Estonia declared itself independent on 24 February 1918. German forces occupied Tallinn the next day. Germany did not recognise Estonia’s independence. The Bolsheviks fled to Russia. After the November Revolution of 1918 in Germany and the end of the German occupation, Estonia’s Provisional Government took power into its own hands. The Red Army launched an offensive to recapture the lands of the former Russian Empire and to start the worldwide revolution. This meant the War of Independence for Estonia. A communist marionette government – the Commune of the Working People of Estonia – headed by Jaan Anvelt, operated in Narva from November of 1918 to June of 1919, and later in Russia. This was meant to create the impression of the Red Army attack as a civil war between Estonian workers and the bourgeoisie. Yet Estonia succeeded in fending off the Red Army’s attacks. The Commune was disbanded and with the peace treaty signed in February of 1920, Soviet Russia recognised Estonia and Estonia recognised Soviet Russia.

During the War of Independence, the communists demanded the incorporation of Estonia into Soviet Russia, and they continued their subversive activity after the end of the war as well. Estonian communist organisations were reorganised in 1920 as the Estonian Communist Party (ECP), which operated underground in Estonia as a section of the Comintern. The Russian Bureau of the ECP Central Committee (ECP CC) and the Estonian sections of the Comintern in Leningrad and Moscow assembled together the Estonian communists who had ended up in Russia. After the suppression of the communist attempt to overthrow the Estonian government in 1924 and the destruction of the communist underground in Estonia, the leading organs of the ECP fled to the Soviet Union. The ECP was banned in Estonia in 1918–1940.

Estonia first experienced communist terror during the War of Independence: Chekists murdered hundreds of civilians in parts of Estonia that were under Red Army control from December of 1918 to the spring of 1919. The common grave of 82 people who fell victim to the Red Terror in the Palermo woods near Rakvere became the symbol of mass murder.

Estonia’s Constituent Assembly was elected in April of 1919. The Bolsheviks boycotted the election but the socialist parties won: out of 120 seats, the Estonian Socialist Workers’ Party (ESWP) gained 41 mandates, the Labour Party 30, and the SR’s seven. Estonia’s Constitution was adopted in 1920. The communists participated by way of front organisations in elections for the 100-seat Riigikogu (Estonian parliament), which were to be held every three years: the Central Council of Tallinn’s Trade Unions (1920), the Working People’s United Front (1923), the Estonian Workers’ Party (1926 and 1929), and Leftist Workers and Proletarians (1932), winning 5–10 seats in each of those elections. Estonia’s political police monitored the activities of the ECP and its front organisations. It was no secret that these movements operated in the interests of the Soviet Union and were steered and funded by the USSR.

Around a hundred communist activists were sentenced to long terms of forced labour in November of 1924. They were released under the terms of the amnesty of 1938. After the attempted coup in December of 1924, the communists lost their support in Estonia once and for all. The shrill speeches of the representatives of the ECP’s front organisations in the Riigikogu were treated as jokes.

The SR Party fell apart at the outset of the 1920s. Members of its left wing joined the camp of the underground Bolsheviks, while its right-wingers joined the ESWP. The left-leaning liberal Labour Party merged with the nationalist liberal People’s Party to form the Nationalist Centre Party for the 1932 election. After the disintegration of the SR’s, Estonia’s only socialist party was the ESWP, which won 22 mandates in the 1932 election. The Bolshevik front organisation, the Leftist Workers and Proletarians election coalition won five mandates.[1]

In 1934, Prime Minister Konstantin Päts established an authoritarian system of government in order to prevent right wing radicals from winning the presidential election, and the following year the activities of all political parties were suspended. The ESWP split. Its right wing had supported Päts also because the coup drove the main competitor of the socialists, the right wing radical War of Independence veterans’ movement out of political life. Members of its left wing sought contacts with the underground ECP and the Comintern with the aim of creating a joint antifascist front, and founded the Marxist Working People’s Association. Leftist socialists, who unofficially continued their activities, coordinated their undertakings with Estonian Bolsheviks and representatives of the Comintern, and with leftist socialists in Scandinavia and Finland.

The majority of the leaders of the Estonian communists who lived in the Soviet Union fell victim to Stalin’s purges in the latter half of the 1930s, including Hans Pöögelmann and Jaan Anvelt. (The Estonian Defence Police caught Viktor Kingissepp in 1922 and he was executed by decision of a court martial.) Liaison was severed between the underground ECP and the Comintern, which had similarly been decimated by Stalin’s purges. Financial support was halted. Starting in 1933, the ECP Central Committee Secretariat (later Orgburo) that operated in Sweden and Denmark, and was headed by the Soviet Union’s foreign intelligence and Comintern agents Leo Looring (alias Johannes Meerits) and Karl Säre, became the guiding organ for Estonian communists. In 1938, Säre used the amnesty declared in Estonia and returned to his Estonian homeland, developing contacts with left wing socialists that he had already made earlier. The amnesty did not extend to those who participated in the attempted coup of December, 1924 and Looring-Meerits could not return to Estonia. Soviet authorities ordered him to travel to Estonia in 1940 but he feared that he would fall victim to the NKVD, and thus refused. Instead he turned himself in to the Finnish state police. In 1947, Denmark extradited him to the Soviet Union, where he was sentenced to death and executed in 1952.

The Estonian communists who were released from prison by the amnesty of 1938 founded an illegal underground Bureau. Relations between its leaders (Johannes Lauristin, Hendrik Allik and others) and Karl Säre were tense.[2]

1940–1952: Estonian Communist (Bolshevist) Party, the Estonian SSR branch organisation of the All-Russian Communist (Bolshevist) Party

1952–1990: Estonian Communist Party, the Estonian SSR branch organisation of the CPSU

The ECP had 133 members in 1940 before the occupation of Estonia. Thereafter the number of party members grew rapidly. Workers, trade unionists, farm labourers, a number of leftist intellectuals, and others joined the party. They were motivated by opposition to the spirit of the preceding era of the authoritarian system of government, sincere faith in communist ideals and the influence of propaganda, or also opportunism and the desire to forge a career.

On 8 October 1940, the ECP was incorporated into the All-Union Communist (Bolshevist) Party (AC(B)P) as its Estonian section. At that time, 2,285 members belonged to the party, over 90% of whom had joined the party after the occupation of Estonia. On 1 July 1941, 3,751 people were on the EC(B)P membership list. Many of them participated in carrying out the mass deportation of 1941 and joined the NKVD destruction battalions after the start of the war. Almost all of the communists who remained in Estonia when the German occupation began or were left behind to conduct ‘underground work’ fell into the hands of the German Security Police and were executed.

The Estonian communists who were evacuated to the rear area in the Soviet Union were mobilised into the Estonian national units of the Red Army or operated in the rear area in civilian posts. In addition to the men mobilised from Estonia in 1941, Estonians who had lived in the Soviet Union before 1940 and members of other nationalities of the Soviet Union belonged to the Red Army 8th Estonian Rifle Corps that was formed at the end of 1942. Thousands of Estonians in the Rifle Corps were recruited as communists. The Corps suffered heavy losses in battles, but in addition to its military role, the Corps was also treated as trained human material for continuing Estonia’s sovietisation after the end of the war. There were 4,765 members in the Estonian Rifle Corps party organisations in July of 1945.

There were only 2,409 members on the EC(B)P list on 1 January 1945. The Estonian Rifle Corps was demobilised by the end of 1946, and a large proportion of people who had been evacuated to the rear area in the Soviet Union returned to Estonia. A number of Estonians from Russia and members of other nationalities of the Soviet Union also came to Estonia. On 1 January 1953, there were 22,320 members on the EC(B)P list, and 30,516 members were on the list on 1 January 1959. Statistics were kept in the Soviet Union according to both social status and nationality. In 1959, 35.2% of party members were workers and 13.6% were peasants.

The remainder were officials, intellectuals, and others. After the war, less than half of ECP members were Estonian, while in 1959, 47.8% of its membership was Estonian. It is not known how large a proportion of them were Estonians from elsewhere in the Soviet Union. The majority of the remaining party members was Russian (42.1% of the total number), followed by Ukrainians, Jews and Byelorussians. Later on, slightly over half of party members were Estonian: 112,925 members in 1988, that is 50.2% Estonians.[1] The ECP remained the trustworthy extension of the communist regime in the annexed territory to the very end. The majority of ECP members were not from Estonia.

The ECP was one of the tools for bringing Estonian society into line. In a society that the Communist Party monitored and controlled completely and where there was no private property, private enterprise or educational and cultural institutions born from private initiative, even the position of primary school principal required membership in the party.

Most leading positions were part of the so-called nomenklatura, in other words the list of positions, the filling of which was decided by the CPSU CC, the ECP CC or the municipal or district committee in accordance with the importance of the position. Most Estonian members of the ECP joined for pragmatic considerations, not out of sincere conviction of the truth of the idea of communism. This is indicated by the mass exodus from the party of Estonian members of the ECP in 1990 before the restoration of Estonia’s independence, and by the marginal support for the ideological successors of the ECP in later elections.

The members of the leadership of the Estonian branch of the CPSU were to the very end of the ECP men who had grown up, acquired their education, and worked in the Soviet Union. Karl Säre, the 1st Secretary of the ECP CC in1940–1941, was left behind in Estonia to organise underground struggle. He soon fell into the hands of the Germans and died in a concentration camp in Germany at the start of 1945. The 2nd Secretary, Nikolai Karotamm, took his position over. Karotamm had gone from Estonia to the Soviet Union by way of Holland in the 1920s. Many so-called prison communists (men and women who had been in prison in Estonia for communist subversive activity) and so-called June communists who joined the ECP in 1940 immediately after the occupation of Estonia, including the former leftist socialists Hans Kruus, Nigol Andresen and others, belonged to the Estonian SSR leadership in the latter half of the 1940s. The AC(B)P CC Politburo decided to replace the leadership of the Estonian SSR at the end of the 1940s.

The change was carried out at the 8th EC(B)P CC Plenum in March of 1950 and most leading positions went to Estonians from the Soviet Union and party employees sent to Estonia from elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Karotamm was replaced by Johannes (Ivan) Käbin, who led the ECP until 1978. His successor was Karl Vaino (in office 1978–1988), another Estonian from the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Vaino Väljas, who was born, raised and educated in Estonia, to replace the conservative Vaino. Väljas led the party until 1990. Starting from the end of the 1950s, the proportion of local people in the leadership of the party’s municipal and district committees, and of the ECP Central Committee started increasing gradually.[2]

The elite of Estonian society fell victim to communist terror, starting with politicians, state officials, military officers and police officers, and extending to businessmen, owners of farms, intellectuals and public figures. Members of Russian White Guard organisations living in Estonia and Polish citizens who came to Estonia in 1939–1940 were also among the first to be arrested.

Over 6,000 people were imprisoned in Estonia from June of 1940 to the autumn of 1941 and sent to GULAG prison camps in Russia in the spring and summer of 1941. Approximately 400 people were executed locally. Another 10,000 people were deported to Russia on 14 June 1941. The heads of families were already segregated from these people at the railway stations and sent to the GULAG. Women, children and the elderly were sent into forced banishment.

The sentences for persons imprisoned on political charges were mostly determined by the NKVD Baltic District Forces Military Tribunal. After the start of the war with Germany in June of 1941, the military tribunals of Red Army groupings of troops and of the Baltic fleet stationed in Estonia also started determining such sentences. Local tribunals in the GULAG camps or also the NKVD Special Counsel in Moscow continued conviction proceedings. The basis for deportation was not the individual verdict of a tribunal or a court, but rather a secret joint decree, that is an administrative decision, issued by the C(B)PSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of People’s Commissars.

The first death sentences were delivered at the end of 1940 and they started being carried out at the outset of 1941. Most of those who were sent to the GULAG in 1941 were executed or died in prison camp. There were more survivors of forced banishment. Approximately another 2,000 people were murdered or fell victim to acts of warfare from July to October of 1941.[1]

Germany occupied Estonia in 1941. An estimated 8,000 Estonian citizens and residents were murdered in Estonia during the German occupation, including all 1,000 Jews who remained in Estonia and over 300 gypsies. Three quarters of the victims were Estonian, the vast majority of whom were accused of belonging to the Communist Party or NKVD destruction battalions, holding communist views, collaborating with the Soviet secret police, or participating in deportation operations.[2] Thousands of people were imprisoned and some of them were sent to concentration camps in Germany.

Approximately 70,000 people fled from Estonia ahead of the advancing Red Army in the autumn of 1944.

The Soviet Union’s state security agencies the NKVD and the NKGB (starting in 1946 the MVD and the MGB), the Red Army and naval fleet Smersh departments, tribunals of groupings of troops and of various institutions, and other such agencies were brought to Estonia together with the returning Red Army in 1944. In addition to continuing ideologically motivated terror, they also fought against the armed Estonian resistance movement. Over 35,000 people were imprisoned in Estonia on the basis of political accusations in 1944–1953.

Most of them were sent to GULAG camps in Russia and Kazakhstan. Additionally, 407 Germans were deported to Siberia in 1945 together with the members of their families, nearly 21,000 people primarily from the countryside were deported in 1949, 282 Jehovah’s Witnesses were deported in 1951, and many others. It is not known how many farm owners were imprisoned for not fulfilling quotas that were beyond their capacity to meet. They served their sentences mostly in Estonian prisons and prison camps.

After the end of World War II, conditions of imprisonment and the food provided in prison camps and in forced banishment improved, and consequently the death rate decreased. Yet until the temporary abolition of the death penalty in 1947, hundreds of people imprisoned for political reasons were executed in Estonia and in GULAG camps.

After Stalin’s death, imprisonment based on political accusations decreased – there were less than a thousand in total of such imprisoned persons in 1954–1990. This does not mean that the Soviet regime started tolerating the resistance movement. On the one hand, by that time much of the resistance had been stamped out by force, and on the other hand, Estonians saw that liberation from Soviet rule could not be expected anytime soon. Starting in 1954, the sentences of political prisoners and deportees started being shortened and these people started being released gradually. Until the start of the 1960s, nearly 28,000 imprisoned and deported persons from Estonia returned to their Estonian homeland. Yet the last Estonian political prisoners sentenced in the 1950s to 25 years of imprisonment gained the right to return to their homeland only at the end of the 1980s.[3]

Rapid sovietisation began after the annexation of Estonia but was interrupted by the German occupation. Sovietisation continued immediately after the recapture of Estonia in 1944 and it was based on the three dogmas of building communist society: industrialisation, collectivisation and cultural revolution. Estonia was incorporated into the rhythm of five-year plans of the Soviet Union’s planned command economy.

Industrialisation consisted of the preferential development of industry compared to other spheres of economic and community life. Greater attention had started being paid to developing industry in Estonia in the era of the authoritarian system of government in the 1930s. This was cut short by World War II and the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union.

Estonia’s advantage compared to the rest of the Soviet Union was the high level of education of the population, yet its shortcoming was its lack of natural resources, and the absence of a heavy industry tradition and a large labour force. Yet heavy industry in particular was considered the mainstay of industrialisation. Estonia’s location on the Soviet Union’s western border caused a high level of militarisation and together with this the preferential development of branches of industry meant for meeting military needs.

The mining of oil shale and the production of oil that had been rapidly developed during the German occupation in Northeastern Estonia was continued in the latter half of the 1940s. The beginning of the nuclear arms race provided a new impetus for this. Dictyonema shale, which is found together with oil shale deposits, contains small amounts of uranium. The Soviet Union had no uranium deposits after World War II and a uranium enrichment plant was built at Sillamäe to enrich the uranium extracted from the dictyonema shale.

The Soviet Union soon gained control of uranium deposits with a richer ore content and mining at Sillamäe was discontinued.[1] Estonian oil shale was used initially for extracting oil shale gas, which started being used to heat Leningrad (the pipeline was completed in 1948), and also Tallinn in 1953. ‘Communism equals Soviet power plus electrification,’ is a sentence that is ascribed to Lenin. The Estonian SSR also started being rapidly electrified. Estonia became part of the energy networks of Northwestern Russia. Two large oil shale burning electric power stations were built here, Balti SEJ (1959) and Eesti SEJ (1969).

These in and of themselves positive undertakings brought negative consequences. First of all, environmental pollution, and secondly a massive influx of manpower from other parts of the Soviet Union, which turned Estonians into a minority in Northeastern Estonia. Machinery factories, electronics factories and radio technology factories were started up again in Tallinn, and new factories were built. A large chemical plant was started up near Tallinn in Maardu. The raw material for this plant was local phosphorite. A number of new textile enterprises were built in addition to the hitherto existing large textile mills – the Kreenholm textile mill, the Baltic textile mill, and others.

The worsening in the situation concerning food supplies starting in the 1970s brought with it the development of the food industry, including the development of the meat processing industry, the primary market for which was Russia’s large cities. The timber and paper industries were traditionally strong in Estonia. There were a number of drawbacks in developing industry: first of all, a large proportion of it was oriented to satisfying the limitless Soviet market and military needs as the first priority, paying little attention to local needs. This also brought a scientific-technical level of production and a drop in quality because there was no cooperation and competition with the rest of the world. A second problem was the uncontrolled influx of non-Estonian manpower, and the third problem was serious environmental damage.[2]

Agriculture was rapidly collectivised starting in 1949 after the deportation carried out in March. The land, livestock and agricultural equipment of individual farms were combined into kolkhozes (collective farms). Kolkhozes initially struggled – the reason for this was the shock of the recent deportation, the unwillingness of the farmers who were forcibly incorporated into kolkhozes to go along with the new system, the rigid planned economy, which did not take local weather conditions and features of nature into consideration, and incompetent management. People with no experience in agriculture, but who had earned the party’s trust, were often appointed as kolkhoz chairmen.

Their task was to make sure that state plans were fulfilled without any objections raised. The economic condition of the kolkhozes started improving in the latter half of the 1950s. The former single village kolkhozes were combined to form larger units, and the competence of their managers improved. The Estonian Agriculture Academy was founded in 1951 as the successor to the University of Tartu Faculty of Agriculture with the aim of supplying farms with trained personnel. There already were collective farms in Estonia in the 1970s and 1980s with farm labourers whose income exceeded Estonia’s average income by far. Regardless of this, the typical range of food consumed by Estonians in the 1980s was rather one-sided because a large proportion of production was shipped out to satisfy the needs of other regions of the Soviet Union.[3]

Collective farms quickly disintegrated at the end of the 1980s and the outset of the 1990s. Land was returned to its pre-war owners or their heirs. The Estonia of small farms was nevertheless not restored: starting in the latter half of the 1990s, modern large-scale farming was built up with numerous different forms of ownership.

After occupying Estonia, communist educational and cultural officials sent to Estonia from the Soviet Union planned to start liquidating illiteracy. Estonia’s full literacy and modern educational system came as a surprise to them. Starting in 1944, the work of forcing Estonian education and culture into the Soviet framework continued. First and foremost, this involved teaching Russian and introducing courses in Marxism-Leninism at all levels of education.

Textbooks were translated from Russian or new ones were written. Schools and institutions of higher education were purged of teachers and lecturers who were not considered to be trustworthy. In the 1940s, Estonia’s educational system was harmonised with the system that was in effect in the Soviet Union: compulsory 7-grade incomplete secondary school, followed by a 3-grade secondary school. An 8+3 school system was adopted in Estonia and the other Baltic states at the start of the 1960s. Teaching in the Estonian language continued at university and in other institutions of higher education. Russian-language departments were opened in some subjects for university students whose mother tongue was Russian.[1]

Propaganda belittled national cultural achievements (intellectuals and artists were under the threat of being accused of ‘bourgeois nationalism’) as well as what was referred to as ‘grovelling before the degenerating West’. Over five thousand titles of books that were published before 1944 were banned and sealed off in special collections or destroyed. Nearly half a million volumes in total were removed from libraries. Total precensorship applied to the press, periodicals, literature and artistic works. This censorship was gradually done away with in 1987–1990.[2]

The only valid artistic movement was socialist realism, a schematic Soviet elaboration of the critical realism of the end of the 19th century, which in its Soviet incarnation was loyal to the powers that be. The first wave of Russification began at the end of the 1940’s. Among other things, several chairs of studies in Estonian subjects (Estonian history, archaeology, and others, but also classical philology, for instance) were shut down at the University of Tartu.

On the other hand, one of the postulates of communist propaganda was the ‘unprecedented blosoming of the cultures of nationalities under the conditions of socialism’. In this light, mainly folklore was promoted, but also literature, art and architecture, which were supposed to be ‘socialist in content, nationalist in form’. Starting in the latter half of the 1950s, the reins of censorship were slackened in the fields of both figurative art and literature.

Starting in the 1950s, the first Soviet citizens were allowed to travel abroad on tourist trips. Foreign tourists also visited Estonia. Estonian Television began operating in 1955, but Finnish Television became the window to Europe for Estonians. To the chagrin of party officials, Finnish broadcasts could also be watched in Northern Estonia.[3] After the 1977 Soviet Constitution was passed, which among other things established the Communist Party’s leading role in society, and the creation of the Soviet people, the policy of increasing the relative importance of the Russian language in society was once again adopted in connection with the latter objective.

This led to the protest movement and resentment among intellectuals.[4] The communist regime did not succeed in achieving the birth of art, literature and other creative expressions in Estonia that were socialist in content and nationalist in form. The educational system remained Estonian-oriented and continued to operate in the Estonian language. Knowledge of Russian did not progress regardless of the efforts of the authorities.[5]

The Soviet regime treated more or less obedient scientists and creative people generously. Their salaries and royalties were high compared to the average wage. Artistic creation was important for both domestic and foreign propaganda, but also for ‘letting off steam’, and first-rate science was necessary for developing the state’s economic and military power. The inferiority complex of the leaders of the ‘workers’ paradise’ when faced with scientists, writers, artists, composers, architects and other creative persons also played its role. This is also inherent to politics in general.

After World War II, the Soviet Union was one of the world’s two superpowers. Its army was one of the world’s largest and a large proportion of its gross domestic product was spent on its military might. Estonia was occupied in 1940 by threatening it with military force. The large contingents of Red Army and Baltic Fleet troop groupings stationed in Estonian territory starting from the autumn of 1939 in accordance with the mutual assistance pact that was forced on Estonia now received even further reinforcement. The former Estonian Army was taken under the firm control of Red Army officers and political leaders after the occupation of the country.

It was purged of independence-minded officers and non-commissioned officers, and incorporated into the Red Army as a territorial rifle corps. The Corps was destroyed at the front in the summer of 1941 and was disbanded in early autumn. Another more than 50,000 Estonian residents were mobilised into the Red Army in the summer of 1941, the autumn of 1944, and the spring of 1945. They belonged to the new Estonian Rifle Corps consisting of two divisions that was formed at the end of 1942.

After World War II, the national military units that had been left intact in the Baltic and Transcaucasian union republics were disbanded in 1956. Until that point, a large proportion of Estonian conscripts performed their compulsory military service in national military units in Estonia, although they were part of the Soviet Army, which was led by officers and political leaders of the Soviet Army and where orders were given in Russian. Starting in 1956, Estonian young men were sent to perform their compulsory military service mostly outside of Estonia.

Compulsory military service in ground forces lasted three years, and five years (later four) in the navy. Starting in 1968, the compulsory term of military service was two years in ground forces and three years in the navy. Nearly 300,000 Estonian residents in total rendered compulsory military service in the Soviet Army in 1947–1991. There were chairs of military training at the University of Tartu and in some schools of higher learning, where one day a week over the course of three years was devoted to military training. University students who completed this training became reserve officers without having to go through compulsory military service.

Estonia was one of the Soviet Union’s westernmost strongholds and it was very militarised. Ground forces, air defence, naval, naval air force, and strategic air force units were stationed here, and starting in the early 1960s there were also four nuclear medium-range ballistic missile bases. There were large numbers of Soviet border guard forces under the command of the KGB in Estonia due to its long sea border. In addition to army units, there were military units of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (interior forces) in Estonia, along with many institutions and organisations that were subordinated to the army and provided the army with a wide variety of services

The soldiers who served in Estonia were from other parts of the Soviet Union. While soldiers rendering their compulsory military service mostly left for their homeland after the end of their term of service, many officers and conscripts who voluntarily extended their military service stayed on with their families to live in Estonia, thus contributing to the growth of the relative proportion of non-indigenous residents in the population. Large tracts of land were at the disposal of the Soviet Army, which were used as military bases, airfields, firing ranges, military settlements, and other such uses. The army was a major source of environmental pollution.

Although Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union for nearly half a century and a large proportion of Estonian men had rendered compulsory military service in the Soviet Army, the people treated it as an army of occupation until the end of the Soviet Union.[1]

Literature:

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Hiio, Toomas; Maripuu, Meelis; Paavle, Indrek. Estonia since 1944: reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity (Tallinn: Estonian Foundation for Investigating Crimes against Humanity, 2009),

Hiio, Toomas. ‘The Communist coup attempt in Estonia on 1 December 1924: the last but one attempt at world revolution’ – Om læring og indsigt fra krig, Bd. 2, Verdun 1914 til Libanon 2006, ed. Michael Hesselholt Clemmesen (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2018)

Hiio, Toomas; Laar, Mart. Eesti riigi 100 aastat [100 Years of Estonian Statehood], Part I, Maapäevast Otto Tiefi valitsuseni [From the Provincial Assembly to the Otto Tief Government] (Tallinn: Post Factum, 2018)

Hiio, Toomas; Maripuu, Meelis;  Paavle, Indrek. Estonia 1940–1945: Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity (Tallinn: Estonian Foundation for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity, 2006)

Hiio, Toomas; Piirimäe, Helmut. Universitas Tartuensis 1632–2007, (Tartu: University of Tartu, 2007)

Kaasik, Peeter. ‘Eesti rahvusväeosade formeerimisest Nõukogude armee koosseisus aastatel 1940–1956’ [On the Formation of Estonian National Military Units within the Soviet Army in 1940–1956], – Väeteenistusest Eestis ja eestlastest väeteenistuses = Military Service in Estonia. Estonians in Military Service, Eesti sõjaajaloo aastaraamat = Estonian yearbook of military history, 1 (7) (2011)

Kaljundi, Linda; Kreem, Tiina-Mall. Ajalugu pildis – pilt ajaloos: rahvuslik ja rahvusülene minevik eesti kunstis = History in images – image in history: the national and transnational past in Estonian art (Tallinn: Art Museum of Estonia, 2018)

Karjahärm, Toomas. 1905. aasta Eestis: massiliikumine ja vägivald maal [1905 in Estonia: Mass Movement and Violence in the Countryside] (Tallinn: Argo, 2013)

Karjahärm, Toomas. 1905. aasta Eestis: sotsialistid ja terroristid [1905 in Estonia: Socialists and Terrorists] (Tallinn: Argo, 2013)

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Karjahärm, Toomas; Luts, Helle-Mai. Kultuurigenotsiid Eestis: kunstnikud ja muusikud 1940–1953 [Cultural Genocide in Estonia: Artists and Musicians in 1940–1953] (Tallinn: Argo, 2013)

Kiin, Sirje; Ruutsoo, Rein; Tarand, Andres. 40 kirja lugu [The Story of the Letter of 40 Intellectuals] (Tallinn: Olion, 1990)

Krikmann, Arvo; Olesk Sirje. Võim & kultuur [Power & Culture] (collection of articles) (Tartu: Estonian Literary Museum, 2003)

Kuuli, Olaf. Sotsialistid ja kommunistid Eestis 1917–1991 [Socialists and Communists in Estonia in 1917–1991] (Tallinn: O. Kuuli, 1991)

Kuusik, Argo. ‘Tsensuur Eesti NSV-s’ [Censorship in the Estonian SSR], manuscript in the possession of the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.

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Liivik, Olev; Nugin, Raili. Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei kohalikud organisatsioonid 1940–1991 [Local Organisations of the Estonian Communist Party], compiled by and ed. Enn Tarvel  (Tallinn: Kistler-Ritso Estonian Foundation, 2000)

Lotman, Piret. ‘Hävitatud raamat ja eestlase identiteet’ [Destroyed Books and Estonian Identity], Tuna, 2 (2000)

Lotman, Piret. ‘Nigol Andresen ja Eesti raamatukogud sõjajärgsel ajal’ [Nigol Andresen and Estonian Libraries in the Postwar Era], Tuna, 4 (2007)

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