Aili Jõgi (''née'' Aili Jürgenson; 24 May 1931 – 9 August 2017) was an

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

n schoolgirl who on the night of 8 May 1946, together with her school friend

Ageeda Paavel Ageeda Paavel (sometimes cited as Ageeda-Andrea Paavel) (born 15 August 1930) is an Estonian woman who, as a schoolgirl, on the night of 8 May 1946, together with her school friend Aili Jürgenson, blew up a Soviet war monument (a wooden memorial ...

, blew up a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

War reburial monument (a wooden memorial topped with a star): the preceding monument to the

Bronze Soldier The Bronze Soldier ( et, Pronkssõdur, russian: Бронзовый солдат, ''Bronzovyj soldat'') is the informal name of a controversial Soviet World War II war memorial in Tallinn, Estonia, built at the site of several war graves, which w ...

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...

. She was born in Tallinn. After the Soviet re-occupation of Estonia in 1944, the Soviet occupation authorities began systematically destroying the war memorials to the fallen in the

Estonian War of Independence The Estonian War of Independence ( et, Vabadussõda, literally "Freedom War"), also known as the Estonian Liberation War, was a defensive campaign of the Estonian Army and its allies, most notably the United Kingdom, against the Bolshevik westwa ...

, which had survived the war. On 15 April 1945 a monument by

Amandus Adamson Amandus Heinrich Adamson (12 November 1855 in Uuga-Rätsepa, near Paldiski, Estonia, then Russian Empire — 26 June 1929 in Paldiski, Estonia) was an Estonian sculptor and painter. Life Born into a seafaring family, Adamson excelled in wood car ...

, erected to 87 persons who had fallen in the

, was blown up in

Pärnu Pärnu () is the fourth largest city in Estonia. Situated in southwest Estonia, Pärnu is located south of the Estonian capital, Tallinn, and west of Estonia's second largest city, Tartu. The city sits off the coast of Pärnu Bay, an inlet o ...

with explosives. Also between 1944 and 1946 the gravestones of the Tallinn Military Cemetery were destroyed by the Soviet authorities and the Estonian graveyard was reused by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

. Aili Jõgi described why the two schoolgirls blew up a monument they considered a symbol of occupation and repression:

"How long should we watch this
red star A red star, five-pointed and filled, is a symbol that has often historically been associated with communist ideology, particularly in combination with the hammer and sickle, but is also used as a purely socialist symbol in the 21st century. I ...
, a memorial for Russian looters. At the time when all our statues are being destroyed. We just couldn't get our heads around it. We decided that if such robbers are raging in Estonia, they should see how one of their memorials gets blown up. We could have just doused the wooden thing with gasoline and set fire to it, but we wanted it to go with a bang!"

The newspapers did not report about the demolition and the local authorities managed to quickly restore the monument before

Victory Day Victory Day is a commonly used name for public holidays in various countries, where it commemorates a nation's triumph over a hostile force in a war or the liberation of a country from hostile occupation. In many cases, multiple countries may ob ...

, but the majority of the inhabitants of Tallinn were aware of the incident. The initiative of the girls was followed and similar monuments were also demolished in

Rakvere Rakvere is a town in northern Estonia and the administrative centre of the Lääne-Viru ''maakond'' (county), 20 km south of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea. Rakvere is the 8th most populous urban area in Estonia. Rakvere has a tota ...

and

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of ...

. Aili Jõgi was not a suspect initially, and continued to distribute flyers for the resistance movement with her classmates of a local high school. She was finally arrested after having tried to find a doctor to treat a wounded

forest brother The Guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an armed struggle which was waged by the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian partisans, called the Forest Brothers (also: the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars"; et, metsavennad, lv, me� ...

, secretly held in a bunker, as someone mentioned the blasted monument during interrogations. At the age of 14, she was taken to local

MVD The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (MVD; russian: Министерство внутренних дел (МВД), ''Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del'') is the interior ministry of Russia. The MVD is responsible for law enfor ...

The Evolution of Secret Police Forces
The

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

was renamed

in March 1946, however it continued to perform some functions of a

political police Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of a ...

at least until 1956. headquarters and detention center at Pagari Street in Tallinn, where she spent her 15th birthday. She was later found guilty as an under-aged terrorist and sent to a

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

labor camp in the Komi-Zyryan ASSR, to the west of the

Ural mountains The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...

in the north-east of the

East European Plain The East European Plain (also called the Russian Plain, "Extending from eastern Poland through the entire European Russia to the Ural Mountaina, the ''East European Plain'' encompasses all of the Baltic states and Belarus, nearly all of Ukraine, a ...

. She was exiled from the

Estonian SSR The Estonian SSR,, russian: Эстонская ССР officially the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic,, russian: Эстонская Советская Социалистическая Республика was an ethnically based adminis ...

for eight years. At the labor camp in the Komi-Zyryan ASSR, she worked in a

coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

and later married fellow prisoner Ülo Jõgi, an Estonian who had been convicted as a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

spy (he had been a veteran of the Erna group, organized jointly by Finnish military and German Abwehr) and exiled from Estonia for life. Thus, she and her husband could not return to Estonia until 1970. They both moved back to Ülo Jõgi's parental home in Tallinn in 1971. Back in Estonia, she worked as a secretary at an architect's office, and was also a

shooting sports Shooting sports is a group of competitive sport, competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms (firearms and airgun ...

instructor at a school in

Keila Keila (german: Kegel) is a town and an urban municipality in Harju County in north-western Estonia, 25 km southwest of Tallinn. Keila is also the location of administrative buildings of the surrounding Keila Parish, a rural municipality sep ...

. In February 1998, Jõgi and her friend Paavel were awarded the Estonian

Order of the Cross of the Eagle The Order of the Cross of the Eagle ( et, Kotkaristi teenetemärk; french: Ordre de la Croix de l'Aigle) was instituted in 1928 by the Estonian Defence League to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Estonian independence. It was adopted as a sta ...

for their fight against the

regime ("Freedom fighter of military merit") by the

Estonian President The president of the Republic of Estonia ( et, Eesti Vabariigi President) is the head of state of the Republic of Estonia. The current president is Alar Karis, elected by Parliament on 31 August 2021, replacing Kersti Kaljulaid. Estonia is ...

Lennart Meri Lennart Georg Meri (; 29 March 1929 – 14 March 2006) was an Estonian politician, writer, and film director. He served as the second president of Estonia from 1992 to 2001. Meri was among the leaders of the movement to restore Estonian independ ...

. Aili Jõgi and Ageeda Paavel are the only women awarded the Order of the Cross of the Eagle. Since the fall of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

, Jõgi was politically active in the Estonian Pro Patria party. In that capacity, she took part in round table talks with opponents of the removal of the

in 2007.

References

Decorations of the Republic of Estonia. Awarded in 1995-1998Common grave for and a memorial to Red Army soldiers on Tõnismägi, Tallinn (PDF file)(Word file)
Historical statement, compiled by Peeter Kaasik, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia, 2006
«Õhkijamemm»: kaua me seda pronkssõdurit kardame!

Postimees ''Postimees'' () is an Estonian daily newspaper established on 5 June 1857, by Johann Voldemar Jannsen. In 1891, it became the first daily newspaper in Estonia. Its current editor-in-chief is Priit Hõbemägi. The paper has approximately 250 ...

, 27 May 2006 — An interview with Aili Jõgi
Partial translation to English

Hon sprängde bronsstatyns föregångare

Dagens Nyheter ''Dagens Nyheter'' (, ), abbreviated ''DN'', is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It is published in Stockholm and aspires to full national and international coverage, and is widely considered Sweden's newspaper of record. History and profile ''Da ...

, May 13, 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Jogi, Aili 1931 births 2017 deaths Estonian women activists Estonian prisoners and detainees Gulag detainees Estonian independence activists Recipients of the Military Order of the Cross of the Eagle, Class III People from Tallinn