The life of the Estonian settlements, which had just gotten on their feet, was seriously affected by World War I (1914-18), Russia’s Civil War (1918-22) and the Bolshevist coup d’etat (1917).
Men were mobilised during both the world war and the civil war. In the civil war, the villages to suffer most were those situated near the frontline (between the Red Army and Admiral Koltchak’s troops), which were alternately looted by the punitive detachments of the “Reds” and the “Whites”. Guerilla bands were operating in a number of localities. Bloody clashes occurred, for instance, in Rõžkovo, Estonia (Krasnoyarsk Territory) and Ülem-Suetuk. As the villagers remember, the two-storey schoolhouse of the Estonian congregation in Suetuk was also burnt down at that time. In 1918-1921 the War Communism policy was implemented in Russia, under which small and medium-size enterprises were nationalised. In Estonian villages, mills and threshing machines were expropriated, foodstuffs were taken away, etc.
After Estonia gained independence many Estonians repatriated to the homeland. Under the peace treaty between the Republic of Estonia and the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (2 February 1920) persons of Estonian extraction residing in Russia were granted the right to resettle, or “optate”, to Estonia within one year. There were many who opted for repatriation since the population was disappointed with the developments in Russia and looked with hope to free Estonia. Optation and repatriation were riddled with various problems, such as conflicts between the governmental departments in Estonia and Russia responsible for the conduction of optation. There were reports of the rights of the optants being restricted, even of executions by shooting and consignments to forced labour camps. The Russian side accused the Control-Optation Commission of Estonia of overriding their commission, of usurping the rights of a consulate. The journey to Estonia, particularly with one’s belongings, involved serious hardships. Mihkel Bach from the village of Estono-Semenovka started the journey on 22 December 1922 and completed it in February 1923. In spite of that, a total of 10,790 individuals in Siberia, including war prisoners and refugees, opted for Estonian citizenship. Among those who left were a number of church organists-schoolteachers. The population of the Siberian settlements shrank by 6,500 thousand people. At the same time, there was an opposite trend of refugees from European Russia and Estonia coming to Siberia. After that, the border with Estonia was closed until right up to World War II.
The 1920s brought new winds. The change of government did not change the landed property of the Estonians. In 1925 re-elections to village soviets were conducted. Ethnic village soviets were founded, with one or several villages falling within the jurisdiction of one village soviet, where business was conducted in the mother tongue. In the villages, people were agitated for joining the Communist Party (Russian Communist (Bolshevist) Party) and the Komsomol (Young Communist League), and propagandist events were held. Society centres and churches were turned into clubs or demolished altogether, libraries were transformed into reading houses, and “red corners” were opened.
Russia set about rebuilding its ruined economy on the foundation of the new economic policy (NEP). This favoured small private enterprise and suited well the system of parcelled-out farms of the Estonian settlers with their scattered households. The economic life was on the upswing. By the second half of the 1920s the farms had an average of 2-4 horses, 3-5 oxen and 1-2 farming machines, the numbers varying by family and settlement. Cooperation intensified; cooperatives were founded jointly with local village stores to facilitate the marketing of consumer goods; dairy and machinery associations were set up to purchase larger agricultural machines. In 1923 a total of 47 registered associations were operating in the Estonian settlements in Siberia; the actual number may have been even greater since the official registration procedure was complicated.
In cultural and educational terms the period was full of contradictions. The linguistic and cultural policies were liberalised. On 31 October 1918 the People’s Commissariat of People’s Education of the Russian SFSR issued a decree enacting the right of national minorities to school education in their mother tongue. The number of schools increased (according to different sources, there were upwards of 60 schools in Siberia at that time); the opportunity to get school instruction in Estonian was available in each larger Estonian settlement. In the 1930s the overall obligation of four-year school education was introduced. Estonian teachers started to be trained at the Estonian Pedagogical High School and at Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Petrograd (later Leningrad, now St. Petersburg) and on short-term courses. Estonian-language textbooks started to be printed for Estonian schools in Russia since the use of textbooks imported from Estonia was banned in 1924. The publishing house “Külvaja” [The Sower] and, later, the State Educational and Pedagogical Publishing House, both situated in Leningrad, systematically supplied the schools with textbooks. In 1918-1940 a total of 49 primers, readers and workbooks were issued, as were 20 Estonian grammar textbooks. Textbooks on geography, etc. were translated. In Siberia, Estonian newspapers “Siberi Tööline” [The Siberian Worker], “Siberi Teataja” [Siberia Gazette], etc. were printed; as well, periodicals and books published in Leningrad were available. In essence, the then publications were at a different level and already exuded the new ideology.
Estonian schoolteachers were the organisers of cultural life in the village; as well, they taught dramas and conducted brass bands, string bands and choirs. In a number of localities (Vambola,Rozental’) folk festivals attended jointly by several villages were held. Although school education was harnessed to the service of Soviet ideology, the then Estonian-language education, the lively cultural life and the possibility to live one’s life in the environment of an Estonian-language settlement were among the reasons for the survival to this day of the Estonian settlements in Siberia. According to the 1926 census there were 29,890 individuals with Estonian as their mother tongue in Siberia and 2,132 in the Far East.
For a short period in the late 1920s some of the settlements set up communes, which were joined on a voluntary basis. The communards collectivised all their property; they had their free meals at the common canteen.
In the 1930s the political line hardened and the ideological pressure intensified. That period became infamous due to repressions, the collectivisation of agriculture, the alternation of the picture of settlements and the banning of Estonian-language educational and cultural life. The 1930s must be considered the breaking point.
In 1928-1932 the forcible formation of collective farms started and individual farming was outlawed. In 1939 the decree was issued that in parcelled-out farms and villages of up to 10 households the houses should be “moved to collective farm settlements” to “make a more efficient use of collective farm lands”. In this manner, the scattered farms of the settlers were forcibly crammed together into a one-street village. Part of smaller Estonian villages were annexed to larger, sometimes Russian, villages, as a result of which the Estonians left. For instance, they moved out of Rõuge Village in the region of Tara. The formation of collective farms dealt a severe blow to the economy.
People were forced to join collective farms by means of expropriation of property and deportation. Nevertheless, it is held that people managed to destroy 30-50% of their possessions before turning them over to collective ownership. By 10 March 1930 fifty-two percent of the households in Siberia had already been collectivised. The collective farms were small; initially, several collective farms could be found in a single village (e.g. in Kovelyovo Village, where the Estonians had one by the name of Karl Marx and the Latvians had another called Arajs [The Plougher]). In spite of everything, part of the collective farms reached good work results. Notable was the agricultural-industrial artel “Leek” [The Flame] situated in Estonia Village, Altai Territory. The artel had two tractors, three GAZ trucks, sowing machines, a diesel-engined flour mill, a shed for 100 milk cows, a two-storey dwelling, etc. Its industrial facilities provided work for 150 people and its metal works and casting house put out replacement parts for agricultural machines and commodities (irons, stove rings). In 1929 electricity lines were drawn from the artel’s power station to the village. The village attracted migrants from other Estonian villages, e.g. almost the entire population of the Estonian settlement at Sandai.
The years 1929-1930 and, in particular, 1936-1939, may definitely be considered the cruellest in the history of the Estonian settlements. The first wave of repressions hit pastors, schoolteachers and wealthier villagers, so-called “kulaks”. Families were deported from the villages or deprived of their possessions; women and children were chased out of their homes and divested of their civil rights. The latter also meant that the kulaks could not be employed at collective farms and their children were not admitted to schools to continue their studies after receiving basic education. In Siberia Territory 76,334 households were declared kulaks; altogether, 90,000 people were deported from the territories of Siberia and the Far East. Up to 15% of the inhabitants of the Estonian villages in west Siberia were deported. In the late 1930s a cruel fate could already befall anyone. The NKVD (the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) mostly imprisoned men, the majority of whom were executed. It is estimated that 25-30% of the population were directly affected by the repressions of the late 1930s.
The purpose of the repressions was to sway people into loyalty to the state, and their direct targets were enterprising collective farmers and the intelligentsia. Major sufferings were also inflicted on small nations living in Russia, such as the Volga Germans and the Ingrian Finns.
Of the Estonians, all the members of the collective farm “Valgus” [The Light] were deported from the village of Semyonovka in 1934. Some settlements (e.g. Estono-Semenovka, Koltsovka, Yuryev and Koidula) are reported to have lost most of their male population between 20-40 years of age through execution by shooting. According to the estimates of the inhabitants of Estonia Village, Altai Territory, 96 out of the total 500 of their fellow villagers were taken away, including the managerial staff of the artel ”Leek”. In the village of Vambola, whose population had totalled 765 people in the early 1920s, fifty-six men were executed by shooting. Also imprisoned were Estonians living in cities, such as industrial workers and university students. The exact figures are still unknown, since large amounts of archival data are either unavailable or insufficiently studied. Some of the villagers have drawn up their own lists and erected monuments, e.g. on the sites of the villages of Estono-Semyonovka and Koltsovka. In the midst of the overall chaos, it was difficult to trace the movement of individuals, since the people fled to the nearest cities and towns as well as to the Far East and Kazakhstan for fear of arrest. Normal life in the villages broke down.
Russification began. Since the academic year 1937/38 all the Estonian-language schools were transferred to Russian as the language of instruction. The publication of literature in the languages of national minorities was terminated; Estonian-language books were destroyed in the villages. Communication and correspondence with the mother country was banned.
The church had been separated from the state and the school already in 1918; in the 1930s all Lutheran churches were closed and ecclesiastical organisations were banned.
The church at Rõžkovo was destroyed. The churches of Räpina and Ülem-Suetuk were turned into clubhouses. The church bells and steeples were taken down. When a secular dance party was held at the church-school of Estonia Village for the first time, the local people responded with indignation. The church at Haida was demolished in 1956. Lutheran pastors fled from Russia. As the villagers remember, the authorities took away pastor Petlemm, who had preached at Ülem-Suetuk Church.
Religious observances, child baptisms and funerals were left entirely with the villagers themselves. The functions of a church organist-schoolteacher were frequently fulfilled by one of the villagers, who during and after World War II was often a woman. The said procedures were performed in secret.
By the late 1930s a number of Estonian villages, such as Rõuge and Vladimir, had disappeared as a result of repressions, collectivisation and the cramming of households into a single village. Apart from the direct executions of people and the decrease in the population the Estonians lost their native linguistic and cultural environment, and they were not recognised as a separate nation. This resulted from a policy of the Soviet authorities aimed squarely at the eradication of national minorities.
At that time, more than 30,000 Estonians were living in Siberia.