In the vast majority of political and historical analyses of the Baltic states from the 1990s, scholars have tended to stress the legacies of the Soviet era as one of the most salient problems faced by these peoples.^[1] The fragility of the Balts’ post-authoritarian political culture, the lack of a market economy, and a low level of social trust were just some of the challenges said to have been inherited from a half-century of Soviet rule. By analogy, the major task faced during the 1990s was to generate pathways out of this predicament, to build new political systems, market economies and civil societies.
This article will offset this focus on purely Soviet-era legacies by arguing that some of the problems faced by the Balts in the 1990s were of their own making to the extent that they derived from the specific choice of a “legal restorationist” form of state identity and the quandaries that this doctrine created on its own.^[2] Although awareness of how the Baltic states have always claimed that they restored their states in 1991 and that they are not Soviet successor states or French style Second republics is widespread,^[3] surprising little analysis has been done of how this mindset actually came about. For, if one had asked the average Balt in 1985 (the year Mikhail Gorbachev came to power) what is “legal continuity” or whether their inter-war republics still exist as internationally recognized states, few would have answered in the affirmative. Much less did these people have the sense that when democratization began in the Soviet Union they would eventually be fighting not just for independence, but for a specific kind of independence based on an official restoration of statehood with many specific consequences resulting therefrom. All of this thinking emerged over the course of particular political struggles and political framings of historical events. The aim of this article is to re-examine these trajectories in light of subsequent events as well as emerging memoirs and archival information
The key protagonist in this tale of state identity construction is the movement known as the Citizens’ Committees and its subsequent Congress of Estonia. The ways in which activists from these organizations propagated a new state consciousness different from the more moderate vision of the Estonian Popular Front at the time will be described in a first section. In the second and main part of the paper, I will detail the actual legacies left by legal restorationism following independence. These I will break down into six different areas: ethnopolitics, property restitution, territorial borders, political development, historiography, and popular culture. As will become apparent, in some cases efforts to find a way out of these legacies or consequences have been successful. In others, the complications remain.

THE STRUGGLE OVER STATE IDENTITY

While the history of Estonia’s independence struggle of the 1990s has been analyzed from a number of theoretical perspectives (including democratic transition, nationalism, and post-imperial decolonialism), an important dimension missing from this debate involves contrasting the different visions of statehood put forward during the independence struggle and thereby gaining a clearer understanding of how particular the choice of legal restorationism as a state identity would be. In most accounts of this period the activities of the Estonian Popular Front are highlighted in terms of either the movement’s ability to organize mass rallies, its defeat of the Estonian Communist Party during the first free elections of 1990, or the subsequent activities of the government led by Edgar Savisaar as it began the long process of extricating the country from Soviet rule.^[4]
Taking a broader view, however, of how Estonian political thinking evolved during this period, one can pinpoint key moments where the tenets of legal restorationism arose and would eventually determine Estonian state identity. The Citizens’ Committees made their strongest appearance as a social movement in the summer of 1989 when they began an unprecedented grassroots campaign to register those people, who they claimed were citizens of the interwar republic or their descendants. The idea was reconstitute the legal “citizenry” of Estonia based on those people who had been citizens at the moment of Soviet occupation along with their descendants (who were also therefore citizens based on the principle of jus sanguinis). The Committees held firmly to the belief that because Estonia (along with the other Baltic states) had been illegally occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, the only way out of this situation was to end this occupation and allow Estonia (along with Latvia and Lithuania) to resume their statehood as a direct continuation from that year. In this respect, the Committees maintained that Estonia did not have to involve itself with the democratization process of the Soviet Union nor should it under any circumstances “request” independence from Moscow. It had simply to insist on the fundamental illegality of its presence in the USSR, and proceed from that basis to demand an immediate end to the occupation. In one of the most powerful motivational calls for legal restorationism, Tunne Kelam declared at the launching of the Citizens’ Committees’ movement on 24 February 1989:

“The only rope, which we can hold onto as we go through this dangerous swamp is our historical continuity, the continuity of the legal, independent Estonian state. This rope must be secured to poles, which have been driven deep into a moral foundation. If we let go of this rope or if we forget about its existence, if we give into weakness and sit down on a stump in the swamp in order to rest and taste the berries growing there, then we are lost…. All of this depends on us, our choices, our purity, our courage and determination, because the correct choice will guarantee purity and moral force. And moral force will guarantee courage. And the courage of a proper conviction will guarantee a continuity of struggle and the achievement of one’s goals.”^[5]

In this vein, the Committees contested the more cautious orientation of the Popular Front, which believed that Estonia’s independence and longer-term survival lay in a democratization of the entire Soviet Union, and that Estonia would not be able to avoid a serious period of negotiation and accommodation with the Kremlin. While in their hearts the leaders of the Front agreed with the notion of Soviet occupation and did not deny the plausibility of the Committees’ legalistic claims, as a political strategy, they considered legal restorationism naïve and at times even reckless. As Marju Lauristin, a co-leader of the Front, would contend in March 1989:

“Such appeals generally bring to mind a situation in a swampy forest, where there is very beautiful grass-covered bog. Someone beckons from the other side, “Come quickly, come straight over.” But in order to get to such fields it is possible only to go around, along hard ground.”^[6]

Yet, the difference between the Committees and the Front lay not only in tactics, but also in substance. At the most basic level, the Committees saw their vision as securing a resolute break with the Soviet past, including averting the danger of a pseudo-transition to democracy, which would simply be controlled by ex-communist nomenklatura. The more the Soviet era could be completely discredited and expunged from consideration, the more secure independence and democracy would be. For example, in a May 1989 interview Tunne Kelam continued the indirect exchange of nature metaphors with Marju Lauristin.

“We are being offered a chance to sit in this swamp on the first clump of grass, where there are even some quite flavorful berries. In doing so we could enjoy the sunshine of liberalization and democratization, and feel as if things weren’t so bad, as if some change had really taken place in our lives. But in doing this we could well condemn ourselves to death, since as in any situation of life and death, it is especially important to follow the correct goal and lay stress on the real problems.”^[7]

In particular, the Committees saw in legal restorationism a way of rupturing all possible links to the Soviet Union and Russia, since in the minds of the Committees’ activists history had proven that Estonia (and the other Baltic states) would not be safe if left in Moscow’s shadow. Secondly, legal restorationism offered a clearer way of dealing with the damages inflicted on Estonia by the Soviet era – in particular, the large influx of Soviet-era immigrants to the republic. Interestingly enough, it should be pointed out that Committee activists generally did not use nationalist or ethnically-based arguments when propagating the advantages of restorationism. They did not proclaim, for example, that restorationism would return political control to ethnic Estonians by excluding Soviet-era immigrants from automatic citizenship (as would later be the case). Rather, this turn of events was only implied by the nature of the Committees’ campaign to register mainly pre-war citizens and their descendants and to offer “applicant” status to non-citizens, who registered. In this respect, the Committees were always open to Soviet-era immigrants registering with them, but with the understanding that the movement itself was about returning power to the citizens of the pre-war Republic. As Kelam would state in the same May 1989 interview:

“Our point of departure is not Estonian ethnicity, but Republic of Estonia citizenship, which encompassed some 8% Russians, Germans, Swedes, Jews, etc…. This is the raison d’être of the Citizens’ Committees movement, whose task it is to determine the circle of people eligible to decide [Estonia’s future].”^[8]

For the Popular Front, however, the challenges of rebuilding Estonian society after five decades of Soviet rule were viewed as simply too great to be written off purely as occupation. Not only would extrication itself from the Soviet Union be more difficult with this kind of stance, but also building a place for Estonia in a world much changed since 1940 would be more complicated if the new realities were not addressed. In October 1989, for example, the Front issued an electoral platform, which openly criticized the Citizens’ Committees for their simplicity and instead declared that a new Estonia was inevitable.

“To this day, the [restorationist] bloc lacks a program for building up a new Estonia after independence. It ignores existing power structures as well as the de facto situation, instead reducing the entire problem simply to one of de jure [principles] and ascribing to individual formalistic-juridical steps exaggerated decisive significance.”^[9]

Plainly drawing a line in the sand, the platform declared,

“In contrast to the Estonian National Independence Party [one of the main initiators of the Citizens’ Committees], the Popular Front does not consider it possible to restore the Republic of Estonia, which was destroyed in 1940. Rather it sets as its goal arriving at a new Republic of Estonia… which while being the legal heir to the first republic will nonetheless not be entirely the same, neither in terms of its economic structure, property relations nor societal organization. Likewise not in terms of its ethnic composition.”^[10]

It was this struggle of ideas and frames that would carry over into 1990, as both movements approached important electoral milestones. For the Citizens’ Committees, their Herculean efforts at registering and mobilizing pre-war citizens had finally paid off in terms of ultimately registering over 600,000 people by early 1990, and proceeding thereafter to hold free elections on February 24 for a 499-member Congress of Estonia, which in turn would act as a representative body on behalf of the restorationist doctrine. When the elections succeeded without a hitch, the Congress itself was convened on March 11-12, during which delegates adopted a number of declarations reiterating Estonia’s occupied status and insisting that only legal restoration could solve the Estonian (Baltic) question.
This event again laid down the gauntlet for the Popular Front, which meanwhile had focused its attention on upcoming elections for the Estonian Supreme Soviet in the belief that this was where the real power lay and where negotiations with Moscow on independence could be better prepared. Yet, even though the March 18 elections would see the Popular Front take control of the Soviet legislature as well as form the next government (under Edgar Savisaar), on the level of state identity the tone was set by the legal restorationists, who were able to get their principles enshrined in Estonia’s actual March 30 re-independence declaration. In the declaration’s very first sentence, the restorationists’ most fundamental point of departure was proclaimed.

“The Estonian SSR Supreme Soviet affirms that the occupation of the Republic of Estonia by the USSR on June 17, 1940 has not interrupted the existence of the Republic of Estonia de jure. The territory of the Republic of Estonia continues to be occupied to this day.”^[11]

From this point on, these principles would serve as a touchstone for the continuing struggle between the Committees and the Front. Although it was very much the case that during 1990 and 1991 the strength of the Committees (and the Congress of Estonia) declined rapidly, the important point from the standpoint of state identity was that the movement had been able to put restorationism firmly on Estonia’s political agenda.
It was this groundwork which therefore allowed the restorationists to spring into action in August 1991, when the attempted conservative coup in Moscow opened the way for a definitive leap to freedom in the Baltic states. As the Estonian Supreme Soviet debated the wording of its final declaration of independence, efforts by members of Edgar Savisaar’s government to cast aside legal restorationism failed, and instead the final declaration not only reiterated the legal continuity of the pre-war Republic, but it also called on other states “to restore” their diplomatic ties with Estonia.^[12]
To be sure, as part of Estonia’s final transition to independence, it was decided to convene a special Constitutional Assembly, which would draw up a new constitution and have it ratified by referendum on June 28, 1992. In this respect, the country did not automatically revert to its last constitution from 1938 (as Latvia did in relation to its 1922 constitution). However, this was not a problem for the restorationists, since they argued that the continuity of Estonian statehood rested in the continuity of its citizenry. And this restoration was completed on 7 November 1991 when the Estonian Supreme Soviet passed an official resolution recognizing only pre-war citizens and their descendants as automatic citizens. All Soviet-era immigrants (and their descendants) would henceforth have to choose either to become naturalized Estonian citizens (including passing a specific Estonian language and civics test), adopt Russian Federation citizenship or remain stateless.

THE LEGACIES OF LEGAL RESTORATIONISM

The decision by Estonia’s politicians to enact a restorationist citizenship policy was but one of many steps that carried the idea of restoration farther than merely representing a certain way of re-gaining independence from Moscow. A real understanding of how legal restorationism as a doctrine came to pervade Estonian politics emerges when one lists all of the subsequent extensions of the principle and, in fact, realizes the extent to which each of these was not in and of itself inevitable. Rather, in a counterfactual world one can entirely imagine how the legal restorationist doctrine might have been left to serve as simply a way to argue re-independence from the Soviet Union, but not be extended to citizenship, property rights, borders or popular culture.
For example, on citizenship it would have admittedly been difficult to argue in favor of wholesale automatic citizenship for the Soviet-era immigrants and their descendants (who amounted to some 30% of the population). But at the same time there were many intermediate variations of policy, which would have been less dramatic than full denial of automatic citizenship and yet wholly consistent with the principle of state restoration. These included offering automatic citizenship to those non-citizens born in Estonia (out of a limited application of the legal principle of jus solis), requiring all non-citizens to naturalize but making this a more token ceremony of loyalty, allowing simplified naturalization during an initial period of 6 months after independence but then tightening the rules for later applicants, or a combination of these different options.
Likewise, the principles for carrying out property restitution might have been less extensive or disregarded all together, since nothing in the concept of demanding an end to Soviet occupation required that Soviet-nationalized property be equally returned to its owners of 50 years earlier. Indeed, state continuity under international law is not defined by the need for an integrity of property ownership over time. This was an entirely separate choice.
These were the kinds of arguments raised by leaders of the Popular Front during 1991 and 1992, when legal restorationism began to make its incursions into fields beyond the area of simply ending illegal Soviet rule. Yet, the cascade toward full restorationism proved increasingly difficult to stop. Restorationism in its extended form became imbued with a perception that it would help Estonia separate itself faster from its recent Soviet past, that it would restore the glory days of the inter-war republic more easily than trudging into the future as an ex-Soviet republic, and that it represented almost a kind of policy model for post-communist transition. In this sense, restorationism came to serve many different purposes. However, not all of these were as unambiguous in their consequences as simple state continuity. It is to these consequences that we now turn.

LEGAL RESTORATIONISM AND ETHNOPOLITICS

Estonia’s dramatic ethnopolitical transformation after the adoption of a restorationist citizenship policy has been one of the most important dimensions of legal restorationism to be scrutinized by scholars and observers alike.^[13] Although previously it was noted that restorationist activists rarely appealed directly to ethnopolitical or nationalist arguments in order to gain support for their doctrine, there is little doubt that these leaders were aware of the severe ethnopolitical consequences that their program would have, and that they implicitly saw this as one of the ideology’s inherent justifications. For them, the restoration of the Republic of Estonia was meant to restore also the spirit of Estonian nation-statehood, which in turn was seen as the only way to provide a guarantee for the survival and vitality of the Estonian nation after decades of Soviet subjugation. Indeed, this desired pendulum swing back toward Estonian domination of the political system became blatantly clear following the first post-independence elections to the Riigikogu in 1992, when not a single deputy of non-Estonian origin was elected and not even a single Russian party stood on the ballot, despite the minority population constituting some 35% of the general population. The restrictive citizenship policy, which Estonia had derived from legal restorationism, had cut down the number of non-ethnic-Estonian citizens so severely that there was no meaningful minority electorate to speak of.^[14]
Of course, over the next few years these numbers would recover somewhat. Already in 1995, a coalition of Russian parties won 6 seats in the 101-seat Riigikogu. In 1999, they repeated this performance, along with a number of non-Estonians gaining seats via Estonian parties. During the 2003 parliamentary elections, the Russian parties suffered a split and therefore failed to make the 5% electoral threshold. At the same time, a total of 7 non-Estonians were elected via Estonian parties; some had also established official Russian sub-sections within these parties. Thus, in terms of political participation minorities were gaining a foothold. Likewise, a decision by the 1992 Constitutional Assembly to accord non-citizens the right to vote in municipal elections was successfully implemented throughout the 1990s, with sizeable numbers of non-citizens (mostly minorities) participating in all five local polls from 1993 to 2005.
This rebound in minority presence was reflected also in a rise (albeit slow) in the number of non-ethnic-Estonian citizens. By 2003, roughly 40% of Estonia’s minority representatives were citizens. This was in part due to the fact that during 1992-2002 over 120,000 non-citizens were naturalized. These included some 25,000 people who received citizenship as a result of having registered in 1989-90 with the Citizens’ Committees as citizenship applicants. Additionally, the proportion of citizens among the minority population rose because during 1989-1994 close to 100,000 people (mostly Russian-speakers) actually left Estonia for Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Thus, the overall proportion of minorities in the population fell to 32% and Russians to just 25.6%.
Still, according to a census carried out in 2000, minorities continued to comprise only 15.8% of the citizenry.^[15] Out of a total population of 1.37 million, there were still some 275,000 non-citizens; of these some 86,000 had Russian Federation citizenship and over 170,000 were “of undetermined citizenship” or in essence stateless persons. Estonia was still far from being an inclusive democracy.
Moreover, this balance was doubly striking since throughout the 1990s it remained largely impervious to efforts even by such actors as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as the European Union, to alter Estonia’s citizenship and other ethnic policies (e.g., on language, minority education, minority cultural organizations). While Estonia made some concessions in terms of giving non-citizens the right to vote in local elections as well as allowing stateless children to gain automatic citizenship, these did not change the balance of power in any significant way. Estonia did initiate a large-scale integration program in 1997, which attracted over 2 million dollars in foreign aid support and which also did much to promote Estonian language learning and even non-citizen naturalization. Yet, on a conceptual level the terms for this minority integration (as written in the official policy document) were largely Estonian-centered. They did not in any way alter the bedrock principle of Estonian nation-statehood.^[16]
Lastly, Estonia’s legal restorationism in the domain of ethnopolitics also achieved an astounding victory in foreign policy, for despite various expressions of concern over Estonia’s ethnic policies (beginning already in the early 1990s), the European Union ultimately acquiesced in accepting these policies as part of Estonia’s accession to the Union. At no point did Brussels (or any individual EU member state) ever threaten to veto Tallinn’s membership if the latter did not abandon legal restorationism.^[17] Instead, the EU sought only minor changes – most likely because it realized that this was one area in which the Estonians would not compromise. The identity was too entrenched.

LEGAL RESTORATIONISM AND PROPERTY RESTITUTION

A second important legacy of legal restorationism to manifest itself as direct policy concerned property restitution. Indeed, action in this sphere began even before independence was regained, when in June 1991 the Supreme Council passed the Bases of Property Reform Act.^[18] This measure laid down a number of provisions, which entitled all owners of property nationalized by the Soviet authorities in 1940 to apply for the return of this property or, in the event of the property having been lost or destroyed, to receive compensation for it. During the parliamentary debates of 1991, restorationists argued that the quick restitution of property was the only just course of action, for it proceeded logically from the entire principle of reversing the occupation. In addition, they argued that a rapid restoration of private ownership would speed economic development. However, only the first assertion was partially vindicated, although even here the question remained as to whether one person’s justice was another’s injustice.
The June 1991 law established a deadline of December 31, 1991 until which all previous owners could file restitution claims. The law, however, defined the circle of eligible claimants extremely broadly, including the spouse of a child of a previous owner, as well as the grandchildren of a previous owner and “other descending relatives.” This meant that within a few months a cascade of claims began rolling into local government offices across Estonia – some 220,000 by the time the whole process was over.^[19] Throughout the 1990s, local government officials spent innumerable hours reviewing these claims as well as gathering additional archival documents in order to decide each case. While many claims were dismissed for lack of substantiating evidence, a total of over 5000 residential dwellings and 171,000 plots of land (equaling some 1.2 million hectares) were ultimately restituted by the middle of 2003. In addition, a total of 8.27 billion Estonian kroons (or roughly 600 million US dollars) worth of compensation vouchers were issued by the Estonian state.^[20] The policy had in one way or another affected hundreds of thousands of people.
Yet, most of all the policy affected those people who lived in restituted residential dwellings and who suddenly became “forced tenants” in the homes and apartments where they had been living, in some cases for over 40 years. To be sure, during the Soviet period these same people had been tenants already; they were tenants of the Soviet state. Yet now under a restorationist policy of property reform these people become “forced” tenants, in the sense that they no longer had an option to privatize their apartment, as most people living in Soviet-built flats did. Instead, many of these people now faced possible eviction if they did not get along with their new (old) landlord. During the 1990s, the Estonian parliament repeatedly adopted laws extending the rights of “forced tenants” to go on living in their apartments without fear of direct eviction by landlords.^[21] Yet, this was of little comfort for most tenants, since many still feared doomsday. Indeed, according to one Estonian analyst, the 5000 residential dwellings that were restituted after 1991 contained some 22,500 families or upwards of 100,000 people.^[22] Thus, the proportions of the property restitution issue were very much in the league of, for example, the citizenship issue if one reckons that in connection with each residential dwelling there might be 2-3 descendant owners, each with their own families. Moreover, since the vast majority of these people were ethnic Estonian, the entire property restitution policy had in fact pitted Estonian against Estonian.^[23] In this case, therefore, legal restorationism had not actually healed any wounds; instead, it had created new ones, which in most instances were still open in 2007.^[24]

LEGAL RESTORATIONISM AND TERRITORIAL BORDERS

The one area in which success for legal restorationism would not come was Estonia’s territorial border with the Russian Federation. Still, the idea that legal restorationism could engender the return of approximately 2000 square kilometers of Estonian territory taken away by Stalin in 1945 was enough to cause plenty of domestic political turmoil during the 1990s, and therefore represented its own domain of legal restorationist legacy.
Since one of the tenets of legal restorationism was that Estonia’s statehood actually dated back to the February 2, 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty between Estonia and Soviet Russia, then the nature of Estonia’s relations with Russia as well as its borders with Russia were also seen as built upon this accord. In particular, the Tartu treaty had laid down the border between the two countries as running approximately 15 kilometers east of the Narva River in the area north of Lake Peipsi, and about 30 kilometers southeast of the town of Petseri in the area south of the Lake. Although these areas contained a majority population of Russians, they were also heavily settled by Estonians. Moreover, Estonia’s war of independence during 1919 had in fact been even more successful than these boundaries, meaning Estonian forces had actually come very close to both St. Petersburg and Pskov before Lenin decided to make peace. Thus, the final borders themselves were not entirely unfounded.^[25]
Following 1920, Estonia moved to better integrate these territories with the rest of the country. This was not very difficult, since the city of Narva, for example, was over 50% Estonian (as opposed to 5% today). The town of Petseri was also a mixed regional center. Yet, in the aftermath of Soviet annexation in 1940, as well as Nazi German occupation during 1941-44, Stalin decided to use the period of chaos in order to effect an abrupt shift in the borders of both Estonia and Latvia in favor of the Russian Federation. In Estonia’s case, the northern border was pushed back to the Narva River, and in the south the entire area beyond Petseri was relinquished to Russia along with the town itself.^[26]
Although this boundary shift ultimately represented just 4.3% of Estonian territory, and by the late 1980s there were barely any Estonians left on these lands, the issue itself became one of principle for the legal restorationists. One of their first attempts to draw attention to their claim was a vigilante-style action on October 1990, where members of the Estonian Defense League (or national guard) attempted to erect symbolic frontier markers at the site of the old border 10 kilometers east of Narva. These posts were soon removed by Soviet militia, but they did send a signal. Following the restoration of independence, the Congress of Estonia also took up the issue by adopting a two-page long declaration on Estonia’s state border, in which it demanded that the Estonian Supreme Soviet begin negotiations with the Russian Federation about a return of Estonia’s territories.^[27] Finally, during debates over Estonia’s new constitution in 1991-92, the restorationists succeeded in securing a version of §122, which stated, “The land boundary of Estonia is determined by the Tartu Peace Treaty of 2 February 1920 and by other international boundary agreements.” Although this wording left open the possibility that some other treaty arrangement could still be worked out, it nonetheless declared unequivocally that Estonia’s old borders represented the starting point for any negotiations.
Needless to say, none of these actions was met with any appreciation in Moscow. The government of Boris Yeltsin announced immediately that in its opinion the Tartu Peace Treaty had become defunct with Estonia’s entry by the Soviet Union, and that it therefore had no bearing on future Estonian-Russian relations. This put the center-right prime minister Mart Laar in a severe bind, since as a former leading activist in the Congress of Estonia he had been wedded to a restorationist principle on borders. Yet now in government, he saw the need for a more pragmatic stance. Still, more hard-line forces within Laar’s Fatherland bloc, together with some grassroots organizations from alongside the southeastern border,^[28] put pressure on the government not to abandon the territorial demands. The issue became an important one internationally, as many Western countries made it understood that they would not support Estonia on this score. Indeed, they even put indirect pressure on Estonia to drop its claims by stressing within the context of NATO and the European Stability Pact that the countries of Europe should not have any “outstanding border disputes” with their neighbors.
This message ultimately became clear to Tallinn as well, but the situation would still need the political cover of a fall of the Laar government in autumn 1994, and the nomination of a caretaker administration under the Moderate Andres Tarand before Estonia would make an official announcement (during a visit by Tarand to Finland, no less) that the country was willing to accept the current borders. Indeed, even after this scale-down, Estonia would continue to insist that any future border treaty with Russia would have to at least mention the Tartu Peace Accord. But this position was also eventually abandoned. Thus, when in May 2005 Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, finally signed a border treaty, there was no mention of the 1920 accord or of any legal continuity of the Estonian state.
Yet this would not end the saga. During the treaty’s ratification process in the Estonian Riigikogu, deputies from the center-right Res Publica party succeeded in placing into the text of the ratification law a statement reiterating Estonia’s legal continuity despite the border changes.^[29] In many respects this move was more party-political wrangling than a position of principle. Res Publica had just recently resigned from government and had gone into the opposition. It therefore saw its statement as an easy opportunity to play the role of valiant defender of the national interest and score political points with more nationalist voters. Yet it clearly underestimated how risky this symbolic politics would be from Russia’s perspective. Barely a week after the Riigikogu had approved the treaty, Moscow served formal notice that it was withdrawing its signature from the accord as a sign of protest. Moreover, it would go on to demand a whole re-opening of the treaty negotiations instead of a simple withdrawal of the Estonian statement. Tallinn, meanwhile, attempted to insist that from its perspective nothing had changed in terms of the treaty. But in reality the doctrine of legal restorationism had served not only to delay a border treaty for over thirteen years, but also once a treaty had been signed the doctrine prompted even that compromise to fail.

LEGAL RESTORATIONISM AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

Although arguably more indirect in its consequences than property restoration or foreign policy, legal restorationism also could be said to have contributed much to Estonia’s general political development during the 1990s in the direction of democratic consolidation and stability. While Estonia’s success as a market-reformed, pro-Western and eventual member of the European Union was due to a number of different factors, there is little doubt that part of this orientation came from the strong position in Estonian politics that had been gained soon after independence by these same legal restorationist forces.^[30] For example, in 1992 Estonia’s first post-independence elections brought to power a coalition of three parties, all of whom had roots in the Congress of Estonia. The election winner, the Pro Patria coalition, as well as the fifth-place finisher, the Estonian National Independence Movement, were both direct descendants of the original Citizens’ Committees.^[31] The third partner, the Moderates, was comprised essentially of those ex-Popular Front leaders who had sought cooperation with the Committees and later with the Congress.^[32] To be sure, amidst the exhilaration of re-independence, along with the adoption of a new constitution and the completion of successful monetary reform (all during 1991-92), Estonians were quite disposed to voting in September 1992 for more right-wing parties. It gave them the feeling of further cleaning away the Soviet era and of finally beginning to decide Estonia’s new future.^[33] However, this kind of simple explanation masks the extent to which these same center-right forces had already been mobilized precisely by movements such as the Citizens’ Committees, and how an experience such as this had prepared these forces for real electoral politics in 1992. Without the restorationist movement this success would have been far less impressive. Indeed, this outcome was in contrast to neighboring Latvia, where the leaders of a comparable restorationist movement were never able to achieve such comprehensive mobilization, and were thus much weaker when the country held its first post-independence elections in 1993.^[34] In Estonia, a onetime prominent leader of the Congress of Estonia, the 32-year-old historian Mart Laar, became prime minister and began an extensive program of economic shock therapy, pro-Western integration and social transformation – all of which set Estonia on a decidedly different path from its southern Baltic neighbors. Moreover, much of this reform endured despite changes in government thereafter. In sum, part of the explanation for Estonia’s developmental trajectory since 1992 lay very much in the fact that a legal restorationist movement emerged in 1989-1990, which through its mobilization and political success altered the makeup of Estonian political forces and in turn the future choices these forces would make. The power of legal restorationism has persevered on this Rokkanesque level of political cleavage as well.^[35]
Second, despite the many deleterious aspects of legal restorationism for minority political participation and the structure of ethnopolitics, an argument can been made that the existence of two rival political movements in Estonia during 1988-1991 also had a positive effect in terms of fostering a greater degree of consensualism among Estonian elites, and thereby contributing to a more mature foundation for democracy. Already in July 1991, i.e., before Estonia’s independence struggle was over, the Supreme Soviet and Congress of Estonia were still locked in fierce competition, Marju Lauristin argued that this rivalry had at least been beneficial in terms of promoting an awareness of fair play among Estonian politicians.

“In retrospect, it must be admitted that to the extent that the opposition between the two movements did not become one of simply running each other down, but instead became a competition, which created a certain room for development and success, then Estonian society received almost a kind of vaccination against extremist forces in the future. We have begun to understand that politics is a game played on a court, where you have to play based on agreed rules.”^[36]

Indeed, it was probably this same sense of consensus which Lauristin herself would bring to the fore barely a month after the publication of those words, when she helped engineer the miraculous compromise on independence between the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of Estonia, which led to the creation of a constitutional assembly. That compromise has been at the heart of Estonian democracy ever since, and it was unique not only among the Baltic states, but across Eastern Europe.^[37] Moreover, for Lauristin this reconciliation was representative of society as a whole, since on a political-sociological level the existence of two strong movements meant that both sides of society – those who were more compliant with Soviet rule and those who had opposed it underground – were able to find their own outlet as well as eventually come together. Reflecting on these events later in 2000, Lauristin noted,

“The main thing was that for the first time a dialogue developed in society between these two groups of people. This represents a difference also in the political experience of Estonia [on the one hand] and Latvia and Lithuania [on the other]. In Latvia and Lithuania, the popular-front-type organizations swallowed up the citizens’ committees and therefore democratic dialogue was minimal. Estonia’s relatively faster renewal of its political elite would not have happened had we not had that dialogue.”^[38]

Similar to arguments made in the theoretical literature on consociationalism or consensus democracy,^[39] Lauristin argued that a major socio-political cleavage generated during the Soviet era between conformists and dissidents had been successfully mitigated in Estonia thanks to the fact that both sides succeeded in become mobilized movements, which in turn created a degree of competition, and ultimately a better understanding of democratic tolerance and cooperation throughout society. This competition did not efface these cleavages, but it did prepare them better for future democratic competition. The fact that the dissident sphere of Estonian society had been able to mobilize so effectively was in no small measure thanks to the way in which the original dissident community had been transformed into a mass-appeal legal restorationist movement.

LEGAL RESTORATIONISM AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

It is perhaps the most telling as well as potentially longest-lasting mark of legal restorationism that while most Western studies of Estonia’s independence movement have focused on the role and activities of the Popular Front, the exact opposite is true of emerging Estonian historiography on this period. Whether judged on the basis of narrative chronicles,^[40] official document collections,^[41] or memoirs,^[42] those keen on stressing how Estonia became independent precisely through legal restorationism have dominated the historical record. Accounts of the Popular Front have been sparse, being either limited to mere picture books or embedded in more wide-ranging accounts of Estonia’s entire democratic transition.^[43] Two works have attempted to give a prominent place to Estonia’s day of re-independence, August 20, 1991;^[44] however, these analyses do not cover the broader moderate-restorationist conflict.
As a result, the tone of pro-restorationist accounts has been relatively triumphal, highlighting the often “heroic” efforts restorationist activists undertook to promote their cause or the valiant spirit of the Estonian people in registering with the Citizens’ Committees and putting their faith in the Congress of Estonia. Likewise, these accounts portray the Popular Front as stubbornly opposing the restorationists at every turn, including the Front’s decision to participate in the Congress in early 1990 only to undermine it later by failing to take it seriously. Credit is given only to moderates, such as Marju Lauristin and Liia Hänni, who helped bridge the gap between the restorationists and the Popular Front in 1990 and 1991. Edgar Savisaar is generally portrayed as a villain.
The pro-restitutionist accounts also rank the Citizens’ Committees among the most impressive and influential civic movements in Estonian history. Their value as an example of non-violent resistance is held up as a model for the rest of the world.

“The Citizens’ Committee movement was the broadest movement of civic initiative ever in Estonian history, which brought the Estonian people to their ultimate goal – the restoration of the Republic of Estonia on the basis of legal continuity. It is and will remain a remarkable example in world history of a small people’s extensive ability to organize itself and to maintain peaceful self-discipline. The Estonian Citizens’ Committee movement was [for the Estonian people] a great strategist, flag-bearer and setter of clear goals.”^[45]

Likewise, these analyses underscore the changes in people’s consciousness that took place thanks to the restorationist movement.

“It forced every person, every citizen to think through in his or her deepest core a fundamental existential question: who am I and am I a citizen of the Republic of Estonia? And from there, do I have the courage to admit this to myself, and even furthermore, do I have the courage to go and publicly register myself as a citizen of the Republic of Estonia?”^[46]

Thus, the historiography of the Citizens’ Committees and of legal restorationism would seem to have touched ontology itself. The movement had succeeded in transforming the very existence of Estonians.

LEGAL RESTORATIONISM AND POPULAR CULTURE

In reality, most Estonians did not undergo such a dramatic process of self-reidentification as Kiin suggests. Yet on the sub-conscious level, legal restorationism pervaded deeper and deeper into Estonians minds, especially thanks to its spread to popular culture during the 1990s. Most obvious among these trends was the official practice of observing Estonia’s national day only on February 24 (the date of the first declaration of independence in 1918), while largely downplaying the significance of August 20, when Estonia regained independence in 1991. For example, during the first parliament of 1992-1995, there was outright rejection of a proposal to declare August 20 a national holiday. This was done only in 1996, and even then President Lennart Meri during his time in office (1992-2001) reserved his major public activities for February 24. August 20 was of little particular significance.
In such a way, Estonia’s entire state history has come to be seen in “octogenarian” terms, rather than an “adolescence” of just a fifteen years since 1991 or even a “mature adulthood” of thirty-five years (if one adds the interwar years). For example, in 1993 Estonia celebrated its “diamond” (seventy-fifth) anniversary, to be followed by an eightieth anniversary in 1998 and an eighty-fifth in 2003. In turn, government institutions and offices all began to date their histories back to the 1918-1920 period, and even issued commemorative albums to reinforce this claim. Moreover, while these publications often talk about the Soviet period as illegal, the years from 1940 to 1991 are still presented as part of a history spanning more than seven decades. They are treated as years when the ministry or office in question was in active operation, even though on another level what it was doing was simply serving an occupation regime. There is a need, on the one hand, to separate off these years as deviant, while on the other hand filling them with some content in order to appropriate them for a larger anniversary. In this respect, popular culture attempts to have both aberration and continuity.^[47]
Even more so is this the case for institutions, which did not exist in any form during the Soviet era, but still tout eighty or more years of legacy. Such was the impression left by a 1997 press release issued by the Estonian Border Guard, in which it, too, publicized its “75th anniversary.” To be sure, part of this celebration was simply to commemorate the day when the first Estonian border guard was formed in 1922. Yet in the case of the guard, there was clearly no continuity of service to be observed since then, as in 1940 the force had been completely disbanded and replaced by the KGB. Still, in popular culture such anniversaries were appealing.

CONCLUSION

In this article, my aim has not been to undermine the legal arguments behind state restorationism or to disparage their meaning in Estonian state identity and politics. Both of these factors are very real, as the author of this article himself realized during an incident from the summer of 2003. It happened during an undergraduate admissions interview at the University of Tartu when the female applicant fell into a quandary as she tried to analyze Estonia’s most recent political development. “Estonia is a young country,” she said, alluding to the fact that independence had been restored only in 1991. “And it takes time for things to change.” Yet, as soon as she had uttered those words, she suddenly felt obliged to correct herself by adding, “Well, actually we all know that Estonia is eighty-five years old, but we’re still young in terms of recent development.” This left Estonia in a considerable degree of flux – influenced on the one hand by its recent history (since August 1991), and at the same time by its more distant past (since 1918), thanks in large part to the nature of a consciously constructed political doctrine known as legal restorationism.