5th Question

What is there to know about Estonian history?

11000 BC

The first inhabitants came to Estonia around 11 000 years ago, soon after the withdrawal of the continental glaciers of the last Ice Age.

2000 BC

2000 years before the birth of Christ, Estonians who had until then been busy with hunting and fishing gradually began raising cattle and cultivating the land. For more than two thousand years, Estonia was Europe's most northerly crop-growing district. Already at that time, Estonia had a favourable position at the junction of northern European trade routes; this became more evident in the 'golden' Nordic Bronze Age (ca 1800-500 BC).

Bronze tools from both the Central Europe and the Ural mountains have reached estonia.

500 BC

The first descriptions of Estonia and the tribes who lived there, whose collective name (Aestii in Latin) may descend from the Northern Germanic word for 'east', date from the centuries around Christ's birth.

1100

In Viking times, boats were rowed from Estonia and through Estonian waters on trading and looting expeditions to what is now Russia, Central Asia and Constantinople. Estonians appeared as enemies and associates in Scandinavian sagas and on rune stones.

Frugården rune stone in Sweden reads:
"Guve erected this stone for Olaf, an excellent lad. He was killed in Estland."

1200

The eastern regions of the Baltic Sea attracted the attention of European merchants and missionaries. The Estonians were one of the last pagan peoples in Europe; they were christianised as a result of the well-organised crusades initiated in Denmark and Northern Germany at the beginning of the 13th century. Once the local upper-class became germanised, Estonians were reduced to the status of peasantry until the 19th century. Small feudal states emerged. Major towns in Estonia were incorporated into the powerful Hanseatic League and prospered; through them arrived the Reformation at the beginning of the 16th century.

Crusaders were as much inspired by hoped-for spoils as by religious zeal.

1600

At the turn of the 17th century, the ravaging Livonian War was fought in Estonia between Russians, Poles and Swedes. The accompanying famine and plague reduced the population by more than half. As a result of the war, Estonia fell under the Swedish rule for almost a century - this period is still remembered by Estonians as "the good old Swedish time".

1700

In the early 18th century, the army of the Russian Tsar Peter The Great conquered Estonia in order to create a much sought-after 'window to the West'. A meagre third of the Estonian population survived the devastating war to become the subjects of the Russian Empire. Despite the change in rule, the Russian powers did not essentially intervene in Estonian affairs; self-government by the local nobility, German-language administration and Lutheran religion retained authority, exacerbating the plight of Estonian serfs.

Change in Estonian population due to wars

1558

Livonian War

250 000

1640

70 000

1690

Great Northern War

350 000

1712

170 000

1934

World War II

1 061 300

1945

845 000

1800

Finally, in the early 19th century, serfdom was abolished. The National Awakening in the mid-19th century brought rapid advances in the Estonian education system, general living conditions and the formation of the Estonians' own cultural environment.

1918

The fall of the Russian Empire in the revolutions following the First World War made the declaration of an independent Estonian Republic possible on 24 February 1918. In the War of Liberation (1918-1920), Estonian Armed Forces resisted the attacks of Russian communists and the Landeswehr, the Baltic German militia.

The first volunteers to defend the independence were 17-18 years-old schoolboys.

Together with other new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, Estonia successfully built up its nation state. In 1921, Estonia became a member of the League of Nations. During her independence, which lasted barely over twenty years, the agriculturally-centred economy was rearranged to incorporate industry. State administrative structures and conditions for cultural activity in the native language were created. It was also a period of advancements in education and science.

As time passes, the first period of independence (1918-40) looks ever sweeter.

1940

In a secret agreement which supplemented the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, Germany resigned Estonia to the Soviet sphere of influence; Soviet military bases were set up in Estonia that same year. Under the threat of full-scale military aggression, a Soviet-minded puppet government was boosted to power in 1940, and Estonia was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Shortly before the battles of the Second World War encroached upon Estonia, almost 10 000 Estonians, accused of resisting Soviet control, were jailed and deported to Russia.

The German forces that had invaded Estonia in the summer of 1941 remained there until 1944. In autumn of the same year, thousands of Estonian families, and almost all of the coastal Swedes who had settled along the Baltic Coast since the 13th century, fled from the invading Red Army across the sea to Sweden, Finland and Germany.

1950

In March 1949, the Moscow powers, ignoring all human rights and laws including their own, deported over 20 000 people to Siberia; the majority of these were women and children. In the forests, a guerrilla war in opposition to the communists continued until the 1950s.

An outpost against the west, Estonia was packed with Soviet troops.

1991

The Soviet powers strove to achieve systematic Russification through the establishment of mines and heavy industry, whose operation relied on a foreign labour force imported from across the Soviet Union; despite this, Estonia and the other Baltic States managed to preserve their national identities. The Resistance Movement, which had been continually gaining support from the mid 1980s onwards, reached its peak in the early 1990s; on 20 August, 1991 the Republic of Estonia was restored.

The largest pro-independence demonstration drew together one third of Estonians.