Russian propaganda on the Estonian indepence referendum

 

In this article, I'd like to address one heinous propaganda lie in the Russian-language Wikipedia (which may be removed by the time you are reading this).

It concerns the Estonian independence referendum of 1991.

To give you a very brief overview of the political and ethnic situation, Estonia had been a part of the Soviet Union (nominally, an equal among the 15 member states of the federation, really a Russian colony) since World War II. At the time of losing its independence, Estonia's population was approximately 90% Estonian and 10% Russian. By 1991, it was 70% vs. 30%. However, Russians were concentrated in the settlements near the railway (hence one of their popular nicknames: "the railway people"). They made out slightly more than a half of the population in the capital, Tallinn, and nearly 100% in Estonia's third-largest town, Narva. (However, the latter had had a large Russian majority even before WW2.) Russians also had a significant presence in the industrial settlements in Northeast Estonia, whereas the large towns of Tartu and Pärnu, as well as most of rural Estonia were predominantly Estonian.

(For exactness's sake, I should add that the "Russians" included people of various ethinicities who overwhelmingly communicated in Russian, were born in other parts of the Soviet Union and shared the common pro-Soviet mentality. They were Russians in our eyes, and for all practical purposes they were Russians, even though their documents indicated their ethnicity as Ukrainian, Belorussian or even Tatar. There was nothing like the current Russian-Ukrainian enmity back in the 1980s.)

In a nutshell, Estonians hated the Soviet regime. However, it was very dangerous to say it in public. Also, there was very little cross-ethnic socialization, largely because Estonians spoke poor Russian, and most Russians spoke no Estonian. That's why the local Russian population lived in blissful ignorance of the hatred burning in the hearts of the Estonian community. To this day, the overwhelming majority of Russians are convinced that before 1985, there was inter-ethnic friendship between the Estonians and the Russians, and it was destroyed when the traitor Gorbachev in co-operation with Western secret services ordered the Estonian mass media to start instigating hatred against the Russians. The Estonians, utterly unable to think for themselves, of course, soon went along with the massive hate propaganda in the media and started to hate the Russians.

The truth is the opposite – as censorship was gradually loosened, the Estonian mass media began to express more and more boldly what the overwhelming majority of the Estonian people were thinking at the time and had been thinking many years before Gorbachev even came to power. The process developed like this. When Gorbachev announced plans for reforms in 1985, then at first the Estonian newspapers published mere praise of Gorbachev and criticism of Estonia's communist leadership for being too slow for implementing the great leader's great ideas. Seeing that no repercussions followed, the media became increasingly bolder. A plan for Estonia's economic autonomy was suggested in the autumn of 1987 (at which time no one seriously believed Moscow would ever approve it, but it had huge importance for the public morale). Unlike in Russia, the political atmosphere in Estonia changed very quickly. As early as in the summer of 1988, it became possible to display the Estonian national tricolor in public (which a mere year ago would have landed you in serious trouble if not in prison) and by the autumn of that year, one could get away with suggesting in public that Estonia's independence ought to be restored.

Estonia at that time was nominally ruled by a mock parliament called the Supreme Soviet. It was formed by a ludicrous procedure which the communists cynically called "elections". Estonia was divided into election districts and there was one candidate in each. On the election day, people went to voting offices and were given ballots with only one name on it. If they didn't like the candidate, they could strike the name through, but very few bothered. There was never two candidates to choose from. That's why every candidate always ended up in the so-called parliament. Needless to say, all the candidates were appointed by the communist party (even though some of them weren't party members). Naturally, that "parliament" didn't really rule over anything. The communist party did that. The so-called MPs simply raised their hands to vote in support of the decisions made by the party. It was a mere formality.

However – and this was one of the most ironic moments in the collapse of the Soviet yoke in Estonia – even that rubber-stamp parliament turned against our imperial overlords as soon as it was safe to do so. In the autumn of 1988, the Supreme Soviet declared (on their own initiative, independently of the Party) that from now on, any federal legislation would become valid in Estonia only after the Estonian Supreme Soviet had approved it.

Unsurprisingly, the central authorities of the USSR declared that decision void. Nevertheless, the provincial authorities of Estonia continued to assume sovereignty (even though avoiding any open confrontation for the time being). Moscow, in turn, refrained from using military force to make the rebellious province toe the line. (FYI, similar events happened in Lithuania and Latvia about the same time.)

In other words, the ethnic Estonian majority in the rubber-stamp parliament, even though appointed by the communist party, still shared the sentiments of the Estonian people in general. As soon as they felt it was safe to do so, they repudiated their masters and turned into real representatives of the Estonian people's interests.

 For that matter, there was a split in the Communist Party of Estonia itself, basically along the ethnic lines. Local party organizations with the Estonian majority started to support the pro-autonomy policy of the Supreme Soviet and the government of Estonia, the ones with the Russian majority were fiercely opposed to it. Nominally, it still remained one party.

Around that time, a Russian man from Russia hijacked a passenger airplane and forced it to fly to Finland where he was arrested and extradited to the Soviet Union. However, since he had crossed the border of the country from the territory or Estonia, he was tried in Estonia. Naturally, he was convicted, but considering the prevailing public mood in Estonia, it was not too surprising that he got away with a suspended prison sentence. In the eyes of the Estonian people, an attempt to escape from the totalitarian regime could not be a crime, and the judges obviously shared the public sympathy for the man.

The point is – the puppet parliament appointed by the communists turned against the regime, the ethnic Estonians in the communist party turned against the regime, and even the judges appointed by the communists as trusted enforcers of the totalitarian laws turned against the regime. Such was the extent of the opposition to the Soviet Union among the Estonians. That sentiment did not arise during the years 1985–88 as the Russian imperialists insist it did. It had existed for decades.

In 1989, a new Estonian Supreme Soviet was elected. The elections were perfectly democratic. By and large, there were three types of candidates – 1) pro-independence, 2) communist party members supporting gradual reforms, 3) anti-independence communists. The first two categories were mostly Estonians, the latter mostly Russians.

By that time, there were several political organizations established by the people independently of the communist party, even though only one of them actually called itself a party.

Regardless of the freedom of speech increasing at a dizzying speed, a significant portion of Estonians remained loyalist in the early stage of the political reforms. They had various reasons. Some feared that the democratization process could be reversed any moment and those who had revealed themselves as Estonian patriots would be harshly punished. Some insisted Estonia could not survive economically without Russia who supplied us cheaply with resources like oil that we couldn't afford to buy at world market prices.

However, in March 1990, the Estonian government declared officially the beginning of a transition period to prepare for the peaceful secession from the USSR. By then, practically all the Estonian loyalists had turned pro-independence. By contrast, the large majority of Russians in Estonia were still vehemently opposed to independence in 1990.

Meanwhile, the radical Estonian nationalists had organized the registration of all decendants of the people who were Estonian citizens prior to Estonia's annexation in 1940. They insisted that only such people could become citizens in the soon-to-be-independent Estonia. Those people could acquire a special document and participate in the elections of an alternative legislative body called The Estonian Congress that took place in early 1990. The latter failed to achieve any actual power in Estonia, but had significant moral influence for some time.

Now we are getting close to the said referendum.

In 1991, the government of the USSR announced a project to transform the country into a real federation by having all the 15 states sign a treaty of union. That project was put on referendum. The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania announced that their states would not participate in the referendum, because they were going to re-establish their independence and thus were not interested in signing any kind of a federation treaty with Russia. Instead, they organized their own independence referendums.

The Estonian referendum was very controversial. The radical nationalists called for a boycott, insisting that, the Soviet annexation in 1940 having been illegal, Estonia had in fact never been legally a part of the Soviet Union, and therefore the question about Estonia's secession was forbidden to be even asked. There could be no secession from a union Estonia had never joined, they claimed. Instead, the "illegal occupation" by the Soviet Union had to be ended and Estonia's independence reestablished regardless of how many people were in favor or against it.

Even though the idea of the legal continuity of Estonia's independence was quite popular (and in fact became the official government policy later), the idea of boycotting the "illegal" referendum found as good as no support among the population.

Since the federal authorities still refrained from using force, the independence referendum took place. The federal referendum about the union contract took place only in certain localities with a Russian majority, Russians in Estonia being still overwhelmingly anti-independence.

The result of the independence referendum in Estonian was 78% for, 21% against. And now we're coming to the propaganda lie in the Russian Wikipedia.

The lie is this:
Only those people who had registered as descendants of former Estonian citizens had the right to participate in the referendum. (Which would mean that the Russian population of Estonia was almost entirely excluded.) And even among those, only 78% voted for independence. Had every resident of Estonia had been allowed to vote without any ethnic discrimination, the majority would have rejected secession.

The truth is:
Every Soviet citizen whose residence (officially registered by the Sovie state) was in Estonia had the right to participate, regardless of who their descendants were, regardless of their ethnicity, regardless if they were born in Estonia or recent immigrants. The only exception was armed forces personnel on active duty currently stationed in Estonia.

Now, with the vote being secret and every voter treated equally, there is no way of telling exactly how did people of different ethnicities vote. Nevertheless, the results of the referendum are know by county and also larger cities. Those were of various ethnic composition, including two counties that were nearly 100% Estonian and a city that was 97% Russian. Extrapolating from the county-by-county results, we can roughly say that 98-point-something per cent of Estonians voted "yes" and approximately 25% of Russians voted "yes". It's very likely that participation rate was higher among Estonians than among Russians. All that resulted in the overall 78% "yes" vote.

I know, to people used to modern democracy, such unanimity among people sounds implausible. However, at the time I read the results, I was shocked to learn that more than 1 Estonian out of 100 was against Estonia's independence. Such was the popular yearning for independence at that time that a mere 98% "yes" vote seemed incredibly low. I wondered: where were those more than 1% of Estonians wanting us to remain in the USSR? I certainly hadn't met any. I mean, seriously, there were no discussions on pro and contra independence in 1991 among Estonians. There was really a consensus that Estonia had to become an independent country. The only ones opposed to the independence were 1) Russians; 2) a relatively small number of people with Estonian names and probably Estonian roots born in Russia whose first language was in fact Russian; and 3) rare individuals such as one prominent scientist who was undoubtedly Estonian and defended the Soviet Union in public and later emigrated to Russia.

The point is:
1. The Estonians overwhelmingly resented the communist tyranny long before Gorbachev's reforms. They did not turn anti-Soviet because of media brainwash. On the contrary – as the censorship loosened, the media started to reflect the popular sentiments which had been fiercely anti-Soviet long before 1985.
2. There was no ethnic discrimination in the 1991 independence referendum. Every adult resident of Estonia was allowed to vote. Considering the ethnic composition of Estonia's population at that time, it is clear that the 78% "yes" vote reflected accurately the sentiments among the population – the Estonian community was almost unanimously pro-independence, the majority of the Russian-speaking community was overwhelmingly against independence.