On the Historical Identity of the Estonians and the Politics of Memory in Estonia

The article gives an insight into the challenges related to shaping the historical identity of the Estonian people in a broad historical perspective, with particular regard to the period when a sovereign Estonian state was being built after restoration of independence in 1991. Among the main issues related to “elaborating the past”, as discussed in the later part of the paper, are the revival process of Estonian statehood in the last years before the fall of the Soviet Union, rehabilitation of victims of Communist terror, as well as the question of Estonian citizens who served in the armed forces of both the German and Soviet regimes. The paper gives an overview of both the legal and symbolic elements of Estonia’s politics of memory, the history of commemorating the victims of the German and Soviet regimes, and the controversies and discussions that broke out over the Estonian ethnos in the Baltic Sea, as stipulated by a traditional vision of the Estonian history of ethnicity. Finally, the article examines the repressed nature of Estonian national existence before an independent state was created in 1918, while evaluating the authoritarian governments of 1934–1940, the Soviet annexation (1940–1941, 1944–1991) and the German occupation (1941–1944).