In the 1940s, the Baltic nations suffered three occupations and a devastating war. These events resulted in the gravest population losses of the century. The first Soviet occupation in 1940-41 was followed by the 1941-44/45 German occupation. In 1944-45 the Soviet forces reoccupied the countries. The first Soviet occupation brought with it arrests, deportations, executions and other kinds of repression. The German occupation almost totally annihilated the Jewish and Gypsy populations of the countries and repressed opponents to the Nazi regime. World War II brought about illegal mobilisations into the armies of both alien belligerent adversaries. Fearing war action and the return of Soviet rule, a large number of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians fled to Sweden or German-controlled areas of Europe. The second Soviet occupation continued what was started in 1940-41. Political, economic, social and cultural reorganisations were accompanied by repression: arrests, deportations, long-term imprisonment and executions were meant to relieve the Baltic communities of the so-called anti-Soviet element. Mental and physical violence was widespread.
Soviet repressions were not an accidental sequence of episodes. They were all-pervasive. By abusing concrete individuals and families, they intentionally abused the nation as a whole. The theme of repressions has an essential place in political and economic histories, as well as in demographic, sociological, cultural and ethnic studies. My study concentrates on the current status of the research in Estonia.
Until the 1980s, most treatments of the Soviet repression policy were published in the West, both as monographs and journalistic articles. Most of them dealt with repressions in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Repressions against the USSR-annexed Baltic countries in the 1940s were mainly addressed by scholars who had emigrated from the Baltic States. [1]
In the second half of the 1980s, along with Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost, Estonian press introduced the theme of Soviet repressions. In 1986, the past facts, hushed-up and changed beyond recognition, began to be made public, at first by allusion only. Hand in hand with disclosing these "white spots", important social changes were initiated. A national movement "Protection of the National Heritage" led actions of protest against phosphate rock mining and addressed questions of the survival of the Estonian nation and language. Russification and its concurrent phenomena were addressed more and more boldly.
On 14 June 1987, the "Helsinki '86" group in Riga, Latvia, commemorated the victims of the 1941 deportation at the Liberty Memorial. On 23 August, people gathered in the Hirvepark in Tallinn, Estonia, to protest against historical injustice. The graves of the fallen in the War of Independence 1918-19 began to be taken care of. Crimes committed by the Soviet power became a common topic.
Since a large part of the population had suffered losses due to Soviet mass deportations in 1941 and 1949, this theme became topical. The historian Evald Laasi was the first to insist on the need to study the problem of deportations in Estonian press, which was still subjected to the control of the CP. At the end of November 1987, his article "Filling in Some Gaps" was published in the cultural newspaper Sirp ja Vasar (Sickle and Hammer), revealing numerical data about the 1941 and 1949 deportees, and adding a few ratings on the Estonians who had participated in World War II and in the subsequent guerrilla war of the "Forest Brethren". [2]
Since 1987, a significant research into repressive actions has been conducted in Estonia. Materials, kept classified for a long time, have been made public. The public has been informed about the oppressions the Estonians had to endure and their population losses as a whole.
The first stage of research attempted to estimate the scope of repressions: how many people were repressed and through whose fault. By now these questions have received more or less complete answers that have become generally available. Political Arrests in Estonia [4] characterises their activity best of all.
After the historical session of the Supreme Soviet of the ESSR on 12 November 1989 had declared the 1940 actions by the USSR an aggression against Estonia and Estonia's incorporation into the USSR null and void, an appeal was forwarded to the Estonian Academy of Sciences to form a committee of scientists and scholars for investigating the areas, on whose basis it would be possible to estimate all the damages done to the Republic of Estonia by the Soviet Union. On 21 February 1990, the committee submitted its report, published in English in 1991, under the title World War II and Soviet Occupation in Estonia: A Damage Report. [5]
The working team investigating the population losses, headed by Arvo Kuddo, based its work at first on Evald Laasi's research. In the course of a few months, the archives of the Estonian Registry Office and other source materials were studied. Altogether over 200,000 persons were counted as killed in combat and in prisons, as having perished when deported, as having escaped with the German army and as fugitives from Estonia elsewhere. In other words, over one-fifth of the pre-war population was lost.
A month later, in December 1989, the Estonian Popular Front and the Ministry of Economic Affairs formed a working team to draw up an Account Book of Estonia and the Soviet Union. The book analysed their financial and commercial relationships. In 1990, a publication concerning social development in Estonia from the 1930s to the 1980s was issued. [6] The working team researching on population losses for the book was headed by Prof. Herbert Ligi from Tartu University, who initiated the compilation of lists of those who perished in Soviet prisons and hard labour camps, as well as were deported in March 1949. The work with these categories of the repressed has been continued at the Chair of Archival Studies of Tartu University.
On 17 June 1993, the Riigikogu (Estonian Parliament) established the National Committee for Investigating the Repressive Policy of Occupations with the final aim "to issue in the form of a white book a scientifically-founded report on all damage and losses that the Estonian nation has born as a consequence of the occupations". It was estimated that direct population losses have amounted to 196,000 persons or 17.5% of the pre-war population. [7]
On 22 November 1996, a Centre for the Research into the Soviet period was established (known as S-Keskus, 'S-Centre'). The statutory aim of the S-Keskus is to activate, co-ordinate and deepen the research into the Soviet period in Estonia. The materials of presentation meetings and seminars of the S-Keskus were published as separate collections of papers. [8] The current research work focuses on the implementation and realisation of the research project "Estonian Military and Security-Political History in 1939-1956".
On 2 October 1998, the President of the Republic of Estonia convened the Estonian International Commission for Investigating the Crimes Against Humanity, with an aim to prepare an authentic report on the repressions against the citizens of the Republic of Estonia or in Estonia by the occupation authorities of the Soviet Union and Germany. [9] In 2001, the commission published its first report that comprises the period of the German occupation.
In addition to the commissions just mentioned, repressive occupation policies are also thoroughly investigated by the National Archives and the historians of Tartu University. One of the aims of the Foundation R-archives, established in 2000, is to compile a joint database of Estonian population losses in 1940-1989.
In 1998, the Kistler-Ritso Foundation was established in the State of Washington, USA. It regards as its aim to gather, document and display statements and reminiscences from the Estonian contemporary history in the planned Museum of Occupations of Estonian Recent Past in Tallinn. The broader aim of the Foundation is to foster research into the Estonian contemporary history in general. [10]
Numerous employees of regional museums and archives, as well as individuals who carry out research in their native areas, are worth mentioning, as their contribution to the theme is hard to overestimate.
The greatest emphasis has been placed on research into various deportations as mass repressions that affected thousands of families. The deportation of the native populations of the Baltic countries to sparsely settled distant areas of the USSR was started by Soviet repressive organs immediately after the incorporation of these states into the Soviet Union in 1940 and was continued until the end of the 1950s.
It appears quite natural that, as far as the deported Estonian people are concerned, the research began with finding out the number of those deported. The first major deportation, comprising all Estonia, took place in the summer of 1941. It was a part of major Soviet deportations in all the newly annexed areas. On 22 May the deportation took place in Western Ukraine, on 12-13 June in Moldavia, on 14 June in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, on 19-20 June in Western Byelorussia, on 1-3 July the action was taken on Estonian islands.
The June deportees' lists were first compiled by Professor Vello Salo and issued by the publishers of the émigré Estonian Roman Catholic periodical Maarjamaa in 1989. [11] The list contained the names of 9,632 deportees who had been registered on the first list of the Zentralstelle zur Erfassung der Verschleppten Esten (ZEV=Centre for Registering the Deported Estonians), the so-called List of Helsinki. The ZEV was established during the German occupation in 1941-1943 with the main aim of gathering data about those taken to the Soviet Union and murdered. A call was published in the newspapers to register all persons who had been arrested, deported, mobilised, sent to the Soviet Union in the capacity of being in active service or on official duties, either killed or missing after 21 June 1940.
Later on, the lists of the deportees were published both in the Päevaleht and county newspapers at the beginning of the 1990s. In 1993 an improved and supplemented version of the original list, The 1941 Deportees, was published. It also included the names of 439 citizens of the Estonian Republic of Jewish origin and the data about active servicemen (243 persons) of the Estonian 22nd Territorial Corps who had been abducted by the Soviets on 14-16 June 1941. [12] On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the June deportation, "Memento" published its own list of deportees, based on the files of family and individual histories. [13] The figures of the June deportees have variously been estimated at 10,157, [14] 10,205 [15] or 11,000 [16] persons.
The last book of lists containing the names of the 1949 March deportees, the victims of the most extensive deportation in the Baltic countries, was published on the 50th commemoration anniversary of the deportation on the initiative of the Estonian Bureau of Registration of the Repressed. [17] Yet, an argument over the number of the March deportees is continuing to date. A detailed analysis of the lists of deportees from the County of Tartu, the largest county in Estonia at that time, allows to state that as a consequence of the 25-28 March 1949 operations, 20,702 persons were locked into cattle wagons. The materials for forcible deportations from Estonia had been prepared for 31,632 persons, but part of the files remained unconfirmed and unauthorised. The detention and later deportation of persons on the lists continued until 1956. After their time of confinement, convicted farmers, sentenced to prison for not being able to meet excessive 1947/48 agrarian taxes, were sent to Siberia to join their families. [18] If we add these persons to the March deportees - because they were also on the lists - the contingent of deportees is certainly larger.
Various regional research papers and lists have been issued on the March deportees, most specific among them are the accounts for the counties of Tartu, Harju, Viljandi, Viru. [19]
Similar to Estonia, at the end of the 1980s, both Latvia and Lithuania began to gather data about their deportees. Special issues, Represeto saraksts, as supplements of the Latvian archival journal Latvijas arhivi, published data about the deportees of 1941 and 1949, and those who had been arrested in 1941-1953. [20] The Lithuanian serial publication Lietuvos gyventoju genocidas [21] has not yet issued lists of the 1949 deportees. The Lithuanian Centre for Research into Genocide and Fight for Freedom is working on the years 1944-1947. It must be noted that in Lithuania, in contrast to Estonia and Latvia, the first massive post-war deportation took place in May of 1948.
Viewing it from Moscow's side, the 1949 deportation in three annexed states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - had been planned as a unitary operation, and therefore it would be interesting to do a statistical analysis of the lists. Electronic databases have been compiled both in Estonia [22] and Latvia. [23] They both proceed mainly from the lists of the onetime Ministries of Internal Affairs, the lists being supplemented and specified in the course of years. [24] Although the theme is the same for historians of all three states, the level of research still varies.
Parallel to gathering and specifying individual data, the course of the deportations as a whole has also been investigated. A decisive breakthrough was made by an access to archival sources that had been confidential for a long time as well as by the complex use of various sources. Since many direct sources were destroyed, the documents have to be searched for among indirect sources. The search for archival materials is undoubtedly one of the most labour and time-consuming tasks.
In particular, the role of Professor of History Heinrihs Strods from the University of Latvia should be emphasised. He succeeded in finding especially valuable documents in the Russian State Military Archives - Materials of the USSR Ministry of State Security on the classified operation "Priboi" in 1949, from 25 February through 23 August. He obtained access to the materials at the beginning of the 1990s when Russian archives were more available than they are now. The public got acquainted with the materials in 1999, in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the 1949 March deportation. [25] At present archival the items mentioned above are unavailable for researchers.
In the same year 1999, new source materials were also made public in Estonia. The journal Akadeemia issued a sequel of documents on the 1949 March deportation, based on the materials from the stocks 17/1 of the Archives of the Central Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Estonian SSR, compiled by V. Ohmann and T. Tannberg. [26] The materials discovered in Russian central archives, as well as state and party archives of Siberian oblasts of the Russian Federation are still forthcoming. [27]
Access to Russian archives varies and often depends on a chance or personal arrangement. A while ago we did not expect to find additional materials in Russia to the deportees' personal files kept in the branch of the Estonian National Archives. However, expeditions to the archives of the Information Centre for the Department of Internal Affairs of the Tomsk Oblast proved otherwise. An exhaustive report on the results obtained was presented by Professor of Archival Studies of Tartu University Aadu Must.[28] All this does not yet put an end to the research into the destiny of the deportees. [29]
The 1949 deportation has been treated as related to the policy of the elimination of kulaks. The Soviet land reform was to abolish the farm-based agriculture and replace it by collective order, simultaneously introducing the policy of class hatred. In Latvia, this aspect has been researched by Janis Riekstin. [30] He has also published a number of papers on the broader theme of repressions. [31] In Estonia, no significant materials related to collectivisation have been published. Most publications refer to the materials issued by Ants Ruusmann. [32]
Relocations to Siberia, encompassing smaller numbers of the population, took place continuously. For instance, on 15 August 1945, 407 citizens of German origin were deported from Estonia. [33] During the re-annexation of Estonia by the USSR in 1944, the former area of Petseri and that beyond the Narva River were separated from the Estonian territory and incorporated into the Russian RFSR. A part of the territory of the Republic of Latvia was incorporated into the Pskov Oblast. The deportation in these areas took place in May 1950 [34] when 1,563 (425 families), Estonians and Latvians, were resettled. The members of prohibited religious sects, 259 Jehovah witnesses, were deported in 1951. [35]
The movement of Forest Brethren has attracted public attention both as related to deportations and as an independent subject. Armed resistance to Soviet occupation emerged from an attempt to restore the Republic of Estonia in the period after the withdrawal of Germans and the re-occupation of the country by the Soviet forces. Soviet authorities had a clear understanding about the political aims of the Forest Brethren's struggle. Arrests that started along with the re-annexation of Estonia made men seek shelter in the forests. Those who had served in the Self-Defence organisation and in the German army were among the first to be arrested. Thus the war in the Baltic States lasted for years after the official end of World War II.
By the beginning of 1947, i.e. within two years after the end of World War II, the authorities estimated that 5,868 armed "bandits" had been eliminated. By November 1947 the number of persons, either killed or arrested, had increased to 8,468. The number of those who had become "legalised" was 6,600. [36]
The number of Forest Brethren could have reached up to 16,000. In Mart Laar's estimation, including into the Forest Brethren's movement all those who in the post-war period were in hiding for a shorter or longer period, their number increases to over 30,000. [37] From among ca 8,000 arrested Forest Brethren about 4,000 were killed. [38] Based on the source materials of Eerik Kross' forthcoming database "Pro Patria II", the number of Forest Brethren who perished may go up to six or seven thousand. At present, the database contains c. 2,000 names. [39]
The archival materials used in compiling the list come mainly from the KGB archival stocks 131 (Special information) and criminal files [40] in which directive documents, Forest Brethren's correspondence and diaries can be found. The list is accessible on the Internet; it also includes the list of all known agents-Bolsheviks or murder-agents of the KGB (MGB) of the Estonian SSR. [41] How successful or poor the state security was in infiltrating into the Forest Brethren is not easy to tell. Files of agents are not available in Estonia, and so researchers have to depend on indirect sources. The methods used by the operative-agency have been disclosed by Peeter Väljas.[42]
Basic documents on the movement of Forest Brethren were published in 1992 by Evald Laasi[43] . Certainly, with the appearance of new files, both thrilling and intriguing facts have been discovered. [44] The reports of Soviet authorities, however, must be treated with caution. Thus the information in Soviet documents oftentimes contradicts the actual reminiscences of contemporaries and former Forest Brethren.[45]
More extensive research into the Forest Brethren's movement has been conducted in Latvia [46] and Lithuania than in Estonia. As a result of his years-long research, Heinrihs Strods has published a collection of documents and materials on Latvian Forest Brethren. [47] In Lithuania, a number of collections of documents as well as results of thorough investigations, have been published. Two well-known historians Arvydas Anuauskas and Juozas Starkauskas [48] deserve mention, as does Genocidas ir rezistencija, a specialised journal, addressing armed resistance and crimes against humanity.
During the 14 months of the first Soviet occupation (1940-41) about 8,000 persons were arrested. The estimates differ: 8,800, [49] 7,926, [50] 7,043. [51] Leo Talve has estimated the number of arrests at 8,000, of whom 98%, or 7,840 persons, died. [52] 1,950 people were killed on the Estonian territory. The others died in the years of 1942-44 in Soviet prison camps. [53] About 500-600 men of those arrested may have survived, i.e. 6-8%. [54] In line with the data from the collection The Estonian People's Year of Sufferings (1943) 1,850 people were murdered (235 remained unidentified). [55] Preliminary lists of people executed in Estonia in 1940-41 as sentenced by the courts (179 persons) and those executed without any trial (2,199 persons) were published in 1996 in The Red Terror, by M. Laar and J. Tross.[56]
Immediately after the arrival of the Red Army and the restoration of Soviet power in Estonia in the autumn 1944, a new wave of arrests swept over Estonia. Already before their arrival in Estonia, the organs of the state security had a list with the names of persons who had to be arrested if they had remained in Estonia. As a rule, the victims were sent to hard labour camps for years. Besides those who had served in the Self-Defence and Defence League, the same destiny befell people who, although having successfully passed the filtration camps, were later punished for their service in the German army.
The leader of the Estonian Communist Party (ECP) Nikolai Karotamm reported to the Minister of the State Security Boris Kumm that within a month 8,000 anti-Soviet persons were registered and over 200 arrested. [57] During a year, 1944-1945, about 10,000 persons were arrested, half of whom died within the first two years. By various estimations, in the years 1944-1953 c. 25,000-30,000 persons were sent to hard labour and prison camps, one third of whom (11,000) never returned home.[58]
The first volume of the serial publication Political Arrests in Estonia in 1940 -1988 (§58) (1995) contains personal data about 20,164 arrested people who were sentenced on the basis of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the Russian SSFR. The database is compiled on the basis of rehabilitation and personal files of those arrested, preserved in the archives of the Estonian SSR Public Prosecutor's office and the Supreme Court. [59] The second volume of the publication (1998) reveals personal data of 15,001 arrested people and corrections of personal data for 2,215 persons. The statistical analysis, based on the joint data in the two volumes (34,620 persons, 1995), reveals that death sentences had been given to 2,861 persons; the number of the dead or murdered in the places of detention was 8,176 (out of 34,710, 1998).[60]
At least 475 persons were arrested in 1953-1988, 375 of them in 1953. [61] The year 1953 also designates the final active stage of the Forest Brethren's fight. In 1956, after the suppression of the Hungarian insurrection, many partisans came out of the woods, and armed resistance was replaced by unarmed resistance. In line with the forms of resistance, the Estonian resistance to the Soviet occupation (1941-1991) falls into five periods. The period of 1955-1985 has been researched on by Viktor Niitsoo.[62]
The war that broke out between the USSR and Germany in 1941 brought along the mobilisation into the Red Army and evacuation. Most authors estimate the number of mobilised men at approximately 33,000. Based on P. Larin's data, 50,000 men were mobilised into the Red Army in the summer 1941, of whom only 32,187 served at the Soviet home front.
At the beginning of the summer 1941 ca 5,500-5,600 men were serving in active forces (in the 22nd Territorial Corps), formed on the basis of the former Estonian army. By that time many officers, having served in the active forces of the Estonian Republic, had been arrested, shot or deported to the Soviet Union. In July 1941 about 4,500 men serving in the 22nd Territorial Corps in the Porkhov (Pskov Oblast, Russia) area defected to the German side. In August 1941, the Corps was dissolved and the men were sent to the home front. P. Larin claims that 3,543 soldiers from Estonia remained in the Soviet army after that date. Estonians, mobilised into the Soviet army, who were considered as untrustworthy both because of their nationality and social and other reasons suffered in work battalions, subordinated to the NKVD, in 1941-42. The number of soldiers who perished in work battalions has been estimated at 12,000, but the number has not been confirmed by archival documents. Reminiscences and records on Estonian soldiers in work battalions in 1941-1942 were published by U. Usai.
Those sent to the front suffered heavy casualties. A group of them met their end at Velikije Luki (12 December 1942-26 January 1943). The list of soldiers of the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps who were killed, died from wounds or were declared as missing (6,474 men, of whom under 2,400 were Estonian-born) has been published in the book Velikije Luki in memoriam compiled by V. Boikov. Men who were taken prisoner or defected to the German side numbered, in T.Nõmm's estimation, 1,800. Officially they were considered as missing. The total number of men in the Rifle Corps, has been placed at 70,000 by T. Nõmm but this seems to be an exaggeration.
E. Laasi estimated the losses related to mobilisation and deaths in the Red Army at a total of 9,758 persons, 1,758 of whom died while transported to the home front, 200 died in the 22nd Territorial Corps and 7,800 in the Estonian Corps (1942-1945). According to "Memento's" Information and History Committee, from among 32,100 persons who were mobilised, 10% (3,210) perished en route, 40% (12,840) died in work battalions, 13% (4,170) in combat and 3% (1,000) in prison. The estimated number of civilians evacuated to Russia wavers between 25,000 and 26,275 , 20% of whom died on the way to or on the home front.
On 22 June 1941, German troops attacked the Soviet Union. On 1 July, Germans took Riga, Latvia, and Soviet occupants and their hirelings began to flee from Estonia. The scorched earth tactics declared by Stalin called for the formation of "destroyer battalions" on the basis of "cadres of tried courage". About 6,000 persons who served in these battalions were given the right to rob and kill; this, in turn, deepened the negative attitude the Estonians felt towards Soviet functionaries.
Estonian Forest Brethren, armed groups of partisans, who had started their actions after the 14 June 1941 deportation, were aiding the German army. Making use of the panic of the adversary, the Forest Brethren liberated South Estonia more or less on their own strength. The summer war of 1941 has been discussed extensively by Herbert Lindmäe.
In reaction to the Soviet occupation policy, thousands of Forest Brethren volunteered as fighters in Self-Defence units in German-occupied areas. At the beginning of the German occupation, over 50,000 Estonians joined Self-Defence units, the German army and the police force. This figure considerably exceeded that planned by the Germans. Outlines of the history of Self-Defence units in the Estonian State Archives deal with the most important events beginning with the occupation of Estonia until the end of 1941.
By the summer 1942, the attitude towards the German army significantly deteriorated, proved by the number of conscripts who fled to Finland to escape mobilisation. About 3,500 of them were conscripted into the Finnish army, and they formed the 200th Infantry Regiment (the "Finnish Boys"). In August 1944, about 1,800 volunteers returned to Estonia from Finland. For Freedom: Brief Biographies of the Finnish Boys (1997) has precise data on 3,333 "Finnish Boys", although the number of the Estonians who served in the Finnish defence forces must certainly have been higher.
It is difficult to assess precisely the number of the Estonians who fought in the German army because of the insufficiency of archival materials. A good overview of the Estonian units in German armed forces can be found in Toomas Hiio's paper, published in the journal Vikerkaar. In line with A. Tinits' calculations, 60,000 men altogether were under arms. According to T. Nõmm, c. 70,000 Estonians passed through German forces, among them 20,000 volunteers and 50,000 conscripts. Altogether, with prisoners of war and those who attempted an escape as well as missing persons, service on the German side destroyed the lives of 20,000 Estonians.
There are various views on the losses that Estonian civilian population had to bear during the German occupation. Enn Sarv, supported by "Memento" estimates, supposes that the number of local casualties, both those killed and those who periskhed, could not be higher than 6,600, including also 929 Jews and 243 Gypsies. The list drawn up by Eugenia Gurin-Loov has 929 names. V. Boikov has gathered personal data on 559 Estonian Jews and about 800 Gypsies who were killed. The data found in various sources are approximate, but all the researchers share the opinion that the number of the Jews killed was between 900 and 1,000. Nearly 800 people were sent to work service in Germany and 4,000 people were sent to prison camps, of whom approximately 1,040 died.
These data are certainly not final. The documentation reflecting executions is rather bulky and controversial. More light should be cast on the matter by the Estonian International Commission for Investigating Crimes Against Humanity, which also deals with the destinies of the people brought to Estonia from Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Poland and executed here. In accordance with the data of the Commission, eight members of the Estonian Self-Administration share the responsibility, together with German occupation authorities, for criminal activity against humanity on the Estonian territory.
In 1944, the front again reached Estonia. In the estimation of S. Ise, approximately 35,000 soldiers of the German side were buried in Estonia, up to one- third of them the Estonians. The number of the Estonians killed in action on the Estonian territory in 1944 wavers between 10,000 and 12,000, not counting prisoners. The number of Soviet air-raid casualties amounts up to 800. After the withdrawal of German troops, an attempt to re-store the Estonian independence failed, and in September 1944 the Soviet army again occupied the mainland of Estonia.
A massive escape from Estonia began even before Soviet troops reached the country. In 1943-19404, about 2,800 persons fled across the sea in their own boats. Officially, about 3,700 Estonian Swedes were evacuated to Sweden in the summer of 1944; among them there were also about 2,000 Estonians. Based on V. Aman's survey, a total of 7,920 Estonian Swedes arrived in Sweden.
In the course of the so-called Massive Escape that began in September 1944, nearly 25,000 Estonians are believed to have reached Sweden. The fugitives preferred to attempt reaching nearby Sweden and Finland, but those who fled in the eleventh hour had to undertake a strenuous journey to Germany, and about 35,000-40,000 Estonians got there. The worst catastrophe for those fleeing to Germany took place on 22 September 1944 on the infirmary ship Moero. Out of 2,500-3,000 people aboard the ship only about 600-700 were rescued. On 6 October 1944 the transport ship Nordstern was sunk near Memel (Klaipeda). About 400-450 Estonians perished. E. Ernits has calculated that in the autumn months 1944, from among the Estonian fugitives who tried to reach Germany, about 1,000-1,200 persons died on the Baltic Sea. No one knows the number of fugitives who were lost at sea aboard boats that were steered toward Sweden. It is generally estimated that of all fugitives who set out, about 10%, or up to 7,000 persons, could have perished. Based on the data issued on 1 October 1946, there were altogether 32,219 Estonians in DP camps in Germany, 16,688 in the US zone (including Berlin); 13,698 in the British zone; 835 in the French zone. 998 Estonians were in Austria.
After Germany's capitulation, thousands of Estonians in East Germany were captured by Soviet forces. About 10,000 Estonian soldiers had made it to Germany. There were Estonian prisoners of war in every occupation zone. According to various sources, about 5,000-6,000 Estonians were taken prisoner by the Allied Forces in Germany and Czechoslovakia. Approximately 5,000-5,500 Estonian soldiers remained in the Soviet zone. In Estonia, prisoner of war camps were set up on the grounds of the former German encampments left behind in 1944. Erich Kaup draws a good picture of the activity of the state security organs in these camps.
Population losses of Estonia should also include those Estonian citizens of German origin who left for Germany, responding to Hitler's call "to come home". Based on the 1934 census, there were 16,346 citizens of German origin living in Estonia. In the course of the Umsiedlung, from October 1939 through May 1940, approximately 12,660 persons left Estonia. According to the German historian Jürgen von Hehn, the number of Baltic Germans who left was 13,700, among them also 500-1,000 Estonians (mainly as spouses of Germans). Naturally this exodus brought about a mass of property rearrangements, many still unsettled to date. Additionally, in 1941, in the course of Nachumsiedlung, another 7,000-8,000 people left Estonia, more than a half of whom were citizens of Estonian origin. In the course of German repatriation about 10,500 persons left Latvia. In 1941 the follow-up repatriation offered an escape route to many Estonians and Latvians.
Investigations into repressive policy presuppose a thorough knowledge of the structures and activity of the Communist Party and its repressive organs. Undoubtedly, a question arises about the personal responsibility of the onetime leading functionaries. Thus, as censorship was eased in the late 1980s, one of the focal themes was concerned with the role of the former First Secretary of the Estonian CP Nikolai Karotamm. In their 1989 publicist writings, both E. Laasi and K. Tammistu inclined to see Karotamm as a puppet, deceived and superseded by others, rather than an organiser of repressions, and they preferred laying the whole responsibility on state security organs. H. Ligi, in turn, emphasised Karotamm's strong personal connection with the preparation and execution of the 1949 deportation. Later, numerous materials from the CP archives provided evidence that both Karotamm and the CP played a leading role in the 1949 deportation.
Hundreds of books have been published about the history of the Estonian CP, however, the time has now come to provide an objective overview of them and a beginning has been made. In 1999, Olaf Kuuli wrote a lengthy treatment about socialists and communists in Estonia in 1917-1991. The period 1939-1941 has been investigated in detail by Professor of History Jüri Ant from Tartu University. During the years 1940-1990, Moscow authorities ruled the Estonian SSR through 42 secretaries and 11 deputy secretaries. Their biographical data were published in a separate collection in 2001.
The disclosure of the work of individual ministers or public figures enables to get a better view of the contents of the occupation policy. Along with the CP apparatus, a key role was also played by the Ministries of the State Security and Internal Affairs. During Soviet rule, a detailed observation of the working mechanisms of these institutions was impossible. By now the cover of secrecy has gradually been lifted. In Russia several remarkable research publications have appeared that impel our historians, too, to go deeper into the issue.
Thus in 2001 Valdur Ohmann completed his MA thesis on the subject "The Institutional Development of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Estonian SSR and Archival Documents (1940-1954)", a chapter of which was also published in the journal Ajalooline Ajakiri (Historical Journal). The problem of the history of Soviet institutions as a whole, however, has come to the attention of our researchers only recently, and therefore research is only in its initial stage. Furthermore, the research is inhibited by insufficiency and selectivity of sources. Therefore, research tries to concentrate on general policies of the USSR as they applied to the Estonian SSR.
Tõnu Tannberg is completing a major research project on the political situation in the Estonian SSR in 1953, dealing with the internal political situation in the USSR - Beria's national-political principles of activity in the Baltic countries and in Estonia, in particular - after the death of Stalin. His research is based on the documentation of the Estonian CP and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Estonian SSR and has partly been published in the journal Tuna.
A major contribution to that particular field was made by Hilda Sabbo. Her documentary series Impossible to Remain Silent has issued four books by now. The compiler has made use of copies and excerpts from original documents obtained in the archives of the Russian Federation bearing the stamp "confidential" or "top secret". Many documents come from the archives of the OGPU, NKVD and KGB, from materials of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Politburo and their respective equivalents in the Estonian SSR. The documents presented begin from the year of 1918 and end with the 1990s. Among the published documents one can come across those that are not directly related to Estonia yet reflect the repressive policy executed all over in the USSR.
In Sabbo's bulky work, however, one finds various questionable aspects, caused mainly by the lack of professional training. The compiler has gathered extremely dissimilar documents with an aim to publish anything available. Most of the documents are neither translated nor commented on, thus demanding from the reader a lot of extra knowledge. Therefore it would be appropriate to add that Mrs. Sabbo is not a historian. She was born in the village of New Estonia, North Caucasia, in 1930. Coming from a repressed family, the aim she has set is to find out the truth about the systematic extermination of the Estonian nation by communists.
The documents published in the series Impossible to Remain Silent are well supplemented by the collection of documents issued by the Latvian State Archives Okupacijas varu politika Latvija 1939-1991. Dokumentu krajums. Lines of comparison with Lithuania can be found in the collection Lietuvos gyventoju tremimai sovietines okupacines valdios dokumentuose 1940-1941, 1945-1953 m. Lietuvos istorijas institutas.
The focal point of the liveliest attention in the last decade was the theme of the KGB. An overview of the structure and personnel of the ESSR state security and its functioning mechanisms based on an analysis of available materials is still lacking. Attempts have been made, though, to describe the activities of various departments of the structure. For instance, reports on the work of the counter-intelligence department in 1954-1955, agency and operative work in 1956 etc., have been issued as source publications, etc.
With the end of World War II, the USSR found it hard to accept the situation that thousands of Estonian citizens had managed to escape abroad. Attempts were made to coax them, in whatever possible ways, into returning to Estonia. The fears of the former Baltic inhabitants that they might be extradited was thus well-founded. Propaganda and ideological suasion of those in exile lasted up to the break-up of the USSR and was a cornerstone of the repatriation policy. The exile policy executed in Soviet Estonia and KGB contacts with Baltic research circles both at home and abroad have been thoroughly studied by Indrek Jürjo. His book, issued in 1996, caused a heated discussion and the author was reprimanded for insufficient source criticism and focus on one source only.
Research into repressions presupposes a complex analysis that makes maximal use of source materials from various institutions and both written and oral personal communication. But since an essential part of the original documentation was destroyed or is too fragmentary and irregular, the researcher has to simultaneously work with various secondary sources.
Analysing the work done, it becomes clear that the bulk of research deals with concrete events and is based mainly on the materials in the Estonian State Archives and those in its branch archives or former CP archives. That access to Russian archives is complicated becomes evident in the research results. Extensive searches to find and sift out documents or their copies in various archives and depositories are now feasible only for well-financed research projects.
Researchers who have been able to analyse events and documents on various levels have achieved best results. These include the local level, including counties, districts, townships, village councils, as well as the former republican and all-Union levels. Numerous documents of state significance (officially ordered to be destroyed) have been discovered among local archival documents. Regulations concerning confidentiality of documents, returning them to higher organs or destroying them were applied differently in different counties. Much depended on the obedience and care taken by the local officials. Therefore an accidental finding in local archives plays a significant role.
For some of the repressed (arrested, deported, et al.), Siberia needs to be added: places where these persons had been resettled and where constant surveillance was maintained over their lives. Regrettably, much of the documentation is still top secret. Expeditions to Siberian archives convince one in that research has to be carried out in different regions and archives. Despite a formally similar order of management, the principles of complementing, maintaining, as well as getting access to archival records may be quite different. Instructions may have been differently interpreted in different places. Luckily for researchers, in some places deviations from the regulations to destroy documents occurred.
Considering the fragmentation of our archival materials, gathering information from eyewitnesses of past events is most significant. However, many events tend to grow or, on the contrary, become clouded in reminiscences. From time to time, past "heroes" crop up, although at the moment when the event took place there was little or no heroism involved. Therefore oral sources, traditions and materials in individual possession should be addressed critically and only as related to archival records. Comparing internally various materials helps to sort out errors and inaccuracies.
Research into various demographic, national and social aspects requires the availability of representative statistical data. Many figures published in literature today can only be regarded as approximate. With people constantly on the move (jumbled demographic processes took place, normal birth and death was disturbed, people migrated east or west, forcibly or voluntarily, various mobilisations took place, etc.), adequate demographic statistical data are lacking and deviations in estimates may be rather significant, reaching not into tens but into hundreds of thousands.
Based on different sources, various individual databases have been compiled to get a whole picture of repressions. In 2000 a project "A Joint Database on Estonian Population Losses" was started, comprising all the categories of the repressed. It further enables the blending of various forms of repression and the specification of the scope of the repressive policy against the Estonian population.
Up to the end of the 1980s any scientific and scholarly research into the Soviet repressive policy was complicated, first of all, due to the lack of source materials and their strict confidentiality. The treatments by the Baltic emigrants were rather propagandistic in nature. During the last decade, numerous research articles, overviews, reminiscences, etc. have appeared in the Baltic States.
The past decade of research into repressions can be regarded as the period of a search for, reconstruction and preliminary statistical analysis of sources. Categories of the repressed have been studied on various levels and with a different focus. Therefore Estonian, as well as Latvian and Lithuanian researchers would benefit from sharing experience and materials.
Thus both Estonian and Latvian scholars have made progress in analysing the lists of the deportees of the 1949 deportations. Latvian and Lithuanian historians have thoroughly studied the relationship between the 1949 deportation and the Forest Brethren's movement. Latvian researchers have elucidated the military aspect of the deportation operation. Estonian researchers have managed to interview hundreds of victims of the deportation, adding a human measure to the research. Both Latvian and Lithuanian colleagues have acknowledged the progress made by Estonian scholars in finding out about everyday living conditions of Estonian deportees in Siberia. Comparison of documents and individual files enables to get closer to creating a full picture about Soviet forms and methods of repression as implemented in the Baltic States.
Baltic partnership in this regard has probably worked best in exile or at conferences in Paris, Stockholm, New York and elsewhere outside the Baltic. Even at the time when the repression issue was politically topical we did not have any considerable joint approaches. As before, the best example of such a partnership is almost a classic two-man Misiunas-Taagepera book Baltic States: The Years of Dependence 1940-1990. However, the Preface to the book points out that Estonian and Lithuanian examples and illustrations predominate in the whole book because "one of our hardest questions was our inability to use original literature in Latvian".
The collection of papers The Anti-Soviet Resistance in the Baltic States is one of the most recent attempts of historians of our three countries to write on a common theme. Hopefully, a comparative study of abundant source material on some other theme will soon be done. In a sense, a partnership may possibly find its way to the pages of the Internet. Thus http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA yields information about the crimes against humanity in Latvia, containing important references to publications by Estonian and Lithuanian researchers.