Due to poor record keeping on the part of the former occupiers and of many sites fading into obscurity with the passage of time, a clear picture of the exact number of memorials, statues, grave sites and related installations was lacking – until now.

The war museum has compiled a public database of the discovered sites, which at present total 366, museum director Hellar Lill said.

This database is being updated, meaning that figure could rise.

Local governments nationwide began approaching the Ministry of Defense and later the War Museum to appeal for the removal of war monuments located on their territories.

These were typically also designated war graves, making their removal a more delicate matter.

At a press conference held Friday at the Ministry of Defense, Lill said: "That same year [as the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began] a commission was formed under the Government Office to map memorials of the Soviet occupation authorities, and the commission identified 321 monuments. Today, we can say that the museum has additionally found 45 more war graves or monuments."

The museum has consolidated information gathered about Soviet monuments and war graves into a single database, which is publicly accessible on the museum's website and contains information specific to the site.

"These are monuments that mark, in the eyes of the Soviet authorities, the site of a significant individual's fall or a battle location, in addition to the war graves. In the database, each war grave or monument includes information on whether it has been removed or not, what it originally looked like — since they were often altered by Soviet authorities — when someone was buried there, as burials usually took place not during the war but later, and what was found during excavations, along with the fate of the monument. Photos are also included."

Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Soviet war monuments and graves became a topical issue, Lill noted.

The museum has conducted reburials at 98 war graves over the years and discovered the remains of 3,700 individuals, he added.

Estonia has rejected Russia's accusations of desecrating war graves, he added, noting that some "graves" were no such thing.

"If we had believed the [Soviet] military commissariat's data, the number should have been dozens of times higher. Seventeen graves turned out to be empty, even though they were claimed to be war graves," noted the war museum director, adding that the excavation of war graves will continue this year as well.
The museum director stated that the database is continuously being updated, as the work is not yet complete, and historical information is being sought from various sources to add to it.

For this reason, Lill has appealed to any members of the public who may recall anything about the monuments or have information on them – often local lore is all the authorities have to go on when it comes to smaller sites – to report it to this email: monument@esm.ee.

One high-profile site is at Tehumardi, on the Sõrve peninsula, the southern tip of Saaremaa. The site of vicious hand-to-hand combat in October 1944 when two German battalions retreating from the Soviet takeover of the island encountered Soviet forces. The "broken sword" monument, unveiled in 1967, remains, but Soviet wording on the edifice has been covered by firmly screwed-in plates, and a patch of freshly planted grass is all that is left on the site of the associated graves – which were removed in a dignified manner and re-interred; in the event only a smaller number of sets of human remains were found, far less than the number suggested by the number of headstones.

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