Estonia
From Metapedia
Estonia officially the Republic of Estonia (Estonian: Eesti or Eesti Vabariik; Germanic languages: Estland), is a country in Northern Europe. Estonia has land borders to the south with Latvia and to the east with Russia. It is separated from Finland in the north by the Gulf of Finland and from Sweden in the west by the Baltic Sea.
Estonia has been a member of the European Union since May 1, 2004 and of NATO since March 29, 2004.
The Estonians are a Finnic people closely related to the Finns, with the Estonian language sharing many similarities to Finnish. The modern name of Estonia is thought to originate from the Roman historian Tacitus, who in his book Germania (ca. 98 AD) described a people called the Aestii. Similarly, ancient Scandinavian sagas refer to a land called Eistland. Early Latin and other ancient sources of the country's name are Estia and Hestia.
[edit] History
The land area that now makes up Estonia was settled immediately after the Ice Age, beginning from around 8500 BC. After the Northern Crusades, being conquered by Danes and Germans in 1227, Estonia was ruled initially by Denmark in the north and by Livonian order in the South. 1943-1562 the whole Estonia was a part of Livonian Confederation. Estonia became a part of Kingdom of Sweden from the 16th century to 1721, when it was ceded to the Russian Empire. Throughout this period the Baltic German nobility enjoyed autonomy, where the language of administration and education was German. The Estophile Enlightenment Period in 1750-1840 led to the Estonian national awakening in the middle of the 19th century. In 1918 the Estonian Declaration of Independence was issued. The Estonian War of Independence ensued on two fronts between the newly proclaimed state and Bolshevist Russia to the east and the forces of the United Baltic Duchy, Baltische Landeswehr to the south, resulting in the Tartu Peace Treaty recognising Estonian independence in perpetuity. Prior to the Second World War, Estonia was occupied and illegally annexed by the Soviet Union as a result of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact. During the war Estonia was occupied by Germany, then reoccupied by the Soviet Union in 1944. Estonia regained independance in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR and joined the European Union in 2004.
The region has been populated since the end of the last glacial era, about 10000 B.C. The earliest traces of human settlement in Estonia are connected with Kunda Culture. The Early Mesolithic Pulli settlement is located by the Pärnu River. It has been dated to the beginning of the 9th millennium BC. The Kunda Culture received its name from the Lammasmäe settlement site in northern Estonia, which dates from earlier than 8500. Bone and stone artifacts similar to those found at Kunda have been discovered elsewhere in Estonia, as well as in Latvia, northern Lithuania and southern Finland.
Until the early 1980s the arrival of Finnic peoples, the ancestors of the Estonians, Finns, Livonians on the shores of Baltic sea around 3000 B.C. was associated with the Comb Ceramic Culture. However , such a linking of archaeologically defined cultural entities with linguistic ones cannot be proven and it has been suggested that the increase of settlement finds in the period is more likely to have been associated with an economic boom related to the warming of climate. Some researchers have even argued that a Uralic form of language may have been spoken in Estonia and Finland since the end of the last glaciation.
The beginning of the Neolithic period is marked by the ceramics of the Narva culture, appear in Estonia at the beginning of the 5th millennium. The oldest finds date from around 4900 B.C. The Narva type ceramics are found throughout almost the entire Esonian coastal region and on the islands. The stone and bone tools of the era have a notable similarity with the artifacts of the Kunda culture. The beginning of the Late Neolithic Period about 3200 B.C. is characterized by the appearance of Comb Ceramic with corded decoration and well-polished stone axes (s.c. boat-shape axes). Evidence of agriculture is provided by charred grain of wheat on the wall of a corded-ware Comb Ceramic vessel found in Iru settlement. Osteological analysis show an attempt was made to domesticate the wild boar.
The beginning of the Bronze Age in Estonia is dated to approximately 1800 B.C. The development of the borders between the Finnic peoples and the Balts was under way. The first fortified settlements, Asva and Ridala on the island of Saaremaa and Iru in the Northern Estonia began to be built. The development of shipbuilding facilitated the spread of bronze. Changes took place in burial customs, a new type of burial ground spread from Germanic to Estonian areas, stone cist graves and cremation burials became increasingly common aside small number of boat-shaped stone graves.
The Pre-Roman Iron Age began in Estonia about 500 B.C. and lasted until the middle of the 1.st century A.D. The oldest iron items were imported, although since the first century iron was smelted from local marsh and lake ore. Settlement sites were located mostly in places that offered natural protection. Fortresses were built, although used temporarily. The appearance of square Celtic fields surrounded by enclosures in Estonia date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. The majority of stones with man-made indents, which presumably were connected with magic designed to increase crop fertility, date from this period. A new type of grave, quadrangular burial mounds began to develop. Burial traditions show the clear beginning of social stratification.
The Roman Iron Age in Estonia is roughly dated to between 50 and 450 A.D., the era that was affected by the influence of the Roman Empire. In material culture this is reflected by few Roman coins, some jewellery and artefacts. The abundance of iron artifacts in Southern Estonia speaks of closer mainland ties with southern areas while the islands of western and northern Estonia communicated with their neighbors mainly by sea. By the end of the period three clearly defined tribal dialectical areas: Northern Estonia, Southern Estonia, and Western Estonia including the islands had emerged, the population of each having formed its own understanding of identity.
The name of Estonia occurs first in a form of Aestii in the first century AD by Tacitus, however, it might have indicated Baltic tribes living in the area. In Northern Sagas (9th century) the term started to be used to indicate the Estonians.
In the first centuries AD political and administrative subdivisions began to emerge in Estonia. Two larger subdivisions appeared: the parish (kihelkond) and the county (maakond). The parish consisted of several villages. Nearly all parishes had at least one fortress. The defense of the local area was directed by the highest official, the parish elder. The county was composed of several parishes, also headed by an elder. By the 13th century the following major counties had developed in Estonia: Saaremaa (Osilia), Läänemaa (Rotalia or Maritima), Harjumaa (Harria), Rävala (Revalia), Virumaa (Vironia), Järvamaa (Jervia), Sakala (Saccala), and Ugandi (Ugaunia).
Ptolemy in his Geography III in the middle of the 2nd century CE mentions the Osilians among other dwellers on the Baltic shore.
According to the fifth-century Roman historian Cassiodorus the people known to Tacitius as the Aestii were the Estonians. The extent of their territory in early medieval times is disputed but the nature of their religion is not. They were known to the Scandinavians as experts in wind-magic, as were the Lapps (known at the time as Finns) in the North.
The Chudes as mentioned by a monk Nestor in the earliest Russian chronicles, were the Ests or Esthonians. According to Nestor in 1030 Yaroslav I the Wise invaded the country of the Chuds and laid the foundations of Yuriev, (the historical Russian name of Tartu, Estonia). According to Old East Slavic chronicles the Chudes where one of the founders of the Rus' state.
In the 11th century the Scandinavians are frequently chronicled as combating the Vikings from the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. With the rise of Christianity, centralized authority in Scandinavia and Germany eventually lead to Baltic crusades. The east Baltic world was transformed by military conquest: First the Livs, Letts and Estonians, then the Prussians and the Finns underwent defeat, baptism, military occupation and sometimes extermination by groups of Germans, Danes and Swedes.
[edit] World War II
Russian Occupation
Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940, after Joseph Stalin gained Hitler's agreement to divide Eastern Europe into "spheres of special interest" according to the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocol. On September 24, 1939, warships of the Red Navy appeared off Estonian ports and Soviet bombers began a threatening patrol over Tallinn and the nearby countryside.The Estonian government was forced to give their assent to an agreement which allowed the USSR to establish military bases and station 25,000 troops on Estonian soil for "mutual defence".
On June 12, 1940 the order for a total military blockade on Estonia was given to the Soviet Baltic Fleet.
On June 14, 1940 while world’s attention was focused on the fall of Paris to Germany a day earlier, the Soviet military blockade on Estonia went into effect, two Soviet bombers downed a Finnish passenger airplane "Kaleva" flying from Tallinn to Helsinki carrying three diplomatic pouches from the U.S. legations in Tallinn, Riga and Helsinki.
On June 16 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Estonia. The Red Army exited from their military bases in Estonia on June 17 . The following day, some 90,000 additional troops entered the country. On June 17 1940 The Estonian government decided, given the overwhelming Soviet force, not to resist, to avoid bloodshed and open war. The military occupation of Estonia was complete by the June 21 1940.
Most of the Estonian Defence Forces and the Estonian Defence League surrendered according to the orders believing that resistance was useless and were disarmed by the Red Army. Only the Estonian Single Signal Battalion stationed in Tallinn at Raua Street showed resistance. As the Red Army brought in additional reinforcements supported by six armoured fighting vehicles, the battle lasted several hours until sundown. There was one dead, several wounded on the Estonian side and about 10 killed and more wounded on the Soviet side. Finally the military resistance was ended with negotiations and the Single Signal Battalion surrendered and was disarmed.
In August 1940, Estonia was formally annexed by the Soviet Union as the Estonian SSR. Those who had fallen short of the "political duty" of voting Estonia into the USSR, who had failed to have their passports stamped for so voting were allowed to be shot in the back of the head by Soviet tribunals. The repressions followed with the mass deportations carried out by the Soviets in Estonia on 14 June 1941. Many of the country's political and intellectual leaders were killed or deported to remote areas of the USSR by the Soviet authorities in 1940-1941. Repressive actions were also taken against thousands of ordinary people.
When the German Operation Barbarossa started against the Soviet Union, about 34,000 young Estonian men were forcibly drafted into the Red Army. Less than 30% of them survived the war. Political prisoners who could not be evacuated were executed by the NKVD.
Many countries including the United States did not recognize the seizure of Estonia by the USSR. Such countries recognized Estonian diplomats and consuls who still functioned in many countries in the name of their former governments. The aging diplomats persisted in this anomalous situation until the ultimate restoration of Baltic independence.
Contemporary Russian politicians, however, deny that the Republic of Estonia was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. They state that the Soviet troops had entered Estonia in 1940 following the agreements and with the consent of the government of the Republic of Estonia, regardless of how their actions can be interpreted today. They maintain that the USSR was not in a state of war and was not waging any combat activities on the territory of Estonia, therefore there can be no talk about 'occupation'. The official position of Russia is a refusal to recognize the fact of Estonia's occupation and claims that Estonians decided to lose their statehood voluntarily and officially describes separatist fighters of 1944-1953 as "bandits" or "nazis". The Russian position isn't recognized internationally.
German Occupation
Subsequently, the country was occupied by Germany from 1941 to 1944. Although initially the Germans were perceived as liberators from the USSR and its repressions by most Estonians, who hoped for the restoration of the country's independence, it was soon realized that they were but another occupying power. Estonia was incorporated into the German province of Ostland. That made many Estonians not willing to side with the Germans, joined the Finnish army to fight against the Soviet Union. Finnish Infantry Regiment 200 AKA (Estonian: soomepoisid) was formed out of Estonian volunteers in Finland. Many Estonians were recruited in to the German armed forces (including Waffen SS), the majority did so only in 1944 when the threat of a new invasion of Estonia by the Red Army had become imminent and it was clear that Germany would not win the war.
By January 1944, the front was pushed back by the Soviet Army almost all the way to the former Estonian border. Narva was evacuated. Jüri Uluots, the last legitimate prime minister of the Republic of Estonia (according to the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia) prior to its fall to the Soviet Union in 1940, delivered a radio address that implored all able-bodied men born from 1904 through 1923 to report for military service (Before this, Uluots had opposed Estonian mobilization.) The call drew support from all across the country: 38,000 volunteers jammed registration centers. Several thousand Estonians who had joined the Finnish army came back across the Gulf of Finland to join the newly formed Territorial Defense Force, assigned to defend Estonia against the Soviet advance. It was hoped that by engaging in such a war Estonia would be able to attract Western support for the cause of Estonia's independence from the USSR and thus ultimately succeed in achieving independence.
Soviet Occupation
Soviet forces reconquered Estonia in the autumn of 1944 after fierce battles in the northeast of the country on the Narva river and on the Tannenberg Line (Sinimäed). In the face of the country being re-occupied by the Red Army, tens of thousands of people chose to either retreat together with the Germans or flee to Finland or Sweden, becoming war refugees and later, expatriates
In 1949, in response to slow progress in forming collective farms, about 20,000 people were forcibly deported over a few days either to labor camps or Siberia. Within the few weeks that followed, almost all of the remaining rural households had been subjected to collectivisation.
Half of the deported perished; the other half were not allowed to return until the early 1960s (several years after Stalin's death). That and previous repressions in 1940-1941 sparked a guerrilla war against the Soviet authorities in Estonia which was waged into the early 1950s by the so called "forest brothers" (metsavennad) consisting mostly of Estonian veterans of both the German and Finnish armies as well as some civilians.
In addition to the human and material losses suffered due to war, thousands of civilians were killed and tens of thousands of people deported from Estonia by the Soviet authorities until Joseph Stalin's death in 1953. Material damage caused by the world war and the following Soviet rule significantly slowed Estonia's economic growth, resulting in a wide wealth gap in comparison with neighboring unoccupied countries such as Finland and Sweden.
Militarization was another aspect of the Soviet regime. Large parts of the country, especially the coastal areas were restricted to anyone but the Soviet military. Most of the sea shore and all sea islands (including Saaremaa and Hiiumaa) were declared "border zones". Estonians not directly living there were restricted from traveling there without a permit and were punished if they did so. A notable closed military installation was the city of Paldiski which was entirely closed to all public access. The city had a support base for the Soviet Baltic Fleet's submarines and several large military bases, including a nuclear submarine training centre complete with a full-scale model of a nuclear submarine with working nuclear reactors. The reactor building passed to Estonian control a year after the Soviet troops left.
Russification was another effect brought about by the Soviet occupation. Hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking migrants (mostly from the Russian Federation or Ukraine) were relocated to Estonia by the Soviet administration and Communist Party to conduct industrialization and militarization, contributing an increase of about half million to Estonia's population within 45 years of occupation and colonisation. The immigrants stayed on to form part of the population. By 1980, when part of the Moscow Olympic Games were also held in Tallinn (the Olympic Regatta), Russification and state-orchestrated immigration had achieved a level at which it started sparking popular protests.
However Russia today maintains that Soviet forces liberated the Estonian SSR from German occupation.
[edit] Demographics
Linguistically, Estonian is closely related to the Finnish language. Estonians, as an ethnic group, are a Finnic people. Indigenous Estonian-speaking ethnic Estonians constitute nearly 70% of the total population of about 1.3 million people.
First and second generation immigrants from various parts of the former Soviet Union (mainly Russia) comprise most of the remaining 30%. The latter, mostly Russian-speaking ethnic minorities, reside predominantly in the capital city (Tallinn) and the industrial urban areas in northeastern Estonia (Ida-Virumaa county). There is also a small group of Finnish descent, mainly from Ingermanland (Ingria).
A significant part of indigenous Baltic Germans left Estonia during the early 1920s, after land reforms and even dispossessions had taken place. But the majority of Baltic Germans left the country in late 1939, after Nazi Germany and USSR had agreed to assign Estonia into the Soviet 'sphere of influence' in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Historically, large parts of Estonia’s north-western coast and islands have been populated by an indigenous ethnically Swedish population called rannarootslased ("coastal Swedes"). The majority of Estonia's Swedish population fled to Sweden in 1944, escaping the advancing Soviet Army. Only a few hundred Swedes remained.
The country's official language is Estonian, a Finno-Ugric language which is closely related to Finnish. It has been influenced by German, and like Finnish contains many Swedish words. Russian is also widely spoken as a secondary language by thirty- to seventy-year-old ethnic Estonians, because Russian was taught as a compulsory second language during the Soviet era. Many younger Estonian people can usually speak English, having learned it as their first foreign language. Some Russians residing in Estonia do not speak Estonian, but many of those who remained after the collapse of the Soviet Union have begun to learn it.
After regaining independence in 1991, the authorities of Estonia did not automatically grant citizenship to anyone whose forebears did not have Estonian citizenship prior to the Soviet occupation of 1940. Although the long-term Russian settlers around Mustvee on Lake Peipus qualified for immediate citizenship, this policy affected people who had arrived in the country after 1940, the majority of whom were ethnic Russians. Knowledge of Estonian language and history was set as a condition for obtaining naturalized citizenship. The perceived difficulty of the initial language tests became a point of international contention, as the government of Russia, the European Union, and a number of human rights organizations objected on the grounds that they made it impossible for many Russians who had not learned the local language to gain citizenship in the short term. As a result, the tests were somewhat altered and the number of stateless persons has steadily decreased. According to Estonian officials, in 1992, 32% of residents lacked any form of citizenship. In July 2007, the Population Registry of the Estonian Ministry of the Interior reported that 8.5% of Estonia's residents have undefined citizenship and 7.8% have foreign citizenship.
According to the Estonian Statistical Office, ethnic Russians comprised 25.7% of the population in 2006. Of that 25.7%, approximately 27% of ethnic Russians in Estonia hold Russian citizenship, 35% hold Estonian citizenship, and 35% continue to have undefined citizenship. Residents without Estonian citizenship may not vote in Riigikogu (the national parliament) elections, residents without citizenship of any EU member state may not vote in European Parliament elections, but all legal residents regardless of citizenship status are eligible to vote in local (municipal) elections under Estonian law.
