About 2,000 of them died in open battle, mainly with KGB forces. The movement reached its peak in 1946-1947 and came to an end in practice in 1956. The armed and unarmed Estonian resistanceġ4,000-15,000 armed Estonian partisans or guerrillas, so-called Forest Brothers, participated in the armed resistance against the occupying forces. It is estimated that only a half of those deported were able to return to Estonia. The deportees included invalids, pregnant women, newborn babies, people over 90 years old and children who had lost their parents. 50% of those affected were women and 35% were children under the age of 16. The deportation in 1949 included 7,500 families. It went against all democratic and human principles that the families were automatically considered guilty if one family member was presumed guilty of a crime. All the people were deported without any trial. as well as families who provide assistance to bandits”. The deported people were described as “ kulaks (independent farmers) and their families, families of bandits, nationalists in hiding …. The arrests were fulfilled with the help of local Communists. The deportations were centrally planned from Moscow by the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. Around 21,000 Estonians, or 2.5% of the population, were deported to remote parts of the Soviet Union.
The biggest mass deportation occurred in 1949 and included all the Baltic countries. The deportations took place from 1944 until 1953. Deportations to remote parts of the Soviet Union (Today a quarter of the residents are ethnic Russians). 250,000 immigrants came from Russia between 19, to a country of around 800,000 Estonians. The second Soviet occupation after the Second World War was a follow-up to the first occupation, characterized by a fully controlled, brutal and censored society with arrests, executions, deportations, Communist unification of social and cultural life, the destruction of everything that reminded people of an independent Estonia (destruction of national identity), nationalization of private property, religious oppression, collectivization of agriculture, courts and military tribunals based on undemocratic principles, indoctrination of youth, no national army, use of Russian as the main language (“the language of friendship of nations”), key positions in local administration given to Russians or Russian Estonians etc.
The Soviet occupation was followed by a Nazi occupation after Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union. Those arrested and executed were mostly leading politicians and officials from the former independent republic.
The Soviet occupation was a regime of terror, with mass arrests, executions and mass deportations to remote areas of the Soviet Union. The Communist parliament paved the way for Estonia’s annexation to the Soviet Union as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. The occupation was followed by a parliamentary election with only Communist candidates.
A part of this agreement was that Estonia, the other Baltic States and a part of Poland would come under the Soviet sphere of influence.Įstonia was then forced by the Soviet Union to sign a mutual assistance pact that allowed the Soviet army to occupy Estonia. This was the result of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Occupied by Soviet and Nazi forces, 1940-1944Įstonia was an independent republic from 1918 until 1940, when Soviet troops occupied the country.
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