The Estonia Governorate, also historically known as the Estland or Esthonia Governorate,The Baltic States from 1914 to 1923 By LtCol Andrew Parrott. was a province (guberniya) and one of the Baltic governorates of the Russian Empire. It was located in northern Estonia and included some islands in the West Estonian archipelago, including Hiiumaa and Vormsi. Previously, the Reval Governorate existed during Peter I's reign and was confirmed by the Treaty of Nystad, which ceded territory from Sweden to the newly established Russian Empire. The Estonia Governorate was established in 1796 when Paul I's reforms abolished the Reval Viceroyalty. The port city of Reval (known in Russian as Revel, contemporary Tallinn) was the administrative centre where the governor had his seat.
From the 1850s to 1914, the Estonian national awakening influenced and characterized the governorate by general modernization, the reorganization into a modern European society, and the success of the newly emerged nationalist awareness. The accession of Alexander III in 1881 marked the beginning of a period of more rigid Russification; the previous Baltic civil and criminal codes were replaced with Russian ones, and the Russian language replaced the German language and Estonian language. Jaan Tõnisson founded the National Liberal Party and organized its first congress in 1905, in the course of the First Russian Revolution; in response, the Russian government suppressed the revolution by declaring martial law, causing Konstantin Päts and the radical leader Jaan Teemant to flee abroad. The governorate gained more territories from the Governorate of Livonia and was granted autonomy on 12 April 1917, and lasted for nearly a year. The Estonian independence that came on 24 February 1918 marked the permanent end for the governorate.
Until the late 19th century the governorate was administered independently by the local Baltic German nobility through a feudal Regional Council.
History
From 1561, Estonia had been under the control as a dominion of the Swedish Empire following the annexation of the northern part of the Livonian Confederation, in which nobles swore obedience to the Swedish king Eric XIV as the Russians, in 1558, invaded Livonia, which prompted the Livonian War. The Treaty of Plussa forced Russia to cede to Sweden possessions along the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, including northern Livonia and Ingria.
Seeking to regain lost territories, in 1700, Tsar Peter I and his allies invaded Sweden, beginning the Great Northern War. He initially met with setbacks by King Charles XII but later gained triumphs. In 1710, the Russians advanced into Estonia and Livonia, which were incorporated into Russia. In the Treaty of Nystad of 1721, Sweden formally ceded its former dominion of Estonia, Livonia, and its other territories to Russia, whereas Russia paid Sweden compensation of 2 million efimki (1.3 million rubles).
Initially named Reval Governorate after the city of Reval (now known as Tallinn), it was established in 1719 by decree of Peter the Great on 29 May, on the territory that was acquired from Sweden, along with the Riga Governorate. In 1783, the Reval Viceroyalty was formed from Reval Governorate, and in 1796, with the abolition of the viceroyalty system, the Estonia Governorate was formed. During the reign of the Swedish kings, there was a tendency towards granting more autonomy to the peasantry, but under the Russian tsars, there was a shift towards tighter regulation. Serfdom remained in place until its abolition in 1816.
Rise of the Estonian cultural identity
The early course of the reign of Alexander II marked the emergence of the Estonian national movement, which periodised the so-called Estonian age of awakening that led to the birth of a distinctive Estonian national culture and laid the groundwork for its growing roles in Baltic politics. As agricultural reforms, the spread of education, increasing communication beyond the Baltic, and the spirit of reformation were factors in the national awakening, from 1860, the Estonian national movement had gained more support from rising Estonians. Although many Estonians still continued to assimilate into the German and Russian cultures, many nationwide efforts to promote the Estonian culture were seen, especially for the , the Society of Estonian Literati, and the all-Estonian song festivals.
The prominent figure in the period was Carl Robert Jakobson from the neighbouring Governorate of Livonia; he opposed the Baltic German dominance and took an anti-clerical position on the Lutheran Church. He had also begun campaigning for the introduction of zemstvo, which had already existed in the empire; in June 1881, seventeen Estonian societies requested that they do so with equal representations for Germans and Estonians, in a memorandum to Alexander III. As a result, four of the ten points of the memorandum were implemented at the end of the 1880s.
Also in this era, poet Lydia Koidula had been a prominent figure in the advocation of Estonian literature; she wrote her most important work, (The Nightingale of Emajõgi), which was published in 1867. Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald composed his epic Kalevipoeg, in which he portrayed the mythological adventures of the eponymous hero, who had ended up in chains at the gate of Hell and the promise of a return to home; Kalevipoeg has been later considered the national epic. Among Koidula and Kreutzwald were Mihkel Veske, Ado Reinvald, Friedrich Kuhlbars, and others. Many works in this era reflected the condition of rural people and satirised the elites. Publication of Estonian-language print grew rapidly from 1860 to 1900, and the number of books and brochures increased sixfold, from 55 to 312. According to the 1897 census, 96.9 per cent of Estonians, 10 years and older, could read and write, making the northern Baltic area the most literate region of the empire.
Russification
In 1885, the appointment of Sergey Shakhovskoy to the governorship of Estonia by Emperor Alexander III marked the beginning of a process of Russification in Estonia. In 1877, the Russian urban reform of 1870 took place in the Baltic area. The new law enfranchised men 25 years of age and over, which was divided into three curiae according to the city taxes they paid, replacing the medieval estate-based system that had excluded Estonians from participation in the municipal government. Virtually all Estonians, in fact, belonged to the third curia since their bourgeoisie was only beginning to improve its economic position. The 1892 municipal law, in which the franchise base was determined by property value, was implemented in the Baltic provinces; for Estonians, it would increase the possibility of winning over the Baltic German hegemony, and for the bourgeoisie, it would be a step forward to put all voters in the same place.
In 1888–1889, the Russification of the police system took place: the Baltic Germans lost all police powers in the rural township, although they retained powers on their estates; and the police system at county and urban levels was reorganised and placed under the Minister of Internal Affairs, by which all higher police officers were appointed. The new Russian officers regarded Estonian local affairs with disinterest, and its population was more impartial than the German ones, although they were non-Estonian. The Russification of jurisdiction, although the Baltic legal codes remained unchanged, was taken as well, by which the peasantry had its own courts, the township court, with appeals to the higher court for the peasantry. In 1864, the Russian institution reform was introduced, which brought more impartial justice: the justice of the peace with appeals to the conference of justices of the peace; and the circuit court with appeals to the court chamber. The major problem was that proceedings in the higher court were conducted exclusively in Russian, which meant the Estonians, who were not fluent in Russian, were forced to hire translators or lawyers, involving a prohibitive expense for destitute Estonians.
Russification policies were also implemented in education: placing all Lutheran rural elementary schools under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education; creating the position of director and inspector so the ministry insured the state control; and introducing Russian as an instruction language in the third year of the school in 1887 and then the first year in 1892. Initially, the results of Russification were disorganization: many schools, which the Baltic Germans withdrew support for in protest, were closed; much of the teaching personnel were unable to teach Russian; and the number of pupils in the governorate declined, from 25,646 to 20,565 between 1886 and 1892.
The promotion of Russian Orthodoxy in the Baltic area starting in the 1840s caused a struggle with the local Lutheran church, which a majority of Estonians had adhered to since the Northern Crusades. In 1883, motivated by anti-German sentiment a conversion movement among 3,400 Estonian peasants began in Wiek county. During his first tenure as governor, Shakhovskoy sought to propagate Orthodoxy in his ruling governorate, which caused spiritual dissatisfaction among the Baltic natives who lived under a German-controlled Protestantism. In 1886, Shakhovskoy suggested to the procurator of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, that Orthodoxy was the quickest way to unite the Estonians into the "great Russian family". Furthermore, in 1885, Alexander III reinstated that children of mixed Lutheran-Orthodox marriages be only baptised as Orthodox, and the reconverts to Lutheranism were again considered members of the state church.
Another major factor was the gradual introduction of Russian as the language of administration in 1885; by 1889, Russian had become the language in municipal government and exclusively in higher courts, as well as in communication among all administrative organs. The Estonian intelligentsia, which had sought equal rights for Estonian as an administrative language and had been rooted in a Baltic Weltanschauung, disapproved of this. Some of them, who had received their education in German, were able to adjust after a long process.
1905 Revolution
With the rise of the liberation movement in Russia, all-Empire questions began to impinge on Estonian life, as well as a new generation emerged in Estonia. The crucial point in social and political thought was the appearance of journalistic voices for the lower class, engaging in the fade of loyalty to the crown. Many intellectuals emerged in the post-Russification era; among them were Jaan Tõnisson, who represented a renewal of the moderate political orientation, and Konstantin Päts, the editor of Teataja in Reval.
In 1905, the massacre on Bloody Sunday became the final straw that brought about the revolution, whose impulse had spread into the rural area of the Baltic region; the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party organised activity in Estonia, with its counterpart formed in August. The worker strikes broke out in Reval, Narva, and Pernau in January 1905. In the rural area, 120 manor houses, which were the symbol of Baltic German power, were put to the torch by Estonians. Mass meetings called for peaceful reform in Reval, and the situation remained calm until 16 October; the Russian Army on that day, however, opened fire on a peaceful demonstration on a market square, which was later known as the Tallinn Bloodbath.