GalleryESTONIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC
Land and People
FIRST, allow me to give some general information about my Republic, her land and her people.
Soviet Estonia is a sovereign socialist state, one of the fifteen Soviet Republics that make up the voluntary Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It is situated in the north-west of the Soviet Union and is washed by the Baltic Sea.
It covers an area of some 18,000 square miles. Part of the territory (a tenth) is made up of some 800 islands.
Apart from the Estonians, who comprise the bulk of the population of 1,200,000, there are also Russians, Letts, and other nationalities.
The ancient city of Tallinn, the capital of the Republic, which has a population of 280,000, is situated on the shores of the Gulf of Finland.
Other large centres are the university town of Tartu (formerly Derpt) and Narva. The biggest of the new Estonian towns to have sprung up in Soviet times is Kokhtla-Yarve, centre of the shale industry.
The history of Estonia is one of a dramatic national struggle for liberation. Since the thirteenth century the Estonians groaned under the heel of alien feudal rulers who laid waste to this then unhappy land. From the eighteenth century onwards, when Estonia became part of the Russian empire, the destiny of her people became closely linked with the struggle of the people of Russia against tsarist despotism and for liberty.
The October Revolution of 1917 resulted in the social and national emancipation of all the peoples of Russia.
Soviet power gave Estonia, for the first time in her history, full equality and independence. An Estonian Soviet Republic, the first really independent Estonian State, was formed.
It was short-lived, however. After only four months' existence German troops occupied the country, and a bourgeois dictatorship was set up.
In the twenty years of capitalist rule, the Estonian workers and peasants fought heroically, under the leadership of the Communist Party, for economic and social emancipation.
This culminated in victory in the summer of 1940. Estonia was proclaimed a Soviet Socialist Republic and joined the Soviet Union.
A new chapter, that of socialism, began in the life of the Estonian people.
Soviet Booklets, London, England, in December, 1959, as part of the series
"THE FIFTEEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF TODAY AND TOMMORROW."
We do not endorse the Soviet account of historical events or their circumstances contained therein as factual.
