Vanished Kingdoms

by Norman Davies

  Russia recognised Estonia’s independence, ‘giving up of free will and for ever all the sovereign rights that Russia had over the Estonian people and country.’ Soviet Russia paid Estonia 15 million gold roubles from the tsarist gold reserves. Under the peace treaty Estonia agreed to disarm the White Russian army on its territory, for which [the] Whites later bitterly reproached [her]. Larger countries were also not enthusiastic… According to the western countries Estonia should have fought Russia until the fall of communism and the restoration of the White government, after which it should have peacefully reunited with Russia. It is understandable that Estonia was not interested in such a future…36

  The dissonance between the interests of small nations and the ideas of Westerners, who pursued stability at anyone’s cost but their own, was manifest.

  Estonia’s independence, therefore, was achieved almost exclusively by Estonian efforts. It had little to do with the Western Powers or their Versailles settlement. What is more, it came about well before the creation of the Soviet Union and the stabilization of Soviet affairs by Joseph Stalin. ‘Today Estonia commands its future for the first time,’ declared the chief Estonian representative at Tartu, Jaan Poska. But he added: ‘The threat has not yet passed.’37

  Under Stalin’s direction, the USSR was transformed in less than two decades from a backward, largely peasant country into a modern power of considerable industrial and military potential. Stalin was driven partly by Communist ideology and partly by memories of the humiliating defeat of the Great War. When he launched his accelerated programme of Five Year Plans and collectivized agriculture in 1929, he said: ‘If we don’t transform this country in ten years, our enemies will destroy us.’

  This socio-economic transformation, however, was achieved through the most appalling cruelty, violence, terror and mass murder. The USSR built the world’s first major concentration camp system: the Gulag.38 Millions died during forced collectivization and during the artificial famine produced in Ukraine.39 The Communist Party itself was subjected to violent purges and disgraceful show trials, and in the ‘Great Terror’ of 1937–9 vast numbers of ordinary men and women were simply shot at random to create the ultimate totalitarian climate where no one felt safe. The Soviet economy, which many foreign observers imagined to be a fascinating experiment, was made to work by suppressing all normal human incentives and spontaneous initiatives: ‘Stalin built this Brobdingnagian economy on the bones of kulaks and prisoners… It was not designed to generate the stream of information necessary for self-regulation, but to respond to orders from the regime. It was an economy planned for total control. But control in the absence of terror cannot be total.’40 Westerners, distracted by the rise of fascism, were notoriously slow to recognize the true nature of the USSR. Anyone living in the countries bordering the USSR was likely to be better informed.41

  Throughout the inter-war period, the Estonian Republic made rapid progress towards the creation of a modern state and society. The Bolshevik model did not appeal. A democratic republican constitution was passed on 15 June 1920. All the national institutions – civil service, education, justice, welfare and armed forces – had to be organized from scratch, and the Estonian language itself had to be adapted. All this, not surprisingly, caused considerable difficulties, not least since the Estonians were used to being governed either in Russian or in German.

  After joining the League of Nations in 1920 as a founder member, Estonia gained universal recognition. It played a full part in international trade, in various pan-European cultural projects, and in numerous international bodies from the Red Cross to the International Postal Union. In foreign policy, the Estonian government was naturally drawn to the company of Western democracies, which had championed the cause of national self-determination. As in the parallel case of Finland, considerable tact and restraint had to be exercised so as not to arouse the ire of the giant neighbour.

  Yet there were limits to what could be achieved. Communist agitation persisted, despite the Tartu Treaty, and in 1924 Estonia survived a brazen attempt to overthrow it:

  With Comintern’s support, the leaders of the putsch received training and equipment in the Soviet Union from where they were then secretly taken to Estonia. The Soviet embassy in Estonia participated actively in the preparations. Military forces were massed on the Estonian borders, and the Red Navy’s Baltic Fleet set out to sea. Soviet journalists started a fierce campaign of anti-Estonia propaganda. On December 1, 1924 several hundred insurgents attacked the more important strategic points and military units in Tallinn. Their goal was to take power in the capital for a couple of hours and then send a request for help to the ‘friendly’ Red Army…

  However, events did not evolve as planned. At Tondi military school, at the War Ministry, and in many other places the attack was resisted. Attempts to get workers to join the uprising also failed. Fighting groups, some of them spontaneously formed, began to take back sites held by communist attack groups. In this way the unit formed by General Põdder won back the Central Telegraph before a victory call could be sent to the Red Navy waiting for the raid. Within six hours the coup attempt had been put down… Some of those captured were executed. Over 20 people died on the Republic’s side, civilians among them.42

  Moscow’s intentions had been fully revealed; tensions did not subside until the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations in 1935, after which Moscow adopted the less abrasive concept of an international ‘Popular Front’ and made a show of co-operating with foreign partners against fascism. It seemed that the ground was being prepared for a programme of collective security, which Estonia could join.

  Nonetheless, the attempt to introduce Estonia to Western-style democracy also ran into trouble. A multi-party parliamentary system functioned in the 1920s, but the largest single political group, the Estonian Peasant Party, was inevitably the advocate of sectional interests. The propertied and landed classes, mainly German, who had the upper hand under tsarist rule, felt threatened; and a small pro-Bolshevik minority was raring to denounce the ‘bourgeois’ state. The financial crisis of 1929–30 caused the collapse of Estonia’s main bank, and was followed by severe unemployment. In the political sphere, the populist VAPSI movement (which began as an association of army veterans) gained support, demanding authoritarian government. In 1933 the currency, the kroon, had to be devalued; and in the ensuing rumpus, Jaan Tõnisson, now head of state, declared a state of emergency. His desperation opened the door to more unrest, a national referendum, a new constitution and the emergence of an authoritarian regime dominated by the Peasant Party of Konstantin Päts:

  As the new constitution came into force, the first step was the election of a president. Four candidates [competed]: August Rei, Päts, [General] Laidoner, and Vapsi leader A. Larka. In reality only the latter two stood a chance… Päts, fulfilling the duties of the head of state, decided not to wait for the election results. He made an agreement with Laidoner and on March 12, 1934 they carried out a coup… giving Laidoner extraordinary authority to guarantee the security of the state. Vapsi organisations were closed and their leaders arrested. Elections were postponed…

  The coup was at first welcomed by a lot of Estonians, but it soon became clear that Päts… planned to govern Estonia on the basis of the authoritarian constitution of the Vapses… On October 2, 1934 Päts dissolved the parliament, which had been demanding a restoration of democracy, and did not recall it. The silent era, as it became known, started, during which the government curtailed many civil rights… On March 5, 1935 the activity of political parties was suspended, the only one that remained being the Fatherland Union (Isamaaliit)… Silencing the opposition enabled the government to carry out centralised reforms…43

  The Estonian dictatorship of 1935–40 had certainly digressed from the democratic path, but it was not in the same horrific league as that of the totalitarians. One of the last peacetime acts of President Päts was to give amnesty to all political prisoners.

  There can
be no doubt that the Soviet Union was the largest combatant state in the Second World War in Europe, and that it ended the war as the principal victorious power.44 In the first phase of the war, during the currency of the Nazi–Soviet Pact, the USSR was the Third Reich’s partner, and behaved accordingly. The Red Army participated in the annihilation of Poland,45 invaded Finland in the Winter War of 1939–4046 and forcibly annexed the Baltic States, Moldova and Bukovina. In the spring and summer of 1940, the Germans rapidly overran Belgium and northern France in an astonishing blitzkrieg, but throughout the war operations on the Western Front were of little interest and no benefit to Estonia.

  In the second phase, which started in June 1941 with ‘Operation Barbarossa’, the Soviet Union sustained a massive attack by its erstwhile German partner. Few experts gave the Red Army much chance of survival. But it fought on against the odds, manoeuvring in the vast spaces of the Eastern Front, evacuating industry and sacrificing colossal numbers of men. The German invaders were repulsed at Moscow,47 stopped in their tracks at besieged Leningrad48 and soundly beaten at Stalingrad.49

  In the third and conclusive phase, which began with the destruction of Germany’s largest Panzer tank force at Kursk in July 1943, the Red Army relentlessly drove the Wehrmacht back.50 US aid via Lend-Lease came on stream, and the pre-war Soviet frontier was reached a year later. The Soviets moved so much faster than the Western Allies that the whole of Eastern Europe was overrun before Berlin was stormed without Western help.51 By May 1945, Stalin’s victory was complete. At Yalta and Potsdam, he was able to drive a very hard bargain with the Americans, who were still fighting the Japanese. Despite unprecedented losses, which may have reached 27 million, the USSR had emerged as one of the world’s two superpowers.52

  During the Second World War, Estonia found itself in a zone of Europe that was occupied in turn both by the Stalinist Soviets and by the Nazi Germans. The resultant miseries were multiplied by the fact that it lay close to the German–Soviet frontline for three whole years.

  In 1939, the secret protocols of the Nazi–Soviet Pact consigned Estonia to the Soviet sphere of influence, where Stalin could act with impunity. Estonians watched helplessly as the Red Army assaulted their Finnish neighbour, and then in June 1940 as it invaded the three Baltic states. In Soviet parlance, this operation was labelled ‘liberation’, though it involved mass repressions, deportations and massacres. By agreement with the Nazis, Estonia’s German community was expelled en masse to German-occupied Poland. That first Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940–41 was to last for only one year, but it was organized in a manner that smacked of careful planning. It was preceded by a harsh diplomatic campaign, and was facilitated by the expulsion of the Estonian Germans. It was achieved by blackmail and threats, and, technically, by a Council of State that voted obediently for incorporation into the USSR.

  The shameless arrogance of Soviet conduct, however, can only be believed if described in detail. Stalin’s manipulation of force and fraud was superlative. The opening gambit was to surround Estonia’s frontiers with Red Army divisions and to demand, in the name of security, that Soviet military bases be built on Estonian territory. Next, after the Red Army had moved in, it transpired that the Soviet troops had been accompanied by thousands of slave labourers brought in by the NKVD to build the bases. The operation was overseen in person by the notorious Andrei Zhdanov, a member both of Stalin’s Politburo and of the Supreme Soviet. In the third stage, Zhdanov delivered the master stroke. The men from the Soviet labour battalions were marched under guard into central Tallinn to lead a ‘public demonstration’ against the Estonian government and to call for an end to ‘bourgeois power’. Appropriate revolutionary placards were distributed for the benefit of the foreign press. Order was maintained by a self-appointed ‘People’s Self-defence’ organization; the Estonian police were warned to stay away. The Estonian tricolour was hauled down from the mast on Toompea hill and replaced by the ‘Hammer and Sickle’. The parliament buildings and the president’s palace at Kadriorg were taken over, together with the offices of press and radio. Two days later, on 21 June, Zhdanov instructed President Päts whom to appoint as prime minister and whom to dismiss. A month of purges followed. All Estonian institutions, including the civil service and the political parties, were stripped of unsuitable personnel. In the general election of 14–15 July, the ‘Union of Working People’ claimed a 92.9 per cent victory. The way was open for the declaration of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic beneath the portraits of Lenin and Stalin and the gunbarrels of Soviet tanks.53

  Estonian reactions were recorded by a British diplomat from Moscow. ‘The feelings of the Estonian people at present’, he noted, ‘are a mixture of apathetic resignation to their fate, forlorn hope for an ultimate delivery by Great Britain or Germany, fear of the OGPU [secret police], contempt for their conquerors, and bitter regret that they did not, like the Finns, make a bid for freedom.’54

  Once incorporation was effected, all existing state institutions were dissolved. The police force was reorganized, and the Estonian army disbanded. All professional associations were banned. The press was censored, and independent journalists dismissed. Sovietization proceeded apace in the economy, in education and in the judicial system. These changes were accompanied by violent repressions. Arrests and interrogations were commonplace. Some cases were tried in court; most were not. Executions were perpetrated in NKVD prisons and in the forests. Mass deportations began, especially of professional people who might rally opposition. The conscription of Estonian men into the Red Army was followed by the evacuation of factories and factory workers to the ‘rear areas’ deep in Russia.

  In the course of several weeks, a fully fledged Soviet system of government was installed and running. The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic officially came into being on 6 August 1940, but all power was vested in the centralized Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its local appointees. An Estonian Supreme Soviet took the place of the Maapäev, and a hand-picked Council of People’s Commissars under Johannes Lauristin headed the executive. All local government bodies were Sovietized. There was, however, some resistance: although the Red Army’s Winter War against Finland had finished before the Soviet occupation of Estonia began, Finnish sympathies were strongly pro-Estonian, and, with clandestine Finnish help, bands of ‘Forest Brothers’ conducted a partisan summer war against the occupiers.55

  In June 1941, following Hitler’s dramatic renegation of the Nazi– Soviet Pact, the German Wehrmacht arrived, and turned Estonia into the base area for the long-running Siege of Leningrad. People suspected of collaboration with the recent Soviet regime were rounded up. Those Estonians who welcomed the German occupation, however, mainly did so from relief at seeing the back of Stalin’s henchmen. As in other countries occupied by the Third Reich, the Waffen SS established an Estonian Legion for recruits willing to sign on for service on the Eastern Front.

  The dilemmas faced by Estonia and other East European countries during the German occupation are rarely understood by Westerners, who have been led to believe that only one ‘Evil Force’ had to be confronted. In reality, the Germans wielded ruthless power and resistance was near-impossible. There were also sound patriotic reasons for joining the ‘war against Bolshevism’, particularly after a measure of self-government was introduced, extremely welcome after the preceding ‘Great Terror’. In the second half of 1941, therefore, a joyful interlude arrived when the symbols of Soviet oppression were torn down. A series of investigations uncovered the sites of Soviet massacres and executions. Estonia, like Finland, was needed by Germany for the war against the USSR. Hope rose among Estonians that a bearable modus vivendi would be found.

  Nonetheless, the true nature of the Nazi regime quickly became evident. The Gestapo and Security Police (SD) proved themselves the equals of the NKVD. A concentration camp was opened in Tartu, and a new wave of arrests and executions took place. The extermination of Estonia’s small community of about 1,000 Jews was perpetr
ated in January 1942, followed by the creation of extermination centres for imported Czech and German Jews. Soviet prisoners of war were killed in still larger numbers.56

  During the three years when the German–Soviet front lay close to Estonia’s north-eastern border, Estonian soldiers served both in German-sponsored and in Soviet-sponsored formations. Before the German invasion, the Red Army had trained Estonian officers, formed Estonian regiments set up an Estonian branch of the Political-Military Department. Two Soviet divisions, the 180th and 182nd, were largely Estonian in composition, as were the 8th and 22nd Territorial Rifle Corps. They were pulled back as the Wehrmacht advanced. A few senior Estonian officers, such as Major-General Jaan Kruus, passed into Soviet service, though every single one of them who was not killed at the front, including Kruus, was eventually murdered by the NKVD. General Laidoner, the pre-war commander-in-chief, was held in the Gulag until his death in 1953.57

  On the German side, Estonian recruits were taken into the Omakaitse (‘Home Guard’), into Estonian security groups within the Wehrmacht, into so-called Defence Battalions, into Border Defence Regiments and into the Estonian SS-Legion. None of these formations was necessarily sinister in character, and, in theory at least, all were assigned to purely military duties. In February 1944 general conscription was imposed on all males of military age.

  Like all other SS-Legions in other German-occupied countries, the Estonian Legionnaires were composed mainly of volunteers. After training, they were transferred either to the Waffen-SS 20th Grenadier Division or to one of the SS-Ostland reserve battalions, where their senior officers were German. They saw combat service in various sectors of the Eastern Front, suffering heavy casualties. Their toughest engagement, in February 1943, was in the Narva sector. The survivors were withdrawn for retraining in Germany, and then saw action in Silesia, where their commander, SS-Standartenführer Franz Augsberger, was killed in battle.58