TALLINN, Estonia - Estonia removed a Soviet war memorial from downtown Tallinn under cover of darkness early Friday, carrying out a plan that has rankled Russia and provoked protests that left one person dead and dozens injured.
The government would not say where it took the 6-foot-tall Bronze Soldier but spokesman Martin Jasko said the statue ultimately would be relocated to the military's Defense Forces cemetery in the Estonian capital.
The removal brought more angry words from Russia, which called on international organizations to take action to "cool the ardor of the Estonian authorities," RIA-Novosti news agency quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying.
Many ethnic Estonians consider the memorial a painful reminder of the hardships they endured under Soviet rule, and wanted it removed from the city center.
But Estonia's ethnic Russians -- roughly one-third of the country's 1.3 million population -- see the statue as a tribute to Red Army soldiers who died fighting Nazi Germany and had vowed to protect it.
The memorial includes the remains of 14 Soviet soldiers buried nearby and whose remains are also to be removed in the days to come. Workers erected a tent over the memorial Thursday to shield the exhumations from public view.
A demonstration of about 1,500 people at the site turned violent when a small group of protesters tried to break through a police line protecting the monument. In the violence that followed, angry demonstrators smashed windows and hurled rocks and bottles at police who tried to disperse the crowds with stun grenades. A bus shelter was set on fire as the clashes were followed by vandalism and looting.
One person was stabbed to death, the Interior Ministry said. Jasko said 56 people were injured, including 12 police officers. Some 300 protesters were detained.
By midnight, the situation was under control and most protesters had gone home. But because of the tense situation, authorities decided to go ahead with the removal overnight, the government said in a statement.
The dispute over the monument has aggravated tensions between Estonia and Russia. Anticipating unrest, Estonia's border guards this week stepped up security checks on the frontier with Russia and Tallinn's police force was beefed up with reinforcements from across the country.
"I think it's absolutely repulsive," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday. "I think this is blasphemy."
Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov called for economic sanctions against Estonia and rerouting the transit of Russian exports to other countries.
Soviet troops invaded the Baltic countries -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- in 1940, but were pushed out by the Nazis a year later. The Red Army retook them in 1944 and occupied them until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
