Tallinn Trip – Soviet Statue Graveyard (Viktor Kingissepp Statue)

The next in my series of posts about the Soviet Statue Graveyard, this one is in honour of Viktor Kingissepp (1888-1922). This rather pivotal figure was born on the island of Saaremaa and he embarked on a path of socialist activism during his law studies at the University of Tartu. He joined the Bolsheviks and became a prominent leader of the Estonian Communist Party although then Estonia became independent and banned these communists who risked undermining the new nation. He was arrested by the authorities on 3 May 1922 after taking part in a rally and he was executed that night without a trial. After the Second World War, the Soviets named towns after him and plenty of roads were called Viktor Kingissepa tänav in his honour (over thirty of them across Estonia, which feels a little excessive).

This bronze statue was designed by Enn Roos installed by Alar Kotli in 1951 after years of debate about where it should go. It was given a prominent position at Harjumägi in Tallinn and they wanted the life-size statue to make him look like an orator. His legacy is a complex one, but the statue was pulled down in 1991 and now lives here rent free. As for all those roads named after him, they all seemed to have been changed to more appropriate Estonian names.