If the destruction of the Berlin Wall came to symbolize freedom in Central Europe, for the republics of the former Soviet Union it was the construction and recognition of new walls in the form of national borders that represented liberation. In the case of Estonia, the end of what was considered illegal Soviet occupation marked a return to the country's republic's rightful place as an independent, European nation. In demographic respects, however, Estonia could not easily escape the legacies of Soviet rule, due in part to the migration of hundreds of thousands of non-ethnic Estonians to the Estonian SSR. Far from completing a clean break with the past, Estonian independence has replaced legal distinctions between nationalities with social and symbolic boundaries between ethnic groups.