The Fate of Victims of Political Repression – The Right to Rehabilitation andRemembrance

Analytical report1

Prepared for the conference:Долгое эхо диктатуры. Обращение с жертвами политическихрепрессий в странах бывшего СССР – реабилитация и память

Москва, Международный Мемориал10 – 12 сентября 2014 г.

Draft 8 July 2014

Estonia

Vello PettaiProfessor of Comparative Politics

Institute of Government and PoliticsUniversity of Tartuvello.pettai@ut.ee

Rehabilitation and remembrance for victims of politicalrepression in Estonia can be summarized across three keyparameters. First, commensurate with the way in which allthree of the Baltic states were joined to the USSR only in1939-40, the main focus of rehabilitations for the victims ofpolitical repression has been on the immediate periodfollowing the Soviet takeover (i.e. 1940-41) and on theimmediate post-war period (1944-50) when additional repressiontook place. Both periods featured waves of mass deportation,which have been the focus of particular attention. Second,like many of the republics of the USSR during the late 1980s,1 Much of the data for this report has been drawn from the book Transitional and Retrospective Justice in the Baltic States (Eva-Clarita Pettai and Vello Pettai), Cambridge University Press, forthcoming early 2015.

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Estonia began a process of acknowledging, rehabilitating andfinally memorializing the victims of Stalinist-era terror.However, following an initial bout of legislation between 1988and 1992, the issue waned and it was not until 2003 thatrenewed political interest led to a lasting victims status lawbeing passed. Third, this sequence of events alludes also tothe fact that although victims of Soviet deportations aresupported through political measures, social welfare policiesand commemorative programs, the issue is not as dominant inthe body politic as in other former Soviet republics (such asLithuania). For example, victims of repression are dealt withmainly by different departments of social welfare. There is nocentralized institution for dealing with victims ofrepression. Likewise, the number of categories of victims isnarrower than in the other two Baltic republics.

Before passing to the project template of this report, a shorthistorical overview of political repression in Estonia as wellas of the evolution of rehabilitation legislation is in order.

Historical overview

As in the other two Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania, thecentral focus of political rehabilitation in Estonia has beenon two periods of Stalinist terror, 1940-41 and 1944-50. Thefirst period involves the one year of Soviet rule that beganfollowing the occupation and annexation of the Baltic statesby the Soviet Union as part of the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Political repression targeted against leadersof the then-still independent country began soon after thestationing of 25,000 Soviet troops in Estonia in September1939. However, it intensified after a pro-Soviet governmentwas imposed in June 1940. Following rigged elections in July,a new pro-Soviet parliament asked for entry into the SovietUnion, which was immediately granted. Once Estonianindependence had been liquidated, political repression beganin earnest with hundreds of political and other societalleaders being arrested, imprisoned, deported and sometimeskilled immediately through extrajudicial executions. ThePresident of Estonia, Konstantin Päts was taken into custodyon July 30 and deported to Russia, where he was held in

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various prisons and psychiatric hospitals until he died in1956. In November 1940 the USSR enacted the Russian SFSRCriminal Code in the Baltic republics, allowing in particularthe conviction of individuals for “counter-revolutionary” actsunder the sub-paragraphs of the infamous Article 58. Inparticular, this meant that many Estonians (along withLatvians and Lithuanians) were repressed for acts they hadcommitted when their countries’ had still been independent. Inother words, Soviet repression was retroactive to theindependence period, now defined as “counter-revolution”. Inall, an estimated 8,000 people were punished as part of thisfirst aspect of political repression.

A second dimension of the 1940-41 period was the mass wave ofdeportations that took place in all three Baltic states on 14June 1941. In Estonia this involved an estimated 9,267 peopleof whom around 2,400 are known to have been killed and around4,260 are said to have been able to return to Estonia afterthe 1950s. In many cases the deportees continued to bepolitical opponents for the new Soviet regime, but in otherinstances they were completely innocent civilians.

After the Nazi German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, moreEstonians suffered when they were forcibly conscripted intothe Soviet Army or evacuated to Russia. During the subsequentNazi occupation, Estonia’s leftover Jewish population (roughly1000 people) was exterminated (and Estonia was one of thefirst territories to be declared Judenfrei by the Nazis). Manythousands of Jews from Central Europe were also transported toEstonia as part of forced labor and eventual execution.Estonia’s victim status laws do provide acknowledgement forthese people, although their numbers are relatively small (afew hundred).

Following the return of Soviet rule in September 1944,Stalinist repression resumed. This proceeded on two levels.First, the Soviet NKVD was tasked with searching out anddestroying armed resistance to Soviet rule. This involvedpursuing, arresting or killing various Estonian partisan unitsthat started operating in the hopes of restoring independenceor at least not giving into the reinstatement of Soviet rule.In Estonia, this partisan fight was the least intense among

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the three Baltic states (it was longest in Lithuania).Nevertheless almost 8,500 people are known to have beenrepressed for acts committed as part of the resistancemovement. Of these, around 4000 were killed.

The second dimension of post-war repression involved a newwave of deportations that took place in March 1949. As part ofa policy to forcibly collectivize agriculture in the Balticrepublics, Stalin ordered widespread deportations in all threeterritories, and in Estonia approximately 21,400 people wereforcibly removed to Russia (mostly Siberia) around March 25.Some 3,000 of these people died while en route to exile. Manyhundreds of family members who initially could not be found orlater came forward eventually followed their loved ones totheir sites of deportation in exile. Lastly, some 10,000 wereable to evade deportation entirely; however in the processthey became fugitives within the Soviet Union itself. Severalthousand deportees eventually survived and either tried toreturn surreptitiously to Estonia in the early 1950s or wereallowed to return after 1956. Still others were released fromdirect detention, but were not allowed to return to Estoniaand therefore ended up settling elsewhere.

During the 1960 and 1970s, political repression took the formof punishing dissidents and other individuals who opposed theSoviet regime. However, these numbers were much smaller,totaling only a few hundred.

In sum, the process of both rehabilitating and recognizing thepolitically repressed in Estonia has been intimately linked tothe Stalinist-era terror that took place both before and afterWorld War II. In addition to deportees, it has also involvedresistance fighters, who have been either rehabilitated (wherethey still survived) or remembered (if they have been killedor otherwise deceased).

Evolution of legislation

As is well known, the process of re-examining Soviet historyand acknowledging victims of Stalinist repression began inearnest during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev and as early as

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1986. A decision within the Communist Party of the SovietUnion to begin dealing with this issue came in 1988, and ittrickled down to the Baltic republics during the second halfof that year. Estonia was the second Baltic republic (afterLithuania) to adopt a blanket rehabilitation act on 7 December1988. The Estonian SSR Supreme Soviet law denounced all“extrajudicial mass repressions” from the 1940s and 1950s as“crimes against humanity” and proclaimed the automaticrehabilitation of all those who had been deported from Estoniaduring these years. Additionally, the law tasked thegovernment with not only preparing a compensation system, butalso developing a commemoration program and preserving allpossible documentation connected to extra-judicial repressionsfrom the Stalinist period. Moreover, this law would be thefirst in the Baltic states to call for the criminalinvestigation of mass killings and crimes against humanity,and for possible trials against proven perpetrators. (See alsopoint V.8, below.)

Although this first round of legislation did set some of thewheels in motion, it was bolstered in February 1990, when thePresidium of the Estonian SSR Supreme Soviet adopted anadditional degree laying out in precise detail, whichparagraphs of the Russian SFSR Criminal Code would be eligiblefor rehabilitation. This list would include some of the mostnotorious forms of Stalinist repression such as convictingpeople for “treason against the motherland” (§58-1a), supportfor “counter-revolutionary activity” (§58-11), “anti-Sovietand counter-revolutionary propaganda and agitation” (§58-10)and for having been part of the pre-1940 “counter-revolutionary government” (§58-13). According to the mainvictim organization in Estonia, the Memento Union, more than65% of the roughly 50,000 political sentences handed downduring the Stalinist period in Estonia involved these fourparagraphs. (Õispuu 1996: D56-59) At the same time, the newdecree took care to delineate some of the more particularcrimes associated with the deportations, such as convictionfor trying to flee one’s place of deportation and trying toreturn home (§82). It also noted a number of economic crimes,under which wealthier farmers were declared kulaks or coercedinto giving up their property.

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In administrative terms, the new decree mandated twoinstitutions to deal with the upwards of 20,000 peopleeventually identified as having been repressed under thesespecific Soviet criminal paragraphs. (See Õispuu 1996) Thesewould be the Estonian Supreme Court in the case of thoseformally convicted by Soviet courts, and the EstonianProsecutor General’s Office in the case of those convicted byextra-judicial authorities such as spontaneous Soviettribunals. Of these two forms of criminal prosecution, theoverwhelming majority had been carried out by Soviettribunals.

On the basis of this February 1990 decree, the rehabilitationprocess in Estonia began in earnest with thousands of peoplereceiving rehabilitation certificates. Another impulse came inFebruary 1992, when the Estonian Supreme Council (now as thelegislative body of a re-independent Estonia) adopted a full-scale law on rehabilitations, which further expanded the listof RSFSR criminal paragraphs subject to rehabilitation, butalso stipulated clear guidelines for a process of propertyrestitution for those whose wealth had been confiscated aspart of deportation or repression. In early 1993, this law wasfurther amended to allow the Estonian Supreme Court to reviewpetitions from people who wanted rehabilitation forconvictions during the Soviet era, which they claimed had beenpolitically motivated. This included convictions forhooliganism and other crimes when, for example, peopleattempted during the Soviet era to display the Estoniannational flag or yelled anti-Soviet slogans.

Still, the issue of rehabilitation and of political repressionfaded from political view once the challenges of renewedstate-building, economic reform and finally also Europeanintegration in Estonian intensified. It would only be in late2002 and early 2003 that a number of victims organizationswould seek to find fresh impetus for their cause via analliance with a new up-start political party in Estonia calledRes Publica. Just before parliamentary elections scheduled forMarch 2003, Res Publica and “Memento” (the main victimsremembrance group in Estonia) signed a cooperation agreement,in which Res Publica pledged to support the adoption of aformal repressed persons law should it be part of the next

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governing coalitions. When on 7 March Res Publica won, infact, a spectacular electoral victory and its chair, JuhanParts, became prime minister, the new government moved quicklyto establish a special expert commission to prepare aconsolidated victims status law for Estonia. The commission,which would include several victim organizationrepresentatives, drew heavily on proposals already formulatedby Memento and other groups. (Raude 2013) In early November abill was introduced in parliament, and in less than four weeksthe new “Persons Repressed by Occupation Regimes Act” waspassed with a huge majority. (Eesti Vabariigi Riigikogu 2003)This piece of legislation remains the core legal framework fordealing with rehabilitation and victims’ rights and benefits,although as we will see below, time is taking its toll on thenumber of beneficiaries and survivors still left.

I. Rehabilitation

1. Persons entitled to rehabilitation

The formal process of legal rehabilitation has been regulatedby the series of legal acts adopted in 1990 and 1992. The maincategories of rehabilitation pertain to those who sufferedunder Stalinist-era repression. Specifically, the legislativeacts from 1990 and 1992 list all of the respective paragraphsof the RSFSR Criminal Code that were used to convict peoplefor different kinds of allegedly anti-Soviet crimes. Anyoneconvicted under these paragraphs could apply forrehabilitation. These paragraphs included the following:

581a–5814, 592, 593, 594–596, 5910, 5913, 60–62, 64, 66, 68–70, 791–794, 81, 82, 84, 121, 122, 125, 126, 182 section 1, 192a, 1937 section “g” and 19310

According to data collected by the Estonian Bureau ofRepressed Persons, 58% of those people repressed by theStalinist regime were convicted under two particularparagraphs: 581a and 5811. (Õispuu 1996) The first paragraph(used 35.7% of the time) concerned being a “traitor of themotherland”; the second (applied 22.3% of the time)

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represented an omnibus paragraph that said that any activitythat was linked to any of the other crimes listed in thepolitical section of the Criminal Code or belonging to anorganization that was preparing political acts listed in theCode would be criminally punished.

Under Estonia’s 1992 laws, those people convicted of genocide,crimes against humanity or war crimes are ineligible forrehabilitation (i.e. if these criminals, too, had beenrepressed at some point). Meanwhile, the 2003 repressedpersons law declared as ineligible for repressed person’sstatus those individuals who had been a member of the SovietCommunist Party before 1 January 1954, or had been draftedinto the Red Army as a Communist Party member or into theGerman Wehrmacht as a member of the Nazi Party.

2. Rehabilitation framework

Estonia’s 1992 rehabilitation law covers both citizens ofEstonia and all permanent residents, who have been convictedof one of the crimes noted above. The law does not cover thoseindividuals, who might have suffered repression in the SovietUnion prior to Estonia’s incorporation into the USSR.2

3. Can the court establish the fact of repression and orderrehabilitation?

Estonian courts may establish the fact of someone’srepression, in particular in those cases where individualswere convicted during the later Soviet period for anti-Sovietoffenses like hooliganism, but which were actually politicallymotivated. Likewise, certain cases arose, where peopleattempted to contest criminal convictions for theft orassault, claiming that these were carried out as part ofpartisan or other anti-Soviet activities and thereforeviewable as politically motivated. Some of these convictions

2 This is in contrast to Latvia, where ethnic Latvians who were living in Siberia during the 1930s and repressed during a particular wave of Stalinist repression were also declared eligible for rehabilitation if theyhad since moved back to Latvia.

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were also subsequently overturned. Court action has also beenrequired in instances where people have claimed they were heldin psychiatric institutions for political reasons.

Under Estonia’s 2003 “Persons Repressed by Occupation RegimesAct” the following victim categories are listed:

Article 2. Illegally repressed persons1. Individuals, who are a victim of genocide, as defined by

the 1948 Genocide Convention2. Individuals, who have been imprisoned, deported or placed

into a special psychiatric institution for their beliefs,political views, religious confession, racial or ethnicaffiliation, citizenship, origin of birth, social statusor property standing

3. Individuals, who have been imprisoned, deported forhaving failed to fulfill special duties imposed by theoccupying state on its citizens (military conscription,state loyalty, compulsory worldview, proscription onleaving the country)

4. Individuals, who have been imprisoned, deported for actscommitted before the occupation or during transitionperiods, except where such acts were punishable under thelaws of the Republic of Estonia

5. Individuals, who have been imprisoned, deported for theirorigin or other human characteristics and irrespective ofany individual culpability

6. Individuals, who have been imprisoned, deported forparticipation in any protest action against theoccupation regime or one stressing a right to nationalself-determination or attempting to exerciseinternationally recognized human rights or civilliberties, irrespective of the crime prescribed to it bythe occupying state

7. Individuals, who have been deported from their permanentplace of residence either to territory of eitheroccupying state or to some other state or who aftercompleting their period of punishment were forciblysettled outside of Estonia

8. Individuals, who were removed from Estonia in 1941 towork in forced labor battalions in the USSR or who weresent to forced labor outside Estonia during the Germanoccupation

9. Individuals, who were subjected to forced labor in theUSSR after having been a prisoner of war or a repatriated

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person10. Individuals, who have been imprisoned or deported

for actions committed in self-defense while in hidingfrom illegal repression, except in cases where suchactions would have been punishable under the laws of theRepublic of Estonia

11. Individuals, who were prohibited from living inEstonia

12. Individuals, who were subjected to experimentaldoses of radiation as part of trial nuclear bombexplosions

13. Individuals, who were forcibly sent to clean upareas of nuclear catastrophe

14. Children, who were born while their parents weredeported or imprisoned, or during the period between theparent’s release and their actual opportunity to returnto Estonia

Individuals accorded a status equivalent to repressed persons1. Estonian citizens, who participated as of 16 June 1940 in

the armed struggle for the restoration of Estonian stateindependence

2. Estonian citizens, who were disabled while have beenmobilized or conscripted into the Soviet armed forces anddid not participate in the execution of repression onEstonian territory.

Compiled from Eesti Vabariigi Riigikogu (2003)

Since this law was more about establishing those individualseligible for social benefits as part of having sufferedpolitical repression (as opposed to the formal-legal processof rehabilitation), the wording of the categories is moregeneral. For example, the categories do not specificallydifferentiate between people who suffered under the Soviet asopposed to the Nazi occupation regimes. (This is in contrast,for example, to Lithuania, which lists its victim categoriesaccording to precise historical periods of repression.)Additionally, Estonian legislation does acknowledge as equallyeligible for benefits those people who were injured or becameinvalids as a result of military service in the Soviet Army(e.g. during the Soviet war in Afghanistan) or during theclean-up of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

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II. Social Consequences for Rehabilitation of FormerVictims

1. Allocation of a non-recurring compensatory payment.

Former victims of repression are not offered any one-offcompensatory payments.

2. Are regular supplements to retirement pensions provided?

Individuals recognized as having been politically repressedare eligible for supplementary pension payments. Those whowere deported under the Stalinist regime or lived in ghettosduring Nazism are eligible for a pension supplement amountingto 20% of the basic pension rate. This means roughly €28 permonth. In addition, repressed persons may go into retirementup to 5 years earlier than the official retirement age (ifthey were in detention or exile at least 5 years). Likewise,all time spent in detention, exile or travelling to and fromthese places of repression is counted three times towardcalculating an individual’s employment record. This amount oftime was, in turn, also used to calculate an individual’snumber of privatization vouchers as part of housingprivatization during the first half of the 1990s. For manypeople this was a noticeable amount, allowing them toprivatize their apartment or summer house despite theirotherwise shortened employment history.

3. Are restitution, recovery of property, or compensation forlost property provided?

Estonia’s 1990 and 1992 rehabilitation legislation mandatedthe restitution of property taken from deportees and otherpolitical repressed persons. In many cases, this process wascomplicated since the fate of this property was mixed.Sometimes other individuals began living in, say, houses thathad been abandoned by deportees. Other times, property wastaken over by local collective farms. Because the Soviets hadnationalized all property already in November 1940, there wereno large farms or other forms of property that later deportees

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necessarily lost. Still, individual houses and other smallerproperties were involved. Since Estonia adopted a larger-scalepolicy of property restitution in June 1991 (involving allthose, whose property had been nationalized already in 1940),then those claims that were submitted by deportees forproperty that was lost after 1940 were as a rule folded intothis broader process of property restitution. Hence, there areno statistics readily available as to how much property wasrestituted specifically to deportees. However, given again thepreceding Soviet policy of full-scale property nationalizationin 1940, the proportion of repression-related restitution wassmall – some 12,200 claims as opposed to over 200,000 as partof the broader restitution process. Nevertheless, over 90% ofthese repression-related claims were decided positively.(Raidla 1991)

4. Which benefits are provided by the law for victims ofrepression?

Based on the 2003 “Persons Repressed by Occupation RegimesAct”, victims of repression receive free entrance to statemuseums and free tickets to the national Song and DanceFestival held every five years. They are also given freefishing licenses. Repressed persons also get a 50% reductionon tickets for national transport lines. Some municipalities(like Tallinn) also offer free local transport or reducedrates of property tax.

5. Are victims of repression entitled to special medical care?

In addition to the regular state-financed health care system,repressed persons are entitled to a yearly payment of €160,with which they can pay for wellness or other medicaltreatments. Repressed persons were also allowed to visit oncea year a special rehabilitation center run by the Ministry ofDefense.

6. Are there any social consequences for the relatives andfamily of former victims?

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There are no additional benefits for family members orrelatives.

III.Enactment of Rehabilitation Legislation

1. What are the institutions responsible for the enactment ofrehabilitation?

The 1990 rehabilitation act designed the Estonian SupremeCourt as responsible for the rehabilitation of individuals whohad been judicially sentenced, while those who had beenrepressed extra-judicially were to be dealt with by theProsecutor General’s Office.

2. Are there or have there been any organisations dealing withvictims of political repression, such as rehabilitationcommissions?

The main victims organization in Estonia is the EstonianMemento Union (Eesti Memento Liit, Endla 4, Tallinn 10142, tel.+372 626 3200, liit@memento.ee, www.memento.ee ) . It wasfounded on 25 March 1989, i.e. on the 40th anniversary of the1949 deportations. In addition to organizing commemorationservices through its local branches, Memento also serves asthe main representative organization vis-à-vis stateauthorities.

In 1992, the information committee of Memento was spun offfrom the organization to become the Estonian Repressed PersonsRecords Bureau (Eesti Represseeritute Registri Büroo). The bureau tookon the task of compiling a full-scale database of allpolitically repressed in Estonia. Through eleven volumes oflists and additional research/commentary, the Bureau hashelped to commemorate the fate of over 87,000 people whosuffered from Stalinist and later political repression inEstonia. All of the books can be downloaded on the Mementowebsite, http://www.memento.ee/trukised/memento-raamatud/. The

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bulk of the books are bi-lingual with Estonian and Englishtexts.

Lastly, under the 2003 victims status law, a special EstonianRepressed Persons Assistance Fund was created through whichthe government channels roughly € 250,000 per year, not onlyto the Memento Union, but also to other smaller victimsorganizations.

3. Which institutions are responsible for public care andsocial support?

Eligibility for social welfare benefits is certified by theEstonian National Social Insurance Board (EestiSotsiaalkindlustusamet). The ENSIB also disburses the benefits(along with all other social welfare payments in the country).

Allocations to the Estonian Repressed Persons Assistance Fundwere initially organized via the State Chancellery, but inrecent years via the Ministry of Interior.

4. What are the prerogatives of the central authorities? Whatare those of the regional / municipal authorities?

The main support for repressed persons is dealt with bynational authorities. Municipal authorities may decide tooffer additional benefits or services (like free publictransport) or to help with coordinating local commemorativeevents.

5. To what extent are the laws governing the status of victimsimplemented?

Estonia’s laws for rehabilitation and for repressed personshave generally been well implemented. The rehabilitationprocess was relatively smooth and social welfare services areprovided without much problem. The main controversies haveinvolved certifying certain borderline cases, such asindividuals who claim repressed status because of Soviet-era

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convictions for non-political crimes or categories ofindividuals who originally were not seen as having beendirectly repressed (e.g. people who travelled to Siberiavoluntarily to be with their deported loved-ones).

6. Is there any rehabilitation statistics prior to and afterthe collapse of the Soviet Union?

There have been no precise statistics compiled concerning thenumber of formally rehabilitated people in Estonia as part ofthe legal process in the early 1990s. What comes closeconcerns statistics from the Ministry of Social Affairsconcerning people eligible for special welfare benefits. Forexample in 2001, the categories and numbers were as follows:

Individuals with early retirement pension for having spent time as a repressed person in a place of detention or deportation

1171

Repressed persons as a result of having been ina concentration camp or ghetto during 1941-42, or in a work or construction battalion, and whoreceive disability pension or supplementary pension

413

Members of the post-war resistance or individuals who concealed themselves for fear of repression, and for whom these years have been added to their pension eligibility record

61

Deported individuals for whom time spent in detention is counted three times toward their pension eligibility,

20 604

Individuals, whose detention in war camps, concentration camps or in ghettos, as well as those forced to serve in work or construction battalions during 1991-41,

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Rehabilitated individuals, who were not allowedto immediately return to Estonia after their release from deportation and for whom this timeis counted 1.5 times toward their pension eligibility,

151

Individuals forcibly resettled in October 1941 from the Sõrve peninsula (on the island

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Saaremaa) to Germany, and for whom this time iscounted 3 times toward their pension eligibility,Rehabilitated individuals or those held in concentration camps, ghettos or forced to work during 1941-42 in work or construction battalions, who receive a pension supplement inaddition to disability payments upon their reaching pensionable age,

915

TOTAL 23 378Source: Oviir (2001)

Another indication comes from the number of repressed personscertificates issued as part of the 2003 “Persons Repressed byOccupation Regimes Act”. According to leader of one victims’organization, 15,851 people have applied for the repressedperson’s certificate, two-thirds of them coming during thefirst year of the law. (Raude 2013)

IV. Public and Social Status of Former Victims

1. Public organisations bringing together former victims andtheir families and relatives

See the information on the Memento Union, above.

2. Organisations working in the interests of the victims

In June 2003, Estonian Museum of Occupations was opened. Themuseum is run by a private foundation (the Kistler-RitsoFoundation), created by an Estonian-American émigré family in1998. In addition to a permanent exhibition at the museum’smain location (Toompea 8, 10142 Tallinn, tel. +372 66 80 250,http://www.okupatsioon.ee/en), the museum also sponsorslectures and independent research projects. The museum hasalso issued numerous publications on the activities andstructure of the Estonian Communist Party during the Sovietoccupation.

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A second research group is called S-Center (S-keskus,lähiajaloo uurimiskeskus), which has put out several volumeson the KGB and the Soviet leadership in Estonia as well aslooked at forms of dissidence in Soviet Estonia. Active mostlyduring the late 1990s and early 2000s, the center engaged abroad range of historians looking into Estonia’s recent past.See http://www.s-keskus.arhiiv.ee/eng/next.htm

3. Public opinion about the victims of political repression

There is little direct information on public opinion vis-à-visrepressed persons in Estonia. In a way, this isunderstandable, since the history of political repressionunder Stalinism and during the later Soviet period has becomesuch a cornerstone of Estonian historical memory and publicdiscourse that it is also too self-evident a thing to ask viapublic opinion polls. Within society, there is broad-scaleempathy and understanding for the victims of repression withyearly public commemorations and ceremonies.

V. Public Awareness and the Preservation of Memory.

1. Are there national researchers in the repression victimstopic?

The Museum of Occupations and the S-Keskus mentioned aboveconstitute the main academic research groups working on thehistory of political repression in Estonia, although some oftheir activities have waned over the last few years. Throughits numerous volumes of victims lists, the Estonian Bureau ofRepressed Persons has also provided analysis of howdeportations and other forms of repression were carried out.

In addition to these organizations, Estonia has also createdthree special commissions to research political repression inEstonia. The first was formed in November 1989 (before re-independence) by the Estonian Supreme Soviet. Known as theKahk Commission, this group of academics and historians

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produced a report in January 1990 estimating the damagessuffered by Estonia during the Soviet occupation. Thesedamages would include human losses, but also environmentdegradation, economic stagnation, and other effects on qualityof life, language and culture. Following re-independence, theEstonian Supreme Council formed a more institutionalizedhistorical commission, to be known as State Commission for theExamination of Repressive Policies Carried Out during theOccupations (ORURK). This 27-member blue-ribbon body was giventhe task of examining the policies of repression and genocideagainst Estonian citizens under the Soviet and Nazioccupations, and to provide an overall assessment of theseregimes. Originally slated to operate for two years, ORURKended up working until 2004, receiving regular state fundingof a few thousand euros per year. During these years, thecommission issued various running reports and analyses beforepublishing its final White Book in 2005. This set ofconclusions again tallied estimated losses from the Soviet andNazi periods. The results of ORURK, however, were somewhatovershadowed by a third special historical commission, whichoperated from 1998 to 2008. The Estonian InternationalCommission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanitywas created by President Lennart Meri as an international bodythat would review the history of both the Soviet and Nazioccupations of Estonia. Meri created the group in response tocontinual remarks from international groups such as the SimonWiesenthal Center that Estonia was not doing enough to examinewhat had happened in the country during the Nazi period. Inresponse, the presidents of all three Baltic states createdsuch historical commissions, to which however they also addedthe task of looking into crimes against humanity that tookplace during the Soviet period as well. In the Estonian case,the commission was comprised uniquely of non-Estonians; thechair was the retired Finnish diplomat Max Jakobson. Thecommission generally met once or twice a year in order toreview archival information collected by Estonian researchers.Ultimately, the commission issued three sets of conclusionslooking first at the Nazi Occupation (1941-44, published in2001), then the first period of Soviet occupation (1940-41,published in 2004) and finally the second period of Sovietoccupation (up until the mid-1950s, published in 2008.Additionally, the commission sponsored the publication of a

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1,300-page set of archival research reports, in which Estonianhistorians working for the commission released the factualfindings of their work. While on the one hand it is difficultto call the Estonian commission a set of “nationalresearchers” since nearly all of their findings wereultimately published in English, the commission was entirelyfinanced by the Estonian state and it did provide theframework for a tremendous amount of historical research to becarried out which will remain available to Estonian scholarsand the public at large.

2. Where are personal files of those prosecuted or displacedkept?

Official archives in Estonia are managed by the NationalArchive (NA) or Rahvusarhiiv. The NA is divided into 9 sub-sections, one of which is the State Archive (Riigiarhiiv), whichhas the main responsibility for maintaining records anddocuments from the Soviet era, including from the KGB, theSoviet Interior Ministry and the full archive of the EstonianCommunist Party. This collection therefore includes all left-over documents concerning Stalinist-era repression. Filesconcerning more recent KGB surveillance were moved to Russiaby Soviet authorities in the late 1980s and have yet to bemade available to Estonian researchers or authorities.

3. Access to files

Pursuant to Paragraph 9 of the “Procedure for Collecting,Registering, Preserving and Utilizing the Materials ofSecurity and Intelligence Organs of Other Countries, Who HaveOperated in Estonia Act”, all individuals have the right tosee Soviet-era materials pertaining to them contained in theNational Archive. Where such individuals are already dead, theright to request information about them is extended to theirparents, spouses, sisters, brothers, and descendants. Uponspecial permission, these materials can also be examined byresearchers and law enforcement authorities.

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4. Are there any dedicated museums or special museumexhibitions dealing with the history of repression andresistance to terror?

The Museum of Occupations in Tallinn serves as the centralnational exhibition dealing with the history of Sovietrepression and resistance. It is the place where foreigndignitaries are taken when they are on state visits and thepublic itinerary includes an introduction to recent Estonianhistory. In addition, there are smaller museums in othercities and towns, such as a museum located in the basementdetention cells used by the KGB (NKVD) in Tartu during thelate 1940s.3 In the countryside, there are also a number ofexhibitions related to bunkers where resistance fighters heldout in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

5. Are there any memorials, monuments, or signs dedicated tothe victims of repression?

Although there are dozens of memorial plaques andcommemorative sites dedicated to places where people weredeported or killed in Estonia during the Soviet and Nazioccupations, one of the more prominent national memorial sitesis in the town of Pilistere, where already in November 1988 awooden cross was erected and visitors were asked to each bringa stone symbolizing the strength of the Estonian countrysideamidst the 1949 deportations that were carried out as part ofthe collectivization of agriculture. Over the last 25 years,the mound of rocks has grown to several cubic meters and theentire complex has been adorned with additional monuments andsymbols.

In Tallinn, commemorative ceremonies remembering thedeportations on March 25 and June 14 are held on the DomeHill, while in Tartu they take place at a special monument tothe victims of communism in the downtown area. Since the mid-2000s, January 28 has also been regularly commemorated byEstonian government officials as the International HolocaustRemembrance Day.

3 See http://linnamuuseum.tartu.ee/?m=2&page=front&change_lang=en. 20

6. Are the mass burial sites, former prison camp sites andcamp cemeteries known? What is their status? Have those beenmemorialised?

Since most of the deportation camps to which Estonians weretaken during the 1940s were in the Russian Federation, veryfew memorials have been erected in these far-off places.Whereas in Lithuania many survivors groups were known to haveorganized regular return-visits to these locations after 1988and even brought back the remains of Lithuanians who perishedthere, no such broad-scale campaign was undertaken in Estonia.

As noted earlier, some detention sites and places of torturein Estonia have been memorialized. A number of exterminationsites from the Holocaust (such as the Klooga concentrationcamp) have also been commemorated.

7. Have there been publications of “remembrance books” aboutvictims of repression? Are online databases available?

The eleven volumes of victims names compiled by the EstonianBureau of Repressed Persons are all available electronicallyon the Memento website.4 There is, unfortunately, no searchableonline database. Dozens of remembrance books have beenpublished by the Museum of Occupations and otherorganizations, although most of these are research works.Memoirs and other commemorative literature have been publishedby different private publishers. Likewise, a special group ofresearchers works at the Estonian Literary Museum collectinglife-stories and other personal material among deportees.

8. Have there been any court trials of organisers orperpetrators of political repression?

All three Baltic states have aimed to bring to justice thosewho were involved in Stalinist terror during the 1940s. Thishas proven difficult, since all too often the NKVD or otherofficials responsible for these acts are either already4 http://www.memento.ee/trukised/memento-raamatud/

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deceased or have since moved to Russia or other parts of theformer Soviet Union. Nonetheless, investigators within theEstonian Prosecutor General’s Office as well as the EstonianSecurity Police Board (Eesti Kaitsepolitsei) have continually workedon gathering information and evidence on these individuals andsince 1996 have undertaken nearly 30 court cases.

The primary legal basis for these cases has been to chargethese people with crimes against humanity, war crimes orsometimes even genocide. In November 1994, the Estonianparliament amended the old Soviet Estonian Criminal Code(still in force at the time) to include four paragraphsdefining crimes against humanity and war crimes. Later in2002, Estonia enacted an entirely new Criminal Code, in which“genocide” and “crimes against humanity” were treated asseparate offenses.

As noted, prosecutors have brought formal charges against 26individuals in connection with Soviet-era crimes and one forNazi-era activities. A majority of these charges have involvedcrimes against humanity, since the notion of genocide hasoften been too difficult to prove. Nonetheless, one of themore publicized cases involved Arnold Meri (a cousin of formerpresident Lennart Meri), who despite having been a decoratedSoviet war hero was also involved in the deportation of ruralfamilies on the island of Hiiumaa in the late-1940s. However,as with many of the cases eventually brought to trial,numerous procedural delays (requested by the defendants andtheir lawyers) usually meant that the accused died before averdict was reached. Only 11 individuals were actuallyconvicted of their charges and even fewer sentenced to formalimprisonment. Currently there are no more such trials beingconducted in Estonian courts.

9. Have the streets or cities/towns/villages or organisationsnamed after the state terror organisers and activeparticipants been renamed?

In Estonia, no place names were ever given to actualorganizers of state terror (à la Felix Dzerzhinsky). Only onetown – Kuressaare – was named in 1952 after an Estonian

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revolutionary from the early 1920s (Viktor Kingisepp).However, this name (Kingisepp) was returned to Kuressaare in1989.5

10. Is the topic of political repression on the nationalagenda?

Commemoration of political repression is on the nationalagenda to the extent that high-ranking Estonian officialsregularly attend national remembrance ceremonies either onMarch 25 and June 14 (for the Soviet deportations) or January28 (for the Holocaust). Another important way in whichdeportees and other victims of political repression havereceived recognition was via a special campaign sponsored byPresident Lennart Meri in 2001. Seeking to commemorate the60th anniversary of the 1941 deportations, Meri organized ancompetition for young people to interview and collect storiesfrom people who had suffered under the Soviet regime. Thecontest was supported by a 30,000-euro grant from the Estoniangovernment and received widespread media coverage. At the sametime, Meri undertook a tour of the country, meeting personallywith thousands of deportees and bestowing upon each of them alapel pin depicting a broken cornflower (the national flowerof Estonia). This symbol eventually became the officialinsignia for people who were declared repressed as part of thesystem created by the 2003 “Persons Repressed by OccupationRegimes Act”. Following the adoption of that law, no otherframework legislation has been deemed necessary. At the sametime, some center-right politicians have attempted to obtainmore explicit acknowledgment of those Estonians who fought inthe German Wehrmacht during the Second World War as victims oftotalitarianism. Namely, many of these Estonians joined theNazi army in 1943 and 1944 in order to try and stave off areturn of the Soviet Union, which they opposed given theStalinist deportations that the country had suffered alreadyin 1940-41. Needless to say, these efforts at acknowledgmenthave been controversial and problematic. Several proposed

5 The town should also not be confused with the Russian town of Kingisepp (Кингисепп), which is in Leningrad oblast. This town (formerly known as Yamburg, Я́мбург) was also renamed in 1922 after the Estonian revolutionary and retains this name to this day.

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parliamentary resolutions naming these Estonians ‘freedomfighters’ or otherwise noting their historical fate have beenbogged down in parliament or watered down in their finalwording. In this respect, this category of individuals has yetto be formally included among those seen as having sufferedpolitical repression.

A related aspect to these controversies has been thewillingness of Estonian state officials to express regret orapologies for the participation of Estonians in the Holocaust.It was not until May 2005 that Estonian Prime Minister AndrusAnsip made an unequivocal speech at the site of the Kloogaconcentration camp, in which he apologized for the fact thatamong those responsible for Nazi-era crimes were also citizensof Estonia. This has been seen as Estonia’s main government-level statement of regret. Estonia’s bilateral relations withIsrael have never suffered significantly from these issues.

By contrast, relations with Russia have long been prickly overthe issue of commemorating Soviet-era repression. On the onehand, Estonia has yet to obtain access to KGB files taken toRussia in the late 1980s. At the same time, Russia hasprotested several times Estonia’s policy of investigatingformer NKVD officials for crimes against humanity andgenocide. It has also criticized the different Estonianattempts to acknowledge the historical fate of Estonians whoserved in the German Army. To top it all off, the controversyover the Estonian government’s decision to relocate the so-called Bronze Soldier in April 2007 only added to the twocountry’s memory conflicts. All of this has left the issue ofSoviet-era political repression high on the national politicalagenda when it comes to dealing with the Russian Federation onthese topics.

11. Is the topic of Soviet political repression allocatedenough space in school curricula and history books?

As noted above, Soviet-era repression is a prominent part ofEstonian historical memory and is duly covered in Estonianhistory textbooks. Thanks to the work of InternationalCommission as well as other historical scholars, there is

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enough material on which teachers can draw. Since the mid-2000s, the Holocaust has also gained a designated place inEstonian school curricula, with special activities organizedyearly around January 28. At the same time, this topic wasslow to develop, since many Estonians initially maintainedthat because Estonia was touched much less by the Holocaustthan neighboring Latvia or Lithuania (only around 1000Estonian Jews were killed in the country, along with some7,000-8,000 Jews brought in from elsewhere in Eastern Europe),the country had less of an obligation to undertake a full-scale remembrance program. Nonetheless, Estonia eventuallyjoined the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, aninter-governmental organization aimed at coordinatingHolocaust education and remembrance.

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References:

Eesti Vabariigi Riigikogu 2003. “Okupatsioonireziimide pooltrepresseeritud isiku seadus.” 4 December, Riigi Teataja, I,2003, 88, 589. For English-language translation, see:https://www.riigiteataja.ee/en/eli/ee/529052014007/consolide

Õispuu, Leo 1996b. Poliitilised arreteerimised Eestis, 1940–1988 (§58), Köide 1.Tallinn: Eesti Represseeritute Registri Büroo.

Pettai, Eva-Clarita 2013b. “Estonian International Commissionfor Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity,” in L. Stanand N. Nedelsky, eds., Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 117-21.

Raidla, Jüri 1991. Presentation before the plenary of theSupreme Council of Estonia, 8 May,http://www.riigikogu.ee/index.php?rep_id=9786950&uni=40

Raude, Kuno 2013. “Kümme aastat okupatsioonirežiimide pooltrepresseeritud isiku seadust,” Riigikogu toimetised, 28: 178-80.

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