Estonia Complex

The Moscow Times has an interesting article about President Putin's "Estonia Complex". It does seem like Putin has a very short fuse on all matters Estonian, and perhaps this is why:

Putin seems to have taken personally Estonia's decision to move the memorial to fallen Red Army soldiers. This may be because he sees it not only as an affront to his country but as an affront to the memory of his father. As Putin once told it, his father was betrayed by Estonians during the war.

Before he was first elected in 2000, Putin gave a series of interviews to three Russian journalists for a book called "First Person." In the first chapter, he talks about his father. During the war, he was in an NKVD sabotage battalion operating behind German lines and was sent as part of a group of 28 people to carry out an operation in Estonian territory. They succeeded in blowing up a supply train and were able to hide in the woods, but eventually they ran out of food and turned to the local population. Estonians brought them food but then gave them up to the Germans. Only four people in the group survived, including Putin's father, who hid in a bog, breathing through a reed, to escape detection by Nazi soldiers who were searching for them with dogs.

The article goes on to tell of some instances of Putin's Estonian Complex, and also talks about his warped perceptions of twentyth century Baltic history -- no doubt instilled by his education as a Soviet youth, and high consumption of beer (read the story!).