AJALOOKIRJUTUS EKSIILIS: EESTI TEADUSLIK SELTS ROOTSIS
WRITING HISTORY IN EXILE: THE ESTONIAN LEARNED SOCIETY IN SWEDEN

Summary/Abstract: In the fall of 1944 a large number of Estonian intellectuals fled Estonia largely to Sweden and Germany. According to the calculations of Evald Blumfeldt, of the 191 full-time faculty members of Tartu University (professors and docents) 90 had fled Estonia to exile, 37 had died, been killed or had been deported, 42 remained in Estonia, leaving 22 about whom he had no information. This meant that almost half (47%) of the previous faculty members were in exile and indeed two-thirds of those still alive. Approximately one-half of the ones in exile were located in Sweden, the other half in the British and American zones of Germany. The article concentrates on the scholars in Sweden. In reports that sought to summarize what had happened to the faculty of Tartu University, Gustav Ränk, an ethnologist, justified the reason for being in exile as a rejection of the Sovietization of Tartu University – the imposition of Soviet ideological and political controls on the university faculty and the cutting of ties with other European universities are cited as the major issues. Most of the faculty members of Tartu University who had fled belonged to a generation that had been born around 1900. They had received most of their education in Estonia where they had studied under Finnish and Swedish professors at Tartu in the 1920s. Many had studied also at other European universities, and they had been the first ethnic Estonians to occupy the university chairs and positions at Tartu University to which they had been appointed. The world of the Soviet universities was foreign to them. The refugee Estonian scholars established in February 1945 an Estonian Learned Society in Sweden, which was patterned after the academic learned societies that had existed in Estonia before being closed by the Soviets in 1940–1941. The main society existed in Stockholm with a branch in Lund. Historians (E. Blumfeldt, A. Soom, A. Tuulse, J. Koit, and E. Uustalu) and scholars in related disciplines like archaeology (R. Indreko) and ethnography (G. Ränk and H. Hagar) played a leading role in the activities of the society. The society in Stockholm held 7–9 meetings a year at which scholary presentations were made that were followed by discussions. Approximately 40% of the presentations were made by historians or those in related disciplines. Protocols of the meetings and discussions were written regularly. Most of the presentations were published in the yearbooks that appeared every five years or in other scholary journals. Besides the meetings, the society also built an Estonian library in Stockholm and organized an annual convocation on the anniversary of the establishment of Tartu University as an Estonian university. The members also read and evaluated student seminar papers on topics in Estonian history. As a voluntary organization the society existed by means of donations from its members and by others in the Estonian community, as well as membership dues.

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