting the memories of those who fell during World War II".

As shopkeepers in central Tallinn began clearing away the broken glass and reckoning the damage, police said that the victim of last night's riot was a 20-year-old youth, named only as Dimitri. He was stabbed to death.

Estonian state prosecutors say that they have "no reason to link his death to police activity".

Relations between the two countries have been tense since independence in 1991. Moscow has repeatedly accused Estonia of violating the rights of its Russian ethnic minority, which represents around one third of the country's 1.3 million population.

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