Vabadussõja-aegsed lendlehed propagandavahendina 1919. aastal
Authors: Kikkas Toivo 
Published: January 2025

Leaflets from the time of the Estonian War of Independence as a means of propaganda in 1919
Bolshevik ideology on the one hand, and the idea of the independence of the new national states that had emerged in the periphery of the Russian Empire on the other, were both incomprehensible to mobilised soldiers in 1918 to 1920. This left them susceptible to influence from the opposing side. The propaganda engaged in during the Estonian War of Independence following the First World War has not hitherto been broadly studied in terms of its effect on Estonian soldiers. Knowledge of attempts to influence soldiers has hitherto been relatively scant. This article considers leaflets meant for soldiers of the Estonian National Army and of the Red Army in the Estonian War of Independence in 1918–19. Leaflets as a source category of illegal publications provide the chance to analyse propaganda aimed first and foremost at soldiers of the opposing side. Of the known leaflets in Estonian memory institutions (116 in total), 86 have been analysed, of which 74 were drafted by the Bolsheviks and meant for use against the army of the Republic of Estonia. Leaflets distributed by the Estonian National Army were all in Russian and Latvian, but no copies of the latter have been found – they are only known to have been disseminated. Appeals spread by the Bolsheviks were mostly bilingual, that is in Estonian and in Russian on the other side of the leaflets. Leaflets from both sides consisted of text only. There were no pictorial images whatsoever.In the Republic of Estonia, the Reconnaissance Department of the Operational Headquarters of the National Army handled the drafting of propaganda messages and the distribution of leaflets to military units for dissemination. The political departments of the Red Army handled the same task for the opposing side, but underground Bolsheviks operating in Estonia also contributed to the effort with their secret print shops. Leaflets from the Republic of Estonia were sent to military units for distribution in the range of 730 to 9,000 copies. According to some estimates, the print runs of Bolshevik appeals were in the range of 1,000 to 25,000 copies but it is not certain if so many of them were actually printed or made it out of the print shop. There is also no reliable data on their distribution. Leaflets were scattered from airplanes or distributed by agents. Only episodic instances of distributors and their recruitment are known. It can nevertheless be said that Estonian Army counterintelligence operatives probably focused more on identifying underground print shops and not so much on Bolshevik agents and distributors.In the course of the First World War, propaganda started being used ever more as a weapon for affecting domestic morale, which could also be aimed at the opposing side. Propaganda needed the image of the enemy. Soviet total propaganda had to be especially consistent and unceasing in its messages to have an effect. The military-political leadership of the opposing side was depicted as the primary image of the enemy for both sides in the War of Independence. Bolshevik propaganda extended the list of enemies to the leaders of countries allied to Estonia and the leaders of Russian Whites who supported Estonia but focused primarily on demonising and dehumanising the leadership of the Estonian government and National Army.The appeals mainly targeted soldiers on both sides. The messages attempted to address the peasant or worker backgrounds of the fighters along with their nationality, religious affiliation, and class belonging. Appeals from the Estonian National Army stressed the positive traits of Russians as a nationality. At the same time, the antisemitism of Russians, which had been cultivated by the propaganda of the previous tsarist regime, was used, thereby attempting to stir up opposition in Russians towards Red Army commissars, many of whom were Jews.Alongside the creation of the image of the enemy and addressing target groups, the messages from both sides mainly attempted to persuade the opposite side’s fighters that defection or desertion was necessary. To that end, messages focused primarily on cultivating doubts and influencing emotions with the aim of altering the behaviour of soldiers. Attempts were made to incite suspicions that the leadership of one or another side had deceived them, forcing them to fight for the wrong reasons and for objectives that were harmful to the soldiers. That was easier to accomplish once the enemy’s military-political leadership had been depicted as the image of the enemy. All manner of seeds of doubt were sown in especially fertile circumstances in the case of Russians, since in the course of the First World War, belief in the existence of internal enemies and traitors started setting the tone among Russians.The main messages disseminated by the Estonian National Army were aimed at persuading Russian Red Army soldiers that in any case, it would be better for them to abandon acts of violence committed in the name of Bolshevik policy and to turn their weapons against their commissars, desert, or surrender to Estonia. It was emphasised that Estonia was not waging a war of conquest yet would not restrain itself in defending its homeland and repulsing Red Army attacks. The Bolsheviks claimed that Soviet Russia had never fought against Estonia and that no Red Army soldier would ever step on Estonian soil in the future as well. The Bolsheviks similarly tried to persuade Estonian National Army soldiers to switch sides, to kill their officers, or simply to desert. Yet starting from the summer of 1919, active peace propaganda was added to those suggestions. The same actions as before were necessary to achieve peace – soldiers had to rebel against the Estonian government, which did not want to make peace with Russia. While taken separately, the propaganda texts distributed by the Estonian National Army formed skilfully narrated and well thought out short stories, the messages of the Bolshevik appeals were full of political slogans. How much of those more complicated messages or concepts that were used were understood by the overall mass of soldiers of one side or the other due to their level of linguistic proficiency or reading ability was another matter altogether.To a great extent, assessment of the effect of propaganda is difficult due to the scarcity or even the absence of sources. There are few assessments of the effect of leaflets from the opposite side in the known attitude reports of the Republic of Estonia from that time. Generally speaking, Bolshevik propaganda was incessant throughout the war, but not of uniform intensity. There were occasional shortcomings in the clarity and continuity of their messages. Similarly, Soviet propagandists made numerous mistakes, underestimating the land question as a message and the peasantry as a target group that needed to be addressed more pointedly. The Bolsheviks were not the only ones to spread the message of peace, which gained the most resonance among the people. They competed with the election propaganda of the social democrats in the Constituent Assembly elections in April of 1919, for instance. Considering the fact that the main mass of Bolshevik leaflets was drafted and disseminated in the period from August of 1919 until the end of the War of Independence, the success rate in achieving the main objective of Red propaganda – persuading soldiers to defect – can be regarded as quite modest, bearing in mind the expectations of the Reds themselves. There was no mass defection from the Estonian National Army in the war’s last months.