Estonians decide to declare independence

On 13 and 14 January 1918 (31 December 1917 and 1 January 1918 Old Style) a secret meeting of Estonian politicians was held in Tallinn. According to the chronicle of the Estonian parliament, it brought together in the Estonia Theatre building members of the Council of Elders of the Maapäev, which had been dispersed by the Bolsheviks, the provincial government and representatives of all parties except the Bolsheviks. The participants took a “decision in principle” that Estonia would declare independence when the threat of German occupation became imminent. In this way they wanted to forestall the Germans. A British chronology of the war recorded under 13 January that the Estonian government had issued a declaration of independence. This is inaccurate: no act was proclaimed at the time, and the meeting was secret. The resolution was nonetheless the first joint decision of the Estonian parties that their aim was a state of their own, not autonomy within a Russian federation.

Until the end of December 1917 the Estonian parties, apart from the Bolsheviks, were still for the most part counting on a democratic Russian federation. They believed that Bolshevik rule would not last long. Other options were also considered: a union with Finland or the Scandinavian countries, a Baltic federation, or finally a Russian or German protectorate. The events of the last few weeks forced a change. In Tallinn power was held by the Bolshevik-dominated Executive Committee of the Soviets of Estonia, and the leaders of the Maapäev were working underground. On the islands of the Gulf of Riga, occupied by the Germans, an occupation administration was being set up. On 13 December the Knighthood of the Governorate of Estonia, the corporation of the Baltic Germans who for centuries had owned most of the land, announced its break with Russia and asked Germany for protection. The Livonian Knighthood took a similar step. At Brest, at the end of December, General Hoffmann declared that Courland, Lithuania and Poland had separated themselves from Russia. The Estonians realised that if they did not speak up themselves, the Baltic barons and the German army would speak on their behalf. According to the Estonian journalist and historian Eduard Laaman, the immediate impulse was a proposal by the leader of the Estonian Knighthood that Estonian politicians join an appeal for German troops to march in.

The meeting also decided to seek support abroad. The same day credentials were issued to the members of a foreign delegation. Besides Ants Piip and Jaan Tõnisson, who had already been recruited, it included Ferdinand Kull, the Social Democrat Mihkel Martna, Kaarel Robert Pusta and Eduard Virgo. The documents of a few lines each, according to which each of them was a “diplomatic agent” of the Maapäev, were signed on behalf of the assembly by Jüri Jaakson and, as head of the provincial government, by Konstantin Päts. Martna (and later also Karl Menning) was to go to Germany, Tõnisson to Scandinavia, Pusta and Kull to Paris, and Piip to London. The delegates were to circulate a memorandum on Estonia’s political situation, prepared under the direction of Jaan Poska, and to seek support for Estonian aspirations. For the time being they were not to ask for formal recognition of independence. That was to wait until the Estonian Constituent Assembly met; its elections had been set for the beginning of February.

The Estonian politicians quickly got to work. On 25 January Tõnisson began his work in Stockholm, and on 23–26 January Poska, Jüri Vilms and Julius Seljamaa, Estonian deputies to the Russian Constituent Assembly, which had just been dispersed, visited the British, American and French embassies in Petrograd. They wanted to find out how the Entente powers would regard an independent Estonia. Independence, however, came only a month later. After the breakdown of the negotiations at Brest the German army moved east on 18 February. On 19 February the Council of Elders set up the Salvation Committee, which on 24 February, on the eve of the Germans’ entry into Tallinn, issued a manifesto proclaiming the Republic of Estonia. The Germans did not recognise it. In May 1918, on the other hand, Britain, France and Italy recognised the Maapäev de facto, and this was largely the achievement of the delegation sent out in January.