History

History of Estonia

Ancient

Human settlement in Estonia became possible 11,000–13,000 years ago, when the ice from the last glacial era melted away. The oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was located on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in southern Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating, it was settled around 11,000 years ago, at the beginning of the 9th millennium BC.

Evidence has been found of hunting and fishing communities existing around 6500 BC near the town of Kunda in northern Estonia. Bone and stone artifacts similar to those found at Kunda have been discovered elsewhere in Estonia, as well as in Latvia, northern Lithuania and in southern Finland. The Kunda culture belongs to the middle stone age, or mesolithic period.

The end of the Bronze Age and the early Iron Age were marked by great cultural changes. The most significant was the transition to farming, which has remained at the core of Estonian economy and culture. From approximately the 1st to 5th centuries AD, resident farming was widely established, the population grew, and settlement expanded. Cultural influences from the Roman Empire reached Estonia, and this era is therefore also known as the Roman Iron Age.

A more troubled and war-ridden middle Iron Age followed with external dangers coming both from the Baltic tribes, who attacked across the southern land border, and from overseas. Several Scandinavian sagas refer to campaigns against Estonia. Estonian pirates conducted similar raids in the Viking age and sacked and burned the Swedish town of Sigtuna in 1187.[1]

Christianity

By the early 13th century, Estonia was divided into eight large counties — Saaremaa, Läänemaa, Rävala, Harju, Viru, Järva, Sakala, and Ugandi. Annual consultations were held by representatives of several counties and developments took the direction of establishing a state. Estonia until this time retained a pagan religion centred around a deity called Tharapita.

Estonia was Christianised when the German "Livonian Brothers of the Sword" invaded southern Estonia as part of the Northern Crusades in the early 13th century. At the same time, Denmark attempted to take possession of northern Estonia. Estonia was consolidated under the two forces by 1227. Northern Estonia remained a possession of Denmark until 1346. Tallinn (known as Reval at the time) was given its Lübeck Rights in 1248 and joined the Hanseatic League at the end of the 13th century. In 1343, the people of northern Estonia and Saaremaa rebelled against German rule in the St. George's Night Uprising, which was put down by 1344. There were unsuccessful Russian invasions in 1481 and 1558. After 1524, during the Protestant Reformation, Estonia converted to Lutheranism.

Sweden and Russia

During the Livonian War in 1561, northern Estonia submitted to Swedish control, while southern Estonia briefly came under the control of Poland in the 1580s. In 1625, mainland Estonia came entirely under Swedish rule. Estonia was administratively divided between the provinces of Estonia in the north and Livonia in southern Estonia and northern Latvia, a division which persisted until the early 20th century.

In 1631, the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus forced the nobility to grant the peasantry greater rights, although serfdom was retained. In 1632 a printing press and university were established in the city of Tartu (known as Dorpat at the time). This period is known in Estonian history as "the Good Old Swedish Time."

Following the Great Northern War, the Swedish empire lost Estonia to Russia (1710 de facto, and 1721 de jure, by the Treaty of Nystad). However, the upper classes and the higher middle class remained primarily Baltic German. The war devastated the population of Estonia, but it recovered quickly. Although the rights of peasants were initially weakened, serfdom was abolished in 1816 in the province of Estonia and in 1818 in Livonia.

Gaining independence

As a result of the abolition of serfdom and the availability of education to the native Estonian-speaking population, an active Estonian nationalist movement started in the 19th century. It began on a cultural level, resulting in the establishment of Estonian language literature, theatre and professional music and the formation of the Estonian national identity. Among the leaders of the movement were Johann Voldemar Jannsen, Jakob Hurt and Carl Robert Jakobson. Significant accomplishments were the publication of the national epic, Kalevipoeg, in 1862, and the organization of the first national song festival in 1869.

Kihnu seashoreIn response to a period of Russification initiated by the Russian empire in the 1890s, Estonian nationalism took on more political tones, with intellectuals first calling for greater autonomy, and later, complete independence from the Russian empire. Following the October Revolution, Estonia declared itself an independent republic on February 24, 1918. After winning the Estonian Liberation War against Soviet Russia (the Treaty of Tartu was signed in February 2, 1920), Estonia maintained its independence for twenty-two years. Initially a parliamentary democracy, the parliament (Riigikogu) was disbanded in 1934, following political unrest caused by the global economic crisis. Subsequently the country was ruled by decree by Konstantin Päts, who became President in 1938, the year parliamentary elections resumed.

Under the USSR

Main article: History of Estonia#Period of Soviet and German occupation

Estonia was occupied by Soviet troops in June 1940, as a consequence of the secret amendment to the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Estonia was formally annexed by the Soviet Union in August 1940 as the Estonian SSR. Many of the country's political and intellectual leaders were killed or deported to remote areas of the USSR by the Soviet authorities during 1940 to 1941. The repressions also included actions taken against thousands of ordinary people. When the German Operation Barbarossa started against the Soviet Union, thousands of young Estonian men were forcibly drafted into the Red Army. Hundreds of political prisoners were killed whom the retreating Soviets had no time to move. The country was occupied by the Third Reich from 1941 to 1944, when Soviet forces reconquered it after fierce battles in the northeast of the country on the Narva river and on the Tannenberg Line (Sinimäed). In the face of imminent re-occupation by the Red Army, tens of thousands of people chose to either flee the country to Finland or Sweden or retreat together with the Germans. In 1949, in response to slow progress in forming collective farms, as prescribed by the Soviet ideology, tens of thousands of people were forcibly deported in a few days either to labor camps or Siberia where half of them 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 guerilla 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.

Western bank of OsmussaarIn 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. Soviet rule significantly slowed Estonia's economic growth, resulting in a wide "wealth gap" in comparison with neighboring democratic countries (e.g., Finland and Sweden).

Militarization was another aspect of the Soviet regime. Large parts of the country and especially the coastal areas were restricted to anyone but the Soviet military. Most of the northern, northwestern and western sea shore and all of the islands (including Saaremaa and Hiiumaa) were declared "border zones". Estonians not directly living there were restricted from travelling there without a permit and could be 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 Navy'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 the aforementioned industrialization and militarization. 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 part), Russification and state-orchestrated immigration had achieved a level at which it started sparking popular protests.

Return to Independence

The tide turned as the Soviet Union ran into economic difficulties as a consequence of the Cold War and began to disintegrate. As the situation evolved, a movement for more Estonian self-governance started. In the initial period of 1987-1989, this was partially for more economic independence, but as the Soviet Union weakened and it became increasingly obvious that nothing short of full independence would do, the country began a course towards self-determination.

In 1989, a landmark demonstration was held for more independence, called The Baltic Way. During the demonstration a human chain of more than two million people was formed, stretching through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, (both Lithuania and Latvia having had similar fates of occupation and similar aspirations for regaining independence as Estonia).

Estonia regained independence on August 20, 1991, with the Singing Revolution during the Soviet military coup attempt in Russia and the following collapse of the Soviet Union. The first country to diplomatically re-recognize Estonia's reclaimed independence was Iceland, closely followed by Denmark.

The last Russian troops left on August 31, 1994. Estonia joined NATO on March 29, 2004 and the European Union on May 1, 2004.