The Radical Right in Interwar Estonia by Andres s> Kasekamp (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 575 to draw on its archive of KGB material (inaccessibleto other researchers)to document the persecution of the Armenian clergy, though Gazer uses his workmore cautiously. Unfortunately, this reliance on sourceswithin Armenia has not been crosscheckedwith outsidesources,whetherin Moscow or elsewhere.When quoting a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury to PatriarchTorgom in 1932, Gazer uses Behbudyan'spublished text without checking in Lambeth Palace archive,in the processtransmogrifyingArchbishopCosmo Gordon Lang into 'Kosmos Cantor' (p. 267). However, Gazer has not fallen into the trap of many Armenian historians of beginning his historywith the conversionof Armenia to Christianityin 301 AD or with even earlierevents. He clearly sympathizeswith the plight of the Armenian Church, speaking of 'two persecutions through equally totalitarian-inspired systems which brought the church in the formerheartlandof Armenia in the end at least to the brinkof its physical and spiritualdestruction'(p. 32 I) a reference not only to the Soviet destructionof the churchbut the genocide of the Armenian nation in the dying days of the Ottoman empire. Yet his account remains factual and neutral in tone, providing a reliable survey of how a minority religious community suffered from the Soviet attempts to destroy popular faiththroughorganizationaland physicalelimination. London FELIX CORLEY Kasekamp, Andres. 7heRadical RightinInterzwar Estonia.Studies in Russia and East Europe. Macmillan, in associationwith the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, Basingstokeand London, and St Martin'sPress, New York, 2000. iX+ 2I8 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. f42.50. ANDRES KASEKAMP'S TheRadical RightinInterwar Estonia is the firstmonograph in English dedicated to the history of the Estonian War of Independence Veterans' League from its foundation in I926 to the ultimate demise of the remnantsof the movement followingthe Soviet occupation of Estoniain 1944. Until recently, Westernhistorianshave been limited in their researcheson the Veterans' League by lack of access to archival sources, as well as by linguistic restraints. Estonian historians of the Soviet period, on the other hand, were hampered by the ideological straitjacket which sought to portray the Veterans' League as lacking roots among the Estonian people and as an artificial'import' of German Nazism. In this respect, Estonian historiansof the Soviet era were not unlike those of other Communist countries, where radical right movements were invariably described as being inspired and backed by the Nazis. Moreover, as Kasekamp points out, Estonian and Western historians have tended to regard Konstantin Pats's moves towards authoritarianismin the mid-I930s as a response to supposedlyjustified fears of a Veterans' coup, aimed at the creation of a 'fascist' dictatorship. Kasekamp's work, which draws on archival sources in Estonia, Latvia and Finland, as well as archives in Britain and Germany, successfullylays to rest these historiographicalghosts. 576 SEER, 8i, 3, 2003 Kasekampplaces the foundation of the Veterans'League within the history of the developmentof Estoniannationalismin thenineteenthcentury(inspired by Baltic German intellectuals),the emergence of an Estonian middle class, and the creationof an independent Estonianstateas a resultofthe I9I8- I 920 Warof Independence. During thiswar,Estonia'sarmedforceswere organized by the future leaders of the Veterans' League and both the German and bolshevikarmieswere successfullyousted fromEstoniansoil. The Veterans'League was initiallyestablishedas a 'self-help'organization for the veterans of the War of Independence to ensure their rights to land underthe I9 I9 LandReform, and to bureaucraticpositionsand statepensions by the post-war government. In addition, the League sought to preserve the memory of the war dead and 'to preserve and spread the spirit, unity and friendshipwhich governed in the daysof the war' (p. 24). The desire to preserve this collectivist 'spirit' lay at the heart of the movement's attacks on 'political corruption' when the Veterans began to emerge as a political force in the early I930S. The Estonian constitution of 1920, like that of many of the newly created states of East-Central Europe, provided for an over-mighty legislature at the expense of the executive. In Estonia, no provisionwas made for a presidency, and the prime ministerwas chosen by the parliament (Riigikogu) and could neither appoint nor dismiss ministers. These constitutional features, together with the proliferation of parties within the ioo-member parliament, led to a series of short-livedand weak governments, whose members were open to political and economic corruption. The apparent inability of these unstable...