Estonian language
During the Soviet occupation, an intensive program of Russification had been undertaken. A massive program of Russian language education was imposed at the expense of the Estonian language and Russian replaced Estonian as the sole language in certain areas of the economy such as banking, mining, energy production, statistics, railways, naval and air transport. Estonians had to learn Russian in order to keep their jobs. By the 1980s, Russian was established as the official language while the Estonian language was effectively reduced to that of a "de facto" minority language within the country. Due to the increasing restrictions upon the public use of the Estonian language in Estonia, the extinction of the Estonian language had become a real possibility.