ESTONIA: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn

ESTONIA:
Almost
extinguished,
successfully
reborn
of the Soviet Union, demanded that Tallinn allow the
Red Army to establish its military bases on Estonian
soil. Isolated internationally and facing a military invasion,
the Estonian Government yielded to the ultimatum.
Under the September 28, 1939 “mutual assistance
and cooperation” treaty, Soviet naval and air bases
were established in Estonia and 25,000 Red Army
troops crossed the border in October. At the same time
Stalin promised not to impair Estonia’s sovereignty nor
its form of government. At the end of 1939, in flagrant
violation of the treaty, the Soviet Union began to use
its Estonian bases in an aggressive war against a third
party – Finland. Taking Estonia under Soviet control
was conducted in coordination with Nazi Germany,
the other partner to the September 1939 deal. A week
before the arrival of the Red Army into Estonia, Hitler
ordered the historic German minority to leave the
country; some 17,000 Estonian Germans were “repatriated”
not to Germany proper but to the newly conquered
Polish territories.
In the spring of 1940 the government of the Soviet
Union began preparations to finalise the occupation of
Estonia and the other Baltic States. This coincided with
Hitler’s occupation of France. On May 28, 1940 the
official Soviet newspaper Pravda suddenly accused the
Estonian political and commercial elites of sympathies
toward England and of “hatred of Germany and everything
German”. At the end of May 1940, larger Red
Army units began to mobilize on the Estonian border.
By mid-June, cá 160,000 men backed by 600 tanks were
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