Because Estonian history and cultural programs tell a fairly established story of our historical events year after year and the women who participated in them are not mentioned, there is no established interpretation of these women's lives and legacies in the way there is for Konstantin Päts or Jaan Tõnisson. It is as if the only women who existed were Lydia Koidula and Marie Under.

The current storm of opinion shows that, as a society, we have not yet fully come to terms with Alma Ostra-Oinas' legacy. As a result, she is vulnerable as a historical figure to inaccurate accusations, for example of communism.

But what did left-wing politics mean in Estonia at the beginning of the 20th century? It is perhaps worth recalling that figures such as Gustav Suits, Anton Hansen Tammsaare, Friedebert Tuglas, Eduard Vilde and Linda Vilde were closely associated with the Social Democrats. Until 1917, Estonia was still under tsarist rule, which was criticized by Social Democrats, socialists and communists alike. Moreover, these currents were not as sharply distinguished at the beginning of the century; even the red flag symbolized the labor movement rather than what we associate it with today.

In addition to the developing Marxist-Leninist ideology, left-wing movements were also driven by the poverty that prevailed among ordinary peasants and workers in the Russian Empire. Factory workdays could last 16 hours, children were required to work and social democratic institutions such as childcare services or parental benefits did not yet exist. In the Republic of Estonia, Ostra-Oinas worked in Tallinn's city government as head of the welfare department, which dealt precisely with such issues.

The equestrian monument erected in Tallinn's Arter Quarter belongs to Flo Kasearu's sculpture series "Monumental Neglect," originally created in 2023 for Vabamu's exhibition "Out From Behind the Stove! 150 Years of the Estonian Women's Movement," though at that time it consisted of miniature clay horses.

As the exhibition's curator, my central idea was that we have forgotten that Estonia has a long history both of women standing up for their rights and of women helping to build Estonian democracy more broadly. Estonian history has been written from a male-centered perspective; men's achievements have been considered important, while the women who participated in those same processes were later pushed from view. The research conducted before the exhibition was published in Vikerkaar 3/2022.

The exhibition on the history of women's movements traced a path from the National Awakening era to the present day, with each period represented by a different figure for whom Flo Kasearu erected an equestrian monument. These were Estonia's first feminist, Lilli Suburg; the women who took part in the 1872 strike at the Kreenholm textile manufactory; Alma Ostra-Oinas, active in the anti-tsarist revolutions and later in the Republic of Estonia; Soviet-era film director Leida Laius; the influential post-restoration figures Marju Lauristin and Eha Komissarov; and 2010s feminist Anna-Stina Treumund. Looking toward the future, the final work in the sculpture series featured a riderless horse onto which we can project the next generation of feminists. These monuments have now been cast in bronze and installed around the Arter Center, on boulders in front of the main entrance.

When preparing the exhibition, I considered how to represent the period of the Republic of Estonia and I had many options before me. The women's movement was highly active in interwar Estonia and Ostra-Oinas was only one of its colorful figures.

As early as 1907, the first women's society was established in Tartu, offering handicraft courses, feminist discussions and the cultivation of national self-awareness. Feminist aspirations meant the same political and economic rights enjoyed by men and recognition of women as independent individuals responsible for themselves and their families on equal terms with men, rather than solely as wives and mothers. Among the founders of the Tartu Women's Society were Marie Reisik and Minni Kurs-Olesk, both of whom were later elected to the Constituent Assembly, as was Alma Ostra-Oinas.

One of the principal missions of the women's movement in the Republic of Estonia was to draft a new family law to replace the old Baltic private law system, one in which women would be economically independent of their husbands. Activists argued, first, that dependence on a husband degraded women and, second, that such an arrangement was often harmful to household finances because of widespread alcoholism.

Representatives of the Women's Union negotiated with the Ministry of Justice for years and submitted their own draft legislation, but the Republic of Estonia remained sufficiently conservative that, apart from a few provisions, the new law was never adopted. In fact, Estonian women gained de jure economic independence only in the Soviet Union.

The first Estonian Women's Congress was held in 1917 and in 1920 an umbrella organization for county women's societies was established. Leaders of the women's movement were also involved in building Estonian democracy; several were elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1919, which proclaimed Estonia's constitution and drafted the Land Reform Act that nationalized the lands of Baltic German landlords, thereby laying the foundation for the end of Baltic German dominance in Estonia.

Alma Ostra-Oinas participated in drafting the Land Reform Act and, for example, opposed Jaan Tõnisson's People's Party proposal to allow Baltic German landlords to retain the core holdings of their knightly estates. The Constituent Assembly included Alma Ostra-Oinas, Emma Asson, Helmi Press-Jansen, Marie Aul, Minni Kurs-Olesk and, as a substitute member, Alma Ast-Ani from the Estonian Social Democratic Workers' Party, as well as Marie Reisik from the People's Party and Johanna Päts and, as a substitute member, Anna Tellmann from the Labor Party. Every one of them deserves a monument.

Left-wing movements in Estonia have a complex history, but today it is difficult to talk about them. The immediate question is how, after Stalin's repressions and 50 years of Soviet occupation, we can remember and commemorate people whose political views were left-wing — especially, as people say, in the current security environment.

This contradiction acts like a magic wand, silencing discussion and dulling our sense of nuance. Before the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, the 20th century had already witnessed the Revolution of 1905, World War I, the fall of the tsarist empire and the revolutions of 1917, the War of Independence and the founding and construction of the democratic Republic of Estonia. Current discussions create the impression that the idealistic anti-tsarists of the early 1900s were supposed to know what would happen 20 or 40 years later.

Jaak Valge has persuasively clarified Ostra-Oinas' relationships with Jaan Anvelt and Viktor Kingissepp, writing that it was no surprise that "leftists who fought against tsarist rule before Estonia's independence knew one another," and that "the Social Democrats, including Ostra-Oinas, supported Estonian independence, while the communists opposed it."

Ostra-Oinas' descendants have recalled that her contact with Kingissepp was brief, occurring when he appeared at the Oinas family's door crazed and bloodied. Being a kind person, Alma patched him up, but the "Oinas scandal" was created by Kingissepp himself when he was arrested and accused the couple. The communist coup attempt did not take place until five years later.

Ostra was in a marriage of convenience with Anvelt for one year, from 1909 to 1910, when Anvelt's name was still "honorable and respected" and seven or eight years remained before he became a Bolshevik. Because Ostra had participated in the Revolution of 1905, she could not return to Estonia under her own name, but she wanted to finish secondary school.

The suggestion that she obtain a new name through Anvelt reportedly came from Aleksander Oinas, who was already Alma's sweetheart at the time, so any speculation that the marriage was not fictitious exists only in the imagination of its authors. Moreover, Ostra had already withdrawn from political activity around 1907, at the age of 21, because she disliked the growing influence of the Bolsheviks.

To overemphasize these events in Ostra-Oinas' biography is to strip them of context. We may have forgotten that half of the members of the Constituent Assembly and even more than half of the deputies in the first parliament of the Republic of Estonia came from Social Democratic and socialist parties. Perhaps this is what some commentators meant when they said that free Estonia was a project of the left.

It is worth noting that 80 percent of eligible Estonian citizens participated in the Constituent Assembly elections and one-third of the seats went to the Estonian Social Democratic Workers' Party, to which both Alma Ostra-Oinas and her husband Aleksander Oinas belonged. The Constituent Assembly elected Social Democrat August Rei as its chairman. Rei had also been a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. He later became head of state and, during the Soviet occupation, served as prime minister in the duties of the president of the Republic of Estonia in exile, thereby preserving Estonia's legal continuity.

The case of Alma Ostra-Oinas' equestrian monument demonstrates that, as a society, we must also come to terms with the role of women and the left in shaping democratic Estonia.

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Piret Karro-Arrak was the curator of the exhibition "Out From Behind the Stove! 150 Years of the Estonian Women's Movement" (Vabamu, March 8, 2023–March 10, 2024).

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