An interview with Aili Jõgi

We were discussing the two girls that destroyed the first monument to Red Army soldiers in Tallinn - a wooden one - before the occupation authorities decided bronze would be more fitting, and less easy to destroy. Well if you ever wondered what happened to the two girls that blew up the first Soviet memorial in downtown Tallinn 60 years ago, now's your chance.

Aili Jõgi was less than 15 years old when she, and her neighber Ageeda got rid of the first memorial there. She spent her 15th birthday in an NKVD prison. She was allowed to leave Siberia in 1970.

A key moment in her interview:

"Ja mis tehti meie presidendiga? Ma mõtlen siis, kui Lennart Meri kirst toodi Kaarli kirikust välja ja kirstuga auto läks sellesama punasõduri eest läbi. Kas nad tõesti ei saanud teiselt poolt minna?! Kas matuse korraldajail üldse aru peas ei ole?!"

"And what did they do with our president? I think that, when Lennart Meri's coffin came out of Kaarki Kirik, the car coffin went right in front of and past the Bronze Soldier. Couldn't they really have gone the other way? Didn't the organizers have any common sense?"

Jõgi says she took up the discussion of the memorial with Tallinn mayor Jüri Ratas, but he decided, after a lot of thought, that it didn't bother him.

Uskumatult loll avaldus... Poisslinnapead ei häiri, kui tema linnas on pisuke maalapp, kus Eesti riigi lipp ei tohi lehvida, aga punalipp tohib.

"This was an incredibly stupid statement...it doesn't disturb the boy mayor [she refers to him as poisslinnapea throughout the piece, Ratas is 28 years old.] that his city used to be a little chunk of land where it was prohibited to wave the Estonian Republic's flag, but it was permitted to wave the Red flag."