Perched on the bluff next to Maarjamäe Palace, this large Soviet-era monument consists of an elegant bowed obelisk set amid a large crumbling concrete plaza. The obelisk was erected in 1960 to commemorate the Soviet troops killed in 1918 – hardly a popular sentiment, as the war was against Estonia and all Estonian monuments to their dead were destroyed shortly after the Soviet takeover (many have since been re-erected).
The remainder of the complex – broad concrete avenues, pointy protrusions and all – was built in 1975 as a memorial to Red Army soldiers killed fighting the Nazis.It was built partly over a war cemetery housing 2300 German dead, dating from 1941. The cemetery was rededicated in 1998 and is now delineated by sets of triple granite crosses in the style common to German WWII military cemeteries throughout Europe.