Posts
Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...
..the previous part is here..
Of poets, writers and youngsters..
As we have seen, Tsarist rule did bring about some positive changes (or rather some positive changes happened to take place under Tsarist rule at any rate) and the 'Tsar Liberator' for Estonia was not Alexander II as was the case in Russia itself, but Alexander I, since the peasantry were freed from bondage to the land under his rule, in 1816 in the case of Southern Estonia, i.e. the Livonian part. North Estonia, roughly corresponding to the old Danish Estonia, had to wait another three years to enjoy the same emancipation.
Whither the 'Estonian' Estonians now, in relation to the Baltic German nobility, now under Russian rule but who certainly hadn't gone away? Whilst many of the latter no doubt regarded their future as simply being a fusion with the teutonic part of the country, a development which no doubt did take place at least partly in any case, there was an intriguing group of people known as the 'Estophiles' emerging at around this time. No doubt a small part of the romanticism sweeping Europe at the time, as their name suggests, these people felt drawn to all things Estonian, particularly the country's distant past and its accompanying folklore, and followed in the wake of ideas propagated by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder of nation and culture (don't forget that Germany itself wasn't a single, cohesive nation yet in the way that Britain and France were, either). These people were Germans, but Estonia/Livonia was their home. An important home-grown Baltic German was Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850) who, as a Livonian, had as much, or more, influence on the concomitant Latvian national awakening as the Estonian one.
The single most important development in this period may well be the compilation of the Kalevipoeg, the epic poem taken to be the country's principal repository of national folk identity in the same way the Kalevala is for the country's northern neighbour, which was gradually compiled over time, started by Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798-1850), and completed by another Friedrich, Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803-1882). Despite their Germanic sounding names, both men were Estonian to their boots. The initial version of the epic was completed in 1853 but due to censorship in Tsarist Russia could not immediately be published; it was later published in full, serialised, between 1857 and 1861 by the Learned Estonian Society at Tartu. Later a slightly abridged version, which became the 'popular' version of the poem, was published at Kuopio in Finland, itself part of the Russian Empire at the time. This was published jointly in Estonian and German.
The floodgates of the move towards nationhood were well and truly opened by this stage, with such luminaries as the barely-out-of-short-trousers Kristjan Jaak Petersen (1801-1822), Carl Robert Jakobsen (1841-1882), Jakob Hurt (1839-1907) and Johann Voldemar Jannsen (1819-1890) all blazing the trail. The latter was in fact the father of perhaps the best-known Estonian poet, Lydia Emilie Florentine Jannsen (1843-1886), known popularly by her nom de plume of Lydia Koidula, a surname deriving from the Estonian word for 'dawn'. Jannsen senior penned the words of the modern day national anthem and junior, the words to the unofficial national anthem, 'mu isamaa on minu arm' ('my country is my love' - sounds much better in the original language). We are into the era of the people who grace the bank note denominations of the Estonian Kroon (though not for much longer).
Finally one of the signature events of Estonian-ness, the 'Laulupidu' ('song festival'), belongs to our period, the first one having taken place at Tartu in the summer of 1869, a tradition which has continued down to the present day.
So much for the writing and singing, but what did the Estonian Englightenment Period/National Awakening, call it what you will, actually tangibly achieve? Notwithstanding censorships and the like, the attitude towards the occupying nation was for the most part much more positive than was later to be the case, and unsurprisingly so. One of the highest rates of literacy within the Russian Empire (for what that's worth) a growth in and industrialization of the strategically-placed capital, Tallinn, and that ever-present herald of burgeoning nationalism the world over, the appearance of the first regular daily newspaper in the vernacular, Postimees ('postman') meant that Estonia seemed a relatively progressive and pleasant part of an albeit decaying and autocratic empire. To what extent this was cause, and to what extent symptom, of the beginnings of the modern day nation state is debatable. However it became clear that Estonia's future did not lie with the Germanic component of its populace - even many of the Germans realised that - and working within the Tsarist system, for example in 1881 in requesting the establishment of a Zemstvo, a type of local government which facilitated an equal footing for national minorities within the Empire, seemed the best bet.
However all was not wine and roses; under the third and last Tsar to be called Alexander, the odd one out in being reactionary and repressive (even Russians in St Petersburg referred to him as an 'idiot' albeit tacitly) a period of intense Russification took place, including in areas such as Finland which had enjoyed huge advances in its status under the previous Alexander. Estonia was to suffer in the same way. But of course, once you've built a well for somebody, blocking it up again is never going to solve anything...
From top, and in descending order of value, Carl Robert Jakobsen, Lydia Koidula and Jakob Hurt (500, 100 and a measly 10 EEK each).
