The republic of historians: historians as nation-builders in Estonia (late 1980s–early 1990s)

Abstract

The restoration of the Estonian Republic in late 1980s and early 1990s can be described as the construction of ‘the Republic of Historians’. A great many founders and leaders of the newly independent republic had received their education from the Department of History at the University of Tartu, and first gained their public renown as leaders of the national heritage movement and publicists on historical issues. The whole of the period, often called the ‘new era of awakening’, was characterized by an ideology of restoration, worked out by politically minded historians and historically minded political dissidents. In essence, all the political steps taken were motivated by a desire to return to pre-war laws, traditions, and institutions – to rehabilitate and restitute everything that had been destroyed or condemned to oblivion in the Soviet period. The major role of historical arguments and restoration ideology in the Estonian independence movement was not without several important sociopolitical consequences, especially in the realm of citizenship and property policy, which departed from a strict idea of legal continuity.

Keywords:

• Estonia
• history politics
• heritage politics
• memory politics
• legal restorationism
• independence movement
• Mart Laar

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Kalle Pihlainen for the invitation to contribute to this special issue and for his editorial work as well as to Antoon De Baets for his perceptive criticism.

Notes

1. Velliste in fact had graduated from the university as English philologist, but gained his public renown and political capital in the 1980s as the leader of the national heritage movement and a publicist on historical issues.

2. In recent years, Estonian history and memory politics have attracted the attention of several scholars but research has mainly centred on the developments of the 2000s (e.g. Onken 2007; Brüggemann and Kasekamp 2008, 2009; Wulf 2010; Smith 2011; Tamm 2013; Selg and Ruutsoo 2014) and the transition period of the 1980s to 1990s has largely lain fallow; among the few attempts made are Lagerspetz 1995; Ruutsoo 1995; Hackmann 2003.

3. Sulev Vahtre (1926–2007) offers a perfect example of an academically committed historian and long-time university professor, who did not think it too much to contribute actively to the restoration of the Republic of Estonia and thereby to the building of the new Republic of Historians. In an interview from 1996, he recalled how his social engagement began, considering the speech made at the Tartu Heritage Days of 1988 to be the starting point: ‘But as to the delivery, I considered myself quite successful. From then on, I had more and more invitations to speak: the openings of all those War of Independence memorials, and very often just invitations to speak about Estonian history. It was a kind of popular university, sometimes I even had to speak just in the street, every now and then somebody would ask, hey, historian, tell me how this or that actually happened? So I felt like a travelling preacher that year. It was rather strenuous, but also very uplifting! It was a very fine time!’ (Laar et al. 1996b, 316).

4. Aadu Must (2010, 81) has made a very similar point: ‘Historians played a disproportionately significant role among the leaders of the movement to re-establish independence, and in parliament.’ It is true that historians also played an important role in the foundation of the Republic of Estonia at the beginning of the twentieth century, yet this is not comparable to their importance in the restoration of the republic. It is worth noting that in 1994, Sulev Vahtre dedicated a whole article to the political role of historians over the ‘critical years’ of Estonian history, 1918/1919 and 1987/1989 (Vahtre 1994). More recently, Jörg Hackmann has also analysed historians’ political activity in Estonian history, focusing on the roles of Hans Kruus (1891–1976) and Mart Laar (Hackmann 2005; see also Hackmann 2010).