Riga and Tallinn in the late tsarist era: Multiethnicity and social and political change

Abstract

This article offers a comparative perspective on the impact of the rapid development of the Baltic cities of Riga and Tallinn (Ger. Reval) from the 1860s to the eve of the First World War in 1914. In many ways typical East-Central European cities, Riga and Tallinn had been dominated by a Baltic German elite for centuries until the middle of the nineteenth century. In the six-decade period until the collapse of the tsarist regime the population of the two cities mushroomed and their ethnic composition changed drastically, especially as Latvians and Estonians increasingly chose the urban option. Adapting to this growing multiethnic diversity provided a challenge for both cities in the last decades of the Russian Empire. Various forms of modernization, including industrialization, expanded trade, and new access to various options in the free professions, afforded the opportunity for upward social mobility. In the contest for hegemony between the Russian and German languages Latvian and Estonian found a niche for themselves, also buoyed by their rapidly growing numbers. Even some local political change transpired in the last years of the Russian Empire.