RIIK, VÕIM JA LEGITIIMSUS EESTIS AASTAIL 1917–1920
STATE, POWER AND LEGITIMACY IN ESTONIA, 1917–1920

Summary/Abstract: The article begins with definitions of state, power, and legitimacy. While we can define the state as an organization exercising sovereign power over the population of a given territory, power is harder to define. Power can mean the sovereign power of a state, but most often it means less than that. In the latter case power needs to be defined by the circumstances in which it is used. Finally, we need to ask what creates the political legitimacy of states. Following the February Revolution, Russian political leaders wished to establish a new political structure for the Russian state where power would be decentralized and the political order would be legitimized by a constitution. Estonian political leaders were able to seize the favorable political moment to obtain from the Provisional Government a statute that brought about the administrative unification of the territory of Estonia and provided an elected institution that was to be responsible for the local governmental institutions of Estonia including schools and local law enforcement. Newly democratically elected town and commune assemblies were to be part of the new structure. The form of this political structure was that of self-government, but the content from the perspective of Estonian political leaders after the February Revolution was to be political autonomy for Estonia. This institution building of 1917 became the pre-history of the construction of the Estonian state in 1918–1919. A competing state-building experiment via the soviets also took place in Estonia during this period. The soviets in Estonia were initially dominated by Russian soldiers and workers. However, with time, Estonian Bolsheviks were able to bring Estonian workers into their movement and later also secure support from segments of the rural population with their agrarian politics. The Bolshevik goal in Estonia was to participate in the building of fairly centralized state structure in Russia based on Bolshevik economic policies. Following the seizure of power in Petrograd by the Bolsheviks in October, the Bolsheviks in Estonia also began the take-over of state and self-governmental institutions in Estonia. Power in Estonia, however, in 1917 was not as simple to define as perhaps before 1917. The Bolsheviks needed to take over not one or two, but numerous institutions. In fact, actual state power in Estonia eluded them as the Bolsheviks failed to gain control of Estonian military units, elements of Estonian society, and failed the test of elections to the Estonian Constituent Assembly. It is argued that the prime reason for this failure was an inability to articulate a coherent national vision for Estonia. With the defeat of Germany in the War and the end of the German occupation in November 1918, state building in Estonia again commenced based on the institutions created in 1917. We can perhaps seriously begin to talk about the existence of an Estonian state in February 1919.

• Details
• Contents