English portfolio (1)

Estonian history between
1710-1850 and 1850-1918

Contents

Contents 1
1710–1850 2
Population and social structure 3
Serfdom and the intensifying manorial economy 3
Influences of Pietism and the Moravian Brethren 4
Enlightenment and enlightened absolutism 5
1850–1918 7
The national awakening 7
The russification period 8
Emergence of parties and the 1905 revolution 10
The post- revolutionary situation and World War I (1907–1917) 13
Our opinion 17
References 18

1710–1850

The century and a half following the Great Northern War, which ended with the Peace of Uusikaupunki, was a relatively static period in Estonian history with few momentous events . This was the time of the crystallization and the culmination of serfdom, when various socio- political and cultural undercurrents were also active , preparing the ground for the industrial society and the national- democratic movement in the second half of the 19th century.
The 1710 of the corporations of knights and towns, until Alexander II (1855–1881), established the relationships between Estonia, Livonia and the Russian Empire . The Baltic Landesstaat reached its full development .
The freedom of action in the new provinces was naturally granted to one of the most firm ideological pillars of the tsarist empire — the Russian orthodox church ; though as the Landeskirche in the Estonian and Livonian territories, the Lutheran church long maintained a de facto predominance.
The most important organ of Baltic German local government was the Diet , consisting of all the noble families who had been ‘selected’ in a list of the eligible . Although jealously guarding their privileges, the knighthoods still never became entirely closed. Between sessions of a Diet, the legislative power of the knighthoods belonged to the Council of the Diet.
The towns were governed by the Town Councils, which supplemented their ranks from among the representatives of merchants and lawyers. The citizens and the inhabitants of a town did not coincide — most of the population had no civic rights . The lower class mainly consisted of Estonians . While an special status secured the supremacy of the Baltic knighthood and the German upper classes in towns, it considerably aggravated the legal and social situation of Estonians. It can be said that the pre-nationhood Landesstaat, with its strict social structure, effectively prevented Estonians from becoming Germans.
Considering their relatively small number, the beneficiaries of the Landesstaat were additionally protected by their disproportionally large representation amongst the Russian elite during the following two centuries . Many noblemen of the Baltic provinces had remarkable military careers, the most brilliant being Michael Barclay de Tolly who excelled in the war against Napoleon. Highly -educated and with good language skills, the share of Baltic Germans in the Russian diplomatic corps was considerable ; several became ministers and governors general.

Population and social structure

Systematic pillaging by Russian forces at the time of the Northern War, and the 1710–1711 plague epidemia, caused a huge demographic catastrophe. It is thought that after the Northern War there left no more than 150 000–170 000 Estonians. The early 18th -century post-war crisis marked the lowest ebb in the Estonian population. But due to a high natural population growth and partly also to immigration , the number of Estonians began to rise rapidly. In 1725, the Estonian population was 220 000, in 1765 , 400 000 and in 1858, 750 000.
Throughout the period, Estonia was mainly an agrarian society. The townspeople formed a modest 5 per cent of the whole population. By 1782 , their number had grown to 23 000. The biggest town was Tallinn with a population of 10 700; in Tartu the number was 3400. And there were some smaller towns like Rakvere and Paide, mercilessly plundered in the Northern War. Townspeople had to fight hard with the neighbouring landlords who considered them as. The population kept growing very slowly: in 1862 the number of townspeople was 64 000, which formed only 8.7 per cent of the population living on Estonian territory.
The Estonian population in 1782 was divided according to social class as follows: nobility 0.6%; the clergy, townspeople, and other free people (excluding the Swedish “free peasants” of the coast and islands , resident since the 13th century); peasants, of who’m most were serfs. The split between social classes in Estonia was further deepened by the virtual coincidence of the borders between social class and nationality . The most important category in determining one‘s social allegiance was the differentiation Deutsch and Undeutsch.
Nor did rural Estonians think of themselves as a nation : they rather considered themselves peasants whose identity was largely influenced by regional loyalty. The name they often used while referring to themselves — “ country people” — also seemed to be a sign of social self-determination. Climbing the social ladder in a society with a fixed class system was possible only for the very few. For an Estonian, this automatically meant Germanisation. Such a process of individuals revising their ethnic adherence, which had begun in the Middle Ages and continued until the early 20th century.

Serfdom and the intensifying manorial economy

The impact of the Swedish social order in Estonia continued under the Russian Empire. Although the Northern War meant a severe setback to the development of schools , the Swedish church and school systems remained practically unchanged. Most peasants learned to read at home, though the level of literacy in North Estonia was 40%, in South Estonia 55% and in Saaremaa Island 62%.
The 1739 declaration of Otto Fabian von Rosen , a Livonian district magistrate, postulated the landlords’ limitless right of ownership over the entire property and person of a peasant. It can be regarded as the ideal legislative model expressing the supremacy of the nobility. But everyday life during the serfdom period, which in Estonia has been researched even less than the agrarian legislation, was still largely shaped by the patriarchal relations between landlords and peasants, founded on customs and traditions . The rapid growth of the Estonian population in the 18th century has even been seen as a sign of the relatively tolerable circumstances of the region ’s peasantry.
The deterioration in the peasants’ circumstances was perhaps caused by general economic development rather than by their uneasy juridical status. Shortly after the Northern War, the landlords were compelled to reconfirm the rates fixed in the Wackenbuch (the officalcontract book) in the Swedish period, partly because of the shortage of labour. The rapid development of the manorial economy in the mid-18th century was founded on the spread of liquor distilling. The spirits sold in Russia , the mash from the distilleries was used to fatten the cattle , whose manure was fertilizing the fields. At the same time, the lifestyle of the nobility and other Baltic Germans became far more refined. Taking advantage of the economic boom, they erected grand neo- classical mansions surrounded by splendid parks which adorn the Estonian landscape even today.

Influences of Pietism and the Moravian Brethren

Being joined to Russia did not mean isolation for Estonia. It belonged to the German cultural sphere and was therefore able to participate in pan-European cultural and spiritual movements. During the first half of the 18th century, the influence of Pietism grew in strength, no longer hindered by the ideological pressure of the Swedish absolutist monarchy. The number of Baltic German students increased in Halle, the centre of German Pietism. One of the leaders of the movement, August Hermann Francke, also dispatched Pietist pastors to fill the numerous teaching posts at Estonian church and town schools left vacant by the Northern War.
Pietism stressed individual religious experience and encouraged the faithful to read the Bible themselves. The Pietists thus strove to develop the Estonian language and religious literature . The full vernacular Bible appeared in 1739. The translators tried to eliminate the vast difference between the ‘country language’ and ‘church language’. The Bible translation became the basic text that regulated the written Estonian language for more than a century.
Despite its enormous impact on the development of the Estonian language, individualistic Pietism found a direct response primarily among the German-speaking clergy and nobility. The Estonian peasantry appears to have welcomed the movement of the Moravian Brethren which had started in Herrnhut in Saxony. In contrast to the Pietism, emphasizing penitence in the spirit of the Old Testament , the christocratic theological approach of the Moravians made them an optimistic and popular movement. This began to spread widely among Estonian peasants in the 1730s, when the founder of the movement, Count Nikolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf , visited Estonia.
As in its ministries elsewhere, the Estonian Moravian organization was based on Zinzendorf’s congregational administration which divided each congregation into so-called choirs. The Moravian movement offered Estonian peasants new areas of activity and possibilities for self-development. The social standing and consciousness of the elite of congregation heads (schoolteachers, parish clerks and church wardens) encouraged other peasants to strive towards a disciplined and abstemious lifestyle and model farming. It is generally believed that the Moravian movement countered the tendencies towards Germanisation and prepared the ground for the growth of the Estonian national movement in the second half of the 19th century.
It should be kept in mind, however , that the Moravian movement never involved more than a fraction of the Estonian peasantry, and its regional penetration varied greatly . The latter took issue with the unregulated legislation between the Moravian congregation and the church. After the initial widespread awakening movement, manifesting several religious and social-revolutionary extremes (e.g. ecstatic sermons at meetings in Saaremaa and Võrumaa, in southeast Estonia, demanding Christian equality between peasants and landlords), from 1743 the Moravian congregation was officially forbidden for a long time.

Enlightenment and enlightened absolutism

After Pietism and the Moravian movement, the next spiritual trend to arrive in Estonia was the Enlightenment. Its ideas were propagated in the Baltic provinces by the German Enlightenment movement which sought support from absolutism and relied heavily on the Protestant church. The chief media in Estonia were books and the press; the first institutional forms of expression were the clubs , societies and freemasons’ lodges of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. During the Enlightenment, the Lutheran church, under Baltic German control , also adopted theological rationalism which relied on human reason in interpreting the Bible, and reduced Christianity to the status of mere moral teaching.
The popular literature of the time directed at the peasantry was the foundation of secular literature in the Estonian language. The purpose of Enlightenment literature was to offer the peasants, in an easily understandable form, some practical advice and knowledge : especially in the field of medicine.
Against the background of such political moderation, two critics of serfdom clearly stand out. They represent two generations of the Livonian Enlightenment — pastor Johann Georg Eisen ( 1717 –1779) and the man of letters Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850). Eisen was not merely concerned with the Baltic provinces, but he was the first to demand the abolition of serfdom and the peasants’ right to land throughout Russia. He laid his hopes on enlightened absolutism, trying to convince the empress Catherine II and the Russian high nobility of the social-economic inefficiency of serfdom. Merkel treated the ancient Livonian and Estonian peoples , or Latvians and Estonians, not only as suppressed peasants, but as nations forced into serfdom whose development had thus been artificially hampered.
Catherine II (1762–1796), on the whole, favored the Enlightenment. Her politics of enlightened absolutism aspired to modernize and unify the entire Russian Empire. The special status of the Baltic provinces was greatly reduced: the customs barriers between Estonia and Livonia and Russia were eliminated and an all-Russian tax system (poll tax) enforced. In connection with this, Russia’s first census was organized in the same year.
In 1783, the Russian guberniya system spread to the Estonian territories. It was called the ‘regency’ and signified a policy compromise by enlightened absolutism towards the Baltic German nobility. Catherine II partly curbed the nobility’s class privileges: the peerage roll lost its former significance, and the Councils of Diet were abolished. The Statthalterschaft extended townspeople’s rights also to non-Germans, allowing urban Estonians to get a foot on the social ladder and limited participation in politics.

1850–1918

The national awakening

The development of Estonia in the second half of the 19th century is characterized by general modernization; the reorganizing of a static agrarian society into a modern European society, industrialization, urbanisation and the success of the newly emerged nationalist awareness. The new passport regulation (1863) gave them first identification documents. It increased their freedom of movement and encouraged emigration to Russia. The 1866 peasant township law freed the peasants’ local government councils from the landlords’ authority and granted them extensive rights to decide their own economic and social affairs.
In the 1860s, Estonian peasants began buying farmsteads from the estates, at free market prices. Due to the shortage of land and the large number of buyers, the prices were much higher than in Russia. The peasants made use of long- term bank credits, which they later paid back from income received from growing flax and potatoes. By the end of the 19th century, the peasants in South Estonia (Livonian province ) possessed over 80% and in North Estonia (Estonian province) 50% of the available farmland.
Influenced by the French Revolution, the ideas of Romanticism and the newly emerging German national consciousness, the mid-19th century also witnessed the national awakening of the Estonians. The leading force in the Estonian national movement was the new elite — primarily the emerging intellectuals aspiring to better their social position , the middle layer consisting of civil servants, merchants and artisans, and, increasingly, the ethnic Estonian clergy. The low social status and the lack of the right to make any decisions , a result of the Russian central power and the Baltic German-dominated cultural situation, motivated the elite of the ‘awakened peasants’ to build up their own independent nation and national society. In 1857 Johann Voldemar Jannsen (1819–1890), replaced the term ‘country people’ with the word ‘Estonians’. Patriotic intellectuals encouraged Estonians to participate in public life, determined the legal and cultural requirements of the emerging nation, and organised the extensive sending of petitions to the Russian authorities.
At its height , in 1860–1880, the movement was governed by a politically moderate trend with their specific ethnic- linguistic aims. The trend stressed the need to develop national culture and education in Estonian. Pastor and linguist Jakob Hurt was convinced that the mission of a small nation can only be of a cultural and not of a political nature ; what counts is national identity, not statehood as such. The movement’s radical wing was headed by Carl Robert Jakobson, a pedagogue, writer and journalist, founder of Sakala, the first political newspaper in Estonian. Jakobson formulated the economic and political programme of the Estonian national movement, demanding equal political rights for Germans and Estonians. He regarded the Russian central government as the main anti-German ally.
The prevailing national- romantic tendency in Estonian art and literature was based on the ideas of the Enlightenment and idealised ‘ancient non-stratified’ society. Patriotic poems and songs extolled the beauty of Estonian nature and expressed ardent love for the native soil. Inspired by the folklore of the neighbouring Finns , a ‘ picture of the ancient Estonian world’ was constructed. Historical fiction sang high praises of the times of past freedom, and an image of 700 hundred years of slavery was implanted in the nation’s memory .
Estonian societies, choirs and orchestras were established in parishes. The money -raising operation which began in Viljandimaa turned into an all-Estonian mass organisation with its own chief committee which arranged various cultural events and agitation activities . This collection was intended for the setting up of the first Estonian-language higher popular school (called Estonian Alexander School in honour of Alexander I). The Society of Estonian Literati (1872–1893), founded in Tartu and consisting of Estonian intellectuals, advanced the Estonian written language, organised the gathering of folklore and ethnographic material , and published literature in their native tongue. The song and drama societies (i.e. theatrical association ) forming Vanemuine laid a foundation for an Estonian national theatre (the first performance took place in 1870) and, following the German example, organised the first song festival in 1869. One thousand singers-musicians and an audience of 12 000 participated in the event. The tradition , still maintained today, occupies the central part in shaping Estonian national consciousness.

The russification period

The systematic Russification of the empire’s western border territories started in Poland and Lithuania during the first half of the 19th century and intensified in the 1860s after another Polish uprising. The worst Russification period in Estonia and Latvia occurred between 1880 and 1890.
The Russian press took up the topic of German influence in the Baltic provinces. As early as the 1860s, the Slavophiles demanded the end of the autonomy in the Baltic provinces and a standardised administration. The unification of Germany (1871) and its subsequent development into a Great Power during the reign of Wilhelm II considerably increased the military-strategic importance of the Estonian and Latvian territories which bordered the Baltic Sea, between the extensively autonomous Finland and the rebellious Poland-Lithuania. The security of the capital St Petersburg became a serious issue for Russian. Tsarist Russia’s government circles were afraid of the Baltic Germans’ possible orientation towards Germany; especially worrying was the thought that by Germanising the Estonians and Latvians.
The first decisive steps in diminishing the Baltic German influence were taken at the end of the rule of Alexander II who was assassinated by the terrorists. The Russian central power became especially militant with the ascendance to the throne of Alexander III. As proof of his anti-German sentiments, the tsar refused to confirm the privileges of the Baltic nobility that formed the basis of local autonomy.
Changing the Baltic administrative system so that it conformed with the Russian one, shattered the medieval class-based way of life and facilitated the modernisation of society. The rights of the indigenous people, however, were not greatly extended — having escaped their Baltic German landlords, the Estonians instead found themselves under the direct pressure of the Russian bureaucratic regime . Instead of Germans, the high positions were now filled with Russians: these had no knowledge of the Estonian language, nor were they familiar with the local situation.
Attempts at Russification were most painfully felt in the field of culture — language, education, religion and the church, journalism and the activities of various cultural societies. By the end of the 19th century, the entire Estonian and German-language educational system, from primary schools to the University of Tartu, functioned in Russian. In the course of this undertaking, numerous Estonian teachers who were also key figures in the national awakening process, were sacked because of their insufficient knowledge of Russian. This radical change constituted a heavy blow to the level of education amongst Estonians: 98% of recruits conscripted from Estonia in 1886 could read, whereas in 1901 the figure had dropped to 80%.
Russian also became the language of administration in government and local government institutions and courts — almost all German and Estonian employees were replaced with Russians without knowledge of any other language. Getting a job in a government office became very difficult for non-Russians. Many educated Estonians were compelled to leave their country and seek work in Russia: by the early 20th century, several Estonian colonies had formed in Russian towns, the biggest being in St Petersburg. The central power tightened its censorship and control over both German and Estonian national organisations; some societies and newspapers were closed down. Besides the farmers’ societies propagating innovative work and land cultivation methods, the authorities only allowed temperance, educational and fire brigade societies.
By Russifying the Baltic peoples, the central power aimed to eliminate the dominating German influence in that area; prevent the separatism of the indigenous peoples and the Germanisation of their elite; replace the prevailing Western civilisation and Germanic culture with Orthodox Slavonic civilisation and Russian culture. The ascendancy of Nicholas II in 1894 in no way changed this state of affairs.
The attempts to Russify Estonians were far from successful: Estonian ethnic identity, based on its ancient national culture, had strengthened during the awakening period to the extent where massive - scale re-nationalisation was no longer possible. Centuries-old German cultural tradition withstood the Russification period, maintaining the general German outlook in the Baltic provinces. With its brutal policy, the tsarist government lost the support of the Estonian national movement. Liberal and socialist anti-monarchy ideas reached Estonia both from the West and East and began spreading rapidly. Workers ’ movements emerged and the first strike was organised in the Narva Kreenholm factories (1870). On the initiative of politically radical students who had come to (the now Russian-language) Tartu University from all over the tsarist empire, the first Marxist organisations sprang up in the 1880s.
During the ever more vigorous period of industrialisation in the second half of the 19th century, large textile, metal and machine works, as well as timber, paper , cellulose and foodstuff enterprises and factories were established in Estonia. A railway network connecting Estonia with the domestic market of the Russian Empire was built . The Tallinn–St Petersburg line was completed in 1870. The railway network considerably advanced the development of trade and industry. Russian, German, French, Belgian, Swiss and Baltic German businessmen invested in Estonian industry; the share of Estonian national capital was, however, small.
The population of Estonia in 1897 was 958 000; slightly more than 90% were Estonians, 4% were Russian and 3.5% German. Every fifth person lived in the rapidly growing cities; two-thirds of them were Estonian. The late 19th century Estonia nevertheless remained an essentially agrarian country: about 65% of the population was involved in agriculture; 14% worked in industry and construction business, and 14% in transport, communication and the service sector. Germans and Russians still dominated in the intellectual, political and economic elite of society; the lower ranks, peasants and workers, were predominantly Estonian.

Emergence of parties and the 1905 revolution

The modernisation processes of Estonian society continued in the early 20th century — industrialisation and urbanisation increase in production and consumption , the use of technological innovations, rapid development of the infrastructure and communications, brisk political activity and growing pluralism. The whole of society was greatly enlivened by the emergence of a new generation of Estonian politicians. In 1904 , the Estonians achieved their first major political breakthrough: at the Tallinn municipal elections, the Estonian-Russian bloc gained a majority , defeating the Germans who had so far remained in power unchallenged. A characteristically Western modern social structure gained ground; the Estonian academic intelligentsia and workers employed in big industries grew in number. The general educational and cultural level of the population steadily rose , prosperity increased, and the whole standard of living improved. Newspapers played an essential part in the Estonians’ social and political awareness; societies and associations were also of immense importance — in 1905, there were more than 500 in Estonia.
The Estonian ‘social mentality’ as a whole remained in opposition to the central Russian government; nationalism and socialism were the major political trends . Within the early 20th century national movement, the moderate and radical wings were clearly profiled. The moderates who gathered around the Tartu newspaper Postimees (the first issue was published in 1891 ), founded by Jaan Tõnisson and pastor Villem Reiman , wanted to transform the Russian authoritarian rule into parlamentarian government, i.e. constitutional monarchy. They also demanded citizens’ rights in Russia, modelled upon those in Western Europe . The moderate ideologists relied on liberal reforms and legal, non- violent means of political struggle . They were afraid to suggest direct resistance to Russian authorities that could result in mass repression and destroy the Estonian people.
In opposition to the moderates, the Tallinn newspaper Teataja (1901–1905), its publisher Konstantin Päts and the lawyer Jaan Teemant , attracted a radical wing of people connected with socialists. The radicals were prepared to resort to revolutionary actions in order to achieve a democratic state; they also demanded an extensive reduction of the land possessed by the manor houses .
Estonian socialists were divided into social-democratic-centralists and social-democratic-federalists. The first belonged to the local, strictly conspiratorial organisations of the illegal Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (founded in 1898 ) headed by Mikhail Kalinin and Friedrich Leberecht. The federalists followed Peeter Speek, editor -in-chief of the Tartu newspaper Uudised (News; banned in 1906). The main force behind the socialist and revolutionary movement were the workers of the huge Tallinn and Narva factories, students at the University of Tartu and secondary school pupils . Political propaganda was distributed in illegally printed leaflets.
The first Russian revolutionary uprising in January 1905 became a turning point in Estonian history. The revolt that spread over a large part of the empire was caused by the ever widening split between the needs of a modernising society and Russia’s hopelessly out-of- date social order. The often spontaneous rebellions culminated in the opposition between absolutism and people, factory owners and workers, landlords and peasants, the empire’s colonial regime and the discriminated minority nations. In Estonia, the revolution was directed against both the absolutist power and the Baltic German upper classes — demands for democratic reorganisation were provoked by the lack of political freedom, remnants of feudal order and the class- related Baltic German privileges, insufficient land and national oppression. Estonians who had become politically conscious by the start of the century, for the first time stepped forward as an active power in 1905. The freedom movement where social and national elements were tightly intertwined, involved large masses of people and achieved a great deal. For the first time, Estonia witnessed general political strikes , large-scale demonstrations and meetings — and also armed struggle against the government.
The revolution started in St Petersburg on 9 January, now known in history as ‘Bloody Sunday’. This unleashed the first demonstrations and strikes in Estonia only three days later. Besides workers, the mostly tranquil protest movement was joined by students, intellectuals and pupils, but also by farmhands and farmers in the country. Actions of varying extent and duration continued throughout spring and summer ; the biggest political demonstration in Estonia took place on 1 May.
After Nicholas II published the manifesto granting the citizens’ rights on 17 October 1905, the first legal parties were established in Estonia: the national-liberal Estonian Progressive People’s Party, the social-democratic-federalists’ Estonian Social Democratic Workers’ Association and the Baltic German conservative Baltic Constitutional Party. Practically all Estonian political trends and movements were in opposition to the government. They demanded democratic and civil rights, many also the right to national self-determination, autonomy and local government.
In the ever tenser atmosphere, the revolutionary movement in Estonia reached its height in the autumn of 1905. Over 20 000 industrial workers and railway workers in Estonia took part in the all-Russian general political strike in October. On 16 October the army opened fire in the Tallinn city centre at the participants of the political manifestation, organised by social democrats. 94 were killed , over a hundred wounded. An all-Estonian congress of people’s representatives took place in Tallinn between 27 and 29 November. This split into two meetings. One demanded constitutional order and threatened the government with passive resistance; the other wanted to overthrow the absolutist power and form revolutionary local governments. In approximately 50 peasant townships, the governments were indeed replaced by peasant committees that in some places were called ‘republics’. In many townships, people established native-language teaching, closed the pub, and boycotted the tsarist officials, refused to pay taxes or provide the Russian army with recruits.
To suppress the revolution in the Baltics, the government used an army consisting of 19 000 soldiers . Special punitive troops, aided and abetted by the Baltic German landlords, shot over 300 hundred people in 1906; without trial or inquest. The court martial additionally condemned about 300 persons to death. About 600 received corporal punishment; hundreds were imprisoned and sent to Siberia. More than a half of all those executed in the Russian Empire, were inhabitants of Estonia and Latvia. Fearing the repressions, a great part of Estonian political leaders fled abroad. Besides other reactionary punitive measures , the central government vetoed the left-wing parties and organisations, and closed down the trade unions and progressive newspapers. The revolution in the Baltic countries and its brutal suppression attracted attention throughout Europe and brought the situation and problems of the Estonians and Latvians into the limelight.
The revolution also diminished the Baltic German trust towards the Russian authorities. The government’s weakness and inability to protect the landed gentry from the wrath of the people urged the Baltic nobility to seek support in Berlin and discreetly sound out the possibility of uniting the Baltic countries with Germany.

The post-revolutionary situation and World War I (1907–1917)

The defeat of the revolution was followed by general reactionary onslaught; the previous promises and freedoms were cancelled. On 3 June 1907, the oppositional II Duma was dissolved and a new election law came into force that was favourable for the government. The Russian political situation had nevertheless undergone an essential change: the Tsar accepted the assembling of the first parliament in 1906. In the empire’s parliament — the Russian Duma (which was regularly assembled from 1906 to 1917) — Estonia was represented by 20 deputies. Of these, 13 were Estonians who formed a bloc with the Russian Constitutional Democrats’ Party (cadets). Although the Duma was unable to solve the acute Baltic problems, it was nevertheless a means of making the Russian public and the world aware of them.
The reaction brought along another wave of Russification which reached the Baltic countries in 1907. Encouraged by the new Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, the government officials devised grand-scale plans to strengthen the central government and force the Russification of Estonians and Latvians — even contemplating the colonisation of the whole region with Russian peasants. But the St Petersburg government lacked both the power and the time to realise these plans.
By the early 20th century, Estonia had become one of the economically and culturally most advanced areas of the whole empire with grand-scale industrial and agricultural production orientated at all-Russian markets. More than half of Estonia’s national income before the First World War was created in industry. Good communications (railway, ports) and an advanced infrastructure enhanced the importance of the Baltic region in Russia’s economy and international work distribution. The local population’s generally high cultural and educational level made an intensive economy possible; the Baltic region had turned into a connecting road and a transit passage between West Europe and Russia. This triangle witnessed a lively movement and exchange of people and ideas.
Inspired and encouraged by this new chance , Estonians were now among the first in the world, as regards the growing rate of the number of academic intelligentsia. The chief places to study were Tartu, St Petersburg, Riga, Moscow and Helsinki . Estonian culture became ever more professional and Estonian scientific terminology developed rapidly. Several scientists of Estonian origin attracted world-wide attention within the institutional framework of Russian science.
Estonian high culture developed under the direct impact of the St Petersburg academic and modernist cultural life. The group called Noor-Eesti (Young Estonia), founded by young writers Gustav Suits, Friedebert Tuglas and others , called upon the Estonians to create European culture without any German and Russian mediation, and in creating culture, to move from the national to the universal . The members of this group sought direct contacts with Western Europe, with Romance, Anglo- Saxon and Scandinavian cultures. Especially tight relations were established with another Fenno-Ugrian nation, the Finns, who were often taken as an example of how to organise and manage the nation’s cultural life.
The first decade of the century saw the emergence of professional theatres in Tallinn, Tartu and Pärnu. In 1907, the Estonian Literary Society was founded, in 1909 the Estonian National Museum .
But the new Estonian elite did not brush aside the old one. The Baltic German upper classes still played a significant part in society, economy and culture in the Baltic countries. This old class of society possessed a large share of real estate and land; in 1917, before Estonia became independent, the eight hundred Baltic German landlords owned 58% of all Estonian land.
In search of a better life and work, and due to the shortage of land, huge numbers of Estonians emigrated to Russia and America. In 1917, one fifth of Estonians lived outside Estonia (250 000); 50 000 of them lived in Petrograd (the Russian capital was renamed Petrograd in 1914). Altogether 40% of university-educated Estonians worked in Russia, they made excellent careers as becoming university professors, generals and estate Stewarts.
From the point of view of the defence of Petrograd, the Baltic countries had especially important place in Russian military planning . Before the First World War, numerous military installations were erected in Estonia: the Russian Baltic navy port and the shipyards in Tallinn; the grand fortified naval base on the Northern coast bearing the name of Peter I. When the war broke out, the Estonian economy was totally subjected to the needs of the Russian war machine. About 100 000 men were forced into the Russian army; 10 000 of them were killed. In the Russian-German conflict the Estonian politicians supported the Russian side, because unification with Germany meant in their opinion the disappearance of the nation through Germanisation. In return for their loyalty, the Estonians expected the Russian government to give them more rights and the long-awaited self-government. The Russian government, however, did not trust the Baltic nations and suspected them (for which there was good cause) of planning to split away from Russia.

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 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.
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 .
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, Jüri Vilms and Konstantin Konik .
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 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.
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. 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, which 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.

Our opinion

We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices , once made and cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and they determine future events.
We think that periods from 1710-1850 and 1850-1918 have changed Estonian life and history in many ways . The enlightening time influenced the life of our country the most, especially the Estonian language. Before the enlightening time our ancestors didn’t know how to read, or write. They didn’t have the possibility to go to school either, but the enlightening gave the chance for doing that.
In addition we would like to say that people in that era went through some serious changes , which are appreciated nowadays and thought to be the most important.

References

E. M Tali & T. Tali “Aastaring Maarjamaal ” Tallinn 2002
E. Tammer “Nõukogude aeg ja inimene” Tallinn 2004
http://www.estonica.org/est/lugu.html?kateg=8&menyy_id=48&alam=12&tekst_id=198
http://www.estonica.org/est/lugu.html?menyy_id=49&kateg=8&alam=12&leht=5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Estonia
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0858036.html
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