Over the weekend, I attended the reburial in his native soil on Saaremaa of Otto Pukk, speaker of the last Chamber of Deputies of the Republic of Estonia. This solemn occasion also provided an opportunity to reflect on the foundations of the Republic of Estonia.

Otto Pukk was one of the people who upheld the continuity of the Estonian state. In January 1945, in Stockholm, he joined other representatives of Estonia's constitutional institutions in signing a document addressing Estonia's constitutional continuity and the exercise of the duties of the president. In this way, Estonia's parliamentary continuity was carried across the Baltic Sea.

Pukk remained speaker of the Chamber of Deputies until his death in Stockholm in 1951. The Republic of Estonia was occupied, but its legal continuity had not been broken.

That continuity was upheld by people who did not accept the occupation as marking the end of the Estonian state. Otto Pukk was one of them. Another was Otto Tief who in September 1944, on the instructions of Jüri Uluots, formed Estonia's lawful government. Its time in office was brief, but its significance for the continuity of the Estonian state was far greater than the few days during which the government was actually able to operate.

The Tief government declared Estonia's national independence restored and sought to reestablish Estonia's constitutional order at a time when the country was emerging from one occupation only to fall under another. This is one of the crucial links connecting the Republic of Estonia established in 1918 with the Republic of Estonia restored in 1991.

If the Republic of Estonia had ceased to exist in 1940 and a new state had been established in 1991, our understanding of the Estonian state would be entirely different. The principle of state continuity, however, says something else: The occupation interrupted the Estonian state's actual exercise of power, but it did not bring the Republic of Estonia to an end. That is why every step taken to preserve that continuity was worth its weight in gold.

It was precisely from this perspective that last week's vote in the Riigikogu on a statement condemning the events of 1934 and the authoritarian rule that followed raised a serious question for me. Twenty-eight members of the Riigikogu voted for the statement and nine against.

The events of 1934 can, of course, be critically studied, discussed and assessed. But should parliament deliver a definitive political judgment on our country's history and a historical event in a way that could make one interpretation of history effectively mandatory?

The Riigikogu's role is to pass laws and make decisions on behalf of present-day Estonia. The role of historians is to study the past. We can debate history and indeed we should, but we should not try to settle historical knowledge once and for all through a parliamentary majority vote. This is especially true because the causes of the events of 1934, their consequences and their links to subsequent events still require historical research.

It makes little sense to reduce the loss of Estonia's independence to a single domestic political event, as the explanatory memorandum accompanying the statement did because doing so unfortunately also provides Russian propagandists with blanks they can use to sow confusion.

The decisive step in the destruction of Estonia's independence was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocols, followed by the occupation that the Soviet Union imposed on Estonia on the basis of those agreements. In this light, I agree with my colleague Eerik-Niiles Kross who said from the parliamentary rostrum: "I am not calling for us to justify suspending the activities of political parties, censoring the press or consigning the Riigikogu to the Era of Silence. But 92 years later, the Riigikogu should not take one historical interpretation, stamp it with the seal of the state and then bask in its own righteousness."

To understand the continuity of the Estonian state, we must look at our history as a whole. The occupying power's aim was not merely to destroy the institutions of the Estonian state. It also destroyed the people who carried within them the Republic of Estonia's institutional memory and continuity. State and parliamentary figures who remained in Estonia were arrested, imprisoned, deported and killed. By destroying them, the occupying authorities sought to sever the link between the independent Republic of Estonia and future generations.

That is why historical memory and state continuity still concern us today: History must be studied and debated and, when new sources emerge, reassessed where necessary. The continuity of the Estonian state cannot depend on a simple majority vote by a single composition of parliament. Our task is to pass this country on to the next generation together with its memory, history and continuity.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and X and never miss an update!