Estonia in World War II - Soviet Return

Soviet Return

Soviet forces reconquered Estonia in the autumn of 1944 after fierce battles in the northeast of the country on the Narva river (see Battle of Narva) and on the Tannenberg Line (Sinimäed). In 1944, in the face of the country being re-occupied by the Red Army, 80,000 people fled from Estonia by sea to Finland and Sweden, becoming war refugees and later, expatriates. 25,000 Estonians reached Sweden and a further 42,000 Germany. During the war about 8,000 Estonian Swedes and their family members had emigrated to Sweden. After the retreat of Germans, about 30,000 Forest Brothers remained in hiding in the Estonian forests, further on leading a massive guerrilla war. Commander of 46. SS Grenadier Regiment, Friedrich Kurg, stood with most of his men in Estonian forests.

In 1949 27,650 Soviet troops still led a war against the Forest Brothers. Only the 1949 mass deportation (see Operation Priboi) when about 21,000 people were taken away broke the basis of the insurgent movement. 6,600 Forest Brothers gave themselves up in November 1949. Later on the failure of the Hungarian uprising broke the resistance moral of the 700 men still remaining under cover. According to the Soviet data, up to 1953, 20,351 insurgents were disarmed. Of these, 1,510 perished in the battles. During that period, 1,728 members of the Red Army, NKVD and the militia were killed by the Forest Brothers. August Sabbe, one of the last surviving Forest Brothers in Estonia, was discovered by KGB agents and drowned himself in 1978. After him there were only little number of insurgents alive in the Estonian forests. Many of them died because of their age in the next 15 years.

During the first post-war decade of Soviet regime, Estonia was governed by Moscow via Russian-born Estonian governors. Born into the families of native Estonians in Russia, the latter had obtained their Red education in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist repressions at the end of the 1930s. Many of them had fought in the Red Army (in the Estonian Rifle Corps), few of them had mastered the Estonian language.

Although the United States and the United Kingdom, the allies of the USSR against Germany during World War II, recognized the occupation of the Republic of Estonia by USSR at Yalta Conference in 1945 de facto, the governments of the rest of the western democracies did not recognize the seizure of Estonia by the USSR in 1940 and in 1944 de jure according to the Sumner Welles' declaration of July 23, 1940 Such countries recognized Estonian diplomats and consuls who still functioned in many countries in the name of their former governments. These aging diplomats persisted in this anomalous situation until the ultimate restoration of Estonia's independence in 1991.

In August 1994 the last Soviet troops withdrew from the Republic of Estonia.