Download Estonia – Winning Recognition 1918–1921

Estonia – Winning
Recognition 1918–1921
John Hiden
Emeritus Professor of Baltic Studies at University
of Bradford and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at
University of Glasgow.
Talk given in Tallinn on 24 October 2008 at the
conference “For Estonia. 90 years of foreign policy
and diplomacy”
Declaring independence is one thing; securing it
quite another. Estonians declared their independence on 24 February 1918, taking advantage of
the single day between the departure of Bolshevik troops from Tallinn and the arrival
of German armed forces. How, under such circumstances, could Estonia make independence a reality and win international recognition of its statehood?
The first obstacle was, of course, the German occupation. Among other things, it
encouraged Baltic Germans to make a final bid to retain their historic control of
governance of the Baltic provinces, albeit under the patronage of the Kaiser now that
the Czar had fallen. Both Wilhelm II and the German High Command favoured the
attachment of the Baltic provinces to the Reich on economic and strategic grounds.
This was the background for Germany’s imposition of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on
the Soviet regime on 3 March 1918.
Paradoxically, the treaty was indirectly helpful to the Estonian cause, in so far as
it stipulated for the first time the separation of the Baltic provinces from Russia.
Moreover, even the German occupiers could not entirely ignore the popular doctrine
of national self-determination. Under the terms of Brest-Litovsk, German troops were
to police the provinces until their future could be decided ‘in consultation’ with the
wishes of inhabitants. In reality, Baltic German inhabitants were given prominence.
A council was convened of mainly Baltic German elites, together with a handful of
compliant Latvians and Estonians, and it promptly asked for the provinces to be attached to the Kaiser as a ‘Baltic state’.
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Estonians therefore looked increasingly towards the Allied Powers for help. In doing
so they encountered the West’s continuing chronic uncertainty over its policy towards
‘Russia’. On the one hand, the Allies were anxious not to offend a possible restored
‘White Russia’ by actively promoting independence for the Baltic peoples. On the other
hand, the Western powers needed all the help they could get in the East to continue the
war against Germany. Eventually they compromised by simply acknowledging the situation
created by the Estonians and offered Estonia de facto recognition on 3 May 1918.
Estonia, however, was still under German occupation. Only after the Reich’s defeat
in November 1918 and the installation of a German republic could key figures in the
new government and Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Office) begin to forge a new
Ostpolitik, one that no longer relied on the Baltic Germans. Instead, it had to be based
on winning over the friendship of Estonians and Latvians, thereby retaining German
influence in an area of economic and strategic importance. On 19 November 1918,
Berlin followed the example of the Allied Powers and accorded de facto recognition to
the government of Konstantin Päts.
The overall military situation remained serious,
as Bolshevik forces swept into the country behind
Wider
the departing German troops, capturing Tartu on
ments continued to present
24 December 1918. Although British ships subse-
obstacles to securing de jure
quently played a part in saving Tallinn, it is impor-
recognition.
European
develop-
tant to give full credit to the Estonians themselves.
A crucial factor was Johan Laidoner’s completion of
the organisation and expansion of the Estonian army on a conscript basis. Estonian forces,
supplemented by the Estonian German Baltenregiment and aided by Finnish volunteers,
managed to clear the country of Bolshevik forces by 24 February 1919. Even so, wider
European developments continued to present obstacles to securing de jure recognition.
Not the least of these was the situation created by Article 12 of the Armistice of 11 November 1918. The article reflected Allied worries about the threat from the Bolshevik
troops and stipulated that for the time being, German soldiers were to remain in the
East to help ‘in the restoration of peace and good government in the Baltic provinces
and Lithuania’. They were to return to Germany only when the Allied and Associated
Powers thought the moment suitable. However, since the exhausted regular German
troops quickly began going home, the German government used Article 12 as the
justification for recruiting fresh volunteers for the Baltic arena.
Their subsequent ‘Baltic campaign’ was never properly controlled from Berlin, where the
overriding preoccupation was with preparations for the coming peace treaty negotiations.
As a result, far too much initiative was left to the German Freikorps leaders in the
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Baltic area. Predictably, such figures fully exploited the chance to remain in the East
even after Germany’s defeat. Their actions, carried out mainly in Latvia and tacitly
supported by Reichswehr leaders and a handful of political figures, seriously impeded
preparations for Berlin’s proposed new Ostpolitik by fostering a mood of ‘wait and
see’ over Baltic questions.
The mood was self-evidently harmful to the Estonian case for independence and the recognition
More decisive action was re-
thereof. More decisive action was required on the
quired on the part of the Allied
part of the Allied Powers to end the policy drift
Powers to end the policy drift
towards the Baltic. A Baltic German coup against
towards the Baltic.
the Latvian government in April 1919 prompted
the Allies to call for the withdrawal of German
troops and to send their own military and economic missions to the Baltic arena. The
head of the British military mission, General Gough, was instructed ‘to establish our
influence in the countries between Germany and Russia.’ He and other Allied mission
leaders soon joined the chorus advising de jure recognition of Baltic independence.
One result of the flow of new information available to the Allied Powers about the
real situation in the Baltic countries was that Estonia’s political leaders could hope
for a better hearing at the Paris Peace Conference, despite the fact that the Russian
question was not part of the official agenda. For too long, the Estonian socialist Martna
rightly observed, the Allies had behaved as though ‘the existence of independent
Baltic countries was secondary to the fight against Bolshevism’. He and others called
urgently for the West to stop regarding ‘the defensive struggle of our country as some
sort of intervention’ against Russia.
It was not so easy, however, to overcome the West’s habit of fusing the ‘Baltic problem’ with the ‘Russian problem’. Throughout 1919 and 1920 the Allied Powers continued to display schizophrenia over Baltic issues. The French government, anxious
to secure pre-war debts from Russia, resisted a premature break-up of the country
by recognising the Baltic states. British officials repeated the mantra that Britain’s
attitude to the Baltic peoples ‘has always been one of sympathy’. For all its good
will, London’s position remained that it could not give de jure recognition of Estonia
‘while the civil war is being fought in Russia’.
There was one gleam of light on the horizon, in that economic considerations were
beginning to have an impact on Allied attitudes towards de jure recognition. Once the
last German troops had left the area in December 1919, Berlin could more effectively
pursue its new Ostpolitik, exploiting Germany’s economic weight to win over Estonian and Latvian trade. The policy directly challenged Britain’s commercial ambi81
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ESTONIAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS YEARBOOK
tions in the region, where the head of the British
commercial mission, Stephen Tallents, had been
Market forces now reinforced
instructed ‘to start commercial dealings between
the argument in favour of de
Britain and the new countries’. Market forces now
jure recognition, which, as
reinforced the argument in favour of de jure recog-
Stephen
nition, which, as Stephen Tallents stressed, was
was vital to the restoration of
vital to the restoration of banking and the flow
banking and the flow of credit.
Tallents
stressed,
of credit.
One major result of the developing Anglo-German trade rivalry in the Baltic was a
heightened awareness of the new countries, Estonia in particular, as stepping stones
to the markets of Russia – whether Russia turned out to be ‘White’ or Soviet. And
by the beginning of 1920, what ‘Russia’ might become was much clearer. White Russians, who opposed Baltic independence, were disorganised and discredited. The
Bolsheviks, also against Baltic independence, were too weak to prevent it – witness
Lenin’s acceptance of the Tartu Peace Treaty of 02 February 1920. Despite the uncertainty caused by the Soviet-Polish conflict in 1920, the strong likelihood was that
Soviet Russia was there to stay.
What was effectively a new Russia was viewed in the West as an unknown but potentially limitless market. Hence the growing enthusiasm of British and European
entrepreneurs for the idea of independent, non-communist border states like Estonia
as transit areas to the East. Yet even now the door to de jure recognition was not fully
open. The British government took the line that it was illogical to recognise Estonia
and Latvia without also recognising Lithuania, which the French, patrons of the new
Poland, refused to do because of the Vilnius conflict.
Furthermore, doubts persisted in London about the ability of the Baltic countries
to survive for long on their own. In a memorandum of April 1920 by John Duncan
Gregory, head of the Northern Department of the Foreign Office, we read: ‘This vast
country [Russia] from the western boundaries of Poland to the Urals forms a single
economic area, and its future prosperity depends on the recognition of this fact. Eventually, therefore, the component parts of the old Russian Empire are bound to come
together again, but this time in a strictly limited economic federalism, and decentralised politically to the fullest extent. Economic union, but cultural independence,
finding expression in the separate political existence of Sovereign States, affords the
best hope for the future, and in so far as we can help forward that solution, we shall
have made a serious contribution to a comprehensive Eastern peace’.
What on earth, it might be asked, were the practical implications of such a mind-set
for Estonian independence? When Gregory revisited the issue of de jure recognition in
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another memo of 2 November 1920 he recorded His Majesty’s Government’s continuing reluctance to accord full recognition, while insisting that London had done what
it could to foster British commerce in the three Baltic states as well as making every
effort ‘to encourage and satisfy Baltic nationalist aspirations in order to stabilise the
present situation bordering on Soviet Russia’.
Stability was the key buzzword in Whitehall and a Foreign Office memo from the
summer of 1920 even went so far as to imply that Britain would do what it could to
help the border states if they faced an aggressive Soviet threat to their existence. However, the unspoken assumption here was that Britain would not be able to prevent
the ‘peaceful’ re-absorption of Estonia and Latvia, which, until well into the 1920s,
Foreign Office circles thought likely to happen.
This underlying scepticism also coloured Allied reactions to Baltic efforts to join the
League of Nations in late 1920. When Estonian Premier Anton Piip asked the British
government to back Estonia’s application to join the League, British Foreign Minister
Lord Curzon noted that admitting Estonia to the League was ‘tantamount to de jure
recognition and our present policy is not to go so far as this’. Conversely, the Foreign
Office felt that if it gave de jure recognition, it would not be able to refuse Estonia’s
entry to the League, and this, it was argued, ran the risk of dragging League members
into a future conflict with a re-constituted Russia.
As late as 21 January 1921 the Foreign Office legal
expert, Malkin, was still taking much the same
The Soviet-Polish peace treaty,
line. Of a conversation he had with Estonian rep-
together with the peace trea-
resentatives in London he noted: ‘The Estonians
ties it made with the Baltic
know our point of view perfectly well, but, like
countries in 1920, undermined
the Latvians and Lithuanians, they have started
Allied objections to the de jure
an intensified campaign in the last few weeks in
recognition of Estonia, which
the hope of influencing our conference in Paris.’
was given on 26 January 1921.
As it happened, by the time that conference took
place, the Soviets had finally survived the civil
war. The Soviet-Polish peace treaty, together with the peace treaties it made with the
Baltic countries in 1920, undermined Allied objections to the de jure recognition of
Estonia, which was given on 26 January 1921.
Another factor in the decision to take this step had been the shift in the attitude of
the French government. The success of France’s protégé Poland in holding back the
Red Army reinforced the French government’s ambition to construct a ‘barrier’ of
independent states in East Central Europe, which could include independent Baltic
states as well as Finland and Poland. For this reason the Finnish president at the time
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described the de jure recognition of Estonia and Latvia in terms of ‘a strengthening of
the European opposition against Bolshevism’.
Since the Versailles Peace Treaty obligated Germany to accept future arrangements of
the Allied and Associated Powers for the territories of the former Russian Empire, it
was only now that the German government could consider giving de jure recognition
to Estonia. Internal German government documents stressed Estonia’s importance
for German trade and Berlin initially tried to make de jure recognition dependent on
successful trade treaty negotiations with Tallinn. However, the Estonians stubbornly
insisted: first recognition, then commercial talks. The German chargé d’affaires, Henkel, also pressed the German government, confessing that ‘what he most desired’
before he left office in April 1921 was the de jure recognition of Estonia.
The decisive argument that Henkel employed was that any prolonged German delay
in according de jure recognition to Estonia would push the country even closer to the
Allied and Associated Powers, thus in the end damaging German trade and influence
in the region. The Reich Economics Ministry threw its weight behind this argument
but it was Henkel’s successor, Werner Otto Hentig, who brought recognition when he
took up his post in Tallinn in May 1921. Moreover, Hentig was a diplomatic heavyweight whose appointment was intended to signal that Estonia was a key target for
German financial and industrial circles. As a British observer noted, ‘Once established in Estonia, [the Germans] would find it a good jumping off place for Russia’.
In the end, this short overview from the perspective of the Western powers simply confirms the
The collapse of Czarist Russia
need to give full credit to the Estonians them-
in 1917, like the more recent
selves, and to the other Baltic peoples, for secur-
collapse of the Soviet Empire,
ing their independence. The collapse of Czarist
was the occasion but not the
Russia in 1917, like the more recent collapse of
cause of Baltic independence.
the Soviet Empire, was the occasion but not the
The actions taken by the Baltic
cause of Baltic independence. The actions taken
nations were critical to their
by the Baltic nations were critical to their success.
success.
This was likely to continue to be the case between
the wars, to judge from the patronising words of
John Duncan Gregory: ‘When recognition came [for Estonia and Latvia], we found
ourselves with two grateful little friends, who on account of our initiative will always
look for moral support to us, though not, I trust, for military protection in grave
emergency’.
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