Germans leave Dorpat

On 18 December 1918 German troops withdrew from Dorpat (Tartu), the university town in southern Estonia. They had held it since 24 February, when they entered the town during the offensive against Soviet Russia. The British chronology of the war records the evacuation of Dorpat by the Germans only under 26 December. Estonian studies state that the Germans left on 18 December and that the Red Army occupied the town on 22 December. In some English-language studies the Reds’ entry falls on Christmas Eve.

After the armistice the Germans were withdrawing from Estonia and handing over power to the Estonian Provisional Government in Tallinn. The Red Army followed them. Narva fell on 28 November, and the Estonians date their War of Independence from that day. The volunteer People’s Army was still in its infancy, and its units were falling back along the whole front. In December the Reds also advanced into southern Estonia. On 18 December, the day the Germans left Dorpat, they occupied without resistance Valga, the railway junction on the Estonian–Latvian border, and their units were approaching Dorpat from the direction of Võru and Räpina.

The Estonian command was still thinking of a counter-attack, but it never took place. On 19 December the Estonian units fell back almost to the town itself, and the Reds stood about 10–12 kilometres from it. Riots and looting broke out in Dorpat, fuelled, according to Estonian historians, by an underground communist committee. After a failed attempt at resistance at Ülenurme, south of the town, the Estonians were ordered on 21 December to retreat and left Dorpat before the Red Army arrived. Some soldiers of the Estonian regiment that was to defend the town abandoned their posts. That day a red flag was hoisted on the town hall tower, and the next day Red units entered the town. In English-language studies the capture of Dorpat is attributed to the 49th Regiment of Red Latvian Riflemen.

Dorpat became one of the centres of the Commune of the Working People of Estonia, the Soviet state proclaimed in Narva. By the end of December the Reds were already about 30–40 kilometres from Tallinn. Communist rule in Dorpat lasted less than four weeks, but it was marked by arrests and executions. The new authorities also banned church services in the town. On 14 January 1919 the Reds murdered, according to Estonian studies, 19 hostages in the cellar of a credit bank, among them the Orthodox Bishop Platon. That same day Estonian armoured trains and the partisan unit of Julius Kuperjanov retook the town. The Estonian counter-offensive, supported by Finnish volunteers and the British fleet, began on 7 January and by February had driven the Red Army out of almost all of Estonia.