The intensity of emotions over the fate of the statue of a Red Army soldier is rooted in contested visions of the past.

Most Estonians view the soldier as an occupier, a humiliating reminder of the time when their country was forcibly absorbed into the Soviet Union as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Josef Stalin's infamous deal with Hitler in 1939. Fifteen years after Estonia regained its independence, they see no reason to retain a monument to half a century of repression in a central square of the capital Tallinn.

Moscow and many in Estonia's sizeable Russian-speaking minority regard the statue as a liberator. They focus on what they see as the Soviet liberation of Estonia from Nazi occupation in 1944 on the Red Army's road to Berlin.

Estonia views this history quite differently. The government website states: "The recapture of Tallinn by Soviet forces was far from being a "liberation" for the Estonian people. It merely marked a change in foreign regimes and the beginning of a nightmarishly repressive occupation that would last for nearly 50 more years."

The Soviet Union lost 26 million lives in the struggle to defeat Nazi Germany. Conscious of that price paid in blood, Russia refuses to regard the Red Army as an occupation force, even though it has acknowledged the secret deal with Hitler that led the Soviets to occupy the Baltic states in 1940.

It has denounced the removal of the monument as "blasphemy", calling it an insult to the war dead and to the millions of veterans who fought alongside them to rid Europe of fascism.

Estonia's 300,000 Russian-speakers, who account for almost a quarter of its 1.3 million people, say that the initiative also casts them as enemies in their own country.

Estonia insists that removal of the statue is a purely internal issue and has nothing to do with Russia.

Officially, the government argues that it is simply moving the remains of Red Army soldiers buried in the busy square to a cemetery as an act of respect, and that the statue, as a memorial, is being moved too.

But it acknowledges that the monument has also become a focus of conflict between nationalists and pro-Russian groups. Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said recently: "Memorials should unite people. But this specific monument in this specific place divides society and I am convinced it should not be there."

The timing of the operation is also heavy with symbolism. The government was determined to remove the statue before May 9, the day when the Soviet Union and now Russia traditionally celebrates victory over the Nazis.

This year, May 9 would also have marked 60 years since the statue was erected in Tallinn in 1947.

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