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  History   1850–1918. National awa ...   The emergence of Estoni ...
1850–1918. National awakening

 
The emergence of Estonian independence
  On 15 March 1917, after Nicholas II renounced the throne and the Romanoff dynasty collapsed, the Provisional government in Russia declared a new course towards establishing a democratic republic. A great number of political parties immediately sprang up in Estonia. By appointing Jaan Poska (1866–1920) the Estonian provincial commissar, the new central government handed the local administration over to Estonian politicians. On 12 April 1917, under the pressure of the ever increasing demands for autonomy that the Estonians had been voicing since 1905, the Provisional government issued a decree on the provisional management of the administrative government and local government. Thus, Estonia (North-Estonia) and North-Livonia (South-Estonia) were united into one administrative unit, locally governed and with elements of autonomy included (Estonians were the only nation among all other minorities in Russia to achieve this). The commissar formed the Estonian Provincial Assembly (Diet) — the first all-Estonian representative body — and a Land Council as its executive body. The Diet included all the main political parties.
 
  The workers’ and soldiers’ revolutionary councils existed as a parallel power. These consisted of the soldiers and sailors of the Russian armed forces based in Estonia, and the multinational members of the working class at the huge Tallinn and Narva enterprises.
 
  With the exception of the bolsheviks, who propagated the idea of international world revolution, all Estonian parties shared the view that Estonia had to become an autonomous part of the Russian democratic federal republic. As a political ideal, some Estonian leaders (Jaan Tõnisson) already mentioned independent statehood and a complete break from Russia. In defence of Estonian national interests, the Estonian soldiers and officers serving in the Russian army were united into a national army unit, an Estonian division.
 
Autor: Eesti Instituut
Manifest to all the peoples of Estonia
  In October 1917, the bolsheviks seized power, soon established a one-party dictatorship and started to implement the utopian ideals of their egalitarian communism. The Soviet power nationalised the banks and large enterprises and prepared to assume possession of the mainly Baltic German manor houses. As it neglected to give land to the peasants and ignored the pursuits of national self-determination, it failed to find support among most of the Estonian population. On 28 November 1917, the Land council proclaimed itself the highest power in Estonia until the convening of the Constituent Assembly. This act declared, for the first time, the Estonians’ right to determine their own fate. The first step towards real statehood was thus taken. The bolsheviks then forcefully dissolved the Land Council and the leading Estonian politicians were compelled to go underground.
 
  At the early-1918 Constituent Assembly election, organised by the bolsheviks, two-thirds of the voters supported the parties who stood for national statehood. The result being clearly the opposite to what the bolsheviks had expected, they immediately proclaimed the elections null and void. On 19 February, the Committee of Elders of the Land Council decided to proclaim Estonian independence. For that purpose, a Rescue Committee with special mandates was set up, involving Konstantin Päts (chairman, 1874–1956), Jüri Vilms (1889–1918) and Konstantin Konik (1873–1936).
 
  In February 1918, the peace negotiations between Soviet Russia and Germany were broken off. Besides the troops of the Russian Provisional Government, the invading Germans forced the bolshevik rifle brigades out of Estonia. On 24 February 1918, during the military interregnum, the Rescue Committee published the manifesto of the Committee of Elders, Manifesto to All Peoples of Estonia. The manifesto declared Estonia a democratic republic within its historical and ethnic borders which would be neutral in the Russian-German conflict. The same day the Rescue Committee appointed Konstantin Päts as head of the new Estonian Provisional Government.
 
  Next day, Tallinn was invaded by German troops. Urged on by the Baltic German upper classes, the occupying forces attempted to turn the conquered Latvian and Estonian areas into a Baltic Dutchy in personal union with Germany. The attempts failed. In May 1918, Great Britain, France and Italy recognised the independence of Estonia de facto. On the basis of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty’s supplementary Berlin Treaty of 27 August 1918, Soviet Russia renounced its state sovereignty over Estonia.
 
  With the collapse of the German occupying regime, the Estonian Provisional Government started work on 19 November 1918. On the pretext of supporting the local bolsheviks, the Soviet Russian army, having tried to establish communist power within the tsarist empire, marched into Estonia on 28 November. The Estonian War of Independence broke out. On 29 November, the Estonian bolsheviks declared regional local government in Narva under the name of the Estonian Workers’ Commune. By early January 1919, the Red Army had conquered two-thirds of Estonia. The Estonian national forces, having started their counteroffensive only a few dozen kilometres from Tallinn, pushed the enemy out of the country by February the same year. The Estonian army under the leadership of general Johan Laidoner (1884–1953) was strongly supported by the British navy and volunteers from Finland, Sweden and Denmark. Estonia received financial aid and supplies also from France and the USA.
 
Autor: Eesti Filmiarhiiv
Armoured train and its crew in the War of Independence
  During the massive onslaught which started in spring, the Estonian troops, together with the white Russians, came close to St Petersburg in the east and conquered Pskov. In summer 1919, the Landeswehr war, as it is known in history, broke out. The opposing sides were Estonian troops who had chased the red rifle brigades out of North Latvia and general Rüdiger von der Goltz’s Baltic German volunteers and the German army. In the course of the main battle raging around the town of Cesis on 19–22 June, the Estonians crushed their ‘historical enemy’, pressed as far as Riga and helped the Latvian national government to its feet.
 
  With the military actions retreating from Estonian territory, the elections for the Estonian Constituent Assembly took place in April 1919 with the participation of 10 parties and political groupings. The majority in the 120-member Constituent Assembly, formed according to the principles of proportional representation, was gained by the leftist parties. The first plenipotentiary legislative body in the history of Estonian national statehood adopted a declaration of Estonian statehood, explaining to the world the historical reasons for Estonia’s split from Russia. On 4 June, the temporary authority of Estonia’s government was legalised. On 10 October 1919, the Land Reform Act was passed which abolished the land ownership of the Baltic German overlords.
 
  The Soviet Russian troops who suffered heavy losses attacking the well-fortified defence positions on Estonian borders, agreed to a truce on 31 December, and on 2 February 1920, a peace treaty between the Republic of Estonia and the Russian SFSR was signed in Tartu. Russia was thus the first country to recognise Estonia de jure, relinquishing ‘forever its rights of sovereignty that Russia had over the Estonian people and country’. The 14-month War of Independence had claimed 3588 lives and 13 775 were wounded on the Estonian side.
 
  The peace treaty granted favourable borders to Estonia and the amount of 15 million gold roubles from Russia’s gold fund. Soviet Russia, however, failed to meet several points of the treaty from the very start. For example the returning of the assets and industrial equipment evacuated to Russia during the First World War, the right to return home for all Estonians living in Russia, etc. Still, about 38 000 Estonians managed to leave Russia after the signing of the treaty.
 
  The foundation for Estonian independence lay in the people’s strong desire for self-determination and their own state, the more so that the necessary domestic policy preconditions were already there. An additional plus was the exceptionally favourable international situation that did not enable either of the historical great powers in the Baltic Sea region to retain their hold in the Baltic countries — Russia and Germany, both weakened by the war and revolution. The Entente countries who emerged victorious from the Great War, were keen to reduce Germany’s power in the global strategic sense — for them, the Republic of Estonia was also a link in the anti-bolshevik struggle.
 
  For the first time since the 13th century, the Estonians achieved complete independence and for the first time in history they now had their own statehood. In the course of half a century, the class-based country people had turned into a socially differentiated nation.
 
   
National awakening Russification period Emergence of parties and the 1905 revolution The post-revolutionary situation and World War I (1907–1917) The emergence of Estonian independence