The question of the significance of WW I for Estonia and Estonians is, in fact, an 'if'question that historians should not raise at all. What would have happened to Estonia and Estonians if the world war had not happened?

Two processes, independent of each other, crossed paths. The first is the national awakening of Estonians, part of the national awakening and liberation movement of European peoples in the process of forming independent states. The other is the aggravation of conflicts between (European) big countries. The first did not depend on the second. Perhaps the second, the conflicts, to some extent depended on the first.

The collapse of empires had already started with Greece splitting from the Ottoman Empire in 1830. By 1914, seven sovereign small countries had emerged in the north-western corner of the Old World. The independence process in Europe was initially overshadowed by the uniting of Germany and, in the world, by the activities of Russia in Central Asia and those of Western-European coastal countries in Africa and Oceania. One side of the process, the freedom aspirations of some nations, might have already been perceived; the second, the collapse of empires, had not yet been perceived, or was seen as a separate incident.

Estonians started moving towards independence beginning in the 3rd quarter of the 19th century, in spite of the conflicts of big states. At first the yearning was not clearly voiced. In the 9th Album of the Estonian Student Society of 1915, dedicated to national questions, Villem Ernits quite frankly described what was in the air: "... if consciousness is saturated with something to the necessary extent, this mental element must then acquire a fixed shape, with a fatal inevitability." But it was only in the air.

These words contained something prophetic. "The basic idea of psychological national theory", in Ernits' mind, had acquired a more "determined shape" in early 1913 and "seeped into writing" in June 1914. "This is how the idea of the first national album emerged," he explained. "Hopefully it will not be the last..." But it was.

the shortest and the tallest recruit from viljandi county in 1915

In the same album, Ernits remarked that "...however, concerning our spirit of nationalism in general, it is often annoyingly inert and indifferent." In 1915 the most significant politician of the early last century, Jaan Tõnisson, categorically rejected the doubts that Estonians were "not sufficiently loyal to the state". The blood of Estonian sons spilled in the war was supposed to re-instil in Russians faith in the loyalty of Estonians, the same loyalty that had aroused suspicions due to the events of 1905, Tõnisson stresses. "As a coast of the Russian state, we have ample opportunity to expand, and there is no reason why Russia should have any misgivings about our people after the war," wrote another prominent figure, Konstantin Päts, at the end of 1914. "Our homeland will remain part of Russia." The wish of the most radical Estonian politician, Jüri Vilms, in 1916 did not reach further than Estonian autonomy within the borders of the Russian state.

In autumn 1915, the political refugee, writer Friedebert Tuglas, expressed the hope that in one hundred years, "times will be better than they are at present. Our people will then be a nation and not the sad sickly sprout it is now." When, in the same year, Estonia's prospects in the ongoing war were discussed at the Tallinn Educational Club, the possibility that Estonia would become a buffer state between Germany and Russia was completely excluded. The only practical-political solution was Estonian autonomy. In 1919 the linguist Johannes Aavik wrote about the time three years previously when "our 'sensible men' only smiled ironically" at the chance of Estonia ever becoming independent.

Another political refugee, Aleksander Kesküla, who contacted representatives of imperial Germany in September 1914, saw his aim as protecting the interest of Estonians. His dream was also limited to autonomy. However, his autonomy was not to be inside Russia, but separated from it and in a union of sorts with Nordic countries. On 30 November 1914 he turned the Germans' attention to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, at that time living in Bern. With some cunning, Lenin and his followers could be used in ways they themselves might not necessarily have planned: aber wenn man geschickt ist kann man daraus mehr machen, als die Betreffende selber wollen. Having founded the first Bolshevist organisation in Tallinn himself, Kesküla was convinced that the economic radicalism of the future communists would weaken Russia for decades to come, which in turn would give Estonia a chance to separate from Russia. Between 1915 and 1916, Kesküla, with the help of another Estonian, the specialist in Turkic languages Arthur Siefeldt, born in Tallinn in 1889 and died in 1939 in Kolyma, informed Berlin of Lenin's ideas and plans.

During the final stage of the war, Estonian politics made a huge leap in order to make use of the emerged and emerging possibilities. Just like the former Bolshevik who realised the opportunities associated with the world war and the Bolsheviks quite early on, other Estonian politicians also immediately sprang into action when these opportunities presented themselves, exactly as they would seventy years later. On 26 March (8 April) the Estonians organised a mass meeting in St Petersburg with over 40 000 participants; four days later the Russian Provisional Government passed the Law of Estonian Local Provisional Government, which gave Estonia national autonomy. This was the first of its kind. Hence the democratically elected assembly (Maanõukogu) came together in July, and on 25 August (7 September) Estonia's international position was discussed for the first time. Jaan Tõnisson enthusiastically stressed the orientation towards co-operation between the small Baltic Sea countries. In June Aleksander Kesküla ended his collaboration with the Germans, declaring that, as a nationalist, he could not continue, but he would always remain an enemy of Russia, "...ob mit, ohne oder gegen Deutschland". The idea of independence crystallised in the minds of Estonian politicians by the turn of the year.

An urge towards independence would certainly have continued even without the First World War. Opposition would have accumulated, the culmination might have arrived during the next or subsequent generation, and the solution have dragged on and been bloodier. What happened in December 1905 revealed the potential. After all, WW I brought defeat to both enemies of Estonians, the Russian empire and the Baltic German manor lords, the Germans losing their empire. This would not have happened without the war. The fact that democratic states won was of great importance to the future development of Estonia, both politically and militarily.

For the second time in ten years Estonians had to go to war, send their sons, brothers and husbands to fight for a country that seemed increasingly alien. The first war, in 1905, had been followed by sudden internal unrest. This could and had to predict that something similar could occur again, despite the fact that these wars, the Russian-Japanese war in 1904-1905 and the First World War beginning in 1914, could have been vastly different for those present at the time.

The first war took place far away, the second close by. The first was waged against an unknown, exotic nation. The other constituted fighting against the Germans who, "thanks" to the Baltic Germans, were very familiar to Estonians, and people could not remain indifferent. WW I gave Estonia an army and experienced soldiers. Three hundred officers, together with their soldiers, supposedly assembled the Estonian army. People took longer to awake. I am enormously impressed by the unshakeable faith in victory of the future general Aleksander Tõnisson. While retreating from the Russians on 9 December 1918, he asked for ten machine guns to be sent from Tallinn, as he only had three left, one having fallen into the hands of the enemy the day before. In January 1919 people were finally roused, due to the Bolshevik massacre. In May 1919 the Estonian army had 75 000 men and the Defence League 100 000. Without them, Estonia's situation would have been similar to Finland's, in which, instigated by Bolshevist Russia, a civil war broke out between the Reds and the Whites in 1918.

Did Estonia's independence arrive too soon? Did the world war accelerate it too much? Perhaps people needed more time to mature? Who knows? It has become increasingly clear since WW II that WW I was also part of the agony of empires. The tendency to regard both world wars as a process, as another Thirty Years War or, even more precisely, as a European civil war, has gained ground as well. This is revealed by the silence that accompanied the 90th anniversary of WW I in the Western world: in today's international situation it would be stupid, even masochistic, to mark in any way, or chew over, the culmination of the conflict between European and Western great powers. With the passing of time, the fatal mistake has become increasingly obvious. As for the people's struggle for freedom - was the premature leap good or bad? No idea either. Perhaps the same leap caused a reaction, the setback of events after WW II.

This is the part of Estonia in the national awakening of small European nations that has been going on for over two hundred years, if we start with the Irish.

Kaido Jaanson (1940), historian and political scientist, senior lecturer in the theory of international relations at the University of Tartu.