Estonia declares independence

On 24 February 1918 in Tallinn, which the Bolsheviks were just leaving and which the German army was approaching, the Estonian Salvation Committee issued the Manifesto to All the Peoples of Estonia. “Estonia, within her historical and ethnographic boundaries, is declared as of today an independent democratic republic,” proclaimed the document, signed by the Council of Elders of the Maapäev, the Estonian provincial assembly. The same day the Committee appointed a Provisional Government headed by Konstantin Päts. The evening before, the manifesto had been read out publicly in Pärnu. For the time being the state existed only on paper, because the next day the Germans entered Tallinn, but Estonians still celebrate 24 February as their independence day.

Between the Bolsheviks and the Germans

The leaders of the Estonian parties had decided as early as mid-January that they would declare independence once the threat of German occupation became immediate. For the moment they still placed their hopes in the Estonian Constituent Assembly, whose elections had been called by the Bolshevik-dominated Executive Committee of the Soviets of Estonia. Voting took place on 3 and 4 February (21 and 22 January Old Style), and in some districts a week later. According to partial results, almost two-thirds of the votes went to parties in favour of a state of their own. The Bolsheviks broke off the elections, on 10 February introduced martial law in the towns, declared the Baltic nobility outlaws and arrested about 800 landowners, who were deported into the interior of Russia. The leaders of the Maapäev remained underground.

Events at Brest decided the matter. After Trotsky announced that Russia would neither fight nor sign a peace, the Germans terminated the armistice and on 18 February moved east. That day the Council of Elders of the Maapäev appointed a commission to draft the manifesto. Its members were Jüri Jaakson, Karl Ast, Juhan Kukk and Jüri Vilms. On 19 February the Council decided to seize the moment when Russian troops were fleeing the country and German troops had not yet occupied it, and to declare independence. It handed all power to a three-member Estonian Salvation Committee, made up of Päts, Vilms and Konstantin Konik. The same day ships of the Baltic Fleet began to force their way through the ice from Tallinn to Helsinki. On 20 February German troops from the islands occupied in the autumn crossed to the mainland near Virtsu. On 21 February the Council of Elders approved the text of the manifesto.

Pärnu and Tallinn

The Bolsheviks were still in control in Tallinn, so the manifesto could not be printed there. According to Estonian accounts, the lawyer Jaan Soop carried the text, hidden in his boot, to Pärnu. It was printed at Aleksander Jürvetson’s printing house on the order of the local leader of the Rural People’s Union, August Jürmann, and posted up around the town. On 23 February at eight in the evening Hugo Kuusner, a member of the Maapäev, read the manifesto from the balcony of the Endla Theatre to the townspeople and to soldiers of the Estonian national units. At noon the next day a battalion of the 2nd Estonian Infantry Regiment held the republic’s first military parade in Pärnu, and the manifesto was also read out in Viljandi and Tori.

On 24 February the last representatives of Soviet power sailed from Tallinn to Helsinki on Russian ships, and order in the city was kept by the Estonian national units and self-defence forces. The Salvation Committee then issued the manifesto in the capital, dated “Tallinn, 24 February 1918”, and appointed the government. Sources disagree as to when the manifesto was read out publicly in Tallinn. Some accounts speak of 24 February, Estonian chronologies state that Päts read it to the townspeople on 25 February, and the newspaper “Teataja” printed it the same day. The version of 24 February, not the original of 21 February, became the official text. In 1937 Kuusner proposed that 21 or 23 February be regarded as the state’s birthday, but the director of the state archives, Gottlieb Ney, replied that 24 February was what counted, because on that day independence had been proclaimed in the capital and power had passed into the hands of elected bodies.

What the manifesto announced

The manifesto listed the lands of the republic: the counties of Harjumaa, Läänemaa, Järvamaa, Virumaa with Narva and its surroundings, Tartumaa, Võrumaa, Viljandimaa and Pärnumaa, as well as the islands of Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Muhu and others on which Estonians had lived for centuries. The final border with Latvia and Russia was to be settled by plebiscites after the end of the war. Until the convening of the Estonian Constituent Assembly, elected by universal, direct, secret and proportional suffrage, power belonged to the Maapäev and the Provisional Government. The republic wished to maintain complete neutrality towards all its neighbours and expected them to do the same. The Estonian armed forces were to be reduced to the size needed to keep order, and Estonians in the Russian army were called home.

The government was to be guided by democratic principles: all citizens, regardless of religion, nationality and political views, were to be equal before the law, and the national minorities, “Russians, Germans, Swedes, Jews and others”, were to receive cultural autonomy. The manifesto guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly, of association and to strike, and announced the release of political prisoners, the restoration of the local governments dispersed by the Bolsheviks, the creation of a militia, and laws on land, labour, food supply and finance. It closed with the words: “Long live the independent democratic Republic of Estonia! Long live peace among nations!”

The Provisional Government

The thirteen-member Provisional Government appointed on 24 February was a coalition of the Rural People’s Union, the Democrats, the Social Democrats and the Labour Party. Päts, the prime minister, also took internal affairs and trade, Vilms justice, the former provincial commissar Jaan Poska foreign affairs, Kukk finance, and Andres Larka military affairs. The government managed to hold its first meeting. Its main tasks were to be seeking recognition abroad, where a delegation with Jaan Tõnisson and Ants Piip had been working since January, and preparing elections to the constituent assembly.

The Germans in Tallinn

There was no longer time for that. On 24 February the Germans entered Tartu and Pärnu, on 25 February Viljandi and Tallinn, and on 4 March Narva, occupying the whole of Estonia. The German command did not recognise any Estonian government. Päts, Vilms and Poska talked with a German general for several hours, but to no effect. The occupiers restored the pre-revolutionary laws, relied on the Baltic Germans, who dreamed of a Baltic duchy joined to the Reich, and in the spring disbanded the Estonian national units. The government went underground. Vilms was killed in April in Finland in circumstances never fully explained, and in June the Germans arrested Päts and sent him to a camp.

The manifesto did not create a state at once, but it gave the Estonians an act to which they could appeal. In May 1918 the United Kingdom, France and Italy recognised the Maapäev de facto. When Germany lost the war in November, the Provisional Government came out of hiding and took power, and the Republic of Estonia defended itself in the war with Soviet Russia, which ended with the treaty of Tartu in 1920.