Estonia History

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Estonia

History

History

Summary

• After centuries of successive rule by the Teutonic Order, Denmark, Sweden, and the Russian Empire, a distinct Estonian national identity began to emerge in the mid-19th century. This culminated in the 24 February 1918 Estonian Declaration of Independence from the then warring Russian and German Empires.
• Democratic throughout most of the interwar period, Estonia declared neutrality at the outbreak of World War II. However, the country was repeatedly contested, invaded, and occupied, first by the Soviet Union in 1940, then by Nazi Germany in 1941, and was ultimately reoccupied in 1944 by, and annexed into, the USSR as an administrative subunit (Estonian SSR).
• Throughout the 1944–1991 Soviet occupation, Estonia's de jure state continuity was preserved by diplomatic representatives and the government-in-exile.
• Following the bloodless Estonian "Singing Revolution" of 1988–1990, the nation's de facto independence from the Soviet Union was restored on 20 August 1991.

Record-keeping

• Under Swedish rule a system for local church records was established. Consistory archives were created with ecclesiastical reforms introduced at the end of the 16th century. Disasters destroyed two-thirds of the Tallinn consistory archive in 1684 and the Saaremaa archive in 1710. Still, some parish registers dating back to the 17th century have been preserved.

Emigration

• During World War II, Estonia was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940–1941, and by Nazi Germany in 1941–1944. In 1944, in the face of the country being re-occupied by the Soviet Red Army, 80,000 people fled from Estonia by sea to Germany and Sweden, becoming war refugees and later, expatriates.bMany refugees who survived the risky sea voyage to Sweden or Germany later moved from there to Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia. Some of these refugees and their descendants returned to Estonia after the nation regained its independence in 1991.
• In 1945, Estonians formed 97% of the population, but by 1989 their share of the population had fallen to 62%. Occupying authorities carried out campaigns of ethnic cleansing, mass deportation of indigenous populations, and mass colonization by Russian settlers which led to Estonia losing 3% of its native population. By March 1949, 60,000 people were deported from Estonia and 50,000 from Latvia to the gulag system in Siberia, where death rates were 30%.
• One of the largest permanent Estonian communities outside Estonia is in Canada, with about 24,000 people (according to some sources up to 50,000 people).

Websites

• Culture of Estonia
• Estonian History and Culture
• A Short History of Estonia
• Chronology of Estonia’s history
• History of Estonia Histrodamus