Читаем The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia полностью

within weeks of the Munich speech, it became clear what the new disposition meant. The Estonian government unwittingly provided the occasion. On April 30, 2007, it moved a monument known as the Bronze Soldier from central Tallinn to the city's military cemetery. The Bronze Soldier was erected by Soviet authorities after the Second World War—one of dozens of such monuments placed in the capitals of Eastern Europe to commemorate the Soviet victories there. In Estonia's reading of history, however, what the Soviets considered liberation was actually occupation. Estonia based its post-Soviet laws and policies on the premise that the country had been illegally occupied between the years of 1940 and 1991—first by the USSR in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, then by Nazi Germany, and then by the USSR again. Among other things, this meant that only people who had been Estonian citizens before 1940 and their descendants automatically became citizens of independent Estonia; all others—presumed occupiers and their descendants—would have to pass Estonian language and history exams to become citizens. Even though the noncitizens were treated just like citizens for the purposes of public benefits and even had the right to vote in local elections, most of the country's sizable Russian-speaking minority—about a quarter of the population—considered the citizenship law discriminatory. The disagreement was fundamental: the Russian speakers did not and would not see themselves as occupiers, so to them the difference in treatment appeared based on ethnicity. Russia objected to the citizenship laws, and after Putin's 2005 "geopolitical catastrophe" speech, in which he called out to "our countrymen abroad," the criticism ramped up. The Bronze Soldier in Tallinn became, increasingly, a gathering spot for radical groups—both those who wanted the monument demolished (and frequently defaced it), and those who called for the restoration of the Soviet Union. The government decided to move the Soldier out of the city center.

Riots broke out in Tallinn. In Moscow, Nashi, the Young Guard, and at least two other pro-Kremlin youth groups began a siege of the Estonian embassy, demanding that the ambassador go home. The police did not intervene, and the consulate was forced to cease operations. After a week, the ambassador flew to Tallinn for what was, officially, a vacation. The youth groups proclaimed victory and lifted the siege.41

"The siege of the Estonian Embassy in Moscow . . . risks becoming a classic example of a violation of diplomatic law that will later be found in textbooks alongside descriptions of other unlawful incidents involving embassies, including ones as serious as the Tehran hostage crisis in 1979-1981," an Estonian defense analyst wrote later that year.42

In addition to the riots and the embassy siege, a novel sort of attack took place: a cyber one. A flood of electronic requests designed to paralyze servers—a DDoS attack—shut down all Estonian government ministries, two banks, and several political parties, blocked all credit card transactions, and impaired the functioning of parliament. NATO and European Commission investigators could not definitively trace the attacks to Russia,43

but two years later Nashi claimed credit for the act of cyberwarfare, which the movement said had been carried out by a mass of volunteers armed with computers.44 The attacks had hit Estonia's point of particular pride— it was arguably the most computerized society in the world—and transformed it into a vulnerability, showing that the small nation, no matter how modern it had become and how well integrated into Western international organizations, could still be trampled by the large one, with its myriad soldiers.

Russia's next war also involved a cyberattack, but at its core it was conventional and almost old-fashioned. On August 8, 2008, Russia invaded Georgia.

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