Facts and Figures
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Language
Tumultuous political and social transformations over the twentieth century have rendered the modern history of Baltic Orthodoxy (and the Baltic states overall) sometimes difficult to follow. No less confusing, places and people often have different names in various different local languages (Estonian, Latvian, Russian, German, Swedish, and more). To try and mitigate this confusion, we have adopted a series of rules in our articles:
Modern place names are used rather than historical variants. For example, the Estonian city of Tartu is referred to precisely as Tartu, and not by its German name Dorpat or its Russian name Iur’ev;
The names of individual historical actors reflect the national identities of said actors, in so far as these identities can be ascertained. To wit, the leading prelate of the interwar Latvian Orthodox Church is called Archbishop Jānis (Pommers), not Ioann (Pommer) or John (Pommer);
The names of churches, monasteries, and other ecclesiastical institutions are translated into English. For instance, one of Tallinn’s early nineteenth-century churches is referred to as the Tallinna Nikolai kirik by Estonians and the Tallinnskaia Nikolaevskaia tserkov’ by Russians: however, we refer to it as the Tallinn church of St Nicholas.
To further aid the readers of this site, the rest of this page is dedicated to providing some basic facts and figures on the history of the modern Baltic region.
Estonia
Estland province
Incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1719, Estland province (known as Reval province until 1796) covered 20,246.7 square kilometres, stretching from the island of Hiiumaa in the west to the limits of the city of Narva in the east. Estland province was much smaller than the modern Republic of Estonia, since it did not include the islands of Saaremaa and Kihnu, the city of Narva, or several southern districts centred on Tartu and Viljandi.
The province’s capital was Tallinn, known in German as Reval and in Russian as Revel’.
The province was divided into four districts:
Tallinn district;
Rakvere district;
Paide district;
Haapsalu district.
As of 1897, Estland province was home to 433,724 residents. In terms of their language, these people were:
74.1% Estonian;
14.8 % German;
4.1% Russian;
1.4 % Swedish;
0.4% Jewish;
0.2% other languages.
In terms of their religion, these people were:
94.3 % Lutheran;
4.9% Orthodox;
0.4% Jewish;
0.3% Roman Catholic.
Thanks to German crusading from the twelfth century onwards, the lands of Estland province were largely in the hands of Baltic German aristocrats, a situation the Russian Empire preserved upon conquering the region from Sweden in the early eighteenth century. Similarly, the cities of the province were dominated by Baltic German merchants and their guilds. Since the Russian Empire undertook to protect the ancient privileges of the Baltic Germans in the Treaty of Nystadt in 1721, German courts, law, policing systems, and administrative bodies were preserved: until the 1880s, German was the language of government in the province. The Lutheran Church, often staffed by the sons of aristocratic families, partially assisted in reinforcing German rule, although pastors increasingly called for the use of Estonian in church services and church schools. Not only did Baltic Germans often assume the office of governor and other important local posts, but they were also highly placed in the empire’s central government in St Petersburg, especially in trade, finance, the army, and the navy.
The Estonians were overwhelmingly poor peasant serfs, legally obligated to perform duties for the owners of the farm lands they rented: while serfdom was abolished in the province in 1816, no land was given to the emancipated peasants. However, changes in the law and rapid industrialisation in the second half of the nineteenth century began to lead to dramatic demographic and social transformations. Estonians began to buy up land and flooded the cities. In 1900, an alliance between Estonian and Russian politicians in Tallinn led to the end of German dominance on the Tallinn city council. Meanwhile, high literacy rates and new waves of civic activism led to the emergence of an Estonian national movement, although it was divided on several key questions, such as the future relationship of Estonia with the Russian Empire.
The Russians of Estland province can be divided into two groups. First there were the peasant communities living on or near the coasts of Lake Peipus/Chudskoe, some of which may have dated back at least to the sixteenth century. These were reinforced by several waves of settlement, the most important of which were the Old Believers, religious refugees who fled from Russia in the late seventeenth century to escape persecution by the Russian Orthodox Church. While the Old Believers Second were the groups that accompanied incorporation into the Russian Empire: these were government officials, merchants, officers, and soldiers. However, thanks to the preservation of Baltic German privileges in 1721, the Baltic provinces were administratively and linguistically distinct from other places in the Russian Empire. It was only in the 1880s that ancient German legal, policing, administrative, and educational settlements were abolished in favour of Russian bodies: at this point, Russian began the language of government in the province, and Russians began to dominate most levels of local administration.
Mostly to be found on the island of Vormsi and the hinterland around Haapsalu, the Swedish-speakers of Estonia were the remnants of medieval waves of migration across the Baltic sea. By the end of the nineteenth century, their population was in steady decline. While they were technically speaking free peasants (in distinction from Estonian serfs), they still owed rents and labour duties to the Baltic German aristocrats who owned their lands. Protestant revivalism in their communities at the end of the nineteenth century brought a renewed focus on education, leading to a small social movement.