Getting to Maarjamäe
Tallinn’s Maarjamäe district really packs a wallop: historically, architecturally and emotionally. You can learn more about the events of the past one hundred years in Estonia here than anywhere else in the capital city.
To get to Maarjamäe, simply hop on a 1, 5, 8 or 34A Bus from underneath the Viru Keskus shopping center. (Note that 34A will take you all the way out out to Kloostrimetsa, making it easy to combine with a trip to Maarjamäe.)
Maarjamäe Loss (Maarjamäe Palace)
In the 19th Century, Maarjamäe acted as a popular summer beach resort for the occupying Russian aristocracy. In 1874, a Russian count built Maarjamäe Loss (Maarjamäe Palace) as an elegant spot to host the St. Petersburg elite when visiting Tallinn. The palace and surrounding stable grounds later became a swanky hotel and then an aviation school until the Soviet occupation transformed it into public housing.
The most impressive room in the palace is the Summer Hall where the count originally held all his banquets. In 1987, Evald Okas painted this mural “The Friendship of Nations” in the Summer Hall at the behest of the government of the Estonian SSR. It was one of the few Soviet murals in Tallinn not to be destroyed or placed in storage after Estonia’s independence in 1991.
Eesti Ajaloomuuseum (Estonian History Museum)
Since independence, Maarjamäe Loss has been fully restored and taken over by a branch of the Eesti Ajaloomuuseum. A new permanent exhibit, “My Free Country,” opened in February 2018 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Estonia’s first declaration of independence in 1918. The museum is excellent, guiding you through the fall of the Russian Empire and the events that led up to Estonia’s independence, the first Soviet occupation in 1940 (the Red Year), the Nazi Occupation from 1941-44, the second Soviet occupation until 1991 and finally modern Estonia in the 21st Century.
Both the content and the layout of the exhibition is top-notch; I easily spent several hours here and the staff was eager to engage with my questions. Much of the material about the occupations is heavy, but the ultimate triumph of the Estonian people to regain their independence through the Singing Revolution is as happy of an ending as one could hope for given the circumstances.
Maarjamäe War Memorial
Behold, one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken.
This obelisk, built by the Soviets in 1960 to commemorate the Red Army casualties in 1918 during Estonia’s War of Independence (you can imagine how well this monument went over with the people of Tallinn!), is in severe danger of collapse. A few stones have already fallen- one hitting a tourist and causing the memorial to be fenced off- but I have dreams of making a coffee table book of decaying Soviet monuments called “No Passage: Danger of Collapsing.”
During the Nazi occupation, Maarjamäe was used as a cemetery for the German soldiers killed on the Eastern Front. After the Soviets “liberated” Estonia from the Nazi threat, they wanted to memorialize their victory by turning the grassy park into a symbol of Soviet military might. Atop the 2,300 German graves, the Soviets built a series of walkways and monuments to celebrate the Red Army’s fallen soldiers. After independence, citizens of Tallinn were divided about what to do with their occupiers’ cemetery and statues.
A compromise was met: leave the Soviet and Nazi reminders of the past, which must never be forgotten, but turn the park into a space to remember the Estonian victims of the two occupations. Tens of thousands of Estonians were killed between 1940-1991 and now all of their names are immortalized at the Eesti Kommunismiohvrite Memoriaal (Memorial to Estonia’s Victims of Communism).
The memorial, barely opened when I visited in early autumn 2018, chronicles the struggles of the Estonian people: the mass deportations to Siberia, the KGB interrogations, the Soviet prisons and of course the executions for the slightest infractions or whiffs of suspicion that you were not towing the party line. As the Soviet monuments crumble in the background and Nazi bodies decompose below, the simple and elegant memorial in Maarjamäe rises up to pay tribute to the real victims in all of this.
