Communist crimes against Estonia's minorities

The Soviet occupation (1940–1941 and 1944–1991) brought Estonia mass repression that also struck the country's ethnic and religious minorities. Deportations, executions and the Gulag drew no ethnic line, and several small minority communities were all but destroyed during the occupation. The following draws on communistcrimes.org and the community's own records.

Estonia's ethnic minorities before the war (1934)

According to the 1934 census, 1,126,413 people lived in Estonia, of whom 992,520 (88.1%) were Estonians. The remaining nearly 12% were ethnic and religious minorities:

Russians — 92,656 (8.2%)
Baltic Germans — 16,346 (1.5%)
Coastal Swedes — 7,641 (0.7%)
Latvians — 5,435 (0.5%)
Jews — 4,434 (0.4%)
Poles — 1,608 (0.1%)
Finns (incl. Ingrian Finns) — 1,088 (0.1%)
Tatars — 166 (0.0%)
Other groups — 4,266 (0.4%)

It was these communities that the repression and destruction of the occupations that followed struck — for small groups, often existentially.

Mass repression that also hit minorities

From June 1940 to the autumn of 1941, over 6,000 people were imprisoned in Estonia and sent to Gulag camps in Russia; about 400 were executed on the spot. On 14 June 1941 a further 10,000 were deported — the family heads were separated at the railway stations and sent to the Gulag, while women, children and the elderly went into forced settlement. Between 1944 and 1953 over 35,000 people were imprisoned on political charges, most sent to the Gulag in Russia and Kazakhstan; the March 1949 deportation removed nearly 21,000, mainly rural people. This repression did not spare the minorities.

The coastal Swedes

The Estonian Swedes had lived on Estonia's coast and islands for some 650 years; before the war they numbered about 10,000. As early as 1939 the Soviet Union confiscated several islands for military bases and forced the inhabitants to leave their homes. Most of the coastal Swedes fled to Sweden in 1943–1944 (by June 1945 there were 6,554 Estonian Swedes in Sweden). Only a handful remained — 435 in 1970, 254 in 1979 — and the once-vital community has all but vanished. Read more: Estonian Swedes.

The Baltic Germans

Most Baltic Germans left for Germany in the 1939–1941 resettlement (Umsiedlung). Of those who stayed, 407 Germans and their family members were deported to Siberia in 1945.

The Old Believers of Lake Peipsi

On the western shore of Lake Peipsi — in Mustvee, Kallaste, Kolkja, Varnja and on Piirissaar — a community of Russian Old Believers has lived since the 17th–18th centuries, having fled the church reforms in Russia. Traditionally fishermen and onion-growers, they were loyal citizens of the Republic of Estonia. The Soviet occupation did not at first see them as a threat, but the March 1949 deportation (Operation Priboi) sent many of them too to Siberia; some returned after 1953. The community and its distinctive way of life have nonetheless survived to this day.

The Ingrian Finns

The Ingrian Finns are a Lutheran Finnic people of Ingria — the region east of the Narva River — historically closely tied to north-eastern Estonia. Soviet power struck them already in the 1920s–30s with deportations and terror. In 1943–44 the German occupation evacuated much of the Ingrian population; after the armistice Finland returned them, and Soviet authorities barred tens of thousands from returning to Ingria, scattering them across the USSR. Some settled in Estonia — but Ingrian Finns were also deported out of the Estonian SSR in the 1940s–50s.

Religious and belief minorities

The occupation authorities suppressed religious societies and congregations. In 1951, 282 Jehovah's Witnesses were deported. Minorities' religious and cultural institutions were closed or stifled.

The Estonian Tatars (Mišär)

The historical Estonian Tatars — the Mišär community — lost their institutions during the occupation: the occupation authorities dissolved both congregations in 1940. The old Muslim cemetery in Tallinn was allowed to decay and was closed in 1955, the remains forced to be reburied at the Liiva cemetery; the Narva congregation building was destroyed in the war. Language and customs faded, and many hid their origins out of fear. This is described in more detail in “Cultural genocide of the historical Estonian Tatars” and “The cemetery as the community's backbone”.

Russification and colonisation

The occupation brought an influx of Russian-speaking population that changed Estonia's demography and pushed minorities — including the historical Tatars — into invisibility. See “Russification”.

A separate tragedy: Jews and Roma under the Nazi occupation

For completeness: during the German occupation (1941–1944) all of the roughly 1,000 Jews who had remained in Estonia and over 300 Roma were murdered. This was a Nazi, not a communist, crime — but it is part of the tragic fate of Estonia's minorities in the maelstrom of a country held in turn by two totalitarian powers.

Why the community values freedom

Understanding the fate of these minorities is part of why the Estonian Tatar community so deeply values the freedom that the Republic of Estonia offers. Precisely because the occupation stripped so many minorities of their language, their sacred sites and their homes, the community holds especially dear the freedom and the rule of law that Estonia took back when it restored its independence.