Curriculum Development Essay

1. What is K-12 curriculum? What is the rationale of K-12 curriculum? K- 12 is a designation for the sum of primary and secondary education. It is used in the United States, Canada, Philippines and Australia. It means kindergarten and the twelve years of elementary and secondary education. The kindergarten refers to the 5-year old unit that takes a standardized kinder curriculum. The elementary education refers to primary schooling that involves six or seven years of education and the secondary education refers to high school. The main purpose of K-12 Program is to provide sufficient time for mastery of concepts and skills, develop lifelong learners, and prepare graduates for tertiary education, middle-level skills development, employment, and entrepreneurship. The outcome goals of the K-12 Basic Education Program is to make Philippine education standards to be at balance with international standards, to create more emotionally mature graduates equipped with technical and vocational skills who are better prepared for work, middle level skills development and higher education, to make the educational inputs significantly addressed shortages or gaps, to make the improvement of basic education outcomes broadened and strengthened the stakeholder support, to improve internal efficiency, system of governance in the department and quality of teachers. 2. Essentialists’ point of view of curriculum development? The curriculum is a crucial component of any educational process. It addresses questions such as what students should learn and be able to do, why, how, and how well. In the past, the curriculum was designed merely from the perspective of its cultural transmission functions with its structure consequently reflecting discrete areas of knowledge. According to Kern it is possible to use a six-step approach to curriculum development for Medical Education: 1. Problem identification and general needs assessment The most important step is the first one, the general needs assessment (GNA). The goal of step 1 is to focus the curriculum, by defining the deficits in knowledge, attitude, or skills that currently exist in practitioners and the ideal approach to teaching and learning these objectives. When completed, the GNA makes a strong argument for the need for the curriculum and identifies potential educational research questions. 2. Needs assessment of targeted learners The general needs assessment is applied to targeted learners. What kind of doctor do we want to educate it depends mostly on social needs but it can reflect job opportunities, financial rewards and attitudes acquired during process of studding. Sometimes it is very difficult to make balance between these several needs. Needs can be obtained on different ways. It can be done through study of errors in practice. It is very difficult to design curriculum which will fully meet the needs of society and students 3. Goals and objectives Institution should define overall goals and aims for the curriculum. Specific measurable knowledge, skill/ performance, attitude, and process objectives should be stated for the curriculum. 4. Educational strategies It is necessary to make a plan how to maximize the impact of the curriculum, which content should be included, how content should be organized and with which educational methods, how elements of curriculum should communicate, what kind of educational environment and climate should be developed. Content which is included must provide to student critical thinking. It must be selected and organized on the way to initiate critical approach to facts and development skill of information retrieval. 5. Implementation A plan for implementation, including timelines and resources required, should be created. A plan for faculty development is made to assure consistent implementation. 6. Evaluation and feedback Evaluation of curriculum presents the final stage inside cyclic process of improvement and development of curriculum. 3. Why develop a curriculum? Ever since the term curriculum was added to educators’ vocabularies, it has seemed to convey many things to many people. To some, curriculum has denoted a specific course, while to others it has meant the entire educational environment. Whereas perceptions of the term may vary, it must be recognized that curriculum encompasses more than a simple definition. Curriculum is a key element in the educational process; its scope is extremely broad, and it touches virtually everyone who is involved with teaching and learning. In no other area has greater emphasis been placed upon the development of curricula that are relevant in terms of student and community needs and substantive outcomes. The career and technical and technical curriculum focuses not only on the educational process but also on the tangible results of that process. This is only one of many reasons why the career and technical and technical curriculum is distinctive in relation to other curricular areas and why career and technical education curriculum planners must have a sound understanding of the curriculum development process. 4. What to consider in curriculum development? In planning and developing a curriculum, you should consider the following: 1. Convening a Curriculum Development Committee Such a committee, consisting primarily of teachers who represent the various schools and grade levels in a district, administrators, members of the public and perhaps students, becomes the driving force for curriculum change and the long-term process of implementing the curriculum. It is critical that an effective, knowledgeable and respected chairperson lead such a committee and it includes knowledgeable and committed members who gradually become the district’s de facto â€Å"experts† during the development phases of the process as well as the implementation phases. 2. Identifying Key Issues and Trends in the Specific Content Area The first step in any curriculum development process involves research that reviews recent issues and trends of the discipline, both within the district and across the nation. This research allows a curriculum committee to identify key issues and trends that will support the needs assessment that should be conducted and the philosophy that should be developed. 3. Assessing Needs and Issues Curriculum development should be viewed as a process by which meeting student needs leads to improvement of student learning. Regardless of the theory or model followed, curriculum developers should gather as much information as possible. This information should include the desired outcomes or expectations of a high quality program, the role of assessment, the current status of student achievement and actual program content. The information should also consider the concerns and attitudes of teachers, administrators, parents and students. The data should include samples of assessments, lessons from teachers, assignments, scores on state standardized tests, textbooks currently used, student perception and feedback from parents.

Hospital Budget

Patton-Fuller Community Hospital Budget Over the years financial management has been a concept that is flourishing in the world of health care. â€Å"Until the 1960s, financial management in all industries was generally viewed as descriptive in nature, with its primary role being to secure the financing needed to meet a business’s operating objectives† (Gapenski, 2008, pg. 26). However, today, financial management holds a more significant role in the management of businesses overall. Now, the primary role of financial management is to plan for, acquire, and utilize funds (capital) to maximize the efficiency and value of the enterprise† (Gapenski, 2008, pg. 26). Similar too many happenings in health care, the specific goals of a business’s management financially is highly dependent on the nature of each particular business. Overall, financial management is a practice that will provide the theories, tools, and concepts needed in order for a company to make be tter decisions.The Patton-Fuller Community Hospital is one of these companies that take advantage of the financial management practices in order to make better decisions. Recently, a 2010 budget was developed using the 2009 projections, assumptions, and figures. The purpose of this paper is to analyze that budget and discuss which financial management practices will be most effective for this organization as well as which practices will be the least effective.The 2010 budget developed for the Patton-Fuller Community hospital projects that there will be a slight increase in total revenue, total expenses, and net income that will allow the organization to continue to make its turnaround in the following year. There are several financial management practices that will be helpful for the Patton-Fuller Community Hospital. The first financial management practice that will be effective for this hospital is evaluating and planning. This involves evaluating current operations of the organiza tion and evaluating their financial effectiveness in order to plan for the future.This can be anything from the organizations requirements in areas of managing cash to budgeting and reporting financial results. Continuing to produce projected budgets and assumptions for following years will ensure that Patton-Fuller Community Hospital is evaluating their financial situation often, and producing and expectant budgets for analyses. These projections will also allow them to plan for future increases or decreases in areas such as patient volume, utilities, supplies, salaries or ash on hand, so they do not come as a surprise. Giving the hospital an opportunity to plan for future events and accommodate for situations and operations that are either working for or against them, will help to keep the hospital from experiencing unexpected negative effects. The next financial management practice that will be most effective is long-term investment decisions. These decisions will focus on acquir ing new facilities and equipment, as well as the implementation of new strategic plans in the future of this organization.As far as equipment is concerned, the new budget specifies that new high-cost equipment has been installed within the last year. Air conditioning, telephone systems, all patient beds, and headwalls were replaced in 2009. It also states that depreciation rose sharply, however it is going to remain the same in 2010. Knowing that these improvements will not cost this organization money this year will allow them to plan ahead for capital investments, and possible expansion of the facility that will bring in more money for following years.Financial decision practices are going to be effective as well. â€Å"All organizations must raise funds to support operations. Such decisions involve the choice between internal and external funds, the use of debt versus equity capital, and the use of long-term versus short-term debt† (Gapenski, 2008, pg. 27). Applying this p ractice to the Patton-Fuller organization will help them to decide if the number of fundraisers needs to be increased, or whether more short-term or long-term investments will prove to be more useful.Despite only a slight increase in revenue, the Patton-Fuller Community Hospital must still support facility upgrades as well as maintenance and costly health information technology. The income that investments provide is typically viewed as an extra source of funding that this organization cannot go without. This type of practice will also be useful for the marketing department who projected in the 2010 budget that donations will be increased by 15%, which will also add to the hospitals expenditures in a capital budget.A financial management practice that may prove less effective for this hospital is contract management. â€Å"In today’s healthcare environment, health services organizations must negotiate, sign, and monitor contracts with managed care organizations and third-par ty payers† (Gapenski, 2008, pg. 28). The complexities that come with third-party repayment means that a large amount of time and resources are being spent on burdensome accounts, bills, and collection processes, instead of focusing on activities that will bring revenue into the company. Historically, the practice of finance had been driven by the Medicare program, which demanded that providers (primarily hospitals) churn out a multitude of reports both to comply with regulations and to maximize Medicare revenues† (Health Care Finance, 2012, para. 6). In order for a company to be financially functional, they must support cost containment efforts as well as be able to lead their company into the future, not just record what is happening and may be in the past. Spending less time negotiating with third-party payers will open up more time and resources that can be focused on increasing hospital revenue.When an organization is in a time of high profitability and is experienci ng an abundance of financial resources, the function of financial management tends to decline in importance. In an effort to control this decline, â€Å"Providers have been redesigning their finance functions to recognize the changes that have been occurring in the health services industry† (Health Care Finance, 2012, para. 9). That way they do not experience a time of fall because of their disregarding of these practice. Recently, a 2010 budget was developed using the 2009 projections, assumptions, and figures for the Patton-Fuller Community Hospital.The purpose of this paper was to analyze that budget and discuss which financial management practices were most effective for this organization as well as which practices were the least effective. Having strong financial management practices is vital to any organization as well as the economic well-being of the health care industry as a whole. ? References Gapenski, L. (2008). Understanding Healthcare Financial Management (5th e d. ). Chicago, IL: Bookcomp. Health Care Finance. (2012). Hospitals move to cash investments. Retrieved from http://www. healthcarefinancenews. com/news/hospitals-move-cash-investments-short-term-pressures-mount

The Impact of Emerging Health Issues Methicillin Resistant Essay

The Impact of Emerging Health Issues Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus (MRSA) and Vancomycin-ResistantEnterococcus (VRE) - Essay Example Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterecoccus (VRE) represent two of the epidemiologically significant pathogens that are resistant to antibiotics, which are responsible for hospital-acquired infections. The reason for their importance is because infections due to these pathogens are responsible for significantly higher morbidity and mortality rates, and hospital costs than infections caused by susceptible organisms of the same species. In addition to this are the rapidly rising rates of infection from these antibiotic resistant pathogens in the past two decades. In current times nearly half of the nosocomial Staphylococcus aureus infections are due to MRSA, and almost a fourth of all nosocomial Enterecoccus infections are due to VRE. This makes these two antibiotic resistant pathogens significant to the healthcare sector (Salgado & Farr, 2003). Staphylococcus aureus is an aerobic, non-motile, gram-positive bacterium. According to Bloch, 2001, â€Å"Staphylococcus aureus colonizes the human skin, vagina, nasopharynx, and gastrointestinal tract†. It is estimated that ten to thirty-five percent of all healthy adults have transient or persistent nasopharyngeal colonization of S aureus, and this percentage is one the higher side among individuals working in the healthcare sector due to handling of colonized patients. S aureus has intrinsic properties that enable it to inhibit host immune defenses and render the penicillin and penicillin-derived group of antibiotics ineffective. Thus inactivation of the penicillin and penicillin derived group of antibiotics is the result of the enzyme beta-lactamase produced by S aureus. More than seventy percent of the S aureus strains are known to be capable of producing beta-lactamase. These strains are collectively known as Methicillin-resistant

Differences between Private and Public Schools Essay

Differences between Private and Public Schools - Essay Example One of the main differences between private and public schools in related to curriculum and policy management. Public schools need to follow and adhere to the local and federal educational guidelines (Long Island Schools n.p.). They cannot bring any change to the curriculum unless the government approves it. Every public school located in any part of the state has the same curriculum. On the other hand, private schools can have a slightly different curriculum from that of the public schools. Although private schools also need to adhere to the educational guidelines of the government, they can make slight changes to the guidelines as per the need of the school and students and can design their own curriculum. In public schools, the government does not apply any restriction on the number of admissions. On the other hand, there is usually some limit related to the number of admissions in private schools. If that limit is over, the school reserves the right to reject other admission applications. The restriction of the limit of admissions also helps private schools give more attention to students individually which results in a better learning environment, as well as improves the teacher-student relationship. Moreover, in private schools, admissions are based on merit (Egan n.p.). Public schools cannot apply any limit to admissions because they are funded by the government, which is responsible to provide education to all children (Gilmore n.p.). The cost of education is also significantly higher in private schools as compared to that of the public schools. The reason is that private schools are not funded by the government because of which the management has to arrange salaries for teachers and money for all administrative expenses on their own. They charge high money to the parents of children in return for providing high-quality education.

Healthy people discussion Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Healthy people discussion - Coursework Example Generally, the HP 2020 is focused at attaining longer lives that is free of avoidable diseases while maintaining high quality health (Fielding, Kumanyika & Manderscheid, 2013). The HP 2010 strengths include processes that are data driven, measurable objectives and targets, and diversity in its usage. However the HP 2020 was different in wording as a result of diversity of organizations and individuals. This is evident in the determinant framework, electronic and ecological approach utilized. This means that the HP 2020 was more focused in developing objectives addressing the link between health status and the above factors (Fielding et al., 2013). The goals have changed in order to improve the lives and health quality offered to individuals. The changes in HP 2020 were influenced by different societal aspects. For instance, the HP 220 was focused on the ability to coordinate tribal, state, national and local attributes. The other societal issue that influenced change in the HP 2020 is the increase of population of people from different races. Improving the health utility highly influenced the changes in the

Nonwestern Art and Western Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Nonwestern Art and Western Art - Essay Example Art can also be categorized based on different cultures that were found in different countries. This means that each country has its own identity based on the artwork. For example, the art of China is very different to art from Africa. Each culture has its own type of art. A painting would be drawn from different countries but differ in some elements due to culture. The artwork has roots in various indigenous cultures that affected America. The indigenous cultures of each sophisticated artistic art discipline but has been highly affected by the religious and social activities. Artwork ranges from one society to another due to the various cultural activities practiced in the society. For example, some societies are influenced by the love the wildlife activities, agricultural activities, art of war and social activities. In the present day, artistic work, non-western culture has adopted the Western culture. This has been a result of social integration and integration. It has been made possible by improved transport and communication networks globally. Modern day art students have a variety of artistic work to choose from during their course work. Most art institutions offer different type of arts. They include the Western art, Non-western art and a combination of the two types of art. According to researchers and the opinion, fro the artists the artwork has many challenges revolving around. The history of artwork from the traditional era, modern, pre-modern, and postmodern artwork has been affected. by a series of problems in the chain of the artwork. The chain of artwork ranges from artist to the buyer. An artist’s work passes through before reaching the customer this channel. However, in the artwork we have the presence of the brokers whom their main aim is to find the market for the artist items. The sculptures, paintings, and photography are the items in the artwork that have a high market demand in the history of the artwork. The increased crave for a rt has shifted from the pre-modern state to the post-modern state. According to the researchers, its shifts and crave have also brought about various problems that have affected the artwork globally. Artwork being a vital factor affecting the underdeveloped and developed countries economy is being faced by a series of challenges. These challenges have affected the

Mission, Vision, Social Responsibility, Strategic Planning Essay

Mission, Vision, Social Responsibility, Strategic Planning - Essay Example The vision of Trader Joe’s is not provided in its website, but based on its timeline of important company events and other company information, it is perceived as supporting a sustainable future, where communities benefit from a company that promotes originality, individual choice, and cultural diversity. For instance, according to Trader Joe’s history timeline, in 1977, it introduced the first reusable canvas bag for shopping needs (Trader Joe’s, n.d.). This shows its dedication to preserving the environment through the principle of reuse. In addition, Trader Joe’s describes how it seeks to find and to sell original and hard-to-find products. This goal is stated in the â€Å"About Trader Joe’s† webpage of its company website. Trader Joe’s is focused on originality, as a way of delivering high value to its customers. As for Whole Foods, its vision is clearly stated in its company website: â€Å"Our vision of a sustainable future means our children and grandchildren will be living in a world that values human creativity, diversity, and individual choice† (Whole Foods, n.d.). The visions of these firms are similar because they want to provide a better future for the coming generations, by thinking about how their actions impact the latter. They want to support sustainable development principles and practices. Whole Foods depicts in its â€Å"Our Mission and Culture† webpage that it supports organic farming and alternative sources of energy. It also recycles and composts waste, while participating in community activities through food banks, sponsoring community events, and donating at least 5% of its net profit to non-profit organizations (Whole Foods, n.d.). Trader Joe’s also manages its effects on the environment by not sourcing GMO materials for its private label products, based on its customer updates from the company website. The vision statements of these two firms are comparable because t hey base their business proposition on the framework of sustainable development. Moreover, the two firms share the same values, except that Trader Joe’s is more pronounced on being an original retailer. They both believe in and support creativity, diversity, and individual choice. They aspire for creative ways in using diversity, as their leverage against conventional food retailers. Despite a little difference, it is clear that Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods are heading toward the same direction because they see themselves as forming a better impact on their stakeholders, as they think about the future and the quality of lives in that future, unlike other companies that focus on the bottom line alone. After discussing the vision, the missions of these two firms will be described. The mission of Trader Joe's is not identified in its company website, although one source provides it: To give our customers the best food and beverage values that they can find anywhere and to provide them with the information required to make informed buying decisions. We provide these with a dedication to the highest quality of customer satisfaction delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, fun, individual pride, and company spirit (Thompson Jr., Peteraf, III Strickland, & Gamble, 2011, p. 20). As for Whole Foods, its mission is: â€Å"Our whole business is about making a difference – in the lives of our Team Members and the customers we serve,

An Analysis of the Importance of Setting In James Baldwins Giovannis Essay

An Analysis of the Importance of Setting In James Baldwins Giovannis Room - Essay Example The story itself is well written and intriguing, but many of the elements involved are only able to arise in the unique atmosphere of Paris. This paper will attempt to examine some of the reasons for Baldwin's choice of setting. The two American characters in the novel have both left the United States for different reasons. David, the narrator, claims that "I wanted to find myself" (p. 31) when leaving towards France, reflecting in hindsight that he would only find the self that he kept trying to escape. His past hinges on a dysfunctional relationship with his father, who spent most of David's youth drunk, to the point that by the time David grows older and the father attempts to get closer, then David no longer wishes it. David's rejection of his father stems from two root causes: firstly, David has begun to judge his father and, while not disapproving of the alcohol exactly, David resents his father's emotional absence through the years. Secondly, David has had at least one homosexual experience by this time - with a boy named Joey - whom he then promptly rejects. David's actions show a subconscious shame about his own homosexual tendencies, as well as a concern that his father might discover this aspect of his son. David's departure from the United States is an attempt to put physical distance between himself and his father, as well as psychological distance between himself, the experience with Joey, and the possibility of his father's discovery. Hella is on a similar journey of self-discovery with similar parallels of trying to escape. She is from Minneapolis and not much is said about her hometown. Instead, she is absent the first half of the novel because she is in Spain, contemplating David's marriage proposal. Hella's quest is to find a nobler purpose in her life than to become an average mother and housewife, yet when she returns to Paris, she grudgingly says that "it's really all I'm good for." (p.163). Her spirit is broken. Her old stance had been that a woman's attachment to a man was degrading, yet she now feels that even though a man will always be a stranger to a woman, she will only be free once she is committed to a relationship. She claims that "women get attached to something by default." (p.167), and that, essentially her purpose is therefore defined by David's need for her. Both of these characters go through an evolution in the course of the novel: they seek to escape their own nature, then accept it for a time and are happy, only to become miserable in the end by denying it once more. David only acknowledges his love for Giovanni when Giovanni is slated for execution; Hella leaves David when he needs the most support, primarily because of the revelation of David's love for Giovanni. Because of the very nature of the Americans, they are portrayed in sharp contrast to the Parisians. Hella declares that "coming back to Paris is always so lovely" (p. 160), implying the American romanticism attached to the city, but her true confusion of the Europe experience is hidden in her description of Spain "it's very beautiful. I just didn't know what I was doing there." David, while he enjoy Parisian life, identifies closely with the his fellow customers at the American Express Office, whom he perceives as having a quality "unedited, unrealized the sorrow of the disconnected." (p. 119). These aspects have become

Policy Memo to an elected state or federal offical Assignment

Policy Memo to an elected state or federal offical - Assignment Example Nurses form the largest group or component of the health care work force and are the front-liners and first responders in most medical cases. As such, they are often in the best position to advise on how to further improve the delivery of health care services and enhance patient safety. All of these desired changes can be achieved if an appropriate law is passed allowing nurses to practice to the full extent of their education and training, similar to the way physicians services today are covered under Medicare. This was one of the four recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in its 2011 report that is entitled â€Å"The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health† and in particular that of Recommendation No. 2 (Expand opportunities for nurses to lead and diffuse collaborative improvement efforts) requires legislative support to amend certain state laws and provisions in this regard. Reforms in the health care system under Obamacare likewise mandate thi s change. Background – the recent passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare in 2010 was to initiate comprehensive reforms in the American health care system to provide safer, higher-quality, more affordable, and easier accessibility health care services to increasing diverse populations of America with its changing demographics towards more elderly citizens. Intention of these reforms is to provide wellness and disease prevention programs that will enhance overall health outcomes and at the same time provide for compassionate health care across the entire life span of an individual patient by improving the quality of life (Institute of Medicine, 2011). The ACA is expected to bring into the formal health care system an additional 32 million Americans (ibid.) which will further put pressure on the resources of the present health care system to

Outline the way that China has been affected by the recent financial Essay

Outline the way that China has been affected by the recent financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent recession. Explore their econ - Essay Example In 2008, the problem was in the sub-prime market in major investment banks in Wall Street. The turning point in 2008 in the crisis was the fall of Lehman Brothers. The world was soon involved in this crisis as many government rushed to implement nationalization policies in their countries to prevent further damage. A number of bad debts also arose during this period because there was a great deal of selling of financial assets with the mortgages that were given out and they were sold all over the world but this became a complex procedure as more and more countries were lending and banks and other financial institutions did not have an idea as to how far in the globe their loans were going. A credit crunch arose in the world which led to a break in the lending system in the world as there was no money to give. This had a detrimental effect on the entire world’s economies including China (Krugman 2009). A fall in output occurred due to the burst of this real estate bubble. This lead to nationalization all over the world as aforementioned and governments made failed attempt after failed attempt to assuage the situation. The government injected more and more money in the economy because demand had fallen and banking systems were trying to hold on. Chinese government increased their spending as well as made tax cuts wherever they could in order to improve the situation of the economy (Soros 2008). The focus of economies including China shifted in two ways. The debt was the responsibility of the public not the private sector since the government had nationalized the economy. And finance was no longer the epicenter, it was the government. Bankers were unwilling to lend and buy bonds because they were fearful of the future due to the crisis. Therefore the financial markets continued to worsen in 2009. China seems to be doing well after just a short duration of time while the other countries are still suffering the blows of the crisis. China in fact had growth of double digits even though it is vulnerable to the changes in the economies of the world. The government in China had to inject money equal to 14% of the GDP in order to boost the economy when the markets in US and Europe fell and they didn’t demand any exports. Social aspects of this injection was relatively little, only about 20% of this stimulus, and the rest went to investment in fixed asset such as concrete, steel and this also lead to the world’s speediest rail system being built in China. Even though this sector was working with excess capacity, the government considered this action to be the correct one (Goodstadt 2011). In 2009 as well, China underwent its own real estate bubble. In this bubble, the prices of apartments shot up by 50 to 60% of their original price, especially in Shanghai and Beijing. New complexes that were being built were abandoned because demand was falling, and so there were half built places all over the country, and there was no sign of growth as no one was constructing which is the first step in order to have a house to sell (McLean & Nocera 2010). The prices of houses were also way beyond the incomes of people and households in the economy. This lead to expansion of credit in China, but one which was cheap, and wages were bogged down artificially so that household transferred their income to businesses and rather than consuming,

Lets Be a Good Listener Essay Example for Free

Lets Be a Good Listener Essay I. Attention Grabber Malaysia currently was buzzing around with the incident that happened between an Indian college student with the first lady of One Voice One Malaysia. The scene which was recorded at Universiti Utara Malaysia in north Malaysia had been a very devastated story among the students and the government itself. These phenomena really taught us how two person or two different people learn to be a good speaker and a good listener. So, how are we going to build the attitude in ourselves to be a good listener when someone is talking? How are we going to react and to respond? II. Introductory Remarks Do you know that being a good listener to someone that we love or to somebody that really needs someone to hear them is actually a very well manner attitude? Everybody in this world needs someone to be with them to listen and to share something together. Therefore, you will learn more how to be a good listener in person and how to gain your humanity attitude. III. Reveal Topic As for today, I would like to elaborate and to highlight some important tips on how to be a good listener to everybody. IV. Preview Listening is an essential part of communication, and it is different from hearing. Being a good and patient listener helps you not only solve many problems at work or home, but also to see the world through the eyes of others, thereby opening your understanding and enhancing your capacity for empathy. [ Let me start with the steps and skills of being a good listener ] BODY i. Place yourself in the other persons shoes. a) look at the problems from the other persons perspective and actively try to see his or her point of view. b) It is not a good idea to consider yourself to be smarter than the speaker and assume that if you had been in his or her shoes, you would have seen your way through the problem much faster. c) Remember you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. ii. Create a conducive physical and mental space. a) Remove all distractions and give all of your attention. b) Turn off cell phones because it may be easiest to arrange to talk somewhere that distractions will not occur. c) Quiet your mind and open yourself to whatever the person might have to say. iii. Stop talking and try to be silent. a) It might sound obvious and trite, but one of the biggest obstacles to listening, for many people, is resisting the impulse thoughts. b) Likewise, many think that empathy means sharing with the listener similar experiences that the listener has had. Both can be helpful, but they are easily abused. c) Put aside your own needs, and wait for the other person to talk at their own pace. iv. Follow and encourage the speaker with body language. a) Nodding your head will indicate you hear what the speaker is saying, and will encourage them to continue. b) Adopting body postures, positions and movements that are similar to the speaker will allow the speaker to relax and open up more. c) Try to reassure the speaker that all is well. d) Whatever the conclusion of the conversation, let the speaker know that you have been happy to listen and to be a sounding board. e) Reassure the speaker of your intention to keep the discussion confidential. [ So, here I will sum up the importance of being a good listener.] CONCLUSION A. Summary of Main Points In a nutshell, I think one of the best way to be a good human being is to be a good listener. Not only listen to their problems but listen what they might want to share. The happiness, miserable, dissatisfaction and everything. Remember, that what goes around comes around. B. Concluding Remarks In my observation, I think that Malaysians are lousy listeners. Let us start changing our attitude to being a good listener. Let’s start listening to our surrounding and giving respond to our society. All in all we can be a good listener in the world.

Toilet Paper Essay Example for Free

Toilet Paper Essay The pages of history state that there was an era in which many other alternatives were used instead of toilet papers. Examples of such alternatives included leaves, pebbles, and water. In ancient times the tribes used to clear their excreta through the remains of a corn or corncobs. They would also sometimes use the skin of the corn. Toilet paper is made up of thin fibers of trees. The increasing demand of toilet roles is decreasing the amount of trees, which are of a great use. The manufacturers of toilet roles many times chop the trees but as it is said they do not understand the importance and just throw the remaining fiber as if it is not of any use. On average, Britons use 17.6 kilograms of toilet paper annually whereas Americans use 15.7 kilograms annually. (Waterfield, 2007) In all, Americans consume 27% of the total wood produced globally. On average, each American uses 75 cubic meters of wood annually. In North America alone, almost half of the coastal temperate rainforests have been wiped out. Almost half of the forests that were originally spread over an area of 48% of the Earths land surface have been lost. Moreover, â€Å"only one-fifth of the Earths original forests remain pristine and undisturbed.† (NRDC: Forest Facts, 2004) In the United States, 94% of the original forests have already been destroyed. Currently, 307,000 square kilometers of forests are remaining which make up around 2% of the total forest remaining worldwide. (Remaining Frontier Forest, n.d.) Toilet Paper manufacturers like Kimberly-Clark say that consumers want non-recycled toilet papers because of their softness which is not possible by using recycled material. â€Å"One million trees would be saved if every U.S. household replaced just one 250-count package of virgin fiber napkins with 100 percent recycled ones. 424,000 trees would be spared by replacing a 500-sheet roll of virgin fiber toilet paper.†Ã‚   (Llanos, 2006) (NRDC: A Shoppers Guide, 2005) Most manufacturers use pulp because it increases the softness of toilet papers. As stated above, many consumers prefer those toilet papers which are soft although the use of recycled toilet papers reduces environmental hazards like global warming by saving trees and forests. Approximately in the USA 5.8 million tons of tissues grades, toilet paper, towels, sanitary products, facial tissues, and diapers are produced yearly. And around 3.5 million tons of scrap paper was used to manufacture aforementioned products. â€Å"By recycling 1 ton of paper you save: 17 trees 6953 gallons of water, 463 gallons of oil, 587 pounds of air pollution, 3.06 cubic yards of landfill space, and 4077 Kilowatt hours of energy.† (Fun Facts, n.d.) An average roll contains 227 grams weight, which usually include the cardboard core tube and this is just over half of a pound. In paper related manufacturing account shows that around 28 percent of trees have been cut down in this respect. However, more trees are planted every annum instead of chopped down. Fortunately, on an average five trees are planted in place of one chopped down tree. (Fun Facts, n.d.) There are over five hundred paper mills are working in the United States. Global production of paper is predictable to expand forty six percent by the year 2040. In this regard, One of the most complete sources for tree-free paper is the â€Å"Oregon based Fiber Options Paper Company catalog†. The owner of the company Karen said that, plants just like â€Å"kenaf† produce four times as much fiber per annum as tress. Hence the plant shorter fiber also forms them more easily recyclable. (Fun Facts, n.d.) Recycled paper is paper that comprises fiber from waste paper. Nevertheless, there is no global agreement on the exact definition of this. According to paper user’s environmental forum checklist recycled paper should comprise as high proportion of pre consumer fiber waste as possibility proportionate. A pre consumer waste paper is a paper that has been used by the end-user for the indented purpose. Recycling paper is not only gathering wastepaper, but also using paper with recycled substances. Certainly, Toilet paper with high-recycled content is neither expensive nor difficult to acquire. â€Å"Recycled paper, either pre or post-consumer materials needs to be washed and is often deinked prior to being pulped. The pulp goes through a bleaching process to make it whiter. There are many bleaching processes; New Leaf Paper chooses a processed chlorine free process. Once the pulp is bleached, it enters a series of phases including the following: the paper forming section; the press section where water is removed by pressing the wet paper between rolls and felts; and the drying section where the moisture content is reduced to the desired level; and the calendering section where the paper is compacted and smoothed progressively as it travels down a stack of steel rolls. After completion, the paper is stored in either rolls or cut into sheets†. (Fun Facts, n.d.) A research conducted by EPA for congress in the early 1970’s disclosed the facts that by using one ton of 100 percent recycled paper we can saves 4100 Kwh of energy, which is sufficient for 1 home for six months besides this we can save 7000 gallons of water. The study further revealed that it also keeps more than sixty pounds of pollution out of the fresh air and hence saves 3.3 cubic yard of landfill space, which is increasingly significant as many domestic landfills near capacity. Moreover, representatives of paper industry companies also approximated that 1 ton of recycled paper saves nearly 17 trees. (Fun Facts, n.d.) References    Fun Facts (n.d.) http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/tpw/encyclopedia/navigation/funfacts.htm Accessed, June 5, 2007 Llanos, Miguel (2006, April 21) Ready to rethink toilet paper for Earth Day? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12318915/ Accessed, June 5, 2007 NRDC: A Shoppers Guide to Home Tissue Products (2005, Oct 26) http://www.nrdc.org/land/forests/gtissue.asp Accessed, June 5, 2007 NRDC: Forest Facts (2004, Aug 27) http://www.nrdc.org/land/forests/fforestf.asp Accessed, June 5, 2007 Remaining Frontier Forest (n.d.) http://www.endgame.org/gtt-deforestation.html Accessed, June 5, 2007 Waterfield, Bruno 05/02/2007 Britons lead the way in toilet paper use http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/05/wrolls05.xml Accessed, June 5, 2007

Issues of War Monuments in Estonia

Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonias War of Monuments from Another Angle * This article is the first published output from British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities: Estonia, Sweden and the â€Å"Baltic World† Since the summer of 2004, the new EU member state of Estonia has been in the throes of what is described as a War of Monuments. The events in question began in the town of Lihula in western Estonia, where a veterans group erected a stone tablet commemorating those Estonians who in World War Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Bearing the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence, the Lihula stone became the latest of several monuments commemorating a group that most Estonians today regard as freedom fighters. In this case, however, the soldier depicted bore SS insignia. Hardly surprisingly, this fact elicited widespread international condemnation, notably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the monument insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had only enlisted as a last resort in order to obtain access to arms w ith which to repel the Soviet invader. The display of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the display of Nazi symbols in todays Europe. Also, while the vast majority of Estonian SS legionnaires did indeed sign up only in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced into their homeland, at least some had previously belonged to auxiliary police battalions which have been implicated in Nazi atrocities.1 Concerned to limit potential damage to Estonias international reputation, the government of the day ordered the removal of the monument. The police operation to carry out this order on 2 September 2004 nevertheless provoked clashes with local residents, while the political fallout from the episode contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the government action argued that if the Lihula monument was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, then the same logic should be applied to Soviet monuments that had been left standing following the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze Soldier on T[otilde]nismgi in central Tallinn—a post-war monument erected on the unmarked grave of Soviet troops who fell during the taking of the city in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the replacement of one brutal occupying regime by another, whic h quickly resumed the arrests, executions and large-scale deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet rule in 1940 41. This remains the dominant perception amongst Estonians today. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, have adhered steadfastly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the liberation of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self-understanding in the post-Soviet era; its  current leaders emphatically deny that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic states constituted a Soviet occupation, and refuse to acknowledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries experienced at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia have emphasised that they will brook no alternative interpretations of the Soviet Unions role in the events of 1939 45, and have therefore characterised calls for the removal of the T[otilde]nismgi monument as a manifestation of support for fascism. For many of the ethnic Russians who today make up nearly half of Tallinns population, the Bronze Soldier has also remained a locus of identification, providing the site for continued unofficial commemorations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet period. Red paint was thrown over the monument just prior to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were also attacked across the country, and a German military cemetery desecrated in Narva. The following year, this date again elicited tensions: local Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian nationalist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was subsequently cordoned off by police pending a decision on its future. This formed the object of vigorous political debate ahead of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of public monuments in post-Soviet Estonia have for the mo st part fallen to local municipalities. In late 2006, however, new legislation was adopted giving central government the power to override local decision making in this regard. This provision was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the centre of Tallinn to the more peripheral setting of the military cemetery on the citys outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c; Ranname 2006). The subsequent removal of the monument in late April 2007 provided the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of people visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers. Issues of past or memory politics2 have assumed a growing prominence in recent scholarly work on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also highlighting the apparently divergent views of the past held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in terms of societal integration (Hackmann 2003; Budryte 2005; Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are evidently central to any discussion of such issues: as recent events in Estonia have shown, they frequently act as catalysts eliciting both official and unsanctioned expressions of collective identity (Burch 2002a, 2004).3 Thus far, however, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to monuments within the relevant academic literature on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly different angle. The War of Monuments has focused political and media attention upon two different cases, one involving a settlement that is predominantly ethnica lly Estonian by population (Lihula) and the other a capital city (Tallinn) that is almost equally divided between Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias border with the Russian Federation. In particular, our study examines the local politics surrounding the Swedish Lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Narva between Sweden and Russia. The Lion monument relates to a past that is far less immediate than the events of 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is still highly salient to contemporary identity politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia framed and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers constitute 96% of the population? Equally significantly, todays Lion is depicted as the successor to a similar monument erected in 1936 during the period of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to banish the Soviet past and reconnect with a past Golden Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was established in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not obtain the automatic right to Estonian citizenship after 199 1.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and why? What form did the commemoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will address these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist transition, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed liberal/multicultural nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.5 Past politics and post-communism The dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the past two decades have entailed a profound redefinition of collective identities at a variety of scales—national, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold War, the demise of the USSR, and the consequent processes of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the overall context of economic globalisation and growing movement of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to revisit existing understandings of who We are and where We are going. Since historical memory is an essential component in the construction of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as well as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in complex †¦ power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, Graha m et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that heritage is time-specific and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing times, circumstances and constructs of place and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such knowledges are also fields of contestation.6 Publicly sited monuments offer a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial function of such objects can take the form of carefully choreographed gatherings at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths might be laid; silence observed; political rallies enacted; pageants performed. Other actions might be characterised more by spontaneity: collective grief at a sudden, tragic event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative terms. Individuals and groups will attach different, often mutually exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent: what constitutes an eloquent memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an annual commemoration) might become a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the year. In this regard, being ignored is as s ignificant as being noticed.7 Political changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any physical change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is intrinsic to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically rendered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible. Issues of collective identity have proved especially challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as classic unitary nation states, and yet in nearly all cases, processes of state and nation building have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are deeply polyethnic or multinational in character (Brubaker 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they need to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul Gready (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of history that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its subjugation and suffering at the hands of former colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily f rame their own exclusivist narratives of history along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, conflicting narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic nexus of nationalist politics—the relationship between nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelands—discerned by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006). In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elites in the Baltic and other Central and Eastern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of integration with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases especially, has entailed significant changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Budryte 2005; Kelley 2004; Galbreath 2005). EU-supported state integration strategies launched at the start of the twenty-first century have set the goal of creating integrated multicultural democracies which will enable representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct culture and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessar ily require all the parties involved to engage with a process of democratising history. Democratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a plurality of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equally, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a; Budryte 2005). A significant step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 Composed of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) underline the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political dynamics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate blanket accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined. As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state level tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex multi-ethnic environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears especially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at least, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that obtain at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermath of independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the right to vote, regardless of citizenship status. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level. In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elites in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends observable in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up almost half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre Party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a significant foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried instead to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning: a Soviet-era plaque referring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was replaced by one that reads simply to the fallen of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of shared understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic setting. What trends, however, can one identify in the more homogeneously Russian pe riphery that is Narva? Estonias new best friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The return of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 2000), can be seen in many ways as the culmination of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near Abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being made available to support processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilised in the service of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9 Historic ties with Scandinavia have assumed an important place within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the notion of a Return to Europe—or, more broadly, a Return to the Western World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997; Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the period 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively extended its dominion over much of the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the Happy Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable improvement in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before serfdom was returned to its former rigour following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive to the possibility of trading on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and economic influence.10 It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmental challenges posed by this largely Russian-populated border region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the prospect that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stability and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, given the important place of the Battle of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the opening salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic provinces ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of King Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically superior forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efendiev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three dates—the birthday of Gustav Vasa; the birthday of the present King; and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the installation of a Lion monument on the battlefield site in 1936.14 Already prior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Lepp—then Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholm—suggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties between Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. Not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population. Narva: Eastern, Western or in-between? The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the border that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational fault line between Estonia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the presence of two great fortresses—one German, one Russian—on the respective banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. Not unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As noted on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outpost and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth century to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the province of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the western border of his realm following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, controlling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16 For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single composite settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came under the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the abortive Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian Republic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet cont ext, the frontier revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully functioning state border between the two towns after 1992. The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Northern Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. While at least some historic buildings—notably the castle and the town hall—were restored, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were replaced by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabit ants. As part of Narvas transformation into a Soviet place, new monuments were erected to commemorate the fallen of the Great Patriotic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 All remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Prince, was destroyed by artillery fire and the bronze lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and maintain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704. As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the maintenance of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence; yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were returned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas economy went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic break with the Soviet past. The last stand o f the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993: with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the national government standing firm and refusing to acknowledge the legality of the vote, and no support forthcoming from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to accept that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles now called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b). At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda: the aim was rather to tip the overall political balance within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as developing new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the principal identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not preclude the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of residence. Between 1989 and 1991, the movement to ass ert Estonian sovereignty gained support from a significant minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could subscribe to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West. Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 census revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). Even so, the collapse of the USSR inevitably created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002; Budryte 2005; Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to identify themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local place of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon. The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local population from seeking election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the grounds of special services rendered to the state. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and interest groups. The city governments elected during the period 1993 2005—a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politics—were far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wid er Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the installation of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an attempt to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish textile firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Estonian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was proof that Narva was finally beginning to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20 In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemorating—inter alia—the victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city. Yet the post-1993 political e Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonias War of Monuments from Another Angle * This article is the first published output from British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities: Estonia, Sweden and the â€Å"Baltic World† Since the summer of 2004, the new EU member state of Estonia has been in the throes of what is described as a War of Monuments. The events in question began in the town of Lihula in western Estonia, where a veterans group erected a stone tablet commemorating those Estonians who in World War Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Bearing the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence, the Lihula stone became the latest of several monuments commemorating a group that most Estonians today regard as freedom fighters. In this case, however, the soldier depicted bore SS insignia. Hardly surprisingly, this fact elicited widespread international condemnation, notably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the monument insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had only enlisted as a last resort in order to obtain access to arms w ith which to repel the Soviet invader. The display of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the display of Nazi symbols in todays Europe. Also, while the vast majority of Estonian SS legionnaires did indeed sign up only in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced into their homeland, at least some had previously belonged to auxiliary police battalions which have been implicated in Nazi atrocities.1 Concerned to limit potential damage to Estonias international reputation, the government of the day ordered the removal of the monument. The police operation to carry out this order on 2 September 2004 nevertheless provoked clashes with local residents, while the political fallout from the episode contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the government action argued that if the Lihula monument was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, then the same logic should be applied to Soviet monuments that had been left standing following the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze Soldier on T[otilde]nismgi in central Tallinn—a post-war monument erected on the unmarked grave of Soviet troops who fell during the taking of the city in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the replacement of one brutal occupying regime by another, whic h quickly resumed the arrests, executions and large-scale deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet rule in 1940 41. This remains the dominant perception amongst Estonians today. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, have adhered steadfastly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the liberation of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self-understanding in the post-Soviet era; its  current leaders emphatically deny that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic states constituted a Soviet occupation, and refuse to acknowledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries experienced at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia have emphasised that they will brook no alternative interpretations of the Soviet Unions role in the events of 1939 45, and have therefore characterised calls for the removal of the T[otilde]nismgi monument as a manifestation of support for fascism. For many of the ethnic Russians who today make up nearly half of Tallinns population, the Bronze Soldier has also remained a locus of identification, providing the site for continued unofficial commemorations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet period. Red paint was thrown over the monument just prior to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were also attacked across the country, and a German military cemetery desecrated in Narva. The following year, this date again elicited tensions: local Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian nationalist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was subsequently cordoned off by police pending a decision on its future. This formed the object of vigorous political debate ahead of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of public monuments in post-Soviet Estonia have for the mo st part fallen to local municipalities. In late 2006, however, new legislation was adopted giving central government the power to override local decision making in this regard. This provision was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the centre of Tallinn to the more peripheral setting of the military cemetery on the citys outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c; Ranname 2006). The subsequent removal of the monument in late April 2007 provided the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of people visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers. Issues of past or memory politics2 have assumed a growing prominence in recent scholarly work on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also highlighting the apparently divergent views of the past held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in terms of societal integration (Hackmann 2003; Budryte 2005; Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are evidently central to any discussion of such issues: as recent events in Estonia have shown, they frequently act as catalysts eliciting both official and unsanctioned expressions of collective identity (Burch 2002a, 2004).3 Thus far, however, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to monuments within the relevant academic literature on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly different angle. The War of Monuments has focused political and media attention upon two different cases, one involving a settlement that is predominantly ethnica lly Estonian by population (Lihula) and the other a capital city (Tallinn) that is almost equally divided between Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias border with the Russian Federation. In particular, our study examines the local politics surrounding the Swedish Lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Narva between Sweden and Russia. The Lion monument relates to a past that is far less immediate than the events of 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is still highly salient to contemporary identity politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia framed and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers constitute 96% of the population? Equally significantly, todays Lion is depicted as the successor to a similar monument erected in 1936 during the period of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to banish the Soviet past and reconnect with a past Golden Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was established in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not obtain the automatic right to Estonian citizenship after 199 1.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and why? What form did the commemoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will address these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist transition, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed liberal/multicultural nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.5 Past politics and post-communism The dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the past two decades have entailed a profound redefinition of collective identities at a variety of scales—national, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold War, the demise of the USSR, and the consequent processes of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the overall context of economic globalisation and growing movement of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to revisit existing understandings of who We are and where We are going. Since historical memory is an essential component in the construction of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as well as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in complex †¦ power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, Graha m et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that heritage is time-specific and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing times, circumstances and constructs of place and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such knowledges are also fields of contestation.6 Publicly sited monuments offer a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial function of such objects can take the form of carefully choreographed gatherings at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths might be laid; silence observed; political rallies enacted; pageants performed. Other actions might be characterised more by spontaneity: collective grief at a sudden, tragic event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative terms. Individuals and groups will attach different, often mutually exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent: what constitutes an eloquent memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an annual commemoration) might become a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the year. In this regard, being ignored is as s ignificant as being noticed.7 Political changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any physical change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is intrinsic to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically rendered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible. Issues of collective identity have proved especially challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as classic unitary nation states, and yet in nearly all cases, processes of state and nation building have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are deeply polyethnic or multinational in character (Brubaker 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they need to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul Gready (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of history that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its subjugation and suffering at the hands of former colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily f rame their own exclusivist narratives of history along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, conflicting narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic nexus of nationalist politics—the relationship between nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelands—discerned by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006). In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elites in the Baltic and other Central and Eastern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of integration with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases especially, has entailed significant changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Budryte 2005; Kelley 2004; Galbreath 2005). EU-supported state integration strategies launched at the start of the twenty-first century have set the goal of creating integrated multicultural democracies which will enable representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct culture and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessar ily require all the parties involved to engage with a process of democratising history. Democratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a plurality of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equally, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a; Budryte 2005). A significant step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 Composed of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) underline the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political dynamics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate blanket accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined. As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state level tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex multi-ethnic environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears especially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at least, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that obtain at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermath of independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the right to vote, regardless of citizenship status. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level. In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elites in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends observable in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up almost half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre Party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a significant foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried instead to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning: a Soviet-era plaque referring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was replaced by one that reads simply to the fallen of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of shared understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic setting. What trends, however, can one identify in the more homogeneously Russian pe riphery that is Narva? Estonias new best friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The return of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 2000), can be seen in many ways as the culmination of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near Abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being made available to support processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilised in the service of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9 Historic ties with Scandinavia have assumed an important place within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the notion of a Return to Europe—or, more broadly, a Return to the Western World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997; Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the period 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively extended its dominion over much of the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the Happy Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable improvement in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before serfdom was returned to its former rigour following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive to the possibility of trading on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and economic influence.10 It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmental challenges posed by this largely Russian-populated border region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the prospect that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stability and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, given the important place of the Battle of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the opening salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic provinces ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of King Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically superior forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efendiev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three dates—the birthday of Gustav Vasa; the birthday of the present King; and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the installation of a Lion monument on the battlefield site in 1936.14 Already prior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Lepp—then Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholm—suggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties between Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. Not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population. Narva: Eastern, Western or in-between? The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the border that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational fault line between Estonia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the presence of two great fortresses—one German, one Russian—on the respective banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. Not unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As noted on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outpost and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth century to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the province of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the western border of his realm following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, controlling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16 For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single composite settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came under the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the abortive Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian Republic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet cont ext, the frontier revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully functioning state border between the two towns after 1992. The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Northern Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. While at least some historic buildings—notably the castle and the town hall—were restored, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were replaced by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabit ants. As part of Narvas transformation into a Soviet place, new monuments were erected to commemorate the fallen of the Great Patriotic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 All remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Prince, was destroyed by artillery fire and the bronze lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and maintain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704. As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the maintenance of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence; yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were returned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas economy went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic break with the Soviet past. The last stand o f the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993: with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the national government standing firm and refusing to acknowledge the legality of the vote, and no support forthcoming from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to accept that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles now called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b). At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda: the aim was rather to tip the overall political balance within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as developing new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the principal identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not preclude the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of residence. Between 1989 and 1991, the movement to ass ert Estonian sovereignty gained support from a significant minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could subscribe to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West. Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 census revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). Even so, the collapse of the USSR inevitably created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002; Budryte 2005; Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to identify themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local place of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon. The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local population from seeking election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the grounds of special services rendered to the state. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and interest groups. The city governments elected during the period 1993 2005—a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politics—were far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wid er Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the installation of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an attempt to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish textile firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Estonian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was proof that Narva was finally beginning to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20 In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemorating—inter alia—the victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city. Yet the post-1993 political e