Republic of Estonia

The **Republic of Estonia** (Estonian: *Eesti Vabariik*) is a country in Eastern Europe.

Estonia was established in 1918 after a period known as the "national awakening". The nationalist Estonian Provisional Government seized upon the chaos of the Russian Civil War and declared independence.

It was not long before the fledgling Estonian state came into conflict with the Bolsheviks, who invaded Estonia with the support of Estonian communists in late-1918. Estonian forces succeeded in defeating the Bolsheviks with the help of the White Russians, but came into conflict with the Baltic German Baltische Landeswehr, which invaded Latvia in 1919 and installed a puppet government. This conflict existed due to the continued Estonian support for the Latvian nationalist government rather than the German government. With the onset of the German Civil War and fears of an invasion from two sides, the greatest supporter of Estonia, the United Kingdom, pressured the government to seek a ceasefire with the Landeswehr. This was achieved, and the two forces jointly expelled the Bolsheviks from both Estonia and Latvia, establishing a months long stalemate that would end in a peace treaty in February 1920.

The newly established state of Livonia, led by the Baltische Landeswehr, would invade Estonia in October 1920. The Baltic German forces were now supported by thousands of German soldiers that had fled from East Prussia amidst the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Estonian forces were overwhelmed and driven back to the capital of Tallinn, where a ceasefire was established and peace negotiated. Estonia was reduced to the lands of the former Estonian Governorate, with the exception of the island of Saaremaa, which remained in Estonia. It also became a Baltic German "protectorate" in practice, as most elements of self governance were quickly diminished through both official and unofficial means. A so called provisional government was established in 1924 under the de facto leadership of Werner Hasselblatt, a right-wing Baltic German politician that had served under the Estonian Army until the end of the war with the Bolsheviks. The reestablishment of a small Estonian military was permitted, and various prominent generals were reinstated. In 1925, a group of nationalist veterans led by Andres Larka and Artur Sirk launched an unsuccessful coup, which resulted in a number of pro-nationalist demonstrations across Estonia. Their primary political rival, General Johan Laidoner, remained loyal to the German-led government and helped suppress the coup, but soon established himself as a potentially dangerous figure to Baltic German rule at a time when Livonia was already facing the prospect of a Latvian national uprising in their own lands. Hasselblatt's government soon collapsed and Laidoner was instated as President in 1926 with the approval of the Livonian government after Laidoner had personally met with Marshall Rüdiger von der Goltz. While Livonia would liberalize towards a limited parliamentary system in 1926, Laidoner would instead establish a moderately nationalist anti-parliamentarian government that weakened German influence while simultaneously suppressing radical nationalists organized under the Vaps Movement.