Maapäev assumes power in Estonia

On 28 November 1917 (15 November Old Style) the Provisional Land Assembly of the autonomous Governorate of Estonia, called by the Estonians the Maanõukogu or Maapäev, met in Tallinn. In defiance of the decision of the local Bolshevik authority, which three days earlier had resolved to dissolve the Assembly, the deputies resolved that the Assembly “recognises itself as the sole bearer of supreme power in Estonia”, whose ordinances were to be obeyed until the Estonian Constituent Assembly convened. The Assembly undertook to convene it without delay on the basis of a democratic electoral law. All regulations and decrees, “from whomever they might come”, were to be valid in Estonia only if promulgated by the Maapäev. For the periods when the Assembly was not sitting, the right to issue urgent ordinances was given to its presidium and the Council of Elders together with the provincial government.

The Assembly owed its existence to the February Revolution. On 12 April 1917 (30 March Old Style) the Provisional Government merged the Governorate of Estonia with the northern, Estonian-inhabited part of the Governorate of Livonia, with Tartu, Viljandi, Pärnu, Võru and the island of Saaremaa, and granted the new governorate autonomy. The Estonian lawyer Jaan Poska became the government’s commissar, and alongside him sat the Assembly, chosen in indirect elections by rural communes and town councils. It first met on 14 July. In the end it numbered 62 deputies, from agrarians and democrats to socialists and five Bolsheviks. Between sessions its work was directed by the Council of Elders, and from October the provincial government (Maavalitsus) was headed by Konstantin Päts. Almost all Estonian parties, apart from the Bolsheviks, then wanted an autonomous Estonia within a democratic Russian federation.

This order was overthrown by the October Revolution. As early as 5 November (23 October Old Style) detachments of the Estonian Military Revolutionary Committee occupied the railway stations and communications offices in Tallinn, and on 9 November the Bolshevik activist Viktor Kingissepp took over the office from Poska. Power in the governorate passed to the Bolshevik-dominated Executive Committee of the Soviets of Estonia, with Jaan Anvelt among its leaders. On 25 November the Committee resolved to dissolve the Maapäev and announced its own elections to the Estonian Constituent Assembly. A threat also hung over the country from the west: a month earlier the Germans had occupied the islands at the entrance to the Gulf of Riga, including Saaremaa, which belonged to autonomous Estonia. In calling the session of 28 November, the Assembly’s leaders wanted to save the only democratically elected representation of the Estonians from both the one and the other.

The resolution did not change the situation at once. Immediately after its adoption the Bolsheviks dispersed the Assembly, and the leading Estonian politicians had to go underground. Päts later spent a month in prison. The Council of Elders and the provincial government, however, continued to operate clandestinely. Chronologies of the war sometimes state that Estonia declared independence on 28 November. That is inaccurate. The resolution did not break with Russia and did not proclaim a state. Estonian studies emphasise, however, that in it the Estonians for the first time themselves proclaimed their right to decide their own fate, and call it the first step towards statehood.

Independence came a few months later, in different circumstances. In February 1918, when the Bolsheviks’ peace negotiations with Germany had broken down and German troops were advancing on Estonia, the Council of Elders appointed a three-member Salvation Committee. On 24 February 1918, the day before the Germans entered Tallinn, the Committee issued a manifesto proclaiming the independent Republic of Estonia.