Academic literature on the topic 'Estonia – Foreign relations – 1918-1940'

During 1904–1940, a total of 26 periodicals were published in Lithuania and in foreign countries in which the Lithuanian language was used alongside others. The demand for multilingual periodicals had emerged during the first part of the 20th c. as new cultural, economic, and political conditions took shape in Eastern and Central Europe. For the governments and businesses of Lithuania, Germany, Latvia, and Poland, the development of economic relations was of the biggest importance, and this process was to be stimulated using the multilingual publications that were being released in these countries. Also, particular importance was granted to the political cooperation of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). Cultural relations, on the other hand, were less expressed in the multilingual periodicals and not characterized by commercial success. For propaganda purposes, a considerable number of multilingual publications were released by Germany during the First World War. Apart from Lithuanian, these multilingual publications were marked by the use of German, English, Polish, French, Latvian, and Russian languages; among the rarer instances were Belarusian, Yiddish, and Estonian texts. The emergence of multilingual periodicals and the presence of the Lithuanian language in these publications reflected the international recognition of the Lithuanian nation and its state. It represented an understanding of multiculturalism and peculiar needs within the society and resembled the dialogue occurring across the political, economic, and cultural dimensions.

The purpose of the article is to analyse the principle of gender equality laid down in the interwar Estonian constitutions and to study the relevant court cases at the highest level of appeal in the Supreme Court of the Republic of Estonia (1920–40). When Estonia granted equality rights with the constitution of 1920 and all citizens, men and women alike, were declared to be equal before the law, it placed Estonia among the vanguard of nations in Europe in support of gender equality. The amendment of the constitution in 1933 left the equality principle unchanged. In the new constitution, which went into effect in 1938, gender equality was extended to relations in marriage as well. In the twentieth century, the focus was not on the equality of genders as such, but rather on women’s equality compared to men, and the main question was how to improve women’s rights to gain the equality promised in the constitution. On 1 September 1924, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court made a judgment which could be considered the first important court case about women’s rights in Estonia. The Supreme Court issued a complaint submitted by a female lawyer, who challenged a lower court judgement that she – as a woman – was not suitable to be appointed to the position of judge candidate. According to the Supreme Court, the only constitutionally uniform solution that would support gender equality was that all persons – men and women – on the same grounds had the right to become a judge candidate and enter the judiciary in Estonia. However, the court system of the interwar independent Republic of Estonia remained traditionally masculine without any female judiciary, which is in turn indicative not so much of legal, but rather of pragmatic questions about social attitudes. The exploration of tensions in society engendered by the ambition to bring women into positions of authority and to grant women rights in the private family sphere as well, leads to two main conclusions. First, despite the formal equality that was granted by both constitutions of the Republic of Estonia adopted in 1920 and 1937, women’s efforts, e.g. opening the judiciary to women, were met with a degree of ironical resistance, and general emphasis on women’s rights even drew attention to presumable positive discrimination as well. Estonia’s foreign minister Ants Piip wrote an article in the magazine Constitutional Review about the first constitution of the Republic of Estonia in 1925: “It is interesting to note that despite this provision, many laws exist which protect women in industry, thereby discriminating favourably against men.” Since both the 1920 and the 1937 constitution granted gender equality in public, not in the private sphere, the traditional gap between women’s legal position and that of men generally remained unchanged in private family law. Thus, the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Estonia confirmed in 1937 that it was in accordance with the principle of gender equality to restrict the possibilities for married women compared to men to make a testament without any mandatory advisor. According to the court’s reasoning, the regulation was constitutional because the law of succession and the right to make a testament belonged not to the public but to the private sphere. Thereafter, female lawyers drew attention to the fact that a married woman could legally become a judge or a minister – at least it was not prohibited or excluded – and decide the fate of a nation, since this right belonged to the public sphere. And still at the same time, a married woman’s competence to transact in the private sphere was limited compared to men. However, the constitution that went into effect in 1937 brought some changes, since equality in marriage was additionally granted, for instance. Unfortunately, the implementation period of the new constitution was limited to about two years, thus there is no case law to confirm that the constitution brought specific changes in practice.

The article covers one of the problematic aspects of US-Soviet relations in the first post-war years - the issue of «the controversial refugees», appeared due to non-recognition by the United States of Soviet annexation of the Baltic States and the conduct of forced repatriation by the USSR. American diplomacy during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt adhered to the «non-recognition policy», concluded in the Stimson Doctrine (January 7, 1932) and the Welles Declaration (July 23, 1940). However, declared foreign policy acts did not lead to a decrease of the level of official relations with the aggressor state. At the same time, the official Washington did not consider the Balts as citizens of the USSR and retained the diplomatic missions of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in the United States. Under the administration of President Harry Truman, the course of non-recognition of the «voluntary entry of the three Baltic republics into the USSR» continued.It was researched that after the end of the Second World War, refugees and displaced persons from the Baltic-occupied Soviet Union were located in Austria, Italy, France and Switzerland. The large contingent was within the limits of the American occupation zone in Germany, the vast majority were immigrants from Lithuania. The attention was paid to the factors that led to the mass exodus of Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians from 1943 to 1944. It is outlined the special place of American diaspora civic organizations in collecting of financial assistance and coordination of their activities with the US State Department. It is also defined the role of representatives of the Catholic and Protestant national churches.The researched paper contains an analysis of correspondence between the leaders of the American diplomatic missions of Lithuania (Povilas Žadeikis), Latvia (Alfrēds Bīlmanis) and Estonia (Johannes Kaiv) with the US Department of State. Baltic diplomats constantly emphasized the need to confront the Soviet propaganda machine with regard to the denial of the «voluntary Sovietization of the Baltic» and the practice of sweeping accusation of refugees in «betrayal» and «cooperation with the Germans». In turn, they pointed to the need to extend the jurisdiction and mandate of international organizations on Baltic refugees, to determine their legal status and to prevent their recognition as the Soviet citizens in some European countries.The article deals with the documental potential of the diplomatic correspondence of the US foreign policy department. Attention is drawn to the analysis of this issue in the research works of foreign historians.During the first post-war years in matter of refugees’ problem and displaced persons, it was found that American diplomacy was in search of consensus between humanitarian reasons for ensuring human rights to asylum and the fulfillment of allied obligations in course of the activities of Soviet repatriation missions. However, «Baltic refugees» were a separate category, which Americans tried not to extradite from their occupied territory to the USSR cause of their non-recognition policy of Soviet annexation of Baltic states.

This article provides an overview of Latvian–Norwegian economic relations in the interwar period. In the interwar period, economic relations between Latvia and Norwegian were mainly confined to foreign trade, although there were some investments in Latvia from Norway as well. Latvia declared its independence in 1918, however normal trade with Norway did not commence until 1920 after the end of the Latvian War of Independence. It ended with the occupation of Norway in 1940. Latvia’s foreign trade in relation to Norway was regulated by the 1924 Commercial and Navigation treaty. Latvia’s main imports from Norway in the interwar period were herrings, cotton cloth, agricultural and industrial machinery, treated hides, various types of metals and metal products, animal fats and fish oils, drive-belts, stones and wire, whilst Latvia’s main exports to Norway were butter, meat, plywood, pit-props and boards, thread, linoleum, pulpwood, gypsum, paints and paint products, as well as radios. In general, trade and thus economic relations were of marginal significance to both countries in the interwar period due mainly to similarities in their economic structures and geographical distance.

The Republic of South Africa was the first country on the continent of Africa to recognise the renewed independence of the Republic of Latvia on 29 August 1991. This paper provides an overview of Latvian-South African economic relations in the interwar period. In the interwar period Latvian and South African economic relations were mainly confined to foreign trade. Latvia’s foreign trade in relation to South Africa (then known as the Union of South Africa) was more or less regulated by Latvia’s 1923 treaty with Great Britain. Latvia’s main imports from South Africa in the interwar period were fruits (including oranges, mandarins, apricots, grapes, pears, etc.), tanning extracts and materials, paint and varnish extracts and materials, raw wool, palm kernels and oil, and furs and hides, whilst Latvia’s main exports to South Africa were fish and fish conserves (including “Sprotes”), confectionery and chocolates, timber and timber products, paper and paper products, plywood, and liquors etc. In general, despite a growth in trade in the 1930s, trade and thus economic relations were of marginal significance to both countries in the interwar period.

Attention has not hitherto been turned intently to the popularity of particular branches of sports in the research of the history of Estonian sports. It has more intuitively been believed that the most popular branch of sports in the pre-war Republic of Estonia (1918–1940) was football. The conspicuously extensive coverage of football in the periodical press has provided grounds for this belief. Compared to other sports games and the more major individual branches, football had the most international matches at the level of national teams, which attracted thousands of spectators. Estonian clubs annually hosted squads from neighbouring countries. Professional clubs mainly from Central Europe brought thousands of spectators to the stadiums in the latter half of the 1920s and in the early 1930s. Rivalries between squads at home were also of great interest to the public and the media. The other primary ball games, basketball and volleyball, started being played in Estonia some ten years after football, and their position was weaker internationally as well: contacts between countries were infrequent. The international basketball association was established in 1932 and its analogue in volleyball was founded in 1947. Track and field, the largest branch of individual athletics, also could not compete with football in terms of matches and international contacts. This article is the first more serious attempt to compare the popularity of branches of sports in Estonia in the 1920s and 1930s. I compared the more major branches of sports in four categories: the number of participants in the particular branch of sports, the sizes of audiences, their ability to cope economically (balance sheets and revenue reports), and their position in the print media. The fact that there are gaps in the data in both the archives and in periodicals, and that the information for different years does not always match, made comparison of the numbers of participants difficult. The methodology used for ascertaining the number of participants was also not necessarily the same. An adequate comparison to the more important individualsports branches is complicated to arrive at because until 1933, the Eesti Kerge-, Raske- ja Veespordiliit (Estonian Association of Track and Field, Heavy Athletics and Aquatic Sports) was the umbrella organisation for major branches of sports such as track and field, wrestling, weightlifting, boxing, swimming, diving, gymnastics and cycling, whereas the last two sports branches are not even mentioned in the association’s name. Conclusions can nevertheless be drawn concerning the number and proportions of persons active in different branches of sports based on indirect data. I compared the size of the membership of the separate sports associations and the number of participants in the Estonian championships of the three largest sports games (football, basketball, volleyball). Periodicals proved to be the most reliable in ascertaining the numbers of spectators since they unfailingly noted the larger attendance numbers based on spectator ticket information or visual observation. The sketchy information on attendance at competitions in individual sports is a problem, but from the standpoint of this article’s research problem, the fact that before World War II there was not a single large sports arena in Estonia is important. The gymnasiums that were in use accommodated slightly over 500 spectators in total. This means that a thousand and more spectators could gather only at stadiums, where primarily football matches and track and field competitions were held. The print media reported the numbers of spectators at those competitions. I compared the attendance numbers for football and track and field competitions, and calculated the average number of spectators. There are gaps in the balance sheets and revenue reports of the separate sports associations for the period under consideration, yet the Eesti Spordi Keskliit (Central Association of Estonian Sports) published them in its yearbooks for 1935–1939, which makes it possible to draw correct conclusions concerning the economic viability of the separate sports associations. While I used the method of source criticism for the preceding three categories, I studied the representation of branches of sports in print media together with Kristjan Remmelkoor using content analysis. We focused exclusively on print media because that was the primary means of mass communication at that time, and it covered the entire period under consideration, unlike radio, which began broadcasting for the first time in 1926. On the basis of circulation numbers, we selected two dailies with nationwide circulation that were published in Tallinn (Vaba Maa was published only until 1938, thus it was replaced for final comparison with another Tallinn daily paper Uus Eesti) and one daily from southern Estonia for content analysis. We studied the newspaper issues from the years 1921, 1925, 1930, 1935 and 1939. Based on the pilot project, we identified the branches of sports that were reported the most and worked out a methodology on the basis of which to search for and categorise branches of sports. After six months, I carried out a repeat analysis for one month of each year that was under consideration. The repeat analysis covered all four dailies. The results differed by 3.97%. Thereat in comparing the two branches of sports that were reported on most, the difference in football was 0.69% and 0.43% in track and field. It became evident as a result of the study that compared to basketball and volleyball, there were almost four times more football enthusiasts. Compared to the other more popular individual sports, we can indirectly conclude that football was the branch of sports with the largest number of enthusiasts. Football had the most spectators in Estonia in the interwar period because branches of sports practiced in indoor conditions could not fit more than 500 spectators into gymnasiums, since there was no large sports arena. Football had the largest audiences when considering the track and field competitions and football matches held at stadiums. In 1935–1939, the Eesti Jalgpalli Liit (Estonian Football Association) was Estonia’s most prosperous separate sports association. It became evident on the basis of content analysis that the two most widely reported branches of sports in print media were football, and track and field. Thereat the number of reports on track and field grew in the latter half of the 1930s and surpassed the figures for football. At the same time, the number of texts on Estonian football was the largest over the entire period that has been studied. The greatest number of texts on football were in journalistic genres that required absorbed reading, which stood out better in newspapers. Due to these circumstances, football became the most popular branch of sports in Estonia in the interwar period. The Estonian national squad’s international match against Latvia held on 18 June 1940 characterises football’s symbolic capital. This match that took place at Kadriorg stadium at a turning point in history evolved into a nationalist demonstration against the Soviet Union’s occupying regime. The crowd went from the stadium to Kadriorg Palace, where President Konstantin Päts was under the guard of the foreign regime. This match and the events that followed it are etched in the people’s collective memory. They have made their way into many published memoirs and also into belles-lettres, and have been echoed in both poetry and prose.

AbstractInternational legal practice in the 20th century is rich in challenging cases of state continuity and extinction. One of those cases is the preservation of the continuity of the Baltic states throughout 51 years of foreign occupation and annexation. After decades of non-recognition of Soviet annexation by leading Western powers, the present-day Baltic republics have not been seen as successor states of the Soviet Union, but as identical with the independent Baltic states of 1918–1940. How could the continuity of the Baltic states be preserved, especially as the Soviet Union had effectively and seemingly “forever”established its control over the Baltic republics? This article focuses on the Estonian situation, laying out the events of 1944 which led to the proclamation of the new constitutional government, and after the country was for the second time occupied by the Soviet army, to the creation of an Estonian government in exile. One of the main questions asked in this article is whether and how the Estonian government in exile contributed to the preservation of the continuity of the Republic of Estonia. Both legal and political aspects played a role in the preservation of the continuity of the Republic of Estonia, and for various reasons, the role of the Estonian government in exile was not exactly that of “the” preserver of state continuity.

Teesid: Artikli eesmärk on avardada teadmisi suulise tõlke ja tõlkide osatähtsusest Eesti Vabariigi loomise algaastatest kuni iseseisvuse katkemiseni 1940. aastal. Perioodil, kui Eesti Vabariik otsis tunnustust, et olla aktsepteeritud iseseisva noore riigina maailmapoliitikas, oli diplomaatilise tõlke roll ja tõlgi vastutus väga oluline. Aastate 1918–1940 kohta on analüüsitud 41 mälestusteraamatut, lisaks suulist tõlget käsitlevaid ajaleheartikleid, Eesti Rahvusarhiivi materjale diplomaatilise kirjavahetuse kohta ja Venemaaga peetud rahuläbirääkimiste protokolle aastatest 1919–1920. Analüüsi on kaasatud Pierre Bourdieu mõiste sümboolne kapital, diplomaatilist tõlget käsitletakse kui mõjufaktorit riigi sümboolse kapitali akumuleerimisel.SU M M A R YDiplomatic interpreting in Estonia emerged concurrently with the proclamation of independence of the Republic of Estonia. The author of this article examined authentic material in relevant Estonian archives, museums, including newspaper articles, and memoirs, enabling her to follow the timeline of this evolution of interpreting from 1918 to 1940, as well as to locate events, languages interpreted, and attitudes vis-à-vis interpreters.Between the two World Wars, diplomatic interpreting in Estonia was carried out by diplomats themselves, acting as interpreters. As early as September 1919, in preparation for the beginning of the Tartu Peace negotiations with Russia, the state language of the Republic of Estonia (Estonian) was used together with interpreters. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has argued that the state can „reap symbolic benefits“ by speaking „with distinction and thereby distinguish[ing itself] from all those who are less well endowed with linguistic capital“ (Bourdieu 1997: 21). The use of Estonian was directly linked to the prestige of the state language and to sending a message that contributed explicitly to the growth of the state’s symbolic capital. It also presupposed the subsequent use of interpreters throughout the period under review.The Foreign Ministry was established on 14 November 1918. Of the first three officials, two were designated as interpreters (tõlk). From 1918 to 1940, the Foreign Ministry and legations had 34 officials on the staff list whose job description included the word tõlk (interpreter). No job description mentions the word tõlkija (translator), as no terminological difference was made between tõlk and tõlkija. In the inter-war period neither the ministerial officials nor diplomats had had any professional interpreter training.To the author’s knowledge, this article is the first to associate diplomatic interpreting in Estonia with the creation of symbolic capital for the state. Symbolic capital is one of the key concepts Bourdieu introduced. By applying this concept to research on diplomatic interpreting in Estonia, we can identify a new aspect of the value of interpreters. Bourdieu stresses that political acts may enhance the symbolic capital of a state „with only their faces, their names and their honor“ (Bourdieu 1992: 119). A diplomatic interpreter is at the centre of historic events not as a passive mediator but as an active agent with a responsibility to communicate legitimate views and actions unambiguously. Diplomatic interpreters, in the sense meant by Bourdieu, enjoyed a privilege, because their acts contributed to symbolic capital and because of their association with those who laid the foundation for Estonia’s symbolic capital.

Just days after the Slovak state was created, it signed with Nazi Germany a ‘treaty of protection’ and a protocol on co-operation in financial and economic matters. As a result of these measures, Slovakia would be labelled a German vassal state and the government a puppet regime. This chapter examines the nature of the wartime Slovak state and reconsiders the concept of a puppet regime and a native version of fascism (so-called ‘clerical fascism’). It examines the ways in which Germany tried to influence the Slovak government, who the German protagonists were, and how and according to what guidelines Slovak politicians reacted to these manoeuvres. It first outlines how Slovak nationalists demanded autonomy during the later years of the First Czechoslovak Republic, and then assesses the Slovak-German relations from March 1939 to the summer of 1940. By this time, the German minister of foreign affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop, had labelled the Slovak case an example of ‘revolutionary foreign politics’.